"One, two, three, lift!"
At the entrance of Lihua Hotel, people wearing thin clothes and face masks lifted corpses that had been moved from hotel rooms onto a vehicle.
The vehicle was an official corpse transport truck specifically dispatched for this purpose. On the first day after the rules ended, nurous corpse transport trucks shuttled along the city's main roads, collecting bodies from various gathering points.
During the final stages of the rules' effect, with temperatures dropping to dozens of degrees below zero, storing corpses indoors temporarily wasn't a problem. But now with the blazing sun and rising temperatures, failing to quickly remove these corpses would only risk outbreaks of infectious diseases.
"One, two, three, go!"
Several people lifted another corpse onto the truck, and during the process, a pair of glasses fell out from the bag wrapping the corpse.
Xu Xiaotian bent down to pick them up. He rembered these were Teacher Feng's glasses. The latter hadn't survived after developing a high fever and died during these rules.
After all corpses were loaded onto the two trucks, everyone watched as the corpse transport vehicles drove away, their expressions appearing sowhat numb.
The rules had ended, but the psychological trauma the rules left on people would not end.
Many people, to distract themselves from these thoughts, took up tools spontaneously without waiting for official calls and went to clear snow from the streets and demolish those ice walls.
Others imdiately packed their belongings, preparing to leave as soon as the snow lted, wanting to get away from this place that had left them with psychological scars.
Only the original residents who had first moved into Lihua Hotel had no plans to leave.
Even though the hotel now looked completely different from before—with collapsed signage and main entrance, a swimming pool filled with plastic bags of excrent, multiple rooms filled with the stench of death... they still decided to stay.
Because this hotel had already beco like their ho, and those people they held mutual support sessions with every day had beco like family. No matter how filthy this place had beco, as long as everyone worked together, they could slowly clean it up over ti.
After moving the corpses, Xu Xiaotian returned to the lobby and packed his own belongings. He planned to head to the capital Yong'an as soon as transportation resud, waiting to join the academy when it opened.
Like many others, he too had suffered significant psychological trauma from these rules. Yunhua had beco a place he wanted to leave and escape from.
"Ding."
His phone buzzed in his pocket at that mont. Taking it out to look, his face imdiately lit up with joy.
...
Guan Tong had turned off his phone during the mid-phase of the rules to save battery.
After completing his July plan today, he turned it on and found it still had 37% battery remaining.
He originally intended to check social dynamics online, but upon turning on the phone, he was notified that he had received a text ssage from Xu Xiaotian sent yesterday on the 1st.
"Brother Tong, are you still alive?"
Seeing the ssage, Guan Tong simply replied: "Still alive."
The fact that he received this ssage proved that Xu Xiaotian had also survived. Having soone he knew survive the rules counted as a rare piece of good news.
After replying, he browsed information online.
As expected, most information related to disaster situations across various regions. The most tragic situations occurred in so villages near major cities.
Villages in remote areas suffered less severe damage due to lower snowfall. But these villages near major cities had the disadvantage of high population density while lacking the advantage of concentrated rescue resources that big cities enjoyed.
This resulted in many similar villages experiencing the terrifying scene of entire villages being buried by blizzards.
Guan Tong saw so drone-captured village videos that were simply too horrible to watch.
The drone flew from one end of the village to the other, capturing scenes of almost all civilian houses collapsed and buried by the blizzard, with not a single person visible—the entire village had disappeared beneath the snow.
Given such scenes, one could imagine what had happened to those villagers. Even more tragically, no one knew when their bodies would be excavated, since urban rescue efforts would naturally prioritize cities.
"This way, population distribution will likely beco polarized in the future," Guan Tong thought. "One extre will see excessive population concentration within those gacities, while the other extre will see so people choosing to live far from cities, isolating themselves in remote areas to live self-sufficient rural lives."
Guan Tong tried searching for "Yunhua City" and found many videos.
Opening them revealed the city filled with ice walls everywhere, entire streets of collapsed shops, and nurous buildings with caved-in roofs.
