In Yunhua City, Guan Tong and Shangyuan Zi were waiting inside the main hall of an abandoned shopping mall.
They had spent the entire interval after the last rule searching for Wei Huo’s trail within Yunhua City. Guan Tong’s Shadow had scoured nearly every block and underground shelter in the city, but it had come up empty. This made him wonder if the Moon Key’s Prophecy had been wrong.
Still, he hadn’t left yet, deciding to wait a little longer.
Now, with the new rule announced, Guan Tong and Shangyuan Zi exchanged a glance.
Unlike many others, they didn’t rush to strip off their clothes the moment the rule was announced. This was because neither of them was wearing any clothing made with plastic.
From his underwear to the trench coat he wore over it, all of Guan Tong’s clothes were Psychic Power items; he wasn’t wearing any normal clothing at all.
Shangyuan Zi was even more extreme. The scales that covered her entire body could basically function as "clothes." After all, clothes serve two essential purposes: providing warmth and covering the body, both of which her scales fulfilled. However, she wasn’t quite so carefree as to walk around with her scales exposed, so she wore a light latex suit over them.
And latex, being a purely natural material, happened to be plastic-free.
"Let’s get out of here first," Guan Tong said. "There are too many plastic objects here."
The abandoned mall was short on everything except plastic. The two left immediately.
Guan Tong led Shangyuan Zi to a wide, open area and summoned the Book Page Sanctuary.
Shangyuan Zi looked at the two-story building before her with some surprise. "It seems... different."
As a core member of Guan Tong’s organization, Shangyuan Zi knew he possessed such a sanctuary item. She had even been inside once, but back then, the sanctuary was only a single story, not the two-story building it was now.
"That’s right, this sanctuary can be modified. The air outside contains microplastics now. Let’s get inside first."
The two entered the sanctuary. Guan Tong took a few deep breaths. "The sanctuary is generated by Psychic Power, so the air inside should be clean. Even if going in and out brings in some outside air, the impact shouldn’t be significant."
Shangyuan Zi nodded. "It will be very safe to stay in here."
A sanctuary like Guan Tong’s could be considered a specialized countermeasure against environmental pollution-type rules. During the last Blood Plague Virus outbreak, for instance, he had stayed inside the entire time, passing the rule risk-free.
With the increased toxicity of microplastics in this rule, he could very well follow the same strategy. But unlike last time, he had a lot on his plate now. Hiding in the sanctuary for a whole month didn’t seem realistic.
While Shangyuan Zi was observing the sanctuary’s new features, Guan Tong opened his Terminal Panel to check the hidden rule for the current Apocalypse Rule.
[Hidden Rule 18: Symbiotic Scavenger]
[Hidden Rule Content: During the Rule Stage, voluntarily injecting high-density microplastics into the body has a 50% chance of causing some of one’s own cells to bond with the microplastics, producing a Plasticization Activation Reaction. This reaction will alter physiological functions, granting immunity to and the ability to purify and absorb microplastics that enter the body. After the Plasticization Activation Reaction occurs, one will permanently lose the ability to reproduce.]
[Note: The stellar pollutant rating is determined by the difficulty of purification. In the cosmos, there are multiple ways to handle radioactive dust, making its purification difficulty far lower than that of microplastics. Given that microplastics can almost only be broken down through biodegradation—is humanity prepared to become ’microplastic scavengers’?]
After reading the hidden rule, Guan Tong felt a chill run down his spine.
What stunned him wasn’t the fifty-fifty probability of transformation, nor the content of the hidden rule itself, but the information mentioned in the note.
’Microplastic scavengers... It’s as if this is the role the Fire Thief has assigned to the human race in this rule!’
This was evident from the fact that humans would lose their reproductive ability after a successful Plasticization Activation Reaction.
Although few people had children during the age of the Apocalypse Rules, this was precisely a consideration born of "love"—what parent would want their child to be born into such a terrifying era?
Based on the current rotation schedule of the Apocalypse Rules, people believed that all forty-nine rules would be over in three years at most. Many people’s plan was to grit their teeth and endure these three years. If they were still alive by then, it wouldn’t be too late to have children. If they didn’t make it, or if all of humanity was wiped out, then whether they had children or not was irrelevant.
Therefore, the "permanent loss of reproductive ability" in this hidden rule was absolutely not a price the general public would be willing to accept.
But among the hundreds of millions of people in the world, everyone thought differently. Perhaps many people only sought survival and would be willing to give up having children. Or perhaps many people never liked children in the first place and wouldn’t have had them even in times of peace.
For these people, this price was acceptable.
So he would release this information. It would give those willing to pay the price another option.
Guan Tong sat down at a computer, logged into Ascender’s Home, and posted a new thread in the [Webmaster Realm] channel.
"Selling Secret Information Related to Apocalypse Rule 18"
Details: Information is priced at 500,000 Sublimation Coins. Delivery is not instant. All buyers will be informed at the same time in 1 hour.
The price was the same as last time. Within a minute of posting, several clients contacted him via private message. The number of clients was also the same as last time—exactly eight.
Guan Tong collected four million Sublimation Coins. Adding this to the more than six million he already had, his total number of Sublimation Coins broke the ten-million mark for the first time.
The excitement or thrill he might have imagined never came. If he had obtained this many Sublimation Coins in the early days, he probably would have been ecstatic.
But now, ten million Sublimation Coins were, in his eyes, equivalent to ten million Flowing Psychic Power. Converted to reserve Psychic Power, that was only two million—less than the total amount the North Star government had supplied him over three consecutive days.