"Your Majesty, hello."
After waiting for a moment in the reception hall of the Hall of Halls, Tianci immediately greeted Bruce with respect as soon as he saw him appear.
Bruce glanced at him, then sat down on a chair.
Tianci began his self-introduction: "I am Tianci. Chairman Han Qiu sent me to see Your Majesty to discuss a potential cooperation."
Bruce asked with a blank expression, "Why didn't Han Qiu come to see me himself? Doesn't he dare to come?"
"Chairman Han Qiu is busy with many affairs and couldn't find the time. Please forgive him, Your Majesty."
Bruce waved his hand at this.
Without any warning or sound, several figures rushed out from the shadows of the room, and in an instant, they pinned Tianci to the ground, holding him firmly down.
Tianci didn't resist, allowing himself to be pressed to the floor.
"Some nobody who popped out of nowhere dares to speak to me like this."
Bruce said coldly.
"I'm considering using your life to send Han Qiu a signal—he should have come himself."
Upon hearing this, one of the guards drew a sharp knife and pressed it against Tianci's carotid artery, waiting only for Bruce's order.
Even with death so close at hand, Tianci's expression didn't change: "Dying for Chairman Han Qiu is my honor. If Your Majesty truly intends to do this, then please give the order to strike."
Bruce stared at Tianci for a moment, then gave a glance to the guards. They understood, put away their weapons, and pulled Tianci to his feet.
"What did Han Qiu send you to say?"
Tianci straightened his collar and said slowly, "Chairman Han Qiu asked me to convey to Your Majesty that he is willing to act as an intermediary, to establish a connection between Your Majesty and influential figures within the Beixing official establishment."
Bruce: "Acting as an intermediary. That really is his specialty."
Han Qiu had managed to establish himself in Suroma back then, including eventually holding a wedding with Yishan, all by acting as a go-between and linking up relationships.
There was no doubt he had a vast amount of classified information in his hands and maintained long-term secret communications with many confidential personnel.
This could be his umbrella, but it could also become his death warrant.
Bruce had thought about it before. Many people must have wanted to silence Han Qiu. Why did that kid keep bouncing around?
It wasn't until after the battle at Wensilisa Castle, when he discovered Han Qiu's body had vanished into thin air, that he vaguely understood something.
It wasn't that no one had tried to silence Han Qiu. Some had, and maybe they even succeeded. But they never expected Han Qiu could come back to life.
If his enemies didn't know about this trait, they would absolutely make a misjudgment due to carelessness and paralysis. The result would be a meticulous retaliation from Han Qiu afterward.
But this kind of "resurrection from the dead" was like a magic trick. Once someone saw through the secret, he would fall into true danger.
Just like right now, Han Qiu didn't dare to come to the Hall of Halls himself, only sending a subordinate.
He knew very well that Bruce, who had learned his secret, had a hundred ways to control him and prevent him from committing suicide.
Seeing that Bruce didn't explicitly oppose him, Tianci continued speaking.
"Chairman Han Qiu said that the influential figures in Beixing hope that Suroma can back up its memory with the highest priority and prepare matching 'high-potential host bodies.' In return, they will provide major confidential data from within Beixing."
Bruce asked, "What major confidential data?"
Tianci shook his head: "I don't know the specifics. Only that it's related to the distribution of Ascendants."
Bruce snorted coldly: "What kind of major confidential data is the distribution of Ascendants? Even if you handed me Beixing's entire Ascendant database, it would be worthless in my eyes."
Tianci was very surprised to hear this, not expecting Bruce to say such a thing.
The Ascendant databases of every nation were confidential. Even after the Human Consortium was established, they weren't shared. How could Bruce seem to completely disregard them?
"Tell Han Qiu to inform the 'influential figures' of Beixing: if they want priority memory backup and host bodies, fine. But they have to trade with real secrets."
Tianci asked, "May I ask what Your Majesty considers to be real secrets?"
"Data from Beixing's 'Tiangong Project' counts as one," Silus said. "And detailed information on 'Shadow' Guan Tong."
"Is that so? I understand. Then allow me to take my leave, Your Majesty."
Tianci moved to walk away, but was stopped by several guards.
Their attitude was very clear: no leaving until Bruce gave the word.
"Your Majesty?"
Tianci turned his head to look at Bruce, who was sitting on the chair, and found the latter's gaze exceptionally cold, which made him feel a dangerous aura.
"I said you could deliver the message, but I never said you could leave intact," Bruce said. "Leave your arms behind."
As the words fell, before Tianci could say anything, he felt an intense pain at both shoulders!
The guards had already moved swiftly, using Mind Power weapons to sever both of his arms.
"AHHH!!!"
Tianci screamed in agony, looking at his two arms lying on the ground, his face full of disbelief.
Bruce rose and left, leaving only one sentence echoing through the hall.
"Go back and tell Han Qiu: his offense against me will eventually cost him dearly. This is just a small interest collected in advance."
