Spreading the book open, Guan Tong did not hurry to write. Instead, he thought about what he currently lacked.
Offensive thods? He had his Shadow, the Silver Hunt, and the living dead summoned by the Corpse Whistle — that was already a fair amount.
Defensive asures? His hardworking Shadow could handle that as well. If worst ca to worst, summoning a few living dead as at shields was also a potential option.
Escape thods? Definitely lacking.
Yes, Guan Tong had realized that he could fight and defend, but he could not run.
He had not swollen with pride to the point of believing he would never face a situation that required retreat.
On the contrary, ever since his last confrontation with the group that seed like an “official squad,” he felt he needed the ability to withdraw from the battlefield in ti.
Not to ntion the upcoming tournant, where tactical retreats were very likely to be necessary.
Granted, summoning the Shadow — which had infinite stamina during its summon — and having it carry him while running was an option... but it was still too slow.
The key to escape was either being so fast others couldn’t catch you, or having a way to stop enemies from pursuing.
Guan Tong planned to work on both angles, adding more words on the second page.
A gun — how could that improve my speed?
He pondered while pacing. After a short while his gaze casually landed on a clothesline dangling from the window of a partially collapsed building in the community.
When his eyes hit the clothesline, he paused, and a thought suddenly popped into his head.
A grappling-gun!
Right — he rembered seeing so films before crossing over where firearms could fire grappling hooks. Once the hook secured, the user could rapidly move by reeling the cable in and out.
The most vivid impression was Batman’s grappling gun. Batman used it to climb fast, drop fast, chase, and retreat... it was almost omnipotent — it could hook people, hook cars, hook buildings, hook rebar, even hook planes!
Guan Tong did not feel that a grappling gun was unrealistic just because it ca from movies — after all, wasn’t his Silver Hunt, which needed no manual reloading and could freely switch between Type 1–3 ammunition, unrealistic too?
This strangely reminded him of Ouyang Shanyue’s words: Mind Power as a dium gave humans the ability to alter reality with thought. His Wordless Book seed to be helping him realize that process.
So he imdiately had an idea for adding words.
But a grappling hook alone wasn’t enough. Besides accelerating his own movent, he also wanted an additional way to hinder enemies. In the end, he decided to add two words to the second page.
Given the Wordless Book’s ability to fulfill fuzzy requirents, Guan Tong planned to simplify the two words into single characters:
“Smoke” and “Claw.”
“Smoke” represented a smoke grenade.
He needed his Silver Hunt to be able to fire smoke grenades that obscured vision, so whether for covering retreats or covering attacks, it would work well.
“Claw” naturally represented the grappling hook.
The three characters together ford “Smoke-Claw Gun.”
“...”
Guan Tong found it sowhat abstract, but he trusted the Wordless Book to understand his fuzzy requirents, since it had succeeded before.
After deciding, he imdiately set to work.
In the days that followed, his routine was fixed.
During the day he spent Mind Power adding words; at night he rested, took walks, watched online courses from the Mind Power academy, then slept.
This life looked monotonous and dull, but Guan Tong enjoyed it.
Watching the strokes on the book’s page increase day by day made him feel solid and reassured.
Day after day passed, and by late August Guan Tong had finished adding words.
During that period he did not store any bullets inside the Silver Hunt, because after finishing the additions it had to be re-manifested. If he stored bullets then returned the gun to the book, the bullets would reset to zero, wasting the Mind Power he had used.
Now he held the Wordless Book in his left hand, opened to the second page, and looked at the three characters “Smoke-Claw Gun,” silently chanting the summoning.
A brand-new Silver Hunt instantly appeared in his right hand.
Its overall tone was unchanged, still primarily silver, but a strange diamond-shaped auxiliary barrel had been added to the side of the main barrel — probably dedicated to the grappling hook.
Guan Tong did not care about the looks; what mattered was whether the functions he wanted had been implented.
His gaze fell on a small black electronic screen on the left side of the grip. He spent 5 Mind Power to generate a Type 1 round, and the screen lit up to show ammo counts.
Type 1*1
Type 2*0
Type 3*0
Type 4*0
Grappling hook (Ready)
“Success!”
Seeing the newly added “Type 4” and “Grappling hook” displays, Guan Tong smiled.
He couldn’t wait to head out and test it.
Taking advantage of being in an uninhabited abandoned complex, he found a half-collapsed building.
He tried consuming Mind Power to generate a Type 4 round and found each one cost 15 Mind Power, more than Type 1 and 2 but less than Type 3.
Given its functionality, Guan Tong could accept that.
After creating one, he aid down the stairwell and pulled the trigger.
