"Did I just say something?"
Guan Tong was taken aback by Uenoshi's words, then furrowed his brow.
"You just said," he repeated word by word, "'All of you, go die.'"
Uenoshi's eyes trembled slightly. Something was very wrong.
Guan Tong first sent the Serpent Hair Society member back for treatment, then privately questioned Uenoshi about her condition.
"What's going on, Uenoshi? You didn't know you just said that?"
*I just felt extremely angry, and then I heard a voice. That sentence was spoken by that voice. But for some reason, it came out of my mouth...
The more Guan Tong listened to Uenoshi's explanation, the more confused he became. At first glance, this looked almost like mental splitting, but there shouldn't be anything wrong with her mind.
Could it be...
A thought struck Guan Tong, and he asked for details: "Uenoshi, did that voice sound strange in its tone?"
Uenoshi nodded: "Yes, and it was very cold. It gave me a feeling vaguely like something from the deep sea..."
"A great serpent," Guan Tong finished her sentence. "Right?"
"Yes. Troupe Leader, how did you know?"
Guan Tong had indeed noticed the strange tone in Uenoshi's words earlier. Although it was her voice, it didn't sound like a human tone at all.
If it was a deep-sea great serpent, and Uenoshi herself felt the same way, then his speculation was about ninety percent correct.
"I suspect that Uenoshi, you're approaching the early stage of Awakening, and you've begun to be influenced by the Authority."
"Authority influence? But Troupe Leader, you told me before that the sign of acquiring an Authority was dreaming of the Starry Giant Tree in the cosmos, right?"
"That was Shi Jingyi's sign. I may have been wrong back then, assuming that all Awakened Ones had the same signs." Guan Tong said uncertainly, "Perhaps each Awakened One acquires a different Authority, and their signs will also differ."
...
Uenoshi fell silent.
If Guan Tong was right, then her sign and Shi Jingyi's sign were worlds apart.
At least the latter's was relatively "normal," while hers was bizarre and extremely dangerous.
"Aside from that sentence, were your actions just now under your own control?"
Guan Tong had also realized this and asked the question.
"My ability was under my own control." Uenoshi said candidly, "These people all have the blood of my subordinates on their hands. I must kill them to avenge that."
"..."
"Troupe Leader, do you disagree?"
"No. It's just that those few Ascendants, I originally wanted to capture and interrogate them... never mind, it's nothing."
"...Then Troupe Leader, I'll head back first. I want to have the Serpent Hair Society sweep the entire city and see if there are any more dens like this."
After Uenoshi left, Guan Tong didn't leave immediately.
He was still thinking about the Authority problem.
Previously, he had felt that awakening an Authority seemed like a natural progression - as long as Mind Power met the requirement, one just needed to slowly wait for the signs.
But he realized he was wrong.
His conclusions were all based on Shi Jingyi's process of acquiring her Authority. Her success didn't guarantee others would succeed as well.
And even she couldn't be called "smooth," because her secluded meditation lasting over twenty days was itself a sign of danger.
Looking at Uenoshi's current situation, perhaps different Authorities not only had different signs but also different dangers during the awakening and inheritance period.
Think about it - those higher civilizations painstakingly crafted their Authorities, certainly not for the purpose of letting other civilizations use them.
So if beings from other civilizations wanted to inherit an Authority, they would inevitably have to risk great danger.
"As for myself... I completely skipped the awakening process, directly inheriting by fusing with the primal blood of the Life-Hunting Demon. I obtained my Authority indirectly."
Guan Tong shook his head.
Right now, there were too few Awakened Ones and too few samples to figure anything out.
Would things improve once more Awakened Ones appeared in the future? For now, all he could do was wait and observe.
Setting aside Uenoshi's Authority problem, he looked at the lime dust scattered across the ground. Being able to petrify and eliminate one to two hundred people at once - there was no doubt her power had grown considerably.
But this also meant the lead had gone cold.
He thought for a moment, then took out a phone from his storage ring.
This was obtained from that fellow from the Xisiya Empire. The latter had said he had encrypted communications with that "Tianci," so getting the phone was useless.
He checked and indeed it was so. The phone only had system software, and the call log had only one contact. The timing did line up.
