"The Impermanent Tax..."
Guan Tong stared at the Authority's effect and became slightly dazed.
At first glance, this Authority seemed heavily restricted. It only took a cut from value transactions that occurred "within the range influenced by one's own Mind Power."
But when he thought carefully, wasn't there already a ready-made platform sitting right in front of him for taking cuts?
Of course — the Ascendant Home!
That website itself essentially operated inside the Wordless Book shelter, and the shelter came from the Wordless Book, which was Guan Tong's exclusive Mind Power item.
That meant any transaction Ascendants made on that site would trigger the Impermanent Tax Authority, siphoning one-twentieth of the transaction to Guan Tong.
In other words, if a transaction worth 100 Ascension Coins appeared on the site, five Ascension Coins would be snatched by the Authority's power and transferred to Guan Tong.
"If this actually works, I'd get rich..."
Guan Tong's heart raced. Because he couldn't stop buying flowable Mind Power, he spent a huge amount every month.
Selling rule information, running the Twin Stars Bar, and the Serpent Hair Society brought in Ascension Coins, but for Guan Tong it still wasn't quite enough.
In theory his reserve Mind Power could keep increasing forever — who would ever complain about having more of that good stuff?
If he applied the Impermanent Tax Authority to the Ascendant Home, he could avoid the hassle of collecting fees himself and let the Authority automatically collect them.
"It looks like I need to push the site's transaction section hard, get it trending. The more people trade there, the more Impermanent Tax I collect..."
Now he understood why platforms were always the most profitable: whether you're buyer or seller, the platform always takes a cut from both sides.
There was, however, another issue: the Authority's usage consumed source essence.
"Each tax extraction consumes 0.0000001% of source essence. That means after one billion extractions it will be exhausted."
One billion sounded enormous, but for a large trading platform it wasn't that much.
Guan Tong remembered adverts from shopping platforms boasting how lively their sites were, how many transactions happened per day.
He recalled one major platform announcing that after a shopping festival they had over 120 million orders in a single day, over 800 million orders in a week — roughly a hundred million orders per day.
At that volume, the Impermanent Tax Authority's one billion uses would be gone in less than ten days. They would then need to replenish the source essence.
"If one billion uses consume one drop of primal blood, then the drop I'll use plus the three drops I still have would supply four billion extractions... That should last a long time, right?"
Guan Tong wasn't foolish enough to think his Ascendant Home platform would ever reach hundreds of millions of daily transactions. Not even tens of millions or millions — he'd be grateful if it reached the hundred-thousand level.
Because most Ascendants are based in Beixing, and Beixing's centralized shelter provisioning prevents their Ascension Coins from being freely distributed; everything is centrally allocated.
With Ascension Coins centrally distributed, low-frequency individual trades disappear. Of course, that centralization brings the advantages of safety: secure shelters, full food rations, and official assistance before any rule is published or challenge attempted.
Xisiya, which has far fewer Ascendants, gradually adopted Beixing-like policies before Yelanka stepped down, folding small-scale Ascendants into official institutions.
The remaining independent Ascendants often trade through White Star, the intermediary, which created the Ascendant Home's Twin Stars Bar real-world trading market.
If Guan Tong targeted that group, he'd be competing directly with his ally White Star — which could very well be necessary and worthwhile.
Sakura Prayer has a similar setup. Apart from the two proper cities, Bandzhen and Antu, a single Serpent Hair Society branch under Uenoshi's management could handle all intermediary activities.
Thus, the so-called "global market" essentially left Guan Tong with a few small countries and the only truly free trading giant, the Suroma Empire.
Regardless, as long as the Ascendant Home kept its advantages of being untraceable and preventing external decryption of user identities, people would keep using it.
After digesting the Impermanent Tax Authority's effects, Guan Tong looked again at the Authority interface: the massive tree that stretched beyond sight and the countless fruits hanging from its branches.
"If each fruit represents an Authority, that's... an awful lot. And why are so many of them gray?"
He tilted his head upward and saw that nearly ninety-nine percent of the fruits were gray; only in the high regions were some fruits bright.
At the edge of his vision there was a large bright area — the higher up the tree, the more lit fruits there were.
Guan Tong thought that on a cosmic scale, the number of fruits wasn't that impressive. The universe's size was difficult to grasp; within the observable range there are at least thousands of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars — far more than the grains of sand in Tianshui Star's deserts.
If the universe held that many Authority fruits, why were most of them dim, as if inactive?
A terrifying thought climbed up inside him.
Could it be the Fire Thief?
Had it destroyed many Authority holders and the civilizations that possessed them?
