49 Apocalypse Rules

May 28th.

As soon as the clock struck midnight, everyone was on high alert.

From that moment on, the final magnitude 10 earthquake could strike at any time.

The vast majority of personnel had already taken cover in sturdy shelters, awaiting the final outcome.

Guan Tong and the others who were to be teleported to the epicenter waited at the operations base.

He was the core operative, supported by an assistance team of about two hundred people.

These individuals had different roles within the team, but they all shared a single objective: to ensure Guan Tong could successfully reach the Earth Vein Pillar and complete the disaster mitigation mission.

The research lab had invested enormous resources to ensure the success of this operation.

Each team member carried over a hundred items, all of them high-value tools with special effects.

If the mission failed, a full-power, magnitude 10 superquake would essentially destroy more than half of North Star, a cost far beyond what these items could ever compensate for.

In the heavy atmosphere, despite the large number of people gathered, almost no one spoke. They all waited in silence for the earthquake to begin.

They waited from the early morning until noon, when they suddenly felt the ground beneath their feet begin to tremble.

Everyone was stunned. ’Could the earthquake be happening nearby?!’

An announcement immediately came through their earpieces: "Epicenter confirmed. Offshore of Lincang! Coordinates are as follows. Teleport immediately!"

Lincang City? That was a small coastal tourist town in the northeast.

’Offshore of Lincang... Does that mean the epicenter is on the seabed this time?’

With no time for further thought, the personnel in charge of teleportation activated the group Teleportation Item.

The team’s commander, Dragon Soul, shouted, "Deploy maximum protection now! We must ensure Shadow reaches the Earth Vein Pillar!"

Having learned their lesson from the previous earthquakes, everyone knew they couldn’t wait until after teleporting to put up their defenses. It would be too late, and they’d be hit by the seismic waves.

Facing an unprecedented magnitude 10 superquake, there was absolutely no room for error.

Guan Tong himself deployed his full defenses before teleporting. The volunteers tasked with protecting him with their abilities now gathered in a tight circle around him.

VMMMM!

The light of teleportation engulfed them. The next moment, upon arriving at the target location, an indescribably immense pressure descended from the heavens and the earth. A terrifying roar, as if a demon were screaming from the depths of the planet, savagely assaulted their eardrums.

Gale-force winds, torrential rain, and crackling Thunder—all the secondary disasters brought on by the superquake erupted in the epicenter region.

In a near instant, a large number of personnel were killed by the immense energy field at the epicenter. At least thirty figures plummeted from the sky into the massive, horizon-spanning vortex below!

Guan Tong felt dizzy after just one glance down.

The undersea epicenter had formed a colossal vortex in the ocean. Even a ten-thousand-ton freighter would be swallowed in an instant, let alone a minuscule human.

And the deadliest part was that this time, the Earth Vein Pillar stood right in the center of the vortex!

Those who hadn’t died instantly were now frantically using all sorts of items to establish a precarious foothold and defensive position on either side of Guan Tong, but they couldn’t keep up with the rate of destruction.

At this rate, everyone would be dead in less than thirty seconds!

So, he immediately used the short-range movement items provided by the government, continuously teleporting toward the location of the Earth Vein Pillar under the protection of the positions his team had established.

The closer he got to the Earth Vein Pillar, the more the terrifying tensile force of the massive vortex threatened to rip control of his body away. Several times, he felt himself about to be sucked in, forcing him to release a massive amount of Psychic Power, which transformed into a thousand Shadow Lines that shot toward the Earth Vein Pillar to bind it to his body.

That’s right—standing on the pillar was simply impossible. The massive vortex below, the storm of unknown intensity, and the constantly striking Thunder made the idea of standing on top of the pillar utterly foolish.

Guan Tong had no other choice. He could only manipulate his shadows to bind his entire body to the Earth Vein Pillar. Only then could he maintain his stability and output his Psychic Power.

"Open!"

The moment Guan Tong touched the Earth Vein Pillar, he tried to pour all of his Psychic Power into the [Wordless Book] to complete the conversion into the Power of Rupture.

However, something unexpected happened. After he injected over a billion units of Psychic Power, the [Wordless Book] became scalding hot, even burning through several of his defensive items.

’What’s going on? Does its absorption have a limit?!’

