After the buyers of the hidden rule information all received their intel, most of their reactions could be summed up as "expected."
Especially since most buyers were national official agencies, which were packed with clever people—many had already guessed at similar possibilities.
But a guess was still just a guess. Without verification from the Administrator of Ascendant Home's accurate information, getting it wrong could cost countless lives.
Now that the information was confirmed, national officials everywhere began actively preparing countermeasures.
At the Countermeasures Research Office, Xu Hao immediately offered his suggestion based on the hidden rule's content.
"I propose a 'dual-track system.' All high-risk departments and shelters must remove every electronic device with chips by 9 a.m. tomorrow to ensure personnel safety. But at the same time, all engineering departments should seize this opportunity—use the power of the rule to leverage the thousandfold-enhanced 'emergence' to boost engineering efficiency, and record the improvement methods so they can be replicated once the rule ends."
Xu Hao's proposal received unanimous approval.
Protecting personnel safety was important, but using the rule to solve problems was equally critical.
In fact, for many engineering experts and individual engineers, the latter was even more important than the former.
This was because many engineering projects, once they reached a certain stage, made it nearly impossible to improve efficiency by even 1%, no matter how many sharp minds racked their brains every day.
Now the rule's power allowed these devices to iterate themselves and enhance core task efficiency—for some engineers, it was no less than manna from heaven.
Many engineers obsessed with engineering problems couldn't care less about "safety redundancy" in their devices; improving efficiency and completing core tasks were what truly mattered.
This rule happened to align perfectly with their tastes.
At the Countermeasures Research Office, the engineers responsible for liaising with the aerospace division and participating in the "Tiangong Project" were especially thrilled.
Building a fully operational space base—let alone a future orbital space city—in such a short time required solving an absolutely staggering number of engineering problems.
Even with concentrated resources and manpower to accelerate breakthroughs, time was still incredibly tight.
But now, as long as they leveraged this new rule—isolating those troublesome engineering problems and letting the rule's power drive the devices to solve themselves—they could drastically speed up the overall project timeline.
So, the moment they received the news, engineering departments everywhere burst into excitement.
Engineers immediately dove into work, setting long-stalled problems as core tasks. Then they placed those devices in isolated, sealed spaces, waiting for the rule to take effect at 9 a.m. the next day to let them iterate and solve the issues on their own.
As for large industrial equipment, precision instruments, and the like, the Beixing government adopted two approaches as well.
One type, which required human presence for maintenance, was shut down—a safety measure for facility personnel.
The other type, which didn't need human presence, was left running depending on the situation. If the rule could boost its efficiency, the potential gains for humanity could be staggering.
For example, large unmanned energy stations and dark factories—these facilities' maintenance was mostly handled by pre-programmed robots, with only rare cases requiring human intervention.
Equipment like this could be left running to see how much the rule's boost increased efficiency.
It wasn't just Beixing doing this—almost every country made the same choice.
At the same time, in Suroma, Dr. Haisen was practically jumping for joy.
"Fantastic! That doomsday rule is absolutely perfect!"
Dr. Haisen was shouting in the lab, and all the assistants stared at him with confused expressions.
"What are you blockheads standing around gawking for?" Dr. Haisen barked at his assistants after his excitement subsided. "Get to work! Cerebral Wake Number One extended-strength version, memory modification circuits, subconscious visualization, anti–Mind Power intrusion devices... God! I need to use this rule to accelerate completing my series of insanely difficult studies!"
The assistants snapped out of it, finally understanding Dr. Haisen's intent, and hurried off to prepare.
One junior assistant couldn't help asking, "Dr. Haisen, your studies are pretty terrifying... what if they produce unpredictable destructive effects under the rule's influence? Wouldn't that be dangerous?"
Dr. Haisen chuckled dryly. "See? This is why I call you blockheads. If there's danger, do we have to test it ourselves? There are so many Ascendants delivered to our doorstep lately—test subjects are plentiful!"
"Ah... got it."
After the assistants ran off to prepare, Dr. Haisen tilted his head back and laughed for a moment longer. Then he looked toward the door, but his brow furrowed.
"Gaelid's problem is more complicated than I imagined. I didn't expect that little girl's consciousness to be so stubborn... Is it because she's a natural Ascendant? Or does it have something to do with that incident?"
Thinking about it, Dr. Haisen couldn't help feeling a bit resentful toward Bruce.
"His Majesty is such a hassle, insisting I teleport her over back then... That girl's consciousness might have grown so strong precisely because she saw Ye Dang and witnessed with her own eyes 'killing her father,' driven by hatred."