Guan Tong tried calling back, but the system indicated the number was no longer in service. The other side had probably switched phones.
He had initially thought that if this guy had logged into Ascendant Home on this phone, he could check the backend for account private messages to obtain leads.
But clearly, this phone had never been logged in. The browser history was all blank. It was probably used exclusively for contacting Tianci, with all other functions unused.
"I remember Scarface said that Han Qiu never uses Ascendant Home. It seems finding him through this line is impossible."
He casually destroyed the phone, then contacted Shi Jingyi and arranged a time with her.
Without knowing how long the Deep Dive of Consciousness would take or what state he would be in, he needed an absolutely trustworthy person to protect him.
Naturally, no one was more suitable than Shi Jingyi.
After learning that he had a way to hide his personal information, Shi Jingyi didn't ask how he planned to do it, because she had no intention of attempting a Deep Dive herself.
As a safety precaution, the two agreed to meet on the final day of the rules, in the mountain valley outside Pinglu City.
...
February 21st.
Nearly a week had passed since the rules began. With Suroma continuously pushing hard, online public opinion against Guan Tong had reached its peak.
And the focus of public opinion had shifted from "whether to query" to "what gives him the right."
In the first few days, people were debating whether or not to query.
Now the two factions had unified their stance, shelving the question of whether to query, and instead turning to condemn Guan Tong together.
The core rhetoric was just one sentence: What gives Guan Tong the right to make decisions on behalf of all humanity?
At first, the third faction's statement that "only Awakened Ones should decide" had now become a target. People were questioning why such a momentous matter should be decided only by Awakened Ones.
Although the Fire Thief had set this rule, whether to execute it was a decision that rested in humanity's own hands.
This wasn't an isolated case - previous rules like [Third Contact] and [Debate of the Oracle] also left the decision in humanity's hands.
It was the Fire Thief's business to deploy the nano-intelligence and the "Dialoguer" to Tianshui Star. But humanity could choose not to ask questions to the former, and could choose not to debate with the latter.
Even with zero interaction with those two alien intelligences, both rules could still pass.
Public opinion was targeting exactly this point.
People felt that while the Fire Thief was right to grant the query authority for the Star Sea Court database to the Awakened Ones, the Awakened Ones could still transfer that choice to the masses and make the decision democratically.
Just like the decision to contact the nano-intelligence back then - it was the result of a vote among the nations of the Human Consortium, not a decision left entirely to the Xisiya Empire just because it had landed there.
The current demand of public opinion was that Guan Tong could not make the decision himself - he had to hand over the decision-making power.
First, all of humanity would vote on whether to query, then Guan Tong would act according to the voting results.
In other words, the public demanded that Guan Tong transform from a "decision-maker" in this rule to an "executor."
This proposal appeared and quickly gained support from all factions. People who had been arguing with each other suddenly united on the same front.
Combined with Guan Tong's continued silence and refusal to speak publicly, for a moment it seemed like everyone online was standing against him.
If it were only ordinary people's voices, that would be manageable. But this time, the official governments of various nations also joined the fray, and their stance matched the public's.
This was normal. National governments were the largest groups, and they naturally hoped the decision would be made through voting, as that would be most advantageous to them.
Even Beixing's officials, though fully aware that this public opinion campaign was a weapon Suroma was using against Guan Tong, had no good way to counter it.
This was a completely unsolvable trap of public opinion, leveraging Guan Tong's global fame against him.
On this matter, even the Beixing officials' meeting discussion concluded that the Awakened Ones should hand the decision-making power to all of humanity rather than keep it in their own hands.
Of course, Beixing had made some efforts on the public opinion front, steering the narrative toward:
At present, there was no confirmation that Guan Tong was the Awakened One, and the public should not resort to personal attacks before that was established.
But such steering was largely ineffective. The vast majority were convinced Guan Tong was the Awakened One. Not to mention he remained silent - even if he came out to deny it, it wouldn't matter.
People's thinking was that as long as they decided it was him, whether he was or not, he had to be.
Because even if it wasn't him, they could use public pressure against him to make the real Awakened One feel tremendous pressure from the sidelines, forcing them to come forward, admit it, and hand over the decision-making power.