The hidden information about the anchor items that Guan Tong had sold was soon made public by Beixing's officials.
While people were shocked, they quickly realized the enormous value of a stable spatial folding passage.
However, Beixing's officials did not reveal the content of the "cooperation," planning to discuss it thoroughly internally first, as premature disclosure carried the risk of being swayed by public opinion.
The other groups that had purchased the information almost immediately asked the Administrator for cooperation quotes.
"Eight million Ascension Coins."
In the Hall of Halls' combat command center, Bruce's expression darkened upon hearing his subordinate's report.
"Eight million to lease one passage, with the term being permanent."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"......"
The people in the command center could see that Bruce was displeased, and none of them dared to say anything, afraid of provoking his wrath.
"We spent tens of millions of Ascension Coins trying to acquire a single anchor item, and it was still that difficult. Yet this Administrator only asks for eight million to construct a stable spatial passage that requires two anchor items to complete.
...Can someone tell me, how did this Administrator obtain anchors at a cost far lower than ours?"
Bruce's cold, lightning-like gaze swept across everyone, and each person averted their eyes, not daring to meet his stare.
Someone mustered the courage to speculate: "Your Majesty, perhaps this Administrator has some special means of production. He was able to grasp the hidden information of the rules. It's possible that after the rules were first released, the information sold to various nations was withheld or concealed."
At these words, the others nodded in agreement one after another.
"Indeed, this isn't the first time something like this has happened. There have been previous cases where the hidden information sold was incomplete."
"This guy might be doing it on purpose, selling off the unimportant parts of the hidden information while keeping the most valuable parts for himself to profit from!"
"This Administrator is truly insatiable. He's sold the hidden information of this one rule three times over: once after the rule was released, once more for the anchor item information, and now he's selling passage leasing... Utterly shameless!"
The crowd gnashed their teeth in hatred at the Administrator's "profiteering" behavior, but there was nothing they could do about it.
Just as Guan Tong had judged, this market was a classic seller's market. As long as buyers had demand, they had to purchase from him, as there was no other option.
Bruce, for his part, didn't join his subordinates in cursing the Administrator's shamelessness and profiteering. He knew that venting emotions like that was meaningless.
If it were him, holding the same opportunity, he would only sell at a higher price.
Eight million compared to tens of millions was less, but taken on its own, it was still an astronomical sum.
Especially since this was just the price for one passage. If purchasing multiple passages, it would easily exceed tens of millions.
This amount of Ascension Coins was no small pressure for Suroma.
This was because Suroma's total population was only in the tens of millions. After excluding the rapidly diminishing ordinary populace, the total number of Ascendants was only a few million.
In theory, each time these few million people passed a rule, based on the current reward amounts of Ascension Coins, the total output could reach nearly ten billion.
If the Ascension Coin rewards increased with future rules, this total scale would continue to grow.
But compared to Beixing, these numbers were nothing to look at.
Beixing currently had Ascendants numbering in the tens of millions, several times more than Suroma. The total Ascension Coins producible after each rule passed was in the hundreds of billions.
What was even more exaggerated was that, because Beixing had heavily constructed shelters in the early days of the Doomsday Rules, by now, in the third year, their layout was fully complete, with over 95% of Ascendants residing in official shelters.
This meant that the amount of Ascension Coins Beixing's officials could mobilize in a concentrated manner was terrifyingly large. Taking out tens of millions or even over a hundred million to purchase multiple passages from the Administrator was entirely within their means.
If Beixing's total output after one rule was a hundred billion Ascension Coins, they only needed to use one-thousandth of it, spending a hundred million to buy twelve passages outright.
Of course, this was only an idealized scenario.
Bruce was well aware that while the total amount of Ascension Coins Beixing's officials could mobilize was enormous, it was absolutely not to be abused. Every major expenditure had to pass through layers of strict review.
Especially after that defector Jiang Lanying had used her position and status to abscond with a large amount of official Ascension Coin reserves, Beixing's officials had learned their lesson and implemented many measures to prevent a recurrence.
Moreover, Bruce didn't think that Administrator could casually produce over a dozen passages for sale. Over a dozen passages would require nearly thirty stable coordinate anchors. Where could one possibly get that many?
"Your Majesty, I have an idea."
At that moment, someone offered a suggestion.
"We take out eight million Ascension Coins and cooperate with this Administrator to lease a passage. Then we designate the positions at both ends of the passage, and station elite troops near those positions in advance...
If we can capture that Administrator through a trap, we'll not only obtain the secret of his anchor item sources, but also monopolize the right to know the hidden information of all future rules."
"That's a good proposal! If we can capture the Administrator, we can indeed control the hidden information of all future Doomsday Rules, leaving other nations in the dark while only we know."
"And we can also control the Ascendant Home platform. I think that's the most important part!"
The speaker was from the intelligence department, and his teeth clenched with hatred when he mentioned Ascendant Home.
"This website has leaked far too many of Suroma's secrets and has done the most damage to our nation's image.
The very reason our nation fell into civil war cannot be separated from this website's behind-the-scenes agitation. Yet we've been powerless to breach it. It's absolutely infuriating!"
The others felt the same way and voiced their agreement one after another.
Suroma had once enjoyed top-tier prestige and reputation worldwide for many reasons. There were good factors, such as outstanding intelligent technology and strong pharmaceutical capabilities.
But there were also plenty of bad factors, such as relentless propaganda campaigns and the infiltration and bribery of media institutions in countries around the world, from official to civilian levels.
Taken together, these factors had once made Suroma a paradise nation that people worldwide aspired to.
But ever since the Ascendant Home website had appeared, Suroma's reputation had been in freefall.
