September 29th, one day remaining until the end of the [Fatal Blood Plague] rule.
The Countermeasures Research Office held an impromptu meeting. The expert researchers who received the message and came to the office didn't know what was going on and were vaguely worried.
Generally speaking, such impromptu meetings only occurred when some bad emergency happened.
Everyone sat uneasily in their seats, waiting. Not long after, the person in charge, Gao Liangwei, entered the room.
After sitting down, he said, "The impromptu meeting today is to announce one thing. But before announcing it, everyone, please take a look at these videos first."
Gao Liangwei had the researcher display some video clips on the large screen.
Everyone watched and quickly realized the video content was about conflicts occurring in major cities. Some scenes were extremely brutal, making it hard to watch.
Furthermore, everyone noticed that the protagonists in the videos weren't just ordinary people; there were also some Bureau employees in black uniforms and some armed squads.
As soon as the video playback ended, Gao Liangwei said, "The purpose of showing you these is to let you know that this rule has caused significant social division. In various regions, infected groups, believing they have no hope of survival, have been causing massive destruction within cities."
"......"
Everyone remained silent.
Actually, this situation couldn't be said to be entirely unexpected, because once most people discover they are infected and will bleed to death within 24 hours, they are bound to develop a tremendous sense of grievance.
They would wonder, why aren't others infected, why is it me? It's not strange for them to act irrationally in despair.
Out of ten infected individuals, perhaps nine would accept their fate and silently await death. But as long as one becomes extreme, developing a destructive mentality of "let's all die together," then given the huge population base of Beixing Country, even this one-tenth of destroyers would be enough to severely tear society apart.
Now it seemed this situation had truly occurred.
Gao Liangwei said, "Although there are no detailed statistics yet, these destroyers have directly or indirectly caused a large number of casualties and destroyed hundreds of gathering points. Many frontline official workers have also suffered targeted attacks."
"Therefore, just one hour ago, after deliberation by the higher-ups, it was finally decided... after this rule ends, Beixing Country will officially declare the nation's entry into a wartime state."
A national wartime state!
Upon hearing this, everyone present felt their hearts drop. Many knew what this meant.
"Some among you may understand, some may not, so I'll explain a bit."
As a Senior Colonel, Gao Liangwei was extremely clear about what a wartime state meant.
"After entering a wartime state, the authorities will take over all major factories nationwide, coordinating production and construction work. Food and other supplies will be uniformly rationed per capita. Transportation and information will also enter a controlled state. Leaving the city will require a valid reason, otherwise it will be strictly prohibited."
"Additionally, all citizens will be uniformly registered and managed. Those wandering in cities, surviving alone, must also be brought under management. Once registration is fully completed, the first batch of shelters in various regions should also be built. At that time, shelter assignments will be made according to the personnel lists."
Everyone in the office listened to Gao Liangwei explaining the wartime state situation, their expressions all very serious.
It seemed the chaos caused by some infected individuals during this Blood Plague rule was too great, having practically disrupted the order of resisting the rules. This was what made the higher-ups determined to strike hard and enforce strict management.
After Gao Liangwei finished speaking, someone proactively spoke up in support, "Good! Actually, I think we should have entered a wartime state long ago! We should have entered after the first rule! After all, the casualties caused by the rules have already surpassed any war in history!"
"That's right. I've been wanting to say this too. After food and other supplies became free, a lot of waste occurred in various places. Some people took huge amounts of supplies they didn't need, only to waste them in the end. It would be better to distribute them uniformly per capita, ensuring no waste."
People spoke up one after another, most expressing support. But there were also a few dissenting voices.
"A wartime state is activated when the nation is at war... Activating it now, does that mean treating the Fire Thief as a wartime enemy?"
"After entering a wartime state, controls in all aspects will be strengthened, requiring a huge amount of manpower. Are there still that many frontline personnel currently? I'm afraid we'll need to recruit more..."
"The Fire Thief isn't just a wartime enemy of our Beixing Country, but an enemy of every human," Gao Liangwei said solemnly. "As for the manpower shortage issue, various regions will also quickly recruit new personnel to fill the gaps."
Everyone nodded, saying no more. After all, this was a notification issued by the higher-ups, not a solicitation of opinions from the Countermeasures Research Office.
"The purpose of this meeting, besides informing everyone of this matter, is also to have everyone quickly adjust the direction and content of your work. Future work must be based on the foundation of the 'wartime state' for thinking and advancement. That's all I have to say. Meeting adjourned!"
...
"Why hasn't any information come back yet?"
Mask sat in front of his computer, biting his nails. He hadn't slept for a day and a night, waiting for the Trojan implanted in the Administrator's computer to transmit data back.
