49 Apocalypse Rules

After the tenth Apocalypse Rule was announced, it unsurprisingly shot to the top of all major social media charts.

On Ascender’s Home, the casual chat section was also flooded with related discussions.

But more than the rule itself, people were happy about its type.

"A non-survival rule! Hell yeah!"

"Not bad, not bad. We can survive a little longer. I really can’t take any more survival-type rules."

"Actually, if all survival rules were like the ninth one, it would be fine. As long as modern weapons are useful, the death toll can be drastically reduced."

"I feel like this tenth rule is manageable. You lose one sense a day, and after five days, you’ve lost all five. Then you just have to last for ten days like that... Shouldn’t be too hard, right?"

"Not too hard??? Are you sure???"

"Whoever said it’s not hard should try living blindfolded for a day. Just losing your sight is already super inconvenient."

"I can imagine what it’s like to lose the other senses. But losing the sense of touch... I really can’t imagine what that would feel like."

"Speaking of which, are there people in the world who don’t have a sense of touch? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that."

"Is it like being under anesthesia?"

"I think losing your sense of touch would be almost like being paralyzed... Think about it, how would you perceive the physical world without touch? If your brain can’t receive any feedback, how can it send signals to your motor nerves?"

"Is the person above me for real? Don’t scare me! Being paralyzed for ten days would be pure torture!"

"It might not be just ten days. What if the first sense you randomly lose is touch? That’s a one-in-five chance. If that happens, you’re looking at fourteen whole days of paralysis..."

The atmosphere of the online discussion quickly shifted from celebrating the fact that the tenth Apocalypse Rule wasn’t a survival rule to all sorts of terrifying speculation and anxiety about losing the sense of touch.

Many people have seen blind or deaf individuals in their daily lives, or even have such people in their social circles. As for the loss of taste and smell, most have even experienced it themselves—for instance, when they have a cold and fever and their food becomes tasteless, that’s a temporary loss of the sense of taste.

Because these four senses were familiar and understood, people weren’t afraid of losing them—after all, the rule would only last for half a month.

But few people understood what the elimination of touch would be like, so the more they discussed it, the more terrifying it seemed.

Then, as time went on, various governments began to issue recommendations.

The North Star Country’s government issued a notice three hours after the rule was announced.

The contents included:

Relevant factories would immediately begin producing guidance devices for the blind and hearing aids, which would be rapidly transported to the various shelters and Gathering Points within the cities;

There was no need to worry about taste and smell for the time being, as food was currently rationed, and everyone was eating standardized canned goods. Even without the ability to smell or taste, there was no concern about health problems arising from food quality.

As for the sense of touch, due to insufficient research, they could only design and produce assistive robots on short notice. If humans became unable to care for themselves after losing their sense of touch, these robots would be programmed to assist with tasks like eating and waste disposal.

...These measures seemed normal, but they posed a massive test for the supply chain. Among the many countries in the world, only the North Star Country currently had the capacity for such large-scale, customized provisioning.

In addition to these measures, the government also encouraged people to use their Psychic Power items and abilities to find other ways to clear the rule.

Since this wasn’t a survival rule, it was unclear whether using external devices for assistance would result in a failed challenge. Therefore, if it was possible to get through using Psychic Power-related items, it was best to avoid assistance from man-made objects.

After seeing the official notice, the citizens of the North Star Country felt much more at ease.

Just as the notice said, it was best if they could get through it on their own, but if they couldn’t, the government’s preparations were more than sufficient. There was no need to worry about life-threatening situations.

With this safety net in place, people wouldn’t be overly anxious and could challenge the rule with a relatively relaxed mindset.

...

「Three hours earlier.」

While the Strategy Research Room was in the middle of a heated discussion, Guan Tong, who was in a forest in the Andai Kingdom, was opening his Terminal Panel to view the hidden rule.

[Hidden Rule 10: Two Negatives Make a Positive]

[Hidden Rule Content: When a sense is randomly eliminated, if your corresponding sense is already disabled, you will receive the opposite effect.]

[Note: If you want to preserve your sight, you can blind yourself before the sense is eliminated; if you want to preserve your hearing, you can pierce your eardrums before the sense is eliminated... But the problem is, self-mutilation is an extremely painful act. Is it worth doing just to clear the rule?]

"This!"

Guan Tong shot to his feet after reading the hidden rule.

He hadn’t expected the hidden rule for this tenth Apocalypse Rule to be so horrifying.

’Before the elimination, as long as the corresponding sense is already disabled, you’ll get the opposite effect... For a normal, healthy person, getting that opposite effect would require self-harm in advance...’

This might be a good thing for people who are blind or deaf, whether from birth or later in life. They wouldn’t have to do anything; they’d regain their health the moment that specific sense was randomly chosen for elimination.

But for most healthy people, this was undoubtedly too cruel!

’...I won’t use this rule.’

Guan Tong made his choice with almost no hesitation.

Even if a mentally sound person were to self-harm to clear the rule, it would inevitably cause irreversible psychological damage.

It could be said that this was the first hidden rule, aside from the first one, [Plunder Sobriety], that Guan Tong felt he would rather let his maximum Psychic Power decay than ever use.

However, even if he didn’t use it, this hidden rule would be discovered soon enough.

