October 1st, evening.
Guan Tong stared at the notes he had written down earlier on paper and realized he truly could not recall anything about his journey to the Algan Grasslands.
That was right—he had already completed his first memory deletion, and it was precisely the segment of memory he had selected earlier.
After the deletion, he tried hard to recall, but no details remained. Those twenty-four hours of memory were as if someone had scooped them out of his brain with a shovel, leaving not even a speck of dirt behind.
What satisfied him, however, was that his other memories remained unaffected after the deletion. And based on the details he had recorded on paper beforehand, even without the memory, he could clearly "know" what had happened back then.
This feeling was somewhat like how some amnesia patients record every big and small daily event in a journal. Although they could know what happened through the notes, they had no emotional connection to those events.
Therefore, this method could only be used for memories that did not involve "emotional factors." Once emotions came into play, it would completely fail.
For example, if you deleted the memory of falling in love at first sight with your beloved, even if you could write down every single detail of your first meeting, the loss of that initial feeling would render those records utterly meaningless.
Having completed the day's memory deletion task, Guan Tong began contemplating tomorrow's task.
He had already decided to follow the officially recommended strategy, which was the "delete tomorrow the day after tomorrow" cycle.
In practical terms, this meant deleting today's memory before midnight tomorrow.
Guan Tong glanced at the time—it was now 9 PM. If he started from 10 PM, then twenty-four hours later would be 10 PM tomorrow, leaving two hours until the midnight settlement.
As long as he deleted those twenty-four hours, he could ensure this cycle continued until the Rule ended.
However, this strategy came with a problem.
"This means... to get through this Rule as safely as possible, I'd better not leave behind any meaningful long-term memories over the next ten-plus days."
Since he planned to delete tomorrow the day after tomorrow, if "tomorrow" produced meaningful long-term memories, they would become meaningless because they'd be deleted the day after.
For people using this strategy, these half-month would essentially only hold the memory of the first day when the Rule was announced.
In other words, when the half-month Rule ended, in these people's minds, only one day would have passed.
This feeling was a bit like a car accident victim who falls into a coma. When they wake up, their memory is still stuck at the moment of the crash, but in reality, three to five days, or even ten days to half a month, might have passed.
But it was better than a coma because even if this strategy couldn't preserve memories, it didn't mean meaningful things couldn't be done during this time.
For instance, the "weeding operation" promoted by the authorities and even mandatory in some regions was a similar activity.
A group of people would take official equipment and spend an entire day in abandoned cities cleaning up the plants left behind by the previous Rule. The next day, they would delete that memory.
As long as they kept a weeding record in advance, even if they couldn't recall any details of that day besides "weeded for a day," the fruits of their labor would not disappear with the deleted memories—they would remain intact.
This was very meaningful for advancing nuclear power station construction, as the vast amounts of electrical resources would eventually benefit everyone. So it was meaningful for individuals too.
This got Guan Tong thinking about what he could do during this Rule period that would still be meaningful without retaining the memory.
"Why don't you just find an abandoned city and clean up the plants too?" Guan Tong thought to himself.
When it came to cleaning up plants, Shadow was more efficient than hundreds or even thousands of people. It could finish cleaning an entire city in just a few days.
Although it might be a bit boring and dull, for Guan Tong, it was still better than lying around in the shelter doing nothing.
Perhaps it was because he was used to being busy. The thought of stopping completely for half a month, doing nothing but eating, drinking, having fun, and deleting memories on schedule actually made him feel a bit uncomfortable.
As for what others would do, what memories they would delete, Guan Tong didn't care much.
Even for Troupe members, he generally didn't pry too much. He didn't want to act like a corporate boss with an overbearing need for control, treating members as employees and questioning everything.
This wasn't just for Troupe members—he had always been like this with familiar friends too.
Unless someone actively asked him for help, he wouldn't interfere with how others chose to follow the Rules or complete challenges.
Just then, Guan Tong realized he hadn't checked the new temporary feature on his Terminal Panel. Driven by curiosity, he opened the panel to take a look.
The newly opened [Memory Market] feature was listed at the very top of the panel. Perhaps because it was a "Rule-limited" feature, the title was a very prominent and eye-catching red.
Guan Tong opened the feature, and countless memory products instantly laid out before him in a dazzling array.
Each listed memory product had a uniform cover of black text on a white background. The first line of white text was the title, the second was the memory duration, and the third was the price.
Below the memory product, there was also a [Memory Browse] function. Buyers could directly use this function to step into the memory and view the details.
Guan Tong flipped through a few pages and noticed several characteristics of these listed memory products.
First, the duration varied dramatically.
Many memory products with a duration of twenty-four hours had the words "for deletion" in their titles, indicating that the seller was offering them so buyers wouldn't have to delete their own memories.
On the other hand, some shorter-duration memory products had titles designed to be extremely attractive, even a bit clickbaity.
