23 hours remaining until the rule ends...
A piercing shriek once again tore through the long night, echoing across human gathering places worldwide...
anwhile, a response eting for this current rule was being held sowhere.
"This rule is a reward stage for the strong, but remains fatal for the weak," declared Gao Liangwei, setting the tone in the conference room of the Doomsday Rules Counterasures Research Office.
"Our official ard teams across various regions can make choices based on circumstances. If conditions permit, prioritize disabling the mobility of the living dead to obtain more Ascension Coin rewards from kills. If conditions don't permit, prioritize rapid elimination and threat removal."
"As for powerful individuals among the civilians, they might voluntarily eliminate more living dead for better settlent rewards—we don't need to interfere with them. Those needing protection are mainly the masses in gathering points."
At this point, soone raised a question: "Should we deploy ard squads to assist civilians in completing this challenge?"
Others also turned their attention to Gao Liangwei upon hearing this, as many were concerned about this issue.
There were nurous appeals online as well, with people hoping the authorities would help them complete this rule—the specific approach wouldn't differ from how ard teams farm coins, similarly involving first disabling the mobility of the living dead. The only difference would be that the final blows would be delivered by civilians instead of soldiers.
Gao Liangwei pondered briefly before responding: "If safety can be guaranteed, we can attempt it."
Ard teams operate with collective discipline, making risks controllable. However, large numbers of civilians lack professional training, so this approach might carry certain dangers.
But if no assistance is provided this ti, many civilians will undoubtedly fail to complete the challenge—if the rule duration were longer it might be manageable, but 24 hours is really quite short.
"By the way, have the tests on the living dead for the Multi-functional Protective Suit and Fast-burning Stick been completed?"
"Completed," answered another researcher. "Testing shows the Multi-functional Protective Suit can effectively resist scratches and bites from the living dead, but protection is limited to the upper and lower body, excluding the head and feet."
"The Fast-burning Stick, during its burning duration, prevents the holder from being attacked by living dead. However, as the number of people near the holder increases, this effective protection ti rapidly shortens.
Tests show that when a single person holds one Fast-burning Stick with no one else within 30 ters, they are guaranteed protection from living dead attacks throughout the entire 15-minute burning duration. But when a second person appears within 30 ters, the safe ti quickly reduces to 10 minutes. As the number of people increases further, the safe ti correspondingly decreases further.
Additionally, the Fast-burning Stick can also be used to attack living dead. Its flas seem to have so suppressive effect against them, capable of reducing living dead to ashes in an extrely short ti."
Hearing the researcher's report, everyone's expressions turned grave.
No one expected the Fast-burning Stick's effectiveness to diminish with increasing numbers of people. This ant that the more crowded a gathering point, the less effective this item would beco.
"From the test results, it seems the Fire Thief doesn't want people grouping together to resist the rules—the hidden rule of the previous Snow in June was similar!"
"Regardless of what it wants, our goal remains to ensure more people survive," Gao Liangwei stated firmly. "Therefore, we still need to build shelters and deploy ard squads at various gathering points."
"Re-report, reporting!"
At that mont, a researcher urgently entered from outside.
"Ergency information! The strange shrieking sound that echoed worldwide when the rule was first announced sounded again three minutes ago! And this ti, countries globally have confird that human corpses transford into living dead after the shriek—a direct connection has been confird!"
Since the Counterasures Research Office was established deep underground in a secure location, the people here hadn't heard any shrieking sounds.
But now that countries worldwide had confird this information, it ant it was true.
"So the shrieks transform human corpses into living dead."
Gao Liangwei imdiately issued orders: "Imdiately synchronize this information with ard teams across all regions nationwide! Require them to imdiately track the location of the nearest shrieking sound and dispatch elite ard squads to investigate!"
"Additionally, Dr. Zhang, deploy the several Doomsday teams we selected and distributed across several major cities. Have them execute this task jointly with local ard squads."
Dr. Zhang was montarily taken aback: "Send the teams on missions now? Their optimal item combinations aren't complete yet—could there be risks?"
"Risks?" Gao Liangwei snorted coldly. "The Counterasures Office has already invested thousands of Ascension Coins in each of them! If they can't handle this level of risk, overco this level of danger, what can we possibly expect from them later? And this is a perfect opportunity to observe their performance."
Dr. Zhang knew the several teams were also competing with each other. Because later, as items beco increasingly expensive and individual training costs rise, it's likely all resources will be focused on just one team.
Thus, Gao Liangwei wanting to test their performance through actual combat, to see which team performs better, wasn't surprising.