Guan Tong had a bad feeling. During the last magnitude 9 earthquake, the [Wordless Book] had also started to heat up.

He just hadn’t paid it much mind at the time. With things so urgent, he had to spend every second receiving Psychic Power transfers and had no time to investigate it closely.

Now, it was heating up again, and it wasn’t just warm—it was hot enough to potentially injure him, the wielder!

Furthermore, Guan Tong discovered that he couldn’t inject his entire ten-billion-plus units of Psychic Power into the [Wordless Book] all at once. The maximum was one billion at a time, and even then, the heat became uncontrollable.

If he couldn’t inject it all at once, even at a rate of one billion per second, it would still take ten seconds to finish the conversion. In a superquake like this, every extra second meant many, many more deaths.

BOOM—!

A shocking bolt of lightning split the sky. A dozen or so people on the floating platform were struck, their bodies instantly stiffening as they plummeted from the air.

Caught off guard, Guan Tong watched them fall into the great vortex, his heart pounding wildly.

He didn’t see Shi Jingyi, Dragon Soul, or anyone else he knew among them, but he knew they were still alive.

Before teleporting, he had split off a few Shadow Lines and connected them to these people. He knew which person corresponded to each Shadow Line, and the fact that those lines were still suspended high above meant their corresponding person was still alive.

However, with his vision obstructed, Guan Tong couldn’t see the situation on the high-altitude position at all.

The magnitude 9 earthquake had occurred in a city center, and the dust kicked up by countless collapsing buildings had obscured everyone’s vision, making it impossible to see anyone else.

This time, however, it was the torrential wind and rain that blocked their view. The downpour was so intense it was as if the sky had been torn open and all the rain in the world was pouring out.

Even with the goggles Guan Tong was wearing, he still couldn’t see clearly. He could only vaguely make out figures after they had started to fall.

’Faster...’

He finally understood what it felt like for a second to stretch into a year. Those ten short seconds felt longer than ten hours.

Of the billion units of Psychic Power he had, he was inputting one hundred million at a time, converting it into the Power of Rupture and injecting it into the Earth Vein Pillar.

He couldn’t see how much of the pillar had disintegrated. He only knew that this Earth Vein Pillar was far more massive than any of the previous ones.

Every second, more people fell from the sky.

Guan Tong gritted his teeth. At the ninth second, he felt a Shadow Line connected to his right pinky finger rapidly descending from above, and his heart leaped in alarm.

The Shadow Line wrapped around his right pinky was the one connected to Shi Jingyi. The line’s sudden top-to-bottom plunge meant that Shi Jingyi was falling!

Following the Shadow Line’s position, Guan Tong immediately released a large mass of shadow to save her. He couldn’t let Shi Jingyi fall into the great vortex; no matter how strong she was, it would be certain death!

While completing the final second of the transfer, he released the numerous Shadow Lines binding him to the pillar and sent them to support Shi Jingyi, trying to stop her from falling into the vortex.

However, to his surprise, the Shadow Line connected to Shi Jingyi stopped its descent after a certain point and then began to move horizontally toward him.

He then realized she hadn’t been injured and fallen; she must have voluntarily left the defensive position to check on the situation.

Sure enough, the next moment he saw a drenched Shi Jingyi emerge from the storm. Her Psychic Power must have been too low to maintain her Spiritual Energy Shield, forcing her to rely entirely on defensive items for temporary support.

Guan Tong manipulated his Shadow Lines to grab hold of her. Just then, Dragon Soul’s voice came through his earpiece.

"Shadow! Someone from the base teleported over to report that the earthquake’s energy release has been weakened by about 40%! Mission complete, you can teleport out!"

’Forty percent... Is that all that over a billion units of Psychic Power could do?’

Guan Tong thought to himself. He then noticed that Shi Jingyi had given him a thumbs-up as soon as she saw him.

They both understood what the other meant. When Shi Jingyi had felt the shadow approaching her, she knew that Guan Tong was also still alive.

’This is the best I can do. I have to get out of here now!’

Guan Tong took out a Teleportation Item, but then something in the corner of his eye caught his attention.

He whipped his head around and saw, at the edge of his vision, a black wall connecting to the sky, pressing in on them bit by bit.

’A black wall? No... It’s a super-tsunami!’