Gao Liangwei walked down the street, closely watching the changes brought by the Rules.
In densely populated cities like Pinglu, most of the original urban buildings had already been torn down and rebuilt as shelters, supply warehouses, and other survival structures.
Only a few landmark buildings retained their original appearance, along with some parks, stadiums, and a handful of restaurants that would operate during the Interval Period.
After all, shelters are not prisons. In the early days of strict management, people might only have been allowed out once a week, but as population tallies and registrations were completed, management relaxed considerably.
Now, during an Interval Period, people could generally go out freely most days, and friends living in other shelters could meet each other more often.
As Gao Liangwei walked, the first thing he noticed was a traffic light.
After the Doomsday Rules, many traffic lights had been removed; only a few remained.
Yet not far ahead, one traffic light displayed a green countdown of “999,” and it stayed fixed.
Gao Liangwei frowned at the exaggerated number. The guards walking beside him were equally surprised.
“How did the green light time get so long, and why isn’t it changing? Even under the Rules, why would it update like this?”
“What is the core task of a traffic light?” Gao Liangwei asked in return.
“To remind pedestrians and drivers to take turns moving, and to prevent accidents,” a guard answered without hesitation.
Gao Liangwei considered for a moment and said, “Its core task is, while ensuring the safety of traffic participants, to maximize throughput efficiency.”
The guards all nodded, thinking their commander’s summary was accurate.
“You remember what the hidden Rule intelligence said, right?” Gao Liangwei asked.
“Of course! It said emergent behavior prioritizes completing designed tasks, accelerating emergence, but... ah.” A soldier suddenly realized, “But it will ignore human safety!”
“Exactly.” Gao Liangwei said solemnly, “If human safety no longer needs to be considered, then the most efficient way for a traffic light to maximize throughput is for the green light to remain permanently on.”
The soldiers felt chills down their spines.
A small change in traffic lights might not immediately threaten lives, but the implied message was terrifying.
If all electronic devices iterated away their “ensure personnel safety” requirement, then unless most devices were shut down, humanity would be surrounded by countless hazards.
“Move out.”
Gao Liangwei led the group onward. After crossing a street, a buzzing suddenly came from overhead.
Everyone looked up to see several drones circling in the air.
These patrol drones had been deployed in Beixing as early as the initial Rule period, first for search-and-rescue and control tasks, and later for routine patrols.
After this Rule was announced, especially once the Administrator of Ascendant Home leaked the hidden Rule intelligence, these patrol drones should have been ordered offline.
Why were they patrolling now?
Could it be another oversight, like the missile left in that missile truck earlier?
While they puzzled, the drones suddenly ended their dive and flew slowly toward the group!
The security squad reacted slowly despite surprise. They quickly used personal items to shoot down the drones.
“Commander, it could be an enemy attack. You should quickly return outside the base!” The squad leader looked grave. Although the drones couldn’t penetrate their security circle, this kind of “suicide attack” symbolized a certain level of danger.
Even if the drones carried no bombs and their threat derived only from rapidly spinning propellers, the guards were still highly tense.
“Hold on.”
Gao Liangwei bent to inspect the scattered drone wreckage and picked out their chips.
“Bring these back to the tech department for analysis. Find out why the patrol drones attacked humans.”
They quickly returned to the Countermeasures Research Office base, encountering a few other accidental dangers on the way.
Although none of the incidents were lethal, the frequency alone showed the Rule’s tendency:
If you live outside shelters and there are enough electronic devices nearby, you will encounter all kinds of accidents.
After the tech department analyzed the chips Gao Liangwei retrieved, a technician reported to the director’s office: “Based on the chip data, the drones classified your group as an ‘unknown path.’ Their purpose in approaching was not to attack, but to scan for modeling and path correction.”
Hearing this, Gao Liangwei frowned.
The technician explained further: “These patrol drones follow fixed routes and have 3D models of route terrain and buildings, and—”
“Because of the Rule, we aren’t classified as ‘people,’” Gao Liangwei finished. “Those drones treated us as an unknown object newly appearing in their models, so they moved in to rescan and re-model.”
“Correct,” the technician confirmed.
Gao Liangwei fell silent.
Like the guards earlier, he had assumed the drones intended to attack. Instead, they had taken the group for an “unknown building.”
“This is dangerous for people working outside,” he said, then asked, “Why weren’t these drones grounded?”
The technician replied, “We traced these patrol drones to the Emergency Management Bureau. It appears someone there dropped the ball.”
Gao Liangwei nodded.
He understood shutting down most intelligent electronics in a single day would be a rushed task, and people make mistakes when hurrying.
No matter how rigorous government departments were, they were still staffed by humans, and errors were inevitable.
That said, proper criticism and punishment needed to be carried out according to procedure.
Someone else then came to report to Gao Liangwei.
“Director, there was a major explosion at the chemical plant in Wucheng. It appears the chip controlling the reactor iterated itself and caused the reaction monitoring to fail. The reactor ruptured, and the exposed high-temperature solvent mixed with air, causing a vapor cloud explosion that flattened the entire workshop!”
“There was also a molten steel explosion at a steel mill in Chonglin City ten minutes ago. It seems the chip controlling the oxygen lance had an algorithm failure...”
“Multiple drug production lines at Sanqi Pharmaceutical were damaged; the freeze-dry machines suffered vacuum leaks...”
