[Congratulations on passing the 23rd Doomsday Rule]
[Rewards have been distributed to your Storage Box]
[The 24th Doomsday Rule will be released in thirty days]
At 9:00 AM on October 15th, the Fire Thief's voice rang out right on schedule.
The half-month-long Rule Period had officially ended. Unlike most past rules, this time many people felt a sense of reluctance to see it end.
Because the strategy of "delete tomorrow's memories the day after" ensured that the vast majority of normal people could smoothly pass the rule. As for the negative effects, those who used this method generally experienced a subjective feeling that "the rule ended in just one day."
Yes, aside from the first day the rule was released, the memories of the remaining fourteen days were all deleted. This caused the brain to skip over that intermediate period of time, arriving at the conclusion that "the rule was released today and ended tomorrow."
Even though people could make up for those lost memories through notes and video recordings, the brain's intuitive feeling remained irreparable.
Whether this was good or bad remained to be seen.
But for most people, safely passing the rule always came first, and everything else was secondary.
As soon as the rule ended, people's attention shifted to other matters.
The most watched topic was still Suroma's announced successful memory digitization technology, but it was worth noting that Suroma had only published the experimental results so far without providing any concrete data.
This left outsiders unclear about what exactly this "success" meant—whether it was a complete success where a normal person's memories could be fully uploaded, downloaded, and unpacked, or only a partial success where some parts of the process had been made functional.
The reason people cared so much about this matter was purely for their own benefit. They were thinking about having the technology popularized as quickly as possible and getting in line as fast as they could.
Even if resource constraints meant the line would be long, very long, extremely long, at least starting the queue was better than not queuing at all.
Besides this matter, Yishan and Han Qiu's wedding was also attracting significant attention.
Yishan announced on her social media account that the wedding would be live-streamed, and everyone in the world was welcome to watch. Naturally, this made people want to join in the fun and participate virtually.
Apart from these two events, each country's own plans were being carried out in an orderly manner according to schedule.
For example, Beixing's space orbital survival base construction project, the "Tiangong Project," had been receiving high attention from people interested in outer space.
On the other hand, the giant babies and those with mental splitting caused by the rules received relatively little attention. Compared to these failures, the public was more enthusiastic about discussing the gossip surrounding precious memories.
But the heat of these discussions was far lower than the topics mentioned earlier, because a huge group had not been included—the ordinary people.
The ordinary people, who made up the majority of the population, had their Terminal Panels closed. The Memory Market and the buying and selling of memories had nothing to do with them, so naturally they wouldn't discuss those things.
But matters like memory digitization, space survival bases, and even the wedding of the king's daughter and a Beixing wanted fugitive—these were things ordinary people could participate in discussing, so their popularity naturally far exceeded the discussion of rules.
This created a peculiar online spectacle: the voices of Ascendants were completely drowned out by ordinary people, forcing them to go to places like Ascendant Home to open separate threads for discussion.
As the Administrator, Guan Tong had no mind to browse any posts right now. He and Adam had been busy preparing for the wedding that would take place in five days.
"Based on the intelligence collected by Shadow, Yishan truly knows nothing."
Inside the farm warehouse, Guan Tong concluded this based on the shadow he had manipulated to lurk beside Yishan.
"Yishan's dissatisfaction with Aaron stems from the former's attitude of being unconcerned about the wedding details. That actually shows Aaron knows this is a fake wedding turned trap, so naturally he would pay attention to some specifics."
Adam nodded in agreement: "That's true. It definitely indicates that Yi Jiao knows the castle will become a battlefield on the wedding day, so what kind of flowers are placed under the stage is indeed important."
"But Yishan cares a great deal about this wedding, wanting every single detail to be perfect." Guan Tong folded his arms across his chest and mused, "If she knew that the most important event in her life was built on deception and lies, she would definitely hate Han Qiu and Bruce to the core."
Upon hearing this, Adam proposed a hypothesis: "Should we tell her? Maybe her sense of vengeance could help us take the initiative."
Guan Tong shook his head: "If we tell her in advance, would she believe it? And besides, no matter what, Bruce is still her father. Hoping for a daughter to betray her father... the probability of success is too low."
"That's true... But Shadow, actually, after you told me earlier that you successfully got close to Yishan using your ability, I did think about kidnapping her to force Bruce into a trade. But if we did that, how would we be any different from Silus?"
Guan Tong exchanged a look with Adam.
He knew that Adam wasn't so much asking for his opinion as questioning himself—whether he should go to any lengths to achieve his goal, even to the point of crossing his own bottom line.
He neither supported nor opposed it, only saying, "Even if you kidnapped her, I don't think Bruce would agree to your terms. He doesn't seem like the type to be easily coerced."
"...You're right. If we used his son as a hostage, that might be somewhat effective. As for this daughter, Yishan, in his eyes, she probably doesn't amount to much."
"Son?" Guan Tong asked, curious. "I don't seem to have heard much about him."
Adam explained, "His name is Gaelid. He's already passed away. It seemed to involve some rule—something went wrong in the middle, but I don't know the exact details. Gaelid became a council member at just twenty-three, the youngest council member in Suroma's history. Bruce had high hopes for this son and seemed to want to groom him as the next king. Perhaps it was because of Gaelid's accident that Bruce turned into the cold-blooded monster he is today."
"I see."
As Guan Tong listened to Adam mention Gaelid's experience, he inexplicably thought of Black Star and White Star's younger brother, Aaron, who had also fallen into a deep coma due to a rule.
Fortunately, during his coma, no Doomsday Rule that could kill those without self-autonomy was released. Otherwise, no amount of protection from others would have helped.
Just like the recently concluded [Memory Erasure] rule—if Aaron were still in a coma at that time, the result would be failing to delete his memories in time, leading to complete failure and all his memories being wiped clean. Even if he could wake up, he would only become a "giant baby."
Somehow, this association made Guan Tong vaguely feel that something was off, but since Ye Dang had said Gaelid was already dead, he didn't continue thinking about it.
"Let's just follow the plan we discussed earlier." Ye Dang said, "I'll still pretend to be the Priest and deliberately show a flaw to attract attention, a feint to the east and attack to the west. You take the opportunity to sneak into the dressing room, take control of Yishan, and then confront Bruce."
Guan Tong nodded and then asked, "Do you need to find some helpers?"
Adam categorically refused: "No! Moon Key's prophecy says this operation is very dangerous. I don't want to get anyone else killed. You feel the same way, right?"
Several figures flashed through Guan Tong's mind. He was silent for a moment before saying, "I won't find anyone else, but I'll have Shangyuan come with us. I promised her that when it came time to deal with Bruce and Han Qiu, I would bring her along. I won't break my word."