Forty-nine rules of the end times

Chapter 103 Entering a State of War

September 29th, one day until the end of the [Deadly Blood Plague] rules.

The Countermeasures Research Office held an emergency meeting. The experts and researchers who came to the office after receiving the news were all unsure of what was going on and were somewhat worried.

Normally, such impromptu meetings are only held when some bad or unexpected event occurs.

Everyone sat anxiously in their seats waiting. Before long, the person in charge, Gao Liangwei, entered the room.

After he took his seat, he said, "We are holding this emergency meeting today because there is something I need to announce. But before I do, please watch these videos."

Gao Liangwei had the researchers display some video clips on the big screen.

As people watched, they quickly realized that the video showed fights taking place in various cities. Some of the scenes were so gruesome that they were unbearable to witness.

Moreover, everyone noticed that the main characters in the video were not just ordinary people, but also some bureau employees in black uniforms and some armed squads.

As soon as the video ended, Gao Liangwei said, "The purpose of showing this to everyone is to let them know that these rules have caused great division in society. In various places, groups of infected people, feeling hopeless about survival, have caused widespread destruction in cities."

"..."

Everyone remained silent.

In fact, this situation cannot be said to be entirely unforeseen, because most people, once they discover they are infected, will bleed to death within 24 hours, which will certainly cause them great feelings of injustice.

They might wonder why others aren't infected, but they are. It's not surprising that they might act irrationally in despair.

Of the ten infected, perhaps nine will accept their fate and silently await death. But if even one goes to extremes and develops a destructive mentality of "nobody wants to live anymore," then given the massive population of the Northern Star Kingdom, that one-tenth of the destroyers would be enough to drastically tear society apart.

Now it seems that this has indeed happened.

Gao Liangwei said, "Although there are no detailed statistics yet, these vandals have directly or indirectly caused a large number of casualties and destroyed hundreds of gathering points. Many of the officials on the front lines have also been targeted."

"Therefore, just an hour ago, after discussions among high-level personnel, it was finally decided... After this rule is implemented, the Northern Star Kingdom will officially declare a state of war."

The nation is in a state of war!
Everyone present felt a jolt of fear upon hearing this, and many knew what it meant.

"Some of you here may know this, and some may not. Let me explain a little."

As a senior colonel, Gao Liangwei was perfectly clear about what wartime status meant.

"Once wartime begins, the authorities will take over major factories across the country and coordinate production and construction. Food and other supplies will be distributed uniformly according to the number of people. Transportation and information will also be under control; leaving the city will require a valid reason, otherwise it will be strictly prohibited."

"In addition, all citizens will be registered and managed in a unified manner. Those who wander in the city and seek survival on their own must also be included in the management. After the registration is completed, the first batch of shelters in various places should also be built, and then people will be assigned to shelters according to the list of people."

Everyone in the office listened to Gao Liangwei explain the wartime situation, and their expressions were all very serious.

It seems that the chaos caused by some infected individuals in this blood plague has been too great, and has actually disrupted the order of the confrontation rules, which is why the higher-ups are determined to take strong measures and manage it strictly.

After Gao Liangwei finished speaking, someone volunteered to support him, saying, "Great! Actually, I think we should have entered a state of war long ago! We should have entered it after the first rule, since the casualties caused by the rules have already exceeded those of any war in history!"

“That’s right. I’ve been wanting to say this for a while now. After food and other supplies were made free, there was a lot of waste in various places. Some people didn’t need them, but they took a lot of supplies and ended up wasting them. It would be better to distribute them according to the number of people, so that we can ensure that there is no waste.”

People spoke up, with the majority expressing support. However, there were also a few dissenting voices.

"A state of war is declared when a country is at war... Does declaring it now mean treating the fire-stealers as enemies in this war?"

"With the arrival of wartime, controls in all aspects will be tightened, and a large number of personnel will be needed. Are there still that many frontline personnel? I'm afraid we'll have to recruit more..."

"The Fire Stealers are not only enemies of our Northern Star Kingdom, but enemies of every human being," Gao Liangwei said in a deep voice. "As for the manpower shortage, new people will be recruited in various places as soon as possible to fill the gaps."

Everyone nodded and said nothing more. After all, this was a notice issued by higher-ups, not a request for the opinions of the Countermeasures Research Office.

"The purpose of this meeting, besides informing everyone of this matter, is also to help you adjust your work direction and content as soon as possible. Future work must be based on this 'wartime state' mindset for both planning and implementation. That's all I have to say. Meeting adjourned!"

……

Why haven't we received any messages yet?

Masked sat in front of the computer, biting his nails. He hadn't slept for a day and a night, waiting for the Trojan horse implanted in the website administrator's computer to send back data.

He was certain that the website owner had already used his optimization package—to ensure the latter would use it, he worked tirelessly for over ten hours, optimizing almost every detail of the interface to its extreme.