“And several sewage treatment plants...”
The more Gao Liangwei heard, the grimmer his expression became.
He hadn’t expected so many major industrial failures on the first day the Rule took full effect.
This was a huge challenge for the authorities; factory failures would not only delay national projects but could also impact the livelihoods of many people.
After hearing a dozen reports, Gao Liangwei called an immediate meeting to revise their response strategy.
...
New Covenant City, Saint Mary Psychiatric Sanatorium.
In peacetime this facility had been the largest sanatorium in the city, and even in Suroma many influential families sent relatives with mental troubles here for conservative treatment.
After the Rule era began and populations shrank, most hospitals closed. But this sanatorium remained open and had upgraded its security systems.
It now sheltered a surprising number of wealthy, mentally disturbed people—actually more than in peacetime, because many powerful people had been driven mad by the Rules.
In an activity room, several disturbed patients chased and attacked a female patient. She appealed to the attendant present but only received an eye-roll.
“Get out of here!”
The angry woman grabbed a chair and threw it at her pursuers. Startled, they fled.
The attendant frowned and scolded, “Don’t damage property. If you do this again, I’ll—”
“Do what?” the woman snapped coldly. “Do you dare put me in solitary or put me in restraints? Believe me, I’ll kill you!”
Faced with a death threat, the attendant’s expression flickered, and he quickly ended the confrontation, muttering “don’t think you’re still a princess” as he hurried away.
The other patients were taken away, leaving the woman alone in the activity room. She covered her face and cried silently.
“A king’s daughter ending up in a psychiatric hospital. That’s rare.”
A low voice sounded. Ishan suddenly lifted her head but saw no one.
“I’m right here.”
The voice came from her right shoulder. She turned and noticed a black thread had appeared along the shoulder of her blue patient gown.
Her pupils constricted. “Could it be...?”
“There are cameras in this room,” Guan Tong whispered through his Shadow, “Move to a place without cameras.”
Ishan didn’t hesitate. She left the activity room and went into a bedroom.
As soon as she entered, she said, “This is the room I sleep in. There are absolutely no cameras here. They wouldn’t dare do that!”
Guan Tong probed the room’s perimeter with a shadow line and found no surveillance devices. The next moment he used Body Swap and appeared in the room.
Ishan saw a figure wrapped in shadow suddenly materialize. She immediately realized she had guessed correctly; it really was Shadow.
“You can probably guess why I came,” Guan Tong got straight to the point.
Although surprised by his arrival, Ishan’s recent experiences had made her steadier; she no longer screamed and panicked the way she once had.
“Of course.” She said, “You want to use my hatred for my father and my hatred for Han Qiu to get their information from me.”
Ishan looked at Guan Tong with a cold gaze. “I can give you what you want, but not for free. You have to give me what I want. We each take what we need.”
Guan Tong found that arrangement easier.
Before coming he had worried Ishan would make a scene, but she seemed to have realized that would be pointless and had become more rational.
“What do you want?”
“I want out of this sanatorium. That’s the first condition.”
“Getting you out isn’t hard. But where will you go afterward?” Guan Tong asked. “Bruce will send people after you. Do you think you can hide?”
“That’s the second condition.” Ishan bit her lip, radiating a fierce hostility. “I want Suroma’s power. I want to be this country’s queen!”
Guan Tong was silent for a few seconds. “Are you joking?”
“I’m serious.”
“If you’re serious, you know how difficult that is. Bruce has completed total centralization. He controls everything in Suroma. Why do you think you can replace him?”
“Then my condition is you help me.”
“That’s impossible.”
Guan Tong rejected her bluntly. Even if he had the ability, he didn’t want to get tangled in Suroma’s political whirlpool.
When he helped Yelanka secure the Administrator position in Xisiya, it took him a long time. That was on the premise that Yelanka was already Administrator, with Sigaochin and a core team backing her and strong popular support.
Now Ishan was a blank slate with no foundation yet planning to seize Bruce—the most powerful king in Suroma’s history. It was a pipe dream.
“Don’t think I don’t understand anything,” Ishan argued.
“My father, Bruce, does have enormous power—those war weapons and robots. But what he’s done has made many Suromans despise him, hasn’t it? If I oppose him and gain the support of real people, it might not be weaker than relying on my father’s robots!”
Guan Tong shook his head. “Even if Suromans despise Bruce, they won’t support you. What qualification do you have for support? Do you think your public image is good in their eyes?”
Ishan’s face paled; she knew he was right.
Since peacetime she had been seen as a daughter who abused her father’s power, repeatedly committing minor crimes and being pardoned. That had caused strong resentment among Suroma’s people.
Now winning support was highly unlikely.
“Can’t you at least find a way to help me? You’re Shadow—just kill those opposed to me!”
Guan Tong looked at the murderous Ishan and thought coming here might have been a mistake.
She seemed consumed by hatred and borderline insane. Maybe the sanatorium suited her after all.
Seeing his silence, Ishan realized Guan Tong wouldn’t help her kill people.
“Forget it. We’ll talk about that later. I know why you came—you want Bruce. You want to kill him, right?”
Guan Tong said calmly, “Anyone with a conscience would want to kill him for what he’s done. As long as he lives, he’ll kill more people—more of you Suromans.”