For example, Guan Tong saw titles like "The Most Extreme Professional Skydiving Memory, Low Price!" and "Terrifying Moments in a Haunted House Adventure"—memories related to extreme sports or sensory thrill experiences.
There were also some related to the Rules, such as "What It Feels Like to Be Chased by Over a Hundred Living Dead on the Night of the Living Dead—Buy It and Find Out, the Scene Is Like a Zombie Apocalypse Movie!", "My Days of High-Stage Infection by Alien Spores," and "Memory of Eating Plastic as a Plastic-Activation Reactor."
There were also memories related to past celebrities, politicians, and the like, but their prices weren't high. Especially after people had been cheated, they didn't trust such memories much.
As for why people still got cheated despite the existence of the [Memory Browse] function... it was related to the potential side effects of using this function.
The authorities had already clearly announced that browsing too many other people's memories could damage one's own brain, and in severe cases, could lead to mental splitting.
Therefore, many cautious people were unwilling to casually use the memory browse function. Not to mention that some sellers deliberately caused trouble, making content that didn't match the title, specifically inserting bizarre and disgusting memories.
Guan Tong had seen it on the forum earlier. Someone had titled a memory for sale "A Beautiful Day," but the memory content was of killing someone.
It was easy to imagine what it would feel like for someone who browsed that memory. Perhaps a very small number of people would find it thrilling, but most would absolutely be repulsed.
With these two concerns, some buyers became extremely cautious when using the Memory Browse function.
The most cautious, and those with substantial resources, simply refused to buy in the mixed-bag market. They directly conducted offline transactions instead.
This way, if there was a problem with the purchased memory, they could directly confront the seller. Since the seller was trading physically offline with the buyer, they definitely wouldn't dare to sell dog meat under a sheep's head for their own safety. Such transactions were relatively reliable.
To attract customers, some sellers only sold short memories of a few seconds or a dozen seconds. These short memories were usually the beginning of a high-value memory.
For example, a memory of a man and woman chatting intimately. The seller sold the part where the two just entered the room, with nothing afterward.
Then they'd title it something like "For the Full Memory, Please Add XXXX" or "For the Rest, Please PM XXX User on the Ascendant Home," leaving contact information to funnel potential buyers into private transactions.
After flipping through a few pages, Guan Tong couldn't help but marvel at how these people had really turned the Memory Market into an art form.
All kinds of unscrupulous sellers, scammers, and purely chaotic evil types had gathered together. Even before the first day of the Rule had passed, they had already turned this market into a complete mess.
However, he wasn't particularly surprised. He knew this was a textbook example of a real market in an unregulated environment.
Too many people were there to scam you out of your Ascension Coins or just to disgust you. As a buyer, if you really wanted to buy some memories, you needed an exceptionally sharp pair of eyes to avoid getting tricked.
Guan Tong himself had no intention of buying anyone else's memories. To be honest, he wasn't very interested in what others had experienced.
Not to mention the side effects of brain conflict caused by others' memories, which meant the risks outweighed the rewards. Just from that perspective, he wouldn't let someone else's memories enter his head.
"...Huh?"
Just as Guan Tong was about to close the market, a newly listed memory product suddenly caught his attention.
"Half-Hour Q&A Session of Ascendant 'Shadow' (Guan Tong) Teaching Mind Power Flow at the Academy – This Memory Is Extremely Valuable, No Recording Available Online"
Duration: 30 minutes. Price: 8,000 Ascension Coins.
"Well, well... they're selling this too?"
Seeing this listed memory product, Guan Tong really couldn't keep his composure.
When he was substituting as a teacher at the academy, there was indeed a "Q&A session" where he mainly answered students' questions about small, confusing details regarding Mind Power Flow.
Because this was an after-class session, it wasn't recorded as an online course and uploaded to the internet. This meant only the students present at the scene could hear it and have this memory.
There was no doubt that the seller of this memory was one of those students.
Guan Tong couldn't help but feel a bit speechless. He personally thought those memories were quite precious—everyone happily discussing problems together, counting as one of the few warm and relaxing moments in this cruel era of apocalyptic Rules.
But while he considered those memories precious, someone else in that same memory didn't agree, preferring to sell them for a few thousand Ascension Coins. This bothered him somewhat.
And just a few seconds after he saw this listed memory product, it turned gray before his eyes and then disappeared from the list.
Guan Tong was slightly stunned. Sold already? That fast?
A price of 8,000 Ascension Coins was expensive for ordinary Ascendants, but for large organizations, or even the national government, it wasn't even a speck of dust.
Being able to buy a thirty-minute first-person perspective memory related to "Shadow" for just eight thousand coins might seem like an absolute bargain to some.
This discovery inevitably made Guan Tong wary.
Was this a spontaneous act by a "fan"? Or was there someone or some organization specifically collecting memories related to him during this Rule?