Without those ice walls, the entire city looked like it had experienced war or an earthquake, presenting a completely devastated scene.
Guan Tong speculated that after these rules, major cities across the country would likely undergo drastic collective reconstruction.
For example, after entering the era of Doomsday Rules, most street-side shops stood empty—without employees or custors—so they naturally lost their value for existence.
Even without these rules accelerating the process, authorities were surely planning to demolish all these shops and construct other facilities more conducive to national survival.
Like establishing large material reserve warehouses in every neighborhood block. This way, when similar disasters occurred again, refugees could receive aid quickly instead of relying on inefficient transport vehicle deliveries as happened this ti.
Of course, Guan Tong didn't know exactly how the higher authorities were planning. Not being in that position, worrying blindly served no purpose—better to focus on things more directly related to himself.
He searched online for "tradable items" and found, as expected, many people shared his concern about this issue.
So posts pointed out that the ergence of tradable items would create a Matthew Effect, where resources would be siphoned away by powerful individuals and organizations at astonishing speeds.
Others believed that powerful organizations, particularly official ones, would likely concentrate resources on a few elite Ascendants, enabling them to strengthen faster and thus serve their organizations to acquire more resources, creating a positive cycle.
Many others shared Guan Tong's concern—that the appearance of tradable items would deal a devastating blow to solo-acting Ascendants, turning them into "unclaid fatty at" in the eyes of major organizations, who would all try to take a bite.
After browsing online for a while, Guan Tong felt the social situation aligned with his judgnts, so he stopped looking and began acting according to his own plans.
Over the next few days, while waiting for the accumulated snow to lt naturally, he sequentially carried out his actions of adding characters, storing bullets, and opening new pages in the Wordless Book.
Wang Yan and Chen Na, the mother-daughter pair, also followed Guan Tong's advice, using their spare ti to improve their Mind Power upper limits and deeply develop their items.
They both worked hard at this, even Chen Na, who was only twelve years old, vaguely understood after these rules that survival depended on one's own strength.
Several days passed like this, and by July 8th, the trio's food supplies were completely exhausted, while the snow around Mingdao Mountain had mostly lted.
Although so snow remained on the roads, it would only trouble small cars—Wang Yan's large truck would have absolutely no problem driving.
After discussion, the three decided to depart for Yunhua City tomorrow morning, first going to the hospital to check Wang Yan's stomach condition. If nothing serious was found, Wang Yan planned to check the national highway conditions and, if suitable, take Chen Na to the capital Yong'an.
Guan Tong would also ride along back to Yunhua, though he had no plans to go to the capital. He just intended to settle temporarily, complete his July plan, and consider other matters later.
The night before departure, Guan Tong opened the Wordless Book. The character addition on the first page had been completed with his priority attention.
Looking at the words "Transformation Physical Form Guan Tong" on it, he injected Mind Power and summoned it.
After the ethereal human-shaped shadow appeared, Guan Tong ntally commanded it to change form. The next mont, it transford into a long straight line according to his thoughts.
Guan Tong glanced at the terminal panel and was pleased to find that this kind of transformation in ethereal state didn't consu Mind Power.
With another thought, he commanded the shadow to transform according to his will. The shadow imdiately changed from a straight line into what appeared to be a set of armor.
Guan Tong had it cover his body in this form, then consud Mind Power to materialize it. The next mont, a pure black "shadow armor" suddenly appeared, enveloping Guan Tong's entire body.
"It actually works!"
Guan Tong was overjoyed. Having the shadow transform into wearable armor for defense had originally been just a concept, but now it had actually been realized.
This way, as long as attacks couldn't penetrate the materialized shadow, Guan Tong himself wouldn't take damage. And as long as his Mind Power wasn't depleted, this "shadow armor" could be maintained continuously.
"Not bad," he nodded with satisfaction. "With 'shadow armor' plus this Multi-functional Protective Suit I'm wearing, under double protection, ordinary attacks shouldn't easily harm . My personal safety is much better guaranteed."
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