The more Guan Tong thought, the more he felt he was probing a too-grand secret while he was so insignificant.
For a moment, the joy he had felt from gaining a title and unlocking an Authority dissolved under the weight of that fearful awe of the vast unknown.
After a moment of looking up, Guan Tong lowered his head.
No matter how shocking the unknown might be, he was still human and had to take steady, practical steps forward.
He closed the Authority interface and reopened his Storage Box.
A scroll sat inside.
Guan Tong knew this was the real prize.
[Memory of Life-Hunting Demon]: Contains the Life-Hunting Demon's partial knowledge of the Wordless Book.
This was the bet the Life-Hunting Demon had made in the Ancient Gamble to equalize the stakes.
Compared to the primal blood, it might only be a piece of information. But to Guan Tong, this information was at least as important as — and possibly more valuable than — primal blood.
He took the scroll out and chose to use it.
As the scroll slowly unfurled, a stream of chaotic images and information flooded into Guan Tong's mind.
It was a memory of the Life-Hunting Demon:
Inside the Gambling Space, a mysterious gambler shrouded in shadow staked a bet.
The stake was only a single sentence, but the Life-Hunting Demon could not produce an equivalent stake, so the gamble could not begin.
The Life-Hunting Demon had never seen such a thing before: because no equivalent stake was available, the Gambling Space automatically opened and let the mysterious gambler leave on their own.
"He must be very strange. Why would a single sentence be worth making the whole Gambling Space stake an equivalent value?" the mysterious gambler said as they left.
The Life-Hunting Demon thought, strange indeed, what's the point — would the gambler really speak such a low-value sentence to it?
Then, in the next moment, that gambler actually spoke the sentence that no one in the Gambling Space could match.
The sentence was brief, but it drove the Life-Hunting Demon utterly mad.
Mysterious gambler: "Nine hundred billion atomic seconds from now, a certain civilization will break the cycle of the universe and create an Authority. It is said that civilization sealed the key to that Authority in a book. When that book is formally opened, it will guide the way to that Authority."
"No, impossible!" the Life-Hunting Demon screamed. "No civilization can discover the universe's cycle, much less create... create that Authority!"
The mysterious gambler laughed softly and exited the Gambling Space.
"I'm leaving, little demon. Gamblers come and go here; one day you might have the chance to see that book yourself."
"Wait!" the Life-Hunting Demon shouted, trying to chase after the mysterious gambler, but the Gambling Space immediately pulled it back. As a creature bound to the space, it could not leave.
The memory cut off abruptly.
Guan Tong snapped out of it, his breathing involuntarily accelerating.
"What? Create what Authority? Why... why couldn't I hear it?"
In the conversation between the mysterious gambler and the Life-Hunting Demon, he understood every word except the crucial Authority name — it was as if that name had been deliberately erased.
And why would the gambler tell the Life-Hunting Demon, "one day you might see that book"? Could the gambler foresee the future, knowing that I, the holder of the book, would enter the Gambling Space?
Guan Tong fell into a great confusion, far greater than the awe the giant tree of countless Authority fruits had given him.
If the gambler's "book" was indeed the Wordless Book he possessed, why would the key to an Authority created by a civilization capable of "breaking the universe's cycle" end up in his hands?
He didn't know what special quality he might have. And if the Wordless Book had been distributed by the Fire Thief, then what exactly was the Fire Thief? Could it be part of that super-civilization?
Also, the gambler said that when the Wordless Book is formally opened it will guide the path to that Authority, but they hadn't said how to formally open it.
In the Gambling Space, the Life-Hunting Demon told the Fire Thief that Guan Tong's book was not formally opened, so it wasn't worth so much.
"Could it be that the Life-Hunting Demon itself didn't know how to formally open the Wordless Book? It only knew that an unopened book couldn't guide the way, and assumed opening it would be difficult."
Guan Tong thought for a long time. Apart from silently noting the key information the mysterious gambler had spoken, there was nothing else he could do.
But he was extremely curious: how powerful would a civilization that could "break the universe's cycle" be?
Moreover, both the mysterious gambler and the Life-Hunting Demon seemed to take the universe's cyclical existence as a given — a foundational fact completely unknown to humanity. After all, mainstream human science accepts scenarios like heat death or big freeze as the universe's end, not a cycle.
"Shadow."
At that moment Adam's voice suddenly came, and Guan Tong snapped back from his reverie, looking up.
Adam had already regrouped, smiling with renewed vigor as he said, "I'm fine. Let's hurry and flush out the rats hiding underground."