Not being able to pinpoint the exact reason for Adam's daughter's strong consciousness was giving Dr. Haisen a major headache.
Because every time Gaelid lost control, Bruce grew a little more displeased. If Dr. Haisen couldn't make Gaelid control this body stably over the long term, Bruce would definitely accumulate a lot of anger.
Dr. Haisen knew very well that this king had gone to such crazy lengths to "revive" his son Gaelid—which meant if Gaelid ever went wrong in the future, Bruce might completely lose his mind.
"...Let's see if I can use this rule to enhance the effects of Cerebral Wake Number One," Dr. Haisen thought.
Since he couldn't completely erase Adam's daughter's consciousness, strengthening Gaelid's consciousness with drugs to let his mind dominate the body over the long term might not be a bad solution.
...
After the national officials received the intelligence, analyzed it, and made their decisions, the relevant information began to be publicly released on official platforms.
When people learned the details, they all felt a sense of amazement.
On the discussion boards of each platform's announcements, many were debating which devices would undergo which iterative changes under the rule.
Everyone seemed to be treasuring these last moments of using electronic devices, sending messages thick and fast.
"Since the rule makes devices focus on improving core task efficiency, let's all talk about what different devices' core tasks are!"
"Uh, fridges will get better at cooling?"
"Lightbulbs will shine brighter!"
"I think hair dryers could get dangerous. If they ditch safety features and just focus on speeding up 'drying hair,' they might get so hot they could burn your scalp!"
"The scariest one after losing safety margins is probably elevators, right? Think about it—the up-and-down speed would be insane. Who cares if the people inside get shaken to death..."
"Single-task devices are one thing, but how do multi-task ones change?"
"Yeah, like a smart scale that measures weight, body fat percentage, even heart rate and all that... With so many tasks, which one does it focus on improving?"
"The guy before is overcomplicating it. All those tasks are actually sub-tasks of the core task 'measure body data.' The improvement would obviously be on that big task."
The discussion was lively, but many people were also complaining nonstop.
"The shelter sent a notice—all electronic devices have to be removed. So annoying!"
"I'm about to hand over my phone after this message. Ugh, how am I supposed to live without a phone!"
"I got used to it during that no-internet rule last time. I'll just read some books."
"Speaking of which, do phones really need to be isolated? What's its core task? Making calls? Surfing the web? Even under the rule's influence, what danger could it pose to humans?"
"Not dangerous? Wait till the battery explodes and you'll be singing a different tune..."
"Devices without chips still work fine. Our shelter has an old analog record player—I can listen to vinyl. It's pretty nice."
"You guys are making trouble for yourselves. Just lie back and relax. Wake up, eat, sleep—a month will pass in no time."
"Why is everyone so optimistic? This is a survival-type rule, isn't it? Is it that easy to pass?"
"Of course I'm optimistic staying in an official shelter. It's not like I'm one of those people wandering outside—what's there to be afraid of?"
But was there really nothing to fear inside an official shelter?
At this moment, Guan Tong was sitting in his own Wordless Book shelter, scrolling through the netizens' messages, lost in thought.
He knew that after today, the internet would fall silent for an entire month. Honestly, that didn't make him happy.
The reason was simple: if no one used electronic devices or went online, his Ascendant Home website would have no traffic. No traffic meant no transactions, and without transactions, his [Impermanent Tax] Authority couldn't take its cut. This really was a matter of personal interest.
And he wasn't entirely sure that hiding in an ordinary shelter would be enough to safely get through this rule...
"I'll see how things look tomorrow."
Guan Tong shut down the computer.
The whole world was busy that night, preparing for the rule, but he went to bed early to rest.
At nine the next morning, the rule's effect officially kicked in.
Guan Tong sat by the window on the second floor, watching the outside. He didn't notice any change—of course, there weren't many electronic devices in the valley where he was staying anyway.
"I might as well go train."
Feeling a bit bored, he stood up to consolidate the training Shi Jingyi had given him earlier. But just as he rose, he saw a blinding flash of light erupt on the horizon!
That was...!
He stared at the direction of the light, his expression stunned.
Meanwhile, at the Countermeasures Research Office, the red phone on Gao Liangwei's desk let out a shrill ring.
He picked it up and heard a solemn voice: "Liangwei, thirty seconds ago, a batch of missiles from an underground weapons depot launched automatically without system password verification!"
Gao Liangwei shot to his feet.
Just then, someone burst through the door, face full of shock, and reported, "Director, Pinglu City has been hit by automatically guided missiles!"