After sending the optimization package, he quickly discovered that the "House of Ascendants" website had changed dramatically, which was a direct result of loading his optimization package.

This excited him greatly, and he felt that the Trojan must have been successfully implanted into the other party's computer and would soon transmit back data such as the computer's backdoor and IP address.

However, he waited and waited, and the optimization package loaded for several hours, but still no data was transmitted back. He manually performed remote wake-up and attempted remote access several times, all of which failed.

This made him gradually realize that the Trojan he had packaged in the optimization package may have been discovered and removed by the website owner, leaving only the clean website optimization content.

"...Could it be that I've really encountered a top-tier expert?"

Mask couldn't believe it. He had just casually browsed a forum and stumbled upon a post, only to find that it was published by a top-tier tech guru. This was too outrageous.

But he just couldn't understand why, if the other party had such advanced technology, the website would have looked so terrible in the first place. It was obviously just a template.

"Could it be deliberately going for a 'construction site website' look? Wait a minute... if it was intentionally made so rudimentary, why is it loading my optimized version now?" Masked was completely baffled, utterly perplexed. He hadn't rested in so long that his mind was sluggish.

"Uh-huh?!"

He casually refreshed the page and discovered that there was new content on the website.

There was a new post in the intelligence section, and the poster was the site administrator.

Post Title: Unveiling the Hidden Treasure of the Holy Grail on Grail Island

"The Holy Grail?" Masked Man was somewhat surprised when he saw the title.

He didn't meet the rules of the "fasting therapy" and didn't receive an invitation, so he didn't participate in the Ascended Challenge.

But after the information was leaked after the match, he naturally knew what the "Holy Grail" was.

He was shocked after clicking into the post and reading the text.

"Is this for real?!"

He had never seen the two pieces of information mentioned in the post—the text on the base of the idol and the effect of holding the Holy Grail—anything he had ever seen elsewhere.

His drowsiness vanished instantly, and Mask immediately opened his big data tool to search the entire internet.

His tool supports multiple languages ​​and can retrieve publicly available information on the global internet. However, after the search was completed, the result was "no match".

"...No match means there's absolutely no relevant information online. The information in this post is completely unique and first-of-its-kind on the entire internet!"

Mask was momentarily overjoyed.

If he saw this post under normal circumstances, he wouldn't believe its contents, thinking it was most likely made up by bored people.

However, through previous "network attack and defense" efforts, he had confirmed that the website administrator possessed some extremely powerful and unique network security technology.

Therefore, the credibility of the message released by this website owner is greatly increased in his opinion!

"I remember reading the information posted by other contestants that the Holy Grail was held by the first-place winner of the challenge from beginning to end, who is also known as Shadow... Could it be that this stationmaster is related to Shadow? Can he obtain information from Shadow? Or... is the stationmaster Shadow himself?"

Mask really wanted to get to the bottom of things, but after these two rounds of confrontation, he felt that he had been completely defeated.

"It seems I can't rely on myself alone."

Masked Man pondered for a moment, then opened a forum.

The forum, named "Anonymous," is a platform where top hackers from around the world chat, share experiences, and exchange skills.

Masked is considered a top-tier figure on this forum. He posted about his frustration and hoped that other experts would try to bypass the defenses of the "House of Ascended" website.

His post quickly attracted many replies.

"A defense that even a mask can't break through? Interesting."

"Has the Masked God's skills declined? He can't even crack a single personal website anymore."

"I'll try."

"The House of Ascended Ones? A secure website that can never be tracked? This site owner is really arrogant."

"Is what he posted true? Unlimited mental power while possessing the Holy Grail?"

"Huh? My tool failed..."

Mask was quite famous on the "Anonymous" forum, and soon after his post was published, hackers from all walks of life started to chime in.

Some expressed surprise, while others accepted the challenge.

Suddenly, Guan Tong's small website saw a surge in traffic, and all sorts of hackers sent over their hand-crafted cracking tools.

However, they soon discovered that this seemingly simple website had incredibly advanced defense capabilities.

All kinds of attack tools were ineffective, and even batch registration, which could crash the website through high concurrency, was not working.

Soon after, another skilled hacker posted: "I have a strange feeling that this website seems to be 'conscious' and can judge our attack intentions."

"I've noticed that too," another expert replied. "I have no problem registering accounts normally, but when I use account registration tools, it fails to register in batches or even once when changing IPs... This kind of judgment technology is beyond my comprehension."

"Could it possibly be able to reverse-locate our real IP address and lock out single-registration only? That seems unlikely..."

"Could it be that some new, high-level AI is running this website?"

"Even AI can't do that right now... I have a suspicion. Could it be that the computer running the website, or the website itself, is some kind of psychic tool? That's why it can do such an incredible thing."

(End of this chapter)