49 Apocalypse Rules

"Have you found her?"

"Nothing. None of the item-finding tools are working."

"Not even a trace of a body? This is trouble."

A massive, sweeping search of the vast area around Xun’an Town ended with no results.

Even with all sorts of advanced equipment and special items, they couldn’t find any trace of Jiang Lanying. It was as if she had vanished into thin air.

After the news was reported up the chain, an order quickly came down: suspend the search, all personnel withdraw.

Meanwhile, in a hospital room at the Strategy Research Room base, Dragon Soul lay in bed, verbally recounting everything he had seen at the scene.

"So you’re saying you can’t be sure if ’Shadow’ intended to enact his own justice on the target or help her leave the country?" Li Meng asked, taking notes by the bedside.

"That’s right," Dragon Soul said. "I can’t be sure."

At the time, Shadow hadn’t given a clear answer to either Jiang Lanying’s offer of a reward or Dragon Soul’s question about whether he planned to enact his own justice.

Li Meng pushed up his glasses and speculated, "It seems that because of the Rules, Shadow didn’t want you to know his true intentions."

Both Li Meng and Dragon Soul knew that lying was unfeasible under the constraints of the Thirteenth Rule. Especially for an Ascender of Shadow’s caliber, no reward was great enough to make him pay the price for violating a Rule.

Therefore, not answering any questions directly was the best way to prevent others from knowing his true thoughts.

"I understand the situation now." Li Meng patted Dragon Soul’s shoulder. "You focus on recovering. I’ll be going."

"Section Chief Li," Dragon Soul asked, "how will this be handled going forward?"

"That... I can’t say for sure. But what Shadow did was very risky for him. You should understand what I mean."

Dragon Soul nodded.

"However," Li Meng’s tone shifted, "there are too many things that defy logic in this day and age. The environment is changing, people are changing, the world is changing... Perhaps soon, what was once a big deal will become trivial, and what was trivial will become a big deal."

After Li Meng left the room, Dragon Soul mulled over his words, sensing a hint of Li Meng’s personal leanings.

He closed his eyes and stopped thinking about the matter, instead reviewing his battle with Lucifer. He pondered what he would need to do to win if he could do it all over again—this was his usual method for self-improvement.

「Meanwhile, in the shelter at the bottom of the canyon.」

Guan Tong stood at the entrance, looked up at the sky, and let out a long sigh.

"Over a year... It’s finally over."

From his first encounter with the kidnapping case at the beginning of the Apocalypse Rules, this old case that had entangled him for so long was finally closed with the mastermind’s death.

Without its leader and her core followers, who had been trained like Death Warriors, the entire evil chain would likely collapse. As for the Qingmei Association, which had long been a shell of its former self, it was now officially a thing of the past.

Guan Tong felt as if a stone that had been hanging in his heart had finally dropped, shattering into dust and scattering in the wind.

As for Jiang Lanying’s dying words, he paid them no mind.

Her words were just the same old mindset: "Nobles might fight amongst themselves, but if some mud-caked peasant dares to challenge them, they’ll immediately stop the infighting to get rid of the peasant first."

Considering her age, it wasn’t surprising she believed in such things. And even if everything she said was true—even if there really were people of similar status who detested, hated, and couldn’t tolerate what Guan Tong had done—so what?

During the period of the Thirteenth Rule, Guan Tong avoided making conclusive statements, worried he might accidentally violate a Rule. But in the end, he had told Jiang Lanying, "I’ll kill as many as come," and that was his truest thought. He’d said it without the slightest fear of it being a violation.

’If someone wants to avenge her, I welcome it. The more such people reveal themselves, the more I can take the opportunity to eliminate them. I believe doing so will even increase my own luck—good deeds are rewarded, after all.’

Besides, this operation wasn’t just about taking revenge on a villain. He had also discovered a major flaw in his Shadow Realm: it couldn’t stop those trapped inside from using Teleportation Items to force their way out.

