"The fifth one."
Guan Tong retracted his Shadow with satisfaction when he saw his "number one" result.
He had just finished another "Maximum Underground Penetration Distance" challenge.
Whoever created that challenge probably worked in so deep underground facility, or had tools or abilities that could burrow into the earth, so they assud their challenge was foolproof.
But they could never have guessed that Guan Tong's Shadow, when blurred, had no physical form and no pressure limitations, and could extend indefinitely deep underground.
So getting first place for that challenge was effortless for him.
As a result, on January 2nd, the second day of the Rules, by the afternoon he had already taken first place in five challenge events.
Those five were almost all related to distance or speed, and they were precisely the tracks Guan Tong had chosen. With his Shadow and the Body Swap ability, he held an almost absolute advantage in these races.
"Five firsts. Three of them are ten-point Upper Limit boosts, and then for every additional first you get an extra five points... I've already accumulated a twenty-point Upper Limit increase."
A twenty-point increase to Mind Power Upper Limit was absurd for Guan Tong. Normally natural growth gave only four to five points a month. Those twenty points equaled four to five months of natural growth.
Still, twenty points wasn't enough for him. Such a precious opportunity had to be maximized—who knew when another Rules reward like this would appear?
Besides, the fifth page of his Wordless Book urgently needed filling, and he simply didn't have enough Mind Power to complete it.
"There are probably people creating challenges about the ocean similar to that underground one..."
Guan Tong thought that divers or people in submarines might have created similar challenges.
His Shadow could go deep underground and could just as easily go deep into the sea, so seizing first place in those events would be easy.
But Guan Tong had also noticed the broad repercussions caused by the intelligence leak.
At first he hadn't expected the information to be made public.
After all, the eleven people who spent fifty thousand Ascension Coins to buy the rules—no matter what organizations backed them—would surely want their groups to gain strength over others.
For that reason, those who bought the intelligence would have no need to coordinate; they should have tacitly kept the information secret and quietly used it to boost their teams' Ascendants.
Guan Tong could imagine Counterasures Research Office people were among those eleven buyers, but he hadn't expected the Beixing Country governnt to ultimately decide to make the intelligence fully public.
Based on past experience, he thought the authorities would choose secrecy to avoid widespread conflict among the populace.
Now it seed the prior governnt statent—that non-core data would be released later—was not empty rhetoric but a real policy shift.
After the intelligence went public, and after several hours of fernting and discussion, people’s attitudes beca clear: they did not want to hand their Mind Power over to the powerful.
Guan Tong glanced at his website forum. In the Casual Chat section many people explicitly said they would not create challenges, and so started joint petitions asking the officials for an explanation.
He even saw a lot of vitriol directed at him, the site Administrator.
"If you ask , the Administrator shouldn't have sold that intelligence! If nobody knew, there wouldn't be such a big fuss."
"Yeah, if only the Administrator and a few people knew and quietly profited, fine, but this wouldn't have blown up into a citywide storm."
"I bet the Administrator's abilities were limited. Knowing the intelligence wouldn't let him get many firsts, so he sold it for profit! Fifty thousand for a sale—he probably made a tidy sum."
"Administrator, co out and accept interrogation!"
"This is all the Administrator's fault. For personal gain he screwed countless ordinary people. Administrator, do you dare respond? @Ascendant Ho-Administrator"
Guan Tong scratched his head when he read these; they weren't entirely wrong. He had indeed sold the intelligence for his own benefit.
So he wouldn't use his privileges to delete posts, but he also wouldn't reply. Let them curse him—after they've finished, he still won't change his mind.
If there had been any change in Guan Tong since the start of the Doomsday Rules era, it was that he had beco more self-centered. After isolating himself for so long, he acted and spoke from his own core and cared less about others' opinions.
Beyond the attacks aid at him, many people were discussing how to preserve their own first-place status.
After all, aside from those who had decided not to create challenges and would accept mutual loss, most ordinary people still wanted to use the Rules to avoid having their Mind Power Upper Limit decay.
The broad debate produced several counterasures.
One was the tactic Guan Tong discovered on the first day: exploit the fact that official shelters were not open to the public by placing challenge locations within shelters, thereby drastically reducing competition and guaranteeing first place.
That strategy was effective, but currently fewer than one hundred million people had moved into shelters, while over seven hundred million lived in cities nationwide, most still in temporary gathering points waiting for more shelters to be built.
Those people couldn't use this thod. Even though many pleaded for temporary access to shelters during the Rules period, everyone knew it was basically impossible.
If the authorities opened the shelters, chaos would ensue and they couldn't afford the cost.
Aside from the shelter tactic, people had also co up with another approach—one Guan Tong had encountered at the Tian Ding Mountain camp—naly defending one’s first place by force.