Dr. Zhang imdiately nodded: "Understood, I'll contact them right away and have all teams go out on missions."
...
The mont the shriek sounded, Guan Tong, who was walking along South Avenue, tensed up.
"Second one."
He checked the ti: 10:19. The rule had been active for 1 hour and 19 minutes.
The hidden rule stated that the "Matriarch Converter" would emit shrieks at irregular intervals. It could be several hours between shrieks, or several tis within an hour.
But this second shriek allowed Guan Tong to roughly determine its location range.
Looking southward, a conspicuous tall chimney stood in the distance.
He knew it was a landmark of Yunhua City—a industrial park from the previous century.
This industrial park had been shut down decades ago, but the related equipnt wasn't dismantled. Locals chose to convert the park into a characteristic park-like attraction for public visits.
"Could the 'Matriarch Converter' be in that industrial park?"
Guan Tong thought it was highly possible. He glanced at the electronic small screen on his Silver Hunt:
Type 1 Ammunition*37
Type 2 Ammunition*15
Type 3 Ammunition*14
Along the way, he had used 13 rounds of Type 1 Ammunition, hadn't used Type 2, and used one round of Type 3 to help the library gathering point break through.
"The remaining ammunition should be sufficient... I need to hurry, the faster the better."
After roughly determining the "Matriarch Converter"'s location based on the sound, Guan Tong quickened his pace.
He still hadn't chosen to find a car to drive, because the living dead's characteristic of attacking moving objects ant driving a car might attract large numbers of them. Getting trapped in the middle of the road would be troubleso.
Compared to taking that risk, Guan Tong preferred to jog there using his own stamina. After all, as his Mind Power upper limit kept increasing, he felt his physical fitness was improving too.
It was about three kiloters from here to the industrial park—jogging there wasn't a problem.
Once decided, Guan Tong imdiately started running along one side of the street. He occasionally saw so living dead wandering on the road and tried to avoid entering their 30-ter range to prevent attracting attacks.
Jogging along like this, he only encountered one attack from living dead. After resolving it with a few rounds of Type 1 Ammunition, he successfully reached the industrial park entrance.
Looking at the completely dark park inside, Guan Tong's heart sank.
After entering the Doomsday Rules era, no one ca here for leisure visits anymore. Official maintenance had stopped, and after several months, water and electricity were probably cut off.
Earlier, Guan Tong could jog on the outer streets without pressure because street lights and such were still on, providing excellent visibility conditions where living dead had nowhere to hide.
But in this pitch-black park... although the living dead's faintly glowing red eyes could reveal their positions, moving in dark environnts was undoubtedly still dangerous.
After brief hesitation, Guan Tong still turned on the flashlight attached to his chest and stepped inside following the light. Since he had co, he wouldn't give up easily.
The park was completely silent. After entering, Guan Tong first moved close to the wall. If any sudden danger erged, he wouldn't end up surrounded on all sides.
After walking like this for a while, he surprisingly discovered a lit area.
It was a warehouse with a small battery-powered pendant lamp hanging at the entrance. Because the light was weak, Guan Tong hadn't noticed it when entering the park.
The warehouse entrance had its rolling shutter door pulled down, with many sandbags and similar barricades piled up, seemingly used to block living dead, but there were no living dead around.
Guan Tong guessed this warehouse should be a temporary personnel gathering point. He moved closer but couldn't hear any movent from inside—no talking sounds.
No one there?
He circled to the other side of the warehouse where there was a small iron door, probably a back door. But to his surprise, this small iron door was slightly ajar, not closed.
A bad premonition suddenly arose in Guan Tong's heart. He imdiately retreated far away. Then he summoned his Shadow and materialized it, hung a flashlight around its neck, and had it go gently pull the door open.
As the slightly ajar small iron door was pulled open, Guan Tong, hiding in the distance, imdiately saw the situation inside the warehouse thanks to the flashlight hanging around Shadow's neck.
He saw densely packed, hundreds of living dead inside!
They wandered aimlessly in the warehouse, and at their feet, items like bedding, clothes, and backpacks were particularly conspicuous.
So among them seed to notice Shadow opening the door but didn't attack. Perhaps in their eyes, Shadow, being a non-human entity and not moving, wasn't a target for attack.
Watching the scene in the warehouse from afar, a terrifying thought erged in Guan Tong's mind.
It was possible that this gathering point had already been breached by living dead earlier, with all survivors killed... Then after the "Matriarch Converter" emitted its second shriek, all these deceased transford into new living dead...
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