’The ability to use Teleportation Items to leave the Shadow Realm is, fundamentally, because the Shadow Realm isn’t a truly independent space,’ Guan Tong mused.

’At its core, the Shadow Realm is just layers upon layers of shadows spread out. The space within isn’t actually affected, which is why those trapped inside face no restrictions when using movement or teleportation-type items.’

’To fix this flaw, unless... unless I can make the Shadow Realm a true Small Space, separated from real space. A true Domain.’

Guan Tong frowned. ’How can I do that?’

He raised his palm, and the Wordless Book appeared in it.

He opened it to the sixth page. On it, the blood-red character for "Domain" looked very lonely. He had written it with his own blood.

’Should I try adding more characters?’

This had always been his method: adding characters to enhance or even change the strength and properties of the product manifested by the page.

But he hadn’t added any characters for a long time since the last one, because the further into the book he went, the greater the cost of writing on a page. This applied not only to the first character but to any subsequent additions as well.

’I’ll give it a try.’

Guan Tong planned to add the two characters for "space," but after only two strokes, his Psychic Power was completely drained.

He stopped writing then and there, with no intention of using his reserve Psychic Power to continue.

In the fight against Lucifer, he had quickly expended a large amount of his reserve Psychic Power to use the Shadow Realm right from the start, all for the sake of a quick and decisive battle.

Otherwise, with that Birdman Lucifer constantly flying in the sky, and his wings having become even sharper than before, conventional attacks would have had little effect.

And based on the results of the actual battle, the effect was excellent. In the face of the Shadow Realm, Lucifer’s advantages were completely nullified; he was thoroughly suppressed.

Guan Tong’s only regret was that he hadn’t been able to finish off Lucifer this time. The next time they met, the guy might have figured out a way to counter his Shadow Realm.

’But every Ascender is constantly improving. In this era, if you don’t improve, you’ll be eliminated. I won’t slack off. I have to ensure that the next time I run into that Birdman, I’ll have an even greater advantage. So, I won’t stop my efforts to grow stronger.’

For a while after that, things were calm.

Guan Tong barely spoke or wrote anything, aside from attending his daily classes.

After his classes ended, he would return to the shelter and continue his work of adding characters.

It wasn’t just in the real world that things were growing silent. On the internet, as time passed, fewer and fewer people were actively posting.

In the beginning, many people had accidentally violated the Rule by lying online, mostly due to their habit of being sarcastic or ironic.

For example, comments like "Wow, you’re sooo great," or "Feeling grateful ♡" seemed harmless, but the people posting them didn’t mean it at all. The instant they posted, they failed the challenge for violating the Rule.

Others were even unluckier. They simply posted some edited photos of themselves online and also failed the challenge. It turned out that if you knowingly posted edited photos of yourself, it was also considered a "lie"—something many people hadn’t realized at all.

With these cautionary tales, netizens learned their lesson. They stopped being ironic and either fell silent or only expressed their true, heartfelt feelings.

However, some who had already violated the Rule decided to throw caution to the wind. They fabricated absurd rumors and even used the Rule to back themselves up, saying things like, "I swear by the Rule, everything I’m saying is true."

The consequence of this was that after some rumors began to fester and spread, the instigators, who thought they were safe, were quickly found by the authorities. After a session of "loving education," they would obediently issue a public apology and debunk the rumors themselves.

By late October, as the Rule Stage drew to a close, the world had entered an age of great silence. Almost no one spoke anymore.

The closer it got to the end of the Rule, the more cautious people became.

No one wanted to be the person who was careful for over twenty days only to have all their effort go to waste because they misspoke in the final few days.

Even those who had already violated the Rule fell silent, because they found that no matter whom they spoke to, they were met with only silence in return.

This atmosphere of great silence placed a strange psychological pressure on everyone.

Even Guan Tong felt a deep sense of oppression when he went to class and saw the students coming and going without a single word.

If anyone ever imagined that a world without lies would be a beautiful place where everyone could live as their true selves, the present reality showed them the actual result.

A world without lies would be a world of silence.