The essence was the sa as other tactics, but the scale was completely different.
In practice, a gathering point of hundreds or even thousands would band together as a collective to defend every mber's project first place.
In other words, if an outsider tried to challenge anyone's project in that gathering point, the whole community would unite and use violence to stop them.
This crude, simple tactic proved surprisingly effective.
Guan Tong even saw posts in his forum where two nearby gathering points in the sa city had contacted each other and ford a "mutual defense alliance."
The two gathering points agreed not to steal each other’s firsts, and if an outsider tried, both points would join forces to resist the intruder.
One gathering point had hundreds of people; together they amounted to over a thousand. They assigned sentries, kept large patrols at designated challenge sites, and anyone approaching would quickly be discovered and the internal group alerted.
Then a human tide of hundreds to thousands would rush over. Even strong challengers, faced with such numbers, would mostly give up and retreat; few would stubbornly refuse to leave.
The poster claid that with this tactic, the two gathering points—over a thousand people—had yet to lose a single first from any created challenge.
Once that post gained traction, many comnted "learned this," "our gathering point just held a eting and we're adopting your thod," and "set up mutual defense alliances—if the authorities won't stop the strong from plundering the weak, we'll protect ourselves!"
Guan Tong finished reading and couldn't help but admire people's initiative and the power of collective will.
If gathering points could unite and set challenge locations around their areas, always post sentries and patrols, outsiders attempting to challenge would face massive risk.
Guan Tong had firsthand understanding of this. If he hadn't been so much stronger than the people at the Tian Ding Mountain camp, he probably wouldn't have been able to leave so easily.
"If gathering points in various cities quickly reach consensus and form mutual defense alliances using this set of tactics, most strong challengers really won't have a way—then they'll likely shift their focus to the loose camp populations outside the cities..."
"...It's worth noting that besides releasing the intelligence, the authorities haven't made any other statents. They neither stop strong challengers from seizing others' firsts nor prevent gathering points from forming mutual defense alliances..."
Guan Tong figured the authorities were in a dilemma. If they publicly condemned the strong, how could they explain their concentrated distribution system? If they stopped gathering point people from using violence, they'd be even less believable to the public.
So they simply remained silent, letting the strong and the weak each find ways to seize or protect their interests.
That suited him fine.
Guan Tong personally wasn't eager to go into cities to steal firsts from city dwellers. His targets were more often out in the wild.
Not only because of risk comparison, but because he believed in taking responsibility for his choices.
Those who chose to stay in the city were constrained in movent, had items and Ascension Coins rationed by the group, but in exchange received official protection.
Those who chose to leave for the wild enjoyed freedom of movent, but nobody would provide shelter for them anymore.
If their firsts were stolen, who could they bla? Would they regret not staying in the city where their first could have been protected collectively in a shelter or gathering point?
When you make a choice, you accept its consequences. Therefore Guan Tong felt no guilt when he took other people's firsts—this was the jungle reality for those who chose the wild.
He scrolled down further and found a special post.
Its popularity was second only to the "counterasure thread," with already thousands of replies and still growing quickly.
The title read: "Collecting/Statistics of Challenges Established by Providers"
Providers...
That one word in the title caught Guan Tong's attention. He opened the thread and the original poster launched into a full-throttle long post right on the first floor.
"First, so people might not know what I an by 'providers.' Plainly speaking, they are Ascendants controlled by certain organizations or groups who are tasked with supplying resources specifically for that organization's priority trainees! These people are the providers—if you want to be blunt, they're human resource mines.
Let
give you an example. The most typical provider model is the Tulip Federation's: flock—pack—alpha wolf structure.
Most of you probably haven't heard, but the Tulip Federation now divides all Ascendants in the country into three categories:
The alpha wolf, who is the selected strongest individual and receives absolute priority in resource allocation; the pack, a group of strong people around the alpha with status just below the alpha who also get priority resources; and the flock, who supply the resources—the providers ntioned in my thread title!
How do I know this so clearly? Simple: I currently live in a city of the Tulip Federation, and I am one of the flock Ascendants! My Ascension Coins, my items, even the challenge project I'm supposed to create this ti, all must serve the pack and alpha wolf. If I disobey, I'll be executed publicly!
So why am I making this post? One, this site is the safest place—I'm not afraid of being traced when I tell the truth. Two, I believe ordinary people shouldn't be treated like this. We should launch a counterattack that belongs to us, the ordinary people!
And I believe one way to strike back is for us providers to publicize the challenges we've been forced to create. Then, I plead with the real strong people of all countries, or capable mass organizations, to seize first place in these projects! The more you seize, the faster this provisioning system will collapse!"
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