Because he was certain that Administrator had used his optimization package—to ensure the latter would use it, he had worked frantically for over ten hours, optimizing almost every detail of the interface to the extreme.
After sending the optimization package, he quickly discovered that the "Ascendant Home" website had undergone a massive transformation, precisely the result of loading his optimization package.
This excited him immensely. He felt the Trojan must have been successfully implanted into the other party's computer and would soon transmit back data like backdoors and IP addresses.
However, he waited and waited. The optimization package had been loaded for several hours, yet no data came back. He manually performed remote wake-ups and attempted remote access several times, all of which failed.
This gradually made him realize that the Trojan he had packaged inside the optimization package might have been discovered and completely removed by that Administrator, leaving only the clean website optimization content.
"...Could I really have encountered a top-tier master?"
Mask couldn't believe it. He had just randomly browsed a forum and stumbled upon a post, and that post turned out to be from a top-tier technical master. That was just too outrageous.
But he couldn't understand. If the other party had such high-level skills, why was the website initially made in that awful state? It looked like a dragged-and-dropped template.
"Could it be an intentional 'construction site website style'? No... if it was intentionally made so simple, why load my optimization package now?"
Mask was utterly perplexed, completely unable to figure it out. Too long without rest made his thinking sluggish.
"Hmm... huh?!"
He casually refreshed the interface and discovered the website actually had new content.
A new post appeared in the intelligence section, posted by the Administrator.
The post title: "Decrypting the Hidden Treasure, the Holy Grail, on Holy Grail Island"
"The Holy Grail?" Mask was surprised seeing the title.
He hadn't passed the [Fasting Therapy] rule back then, didn't get an invitation, so he didn't participate in the Ascendant Challenge Tournament.
But after the tournament, information leaked out. Having seen it, he naturally knew what the "Holy Grail" was.
Now, clicking into the post and reading the main text, he was completely shocked.
"Is this real?!"
The two pieces of information mentioned in the post—the text on the statue base and the effect of holding the Holy Grail—he had never seen anywhere else.
His original drowsiness vanished instantly. Mask immediately opened his big data tool and began a full-work search.
His tool supported multiple languages and could search publicly available information on the inter worldwide. After the search completed, the result was "no matches."
"...No matches means there is absolutely no related information on the inter. The information in this post is completely the first and only of its kind on the entire web!"
Mask was instantly exhilarated.
If he had seen this post normally, he wouldn't have believed its content, thinking it was most likely fabricated by some bored person.
But through the previous "work offense and defense," he had confirmed this Administrator possessed some extremely powerful and unique work security technology.
Therefore, in his view, the credibility of information released by this Administrator greatly increased!
"I remember reading information posted by other participants. The Holy Grail was held from start to finish by the first-place winner of the tournament, which was Shadow... Could this Administrator have a connection with Shadow? Able to get information from Shadow? Or... is the Administrator Shadow himself?"
Mask really wanted to figure this out clearly. However, after these two rounds of confrontation, he felt he had completely lost.
"It seems I can't do it alone."
Mask thought for a moment and opened a forum.
The forum was called "Anonymous," a platform where top hackers worldwide usually chatted, shared experiences, and sparred.
Mask was considered a master-level figure in this forum. He posted a thread, describing his defeat, and hoped other experts would try to see if they could breach the defenses of the "Ascendant Home" website.
His post quickly attracted many replies.
"Defenses even Mask can't breach? Interesting."
"Has Master Mask's skills regressed? Can't even crack a personal site now?"
"I'll give it a try."
"Ascendant Home? An absolutely untraceable safe website? This Administrator is really arrogant."
"Is the content of his post true? Unlimited Mind Power while holding the Holy Grail?"
"Huh? My tool actually failed..."
Mask was very famous in the "Anonymous" forum. After his post was published, hackers of all kinds quickly surfaced.
Some expressed surprise, others accepted the challenge.
For a time, Guan Tong's little website experienced a massive surge in traffic. Various hackers threw their self-developed cracking tools at it.
However, they soon discovered this seemingly simple website had ridiculously powerful defensive capabilities.
All kinds of attack tools failed. Even attempting to crash the site with high concurrency through bulk registration didn't work.
Soon, another master hacker posted, "I have a strange feeling. This website seems to be 'conscious,' able to judge our attack intentions."
"I noticed that too," another master replied. "I can register an account normally without issue, but using account registration tools, changing IPs for bulk registration, or even single attempts fail... This judgment technology is beyond my understanding."
"Could it be reverse-locating our real IP addresses, locking it to single registration only? That's not very likely..."
"Could it be some new high-level AI running this website?"
"Current AI can't do that either... I have a suspicion. Could the computer running the website, or the website itself, be some kind of Mind Power item? That's why it can achieve such unbelievable things."
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