...
November 20th, the fifth day of the new Doomsday Rule's effectiveness.
Nations around the world generally implemented a "Shutdown Order."
All personal smart devices were temporarily surrendered, and batteries and other power supply components were uniformly removed. In public places, only chip-free mechanical equipment was retained.
Major critical infrastructure, such as power grids, water plants, and hospitals, generally adopted manual operation to replace automation, shutting down all automatic adjustment modules.
Large-scale network fiber optic cables were also all shut down. For those that couldn't be confirmed as shut down, Electromagnetic Pulses were even used for hard elimination.
But the nations unanimously retained a small portion of fixed fiber optic cables for various tests and experiments.
At the same time, another similar "Development Order" was implemented alongside the "Shutdown Order."
Each nation dispatched a portion of specialized personnel to use the Doomsday Rules in reverse to accelerate various technological iterations.
The fields covered included, but were not limited to, aerospace, military industry, pharmaceuticals, construction... basically every area where electronic chips could improve efficiency.
However, this development was subject to strict regulation and scale limitations. In nations like Beixing and the Xisiya Empire, it was ordered that active harm to human life should not be the baseline for testing.
Suroma had no such regulation, and under Bruce's forceful push, it had now become a veritable "Modification Paradise."
All Ascendants around the world who dreamed of mechanical ascension, cyborg immortality, and free memory backup responded to Bruce's call and flocked to Suroma.
Beixing people, Xisiya people, Lury people, Sakura Prayer people... Every nation had Ascendants who recognized this path, actively heading to New Covenant, the "promised land" in their hearts.
Beixing only issued a warning to these people, telling them to stay rational and recognize the risks.
But there were no further measures, no forced restrictions or pursuits of the Ascendants heading outside Suroma's shelters, respecting personal will and choice.
Besides, Beixing didn't have the spare energy to manage them anyway.
The trouble this Doomsday Rule brought domestically was even greater than the authorities had anticipated.
Various large facilities were affected and shut down. Maintaining a stable life for hundreds of millions of people was a huge challenge.
Some citizens also accidentally died from the Doomsday Rule's effects due to various circumstances, which was almost impossible to prevent.
For example, the Countermeasures Research Office's data statistics department received many death lists, among which quite a few causes were "Medical implants affected by the Doomsday Rule underwent self-iteration, resulting in the implant recipient's death."
Medical implants naturally referred to things like "pacemakers," "insulin pumps," "cochlear implants," and the like.
All of these things had built-in chips and were rigid requirements that couldn't be removed.
This created a contradiction.
Removing the device from the body would either kill the person or cause extreme inconvenience.
Not removing the device meant no one knew if an automatic strategy iteration would one day kill the implant recipient.
This patient group was completely caught in a dilemma.
Some people, relying on wishful thinking, chose not to remove them.
For the first two or three days, nothing went wrong, so they thought it was fine. It was actually just luck. On the fourth day, the device exploded inside their bodies.
The reason was that these chips were affected by the Doomsday Rule; the strategies wouldn't iterate just once, but continuously.
Thus, safety today didn't guarantee safety tomorrow, and safety tomorrow didn't guarantee safety the day after.
To get through a month-long Doomsday Rule Period without an accident, one's luck would have to be so good that no one could know.
For these casualties, the authorities were also helpless, completely at a loss.
Even if some could be avoided through medical items, facing such a large base, it was still just a drop in the bucket.
In the end, they could only first remove non-life-saving devices, like cochlear implants. Taking them out would at most make someone deaf for a month, which was better than dying.
But for life-sustaining devices like pacemakers, whether to remove them or not was left to the patients themselves to decide.
Patients basically all chose not to remove them. After all, taking them out would likely result in immediate death, while not taking them out might mean they'd be lucky enough to live many more days.
The Countermeasures Research Office was well aware that almost none of these people would be able to hold out until the Doomsday Rules ended. But there was no choice; this was unavoidable Doomsday Rule casualties, almost a form of forced elimination.
But for what could be avoided, the authorities would do their best to avoid it.
However, all the various incidents happening within each nation couldn't spread worldwide.
Because internet devices couldn't be used, this month of the Doomsday Rule Period could be called a "Great Silent Month."
Thanks to the uncontrollable communication channel of Ascendant Home, news of anything happening somewhere would spread worldwide quickly.
Now that the source was cut off, it satisfied the needs of certain people.
In this "Silent Month," it didn't matter if one did something outrageous, since it couldn't be spread. As long as the witnesses were eliminated before the Doomsday Rules ended, it was fine.
Thus, in regions where national authorities had weaker control, mercenaries and wilderness groups simultaneously erupted in large-scale melees, all wanting to seize the opportunity to eliminate competitors.
There were even small nations whose authorities took advantage of this opportunity to secretly conduct research that, under normal circumstances, would have been immediately crushed by major powers if exposed, attempting to use the power of the Doomsday Rules to take a shortcut and overtake them.