The reason was simple: this website could not be traced to identify users, and damaging information that people didn't want seen couldn't be suppressed or taken down.
When everything was exposed in the light of day, all the gorgeous disguises and shells crumbled to ashes, revealing the rot and filth within.
For this reason, Suroma's intelligence department had maintained a dedicated division investigating the Administrator's identity for years. But over the years, aside from speculating that the Administrator was from Beixing, they had found nothing else.
Now that a golden opportunity lay before them, of course they didn't want to let it pass.
"This proposal is worth attempting."
Bruce considered for a moment and agreed.
Although he didn't hold much hope, thinking that the Administrator wouldn't be that foolish and would surely guard against others using this trick against him.
But he was well aware of the illogical nature of this world, and figured there was no harm in trying.
Just as many great figures throughout history had died in absurd ways at the hands of petty men, who could say the same thing couldn't happen again?
To the teachers and students of the academy, Dean Zhou Qinfeng was an undisputed great figure.
So one week after he was taken away for investigation, the teachers jointly submitted an inquiry application to the official departments.
Even though students couldn't leave their homes during the current rule and could only watch online courses, they were still the most well-informed.
Especially since some teachers deliberately told the students what had happened. Word spread from one to two, from two to six, and within a single day it had spread throughout the entire academy.
If this were an ordinary university, the principal's disappearance wouldn't have much impact on the students.
But at the academy, the relationship between the Dean and the students was much closer, and their interests were more deeply intertwined. Therefore, not just the teachers, but the students too all wanted to find out what had happened.
Throughout this period, the officials had been discussing internally how to handle the matter.
Some worried that directly announcing the full truth would have too severe an impact — the academy's Dean, out of jealousy, had tried to obtain a younger body through memory transfer? This would be an enormous disgrace to the academy and even the officials.
One had to remember that not long ago, Beixing's officials had sternly condemned Bruce for transferring his son Gaelid's memories into a little girl's brain, explicitly labeling it an inhumane and absolutely intolerable act.
Yet before the condemnation had even faded, something similar had occurred on their own side, and the person involved was the academy's Dean, a figure of considerable status.
But if they chose to conceal the truth, say that Zhou Qinfeng died accidentally, or hide the news of his death and only claim he was transferred to a confidential department... then once Guan Tong exposed it, the situation would only get worse, severely damaging the officials' credibility.
Even if they could come to an agreement with Guan Tong for him not to reveal the truth, even if he didn't speak, wouldn't Suroma's side make it public?
Here was a hard-won opportunity to damage Beixing's official authority and trigger internal chaos. How could Bruce possibly let it go?
Thus, being squeezed from both ends, the officials remained indecisive.
After dragging things out for a full week, the highest decision-making layer finally intervened and made the call, ordering those below to directly explain the truth — from Zhou Qinfeng colluding with foreign agents to betray Shi Jingyi for memory transfer, to being killed by Guan Tong, saying everything there was to say.
As for the shame this would bring and the damage to the academy's and officials' image, there was no longer any room to care.
When weighing two harms, choose the lesser. Losing face was still better than being frauds.
Moreover, human nature itself was fickle. The person most tarnished by Zhou Qinfeng's actions was himself.
His motives were also quite clear, even the students understood them well — after all, over the past three years, the students had never missed an opportunity to mock Zhou Qinfeng's particularly conspicuous head of white hair.
If one were to trace the root of Zhou Qinfeng's rapid "descent into darkness," perhaps those taunting glances from students, whether overt or covert, were one of the causes.
Perhaps he had been suppressing himself for too long before this, and the incident where Duanmu Feng attacked him in the meeting room, forcing him to rely on Shi Jingyi to save his life, had completely shattered his psychological defenses and driven him to make his final decision.
After the officials made their final decision, they officially released a detailed statement on January 24th.
The teachers, students, and the broader community outside the academy were all utterly shocked after reading it.
No one could have imagined that Zhou Qinfeng would do such things, and even fewer could have imagined that Guan Tong had directly executed Zhou Qinfeng right there in the academy.
The teachers were both shaken and furious.
Furious at Zhao Ming for deceiving them — Zhou Qinfeng had died on the very day of the test, yet Zhao Ming had said he was taken away for investigation.
Also furious at Guan Tong, that former substitute teacher, for his ruthless methods — he had killed the Dean in the academy without even going through the official interrogation process.
The students, however, quickly accepted the facts.
The officials released the news in the morning, and by the afternoon, a large number of students had already started posting meme images and insulting nicknames for Zhou Qinfeng online.
The students naturally looked down on Zhou Qinfeng's misdeeds, dubbing him the "White-Haired Old Demon." As for Guan Tong's actions, just like in the official discussions, some supported and some opposed.
By evening, a student initiated a vote on the forum, asking everyone to elect a new Dean candidate.
With Zhou Qinfeng dead, the academy would inevitably need a new Dean. Since the officials hadn't directly announced their appointment, the students' enthusiasm for voting was high.
And the voting result was almost exactly what everyone had predicted: Shi Jingyi led by a landslide with 91% support, while the other candidates all scored in the single digits.
It was only when the students and teachers were discussing this that they realized Shi Jingyi had been quiet all this time.
Since the new rule had been released, she had neither appeared at the academy nor posted any news online.
The teachers knew she had taken leave for secluded meditation, but none of them expected it to last this long. They began to wonder how she was doing now, and whether something had happened to her.
The Countermeasures Research Office also started contacting Guan Tong to inquire about Shi Jingyi's situation.
Clearly, the officials could see how highly she was regarded in the students' eyes, and they were already inclined to have her take over as the next Dean of the academy.