After the new rule was released, related discussions heated up.
Across all platforms, the Ascendant Home forum ranked near the top, because if the Administrator announced hidden intelligence for sale, forum members could be the first to swarm the thread.
At this moment the Administrator had not posted anything yet, but many people were already impatiently making posts to hurry him along.
“Where’s the Administrator? Come out quickly!”
“There must be hidden intel for sale, right? I’ll grab a front-row seat.”
“I’m freaking out! If there’s hidden intel, I hope the official buys it and releases it. I was on the toilet when the rule dropped, I couldn’t get out at all!”
“The guy above made me laugh. How would it help you? Couldn’t you hold it a bit? Why did you have to choose the exact moment the rule was released to use the toilet?”
“No one expected this rule to be so bizarre...”
“What’s the difference between being locked in the toilet and locked in a dorm? Other than the latter having more space, you still can’t go out.”
“Who says you can’t get out? If you open the door and your luck’s good, you’ll be fine.”
“You’d need ridiculous luck. Even if you’re lucky, the scene beyond the door might not be an ocean or some dangerous place, it could be an abandoned city. Getting back to your original residence from there would be very hard.”
“Yeah. The remaining few hundred million people in the world are highly concentrated now. Most areas are desolate no-man’s lands. If you end up in one of those places, it won’t be easy to return to the human world.”
Many people complained about the trouble the rule caused, but some were actively searching for solutions.
“I just saw someone online say they smashed through a wall and got out, seemed to succeed; there was no spatial folding outside the wall.”
“Smash the wall? That actually sounds alright...”
“What room are you living in that you can even try to smash a wall? The shelter walls where I am are stronger than steel. You can’t break them by yourself unless the officials provide tools to smash them open.”
“The shelters were painstakingly built. They’re that solid to resist disaster rules or alien monsters. Is it worth destroying them for this rule?”
“To the person asking if it’s worth it—solve this month’s food problems for me and I’ll support not breaking walls! Otherwise shut up!”
"....."
“Teleportation Dao Zhen shouldn’t be affected by this rule either, right?”
“That thing is only affordable by the government and a handful of powerful Ascendants. Ordinary people shouldn’t even think about buying one.”
“Breaking news! The Administrator posted, hurry and check it out!”
Those discussing the rule saw the Administrator post and immediately surged into the Administrator’s Domain channel.
Sure enough, they saw a new thread.
“For Sale: Hidden Intelligence Related to Doomsday Rule Twenty-Five”
Details: Intelligence price 500,000 Ascension Coins.
There were already tens of thousands of comments under the post.
“Finally!”
“Worship the Administrator!!!”
“Official daddy better buy it and release it slowly, you all want to know everything at once!”
Designated buyers had personnel constantly monitoring the post, and once the sale thread appeared, the transaction completed quickly.
An hour later, the various buyers who had obtained the intel all had their own reactions to its contents.
.......
Suroma, Hall of Halls.
When the rule was released, Bruce had been in the laboratory discussing issues with Dr. Haisen. Once the rule came out, they temporarily did not use items to leave the place.
Now that the hidden intelligence had been acquired, Dr. Haisen immediately proposed, “The ‘Coordinate Resonance Anchor’ mentioned in the hidden intel seems to be tradable, and ordinary people can obtain it.
Your Majesty, it would be best to let ordinary populations be forced into door-opening. If the base is large enough, we should be able to obtain some anchors, gather them for our use and research.”
Bruce wore a thoughtful expression. Dr. Haisen, thinking he might be reluctant to do this, continued to persuade him.
“Your Majesty, with the accelerated development provided by the previous rule, Suroma has nearly achieved full automation and mechanization ahead of schedule.
Robots can now handle almost any task. Starch and protein synthesis techniques are mature; with sufficient energy, food can be produced automatically in factories.
For your kingdom, the ordinary population has almost ceased to have value. Instead, they have become a heavy burden. Taking this opportunity to make those burdens generate value would be beneficial.”
Dr. Haisen’s views were not uncommon worldwide.
Previously, many Ascendants had argued that ordinary people had lost their value.
What ordinary people can do, AI plus robots can do, and more efficiently. Many of the jobs people now hold are merely performative.
Therefore some proposed whether the government should spend so many resources feeding the ordinary population that outnumbers Ascendants by multiple times.