After all, even a full year into the era of the Apocalypse Rules, there were bound to still be people in the world who were blind, deaf, or had lost their sense of taste or smell.

When these people found that not only were they unaffected by the sensory elimination but had actually regained their sight/hearing/smell/taste, they would definitely realize the existence of the hidden rule.

The people around them would notice as well, and the information would spread.

Given this, Guan Tong decided to make the most of the situation and sell the hidden rule on his website.

Having made his decision, he immediately opened his computer and logged into the website.

He already had many private messages. Even though he hadn’t sold the hidden information for the last rule, that didn’t stop a lot of people from messaging him the moment this new rule was announced, asking if he had any hidden intel to sell.

Guan Tong followed the same procedure as last time, opening the special "Webmaster Realm" section.

In this section, where only he had permission to post, there was currently only one thread: the one from last time, titled ’Selling Secret Intel Related to the Eighth Apocalypse Rule.’

This time, he posted a second thread.

’Selling Secret Intel Related to the Tenth Apocalypse Rule’

Details: Intel price is 100,000 Sublimation Coins. Not provided instantly. Will be sent out uniformly in 12 hours.

The moment he hit ’post,’ the reply count on the thread visibly skyrocketed, surpassing a thousand in less than a minute. The speed was astonishing.

Guan Tong hadn’t realized so many people were following him, but on second thought, it made sense. The website had been online for several months, and its user base had grown to a terrifying size. A reaction like this was to be expected.

He refreshed the page, and the comments were coming in too fast to read.

"The great Webmaster is selling intel again?!"

"The price doubled this time. A hundred thousand a pop. Tsk tsk, the Webmaster is about to make a killing again."

"I support the Webmaster for not ripping off us poor folk! We’ll just wait for the North Star Country’s government to buy it and release it to the public. They released it last time, so they’ll probably do it again, right?"

"That’s different... If it’s hidden intel like the Sober Mint Candy, do you think the government would ever make that public?"

"I hope the great Webmaster makes a ton of coins. He deserves it for creating such an amazing site!"

"I wonder if the hidden intel has information on how to deal with losing the sense of touch. I’ve watched so many videos explaining how scary it is that I’m completely freaked out."

"Same here... I hope there’s a solution."

Guan Tong noticed that many replies expressed hope that the North Star Country would buy and publicize the intel, and that the intel would offer a solution to the loss of touch.

He had to admit, Guan Tong had no answer to the problem of losing one’s sense of touch either.

’The hidden rule is "two negatives make a positive." For a blind person, the two negatives make them not blind; for a deaf person, it makes them not deaf... But how is a normal person supposed to make themselves lose their sense of touch first? To trigger the "two negatives make a positive" effect?’

’The hidden rule didn’t mention anything about that, and he couldn’t figure it out either. Would you have to paralyze yourself first? But what if that didn’t work? Or what if you went too far and killed yourself?’

After a moment’s thought, Guan Tong decided not to dwell on it. He wasn’t planning on using this hidden rule anyway, so there was no point in overthinking it.

He opened his private messages. As expected, only a few minutes after he posted the thread to sell the intel, requests from paying customers came flooding in.

Last time, when he priced the intel at fifty thousand Sublimation Coins, he had only sold eleven copies. This time, he had doubled the price to one hundred thousand, yet over thirty users had already messaged him to buy it.

Guan Tong, of course, turned no one away. Following his usual procedure, he had them send their terminal ID numbers, then added them as friends to complete the transactions.

The entire process took nearly an hour. He sold 34 copies in total. At 100,000 Sublimation Coins each, that was a grand total of 3.4 million!

After the transactions were complete, Guan Tong stared at the total of 4,085,620 Sublimation Coins on his panel, and a catchy tune with the lyrics ’I made money, made money, don’t know how to spend it’ instantly popped into his head.

He was now sitting on a huge fortune of four million Sublimation Coins! Considering the current average Ascender held around 1,500, his four-million-plus was equivalent to the combined total of more than 2,700 people!

For one person to possess the same amount of Sublimation Coins as a group of nearly three thousand was already terrifying. A group of three thousand people would absolutely be considered a large organization.

Guan Tong now single-handedly controlled the total currency of a large organization, and he could spend it as he pleased—meaning he could use it all to strengthen himself, or he could use it to recruit followers.

That’s right. Although he had no intention of recruiting anyone, if he wanted to, he could absolutely use this enormous sum to raise a team of Ascenders in a short amount of time.

From what he understood, many civilian organizations, and even some national governments, were now recruiting freelance Ascenders by offering to ’pay salaries’ in Sublimation Coins.

The old methods of violent suppression and coercion were gradually becoming ineffective over time.

The reasoning was similar to how feudalism was a higher-dimensional blow to slavery, and how capitalism was a higher-dimensional blow to feudalism.

If you compare enslaving and exploiting people to hiring them to work for you, the latter will obviously have more personal initiative.

This wasn’t just Guan Tong’s personal opinion; it was a conclusion he’d reached through observation. And his observation platform was his own website.

Indeed, as the number of users on Ascender’s Home grew, many had begun to spontaneously post commissions and conduct trades.

This was especially true in the commissions section, which Guan Tong had checked once before, only to find that even ’international mercenary groups’ had appeared.

As long as you had enough Sublimation Coins, these mercenaries, located in countries all over the world, were willing to help you solve your problems. It was all very market-driven.