“Bang—”
A sound like a bottle cap popping ca from the barrel. Guan Tong saw a round, grenade-like projectile fly out, then heard a hiss.
Imdiately a large volu of smoke rapidly spread through the stairwell. In about two seconds, the entire corridor was a white fog; nothing could be seen.
“Not bad.”
Guan Tong was pleased. This was the dense smoke he wanted. With it he could attack or retreat; against stronger opponents he could instantly smoke and flee.
Then he went to the suburbs for an outdoor test. Once the smoke spread it covered a wide area, forming a smoke column over twenty ters across in still air.
If there was wind, the column would be blown into a long smoke band tens of ters long. Although the area widened, the obscuring density dropped significantly.
Next, Guan Tong tested the grappling hook on abandoned vehicles, trees, and buildings — it basically t his requirent to “hook and rapidly move.”
However, unlike creating bullets, each use of the grappling hook consud a fixed 15 Mind Power.
If used repeatedly, it would cost dozens of points — a heavy burden even for Guan Tong — so he couldn’t use it recklessly just to get sowhere faster.
After completing all tests, Guan Tong judged the additions successful overall; they partially filled the gap in his escape capabilities.
What to do before September 1st was now clear.
Stockpile bullets!
As his main ranged weapon at this stage, the Silver Hunt needed plenty of ammo to be practical.
So over the remaining days, Guan Tong focused single-mindedly on storing bullets. During this ti he checked the Market a few more tis and found that item prices were still sky-high.
Spending seven or eight hundred Ascension Coins on a single-use ordinary item struck Guan Tong as wasteful; only those who did not earn their own coins would splurge like that.
So after consideration, on the night of August 31st he decisively gave up shopping from the Market. Instead he opened the Ascension Store and bought five Multi-functional Lockpicks and five Small Reconnaissance Drones, spending a total of 550 Ascension Coins.
For him, stocking up on these was better than wasting coins in the Market. Especially the drones — he felt they might be very useful in the tournant; so professional teams would surely buy many.
Thus, Guan Tong felt sufficiently prepared.
Before the tournant started on September 1st, he reviewed his current status and gear.
[Na: Guan Tong]
[Nickna: Shadow]
[Title: Order Keeper]
[Mind Power: 132 (132) (330)]
[Ascension Coins: 387]
[Comprehensive Biological Evaluation: Excellent]
Guan Tong had not spent all his Ascension Coins because he wasn’t sure whether the store would refresh with new items after the tournant like it usually did when rules ended.
If it did, he would be short on coins. So he left nearly four hundred coins.
He opened the Storage Box; the number of items inside had grown.
[Wordless Book], [Guiding Flashlight], [Corpse Whistle], [Basic Food Box · Bronze Tier]1, [First Ascendant Challenge Tournant Invitation], [Multi-functional Lockpick]6, [Small Reconnaissance Drone]*6
Besides these were three pieces of equipped gear.
[Constant Temperature Tech Underwear] (Equipped), [Multi-Terrain Marching Boots] (Equipped), [Multi-functional Protective Suit] (Equipped)
Outside the Storage Box, his Silver Hunt itself had a large stockpile of bullets:
Type 1*100
Type 2*50
Type 3*50
Type 4*20
Grappling hook (Ready)
He had specially stored fifty of the most powerful Type 3 rounds. If his Mind Power recovered faster, he would have stored even more.
After checking everything, Guan Tong felt he was about ready.
This was the limit of what he could prepare. Whether these preparations would win him a good result in the tournant depended on fate after he had done his part.
He slept deeply and the next morning, before nine, Guan Tong went online to check things.
Online discussion about this tournant was far less heated than for the Doomsday Rules. The reason was simple: many people did not receive invitations and thus had no qualification to participate.
If you can’t participate, and unlike other human competitions you can’t watch qualified people live-stream it, what’s there to discuss?
Only a few who had invitations were talking more.
“I don’t know what the competition format will be. I’m so nervous!”
“Is your team full? Our team has only three people, so we’ll definitely get a bad result.”
“Filling a team is easy, right? So many people are looking for teams.”
“I don’t want to team up with strangers. What if soone backstabs us...”
“We’re full, and we all know each other. Still doesn’t feel useful. The big shots will all join, their results are guaranteed.”
“That’s not certain. Anything can happen!”
Guan Tong read for a mont, then quietly turned his phone screen off.
At nine, the invitation in his Storage Box unexpectedly flew out and hovered in front of him.
Then the center of the invitation suddenly burst into fla, burning a black hole. That hole rapidly expanded beyond the invitation, and Guan Tong felt his body pulled by a powerful suction — he was directly sucked into the hole!
[The First Ascendant Challenge Tournant is about to begin. Transporting to the venue now]
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