Wouldn’t those resources be better spent on Ascendants and technological advancement?
But that voice had always met fierce opposition.
There are simply more ordinary people, and they make more noise online.
Besides, many Ascendants with low Mind Power did not accept such ideas. Even ignoring the possibility of Ascendants’ terminal panels being shut off, this survival-of-the-fittest approach was dangerous for them.
In their words, ordinary people were like a small country squeezed between two great powers. That small country existed as a buffer zone to prevent direct border friction from spiraling out of control.
For Ascendants with low Mind Power, the ordinary population was that buffer.
If all ordinary people were abandoned today, those low Mind Power Ascendants would replace them ecologically and become the new buffer, which they could not accept.
But now circumstances had changed.
In Suroma, the replacement rate of intelligent machinery for many jobs had reached nearly one hundred percent, and Ascendants were continually undergoing staged modifications.
Under these conditions, if Bruce made a decision, the ordinary populace would have no real capability to resist.
“I do not care about their lives or deaths. I only consider the risk of triggering a world war prematurely,” Bruce said.
Dr. Haisen nodded, though he had not thought in that direction.
“Then we execute it region by region, in batches. Each area will randomly select some people to forcibly test door-opening and see what the probability of obtaining anchors is.”
“Your Majesty is wise. If we obtain a few anchors, we can stabilize several major laboratories—these labs are crucial. Making holes in the walls won’t work, it would destroy the sealed experimental environment.”
While Suroma made its decision, at the Countermeasures Research Office in Beixing they were considering publishing a completely opposite “Door-Opening Prohibition.”
“The probability of the space beyond the door remaining unchanged and obtaining a Coordinate Resonance Anchor is far too low,” Zhang Minglu said with a serious expression. “If everyone tries this, the consequences would be unimaginable!”
“Dr. Zhang is right,” Li Meng agreed with the same stance. “I suggest banning people from casually trying to open doors, especially those living in shelter dormitories. One person opening a door could endanger several lives.”
Their words received a lot of support. Gao Liangwei had not yet stated his view and was still considering.
At this moment someone from the Data Department looked shocked and abruptly stood up. “Everyone, I just received a piece of surveillance footage from inside an official shelter. Someone has already been killed!”
“What?!”
“Was it caused by opening a door? Put it on the big screen.”
Everyone was curious. Gao Liangwei also signaled to project the footage.
The Data Department staff projected the video onto the large screen. It was not a dorm room but a small storage closet.
Dorm rooms in shelters did not have cameras, but other functional rooms did.
The footage showed three people in the storage closet. For some reason they had not been in the dorm when the rule released, and had become trapped in the closet. Their expressions looked very uncomfortable.
The storage closet was small; three people inside looked a bit cramped.
Because many people had developed claustrophobia after the Five Senses Elimination rule, two of the three were visibly afflicted and appeared agitated.
They quickly began arguing. The two affected ones wanted to open the door; the other refused. After a scuffle, the lone person’s two fists could not hold back four hands, and the door was opened.
The instant the closet door opened, the camera recorded absolute blackness.
At that same moment, the three people, everything in the storage closet, and even the surveillance camera itself all seemed to be “sucked” out. The three vanished into the dark without even a cry.
In the final second of the video, a sound like a door shutting was heard.
When the footage ended, everyone was stunned into silence.
After a moment, someone broke the silence: “Where on earth did the space behind their door fold to? How could they all be sucked away...”
“They weren’t sucked; they were pushed out,” the physics expert said in a deep voice. “If I’m not mistaken, outside the door was a space environment—vacuum pressure close to zero—so the three were expelled by the pressure difference.”
"............
Many showed looks of terror. This resembled scenes from sci-fi films: because a spaceship failed to seal properly, astronauts were pushed out into space by the internal-external pressure difference and disappeared...
Who would have imagined such a thing could happen on the ground, in a non-space environment?
“I will propose this to the decision-makers,” Gao Liangwei said. The video seemed to finalize his choice.
“Beixing official release a prohibition: strictly forbid unauthorized personnel from taking chances and casually opening doors during the Rule Period. And make this video public so people understand the real danger of opening doors.”
“Agree.” “Support.”
Everyone nodded in agreement. The Coordinate Resonance Anchor was appealing, but the risk of obtaining one was too high, and individuals could not bear that cost.