Forty-nine rules of the end times

Chapter 168 Hidden Rule Ten (One Month of Daily 10,000 Words!)

The tenth apocalyptic rule, unsurprisingly, topped the charts on major social media platforms after its release.

Even the Ascended Home forum and the casual chat section are filled with related discussions.

However, people are more pleased with the types of rules than the rules themselves.

"Non-survival rules! Great!"

"Not bad, not bad, we can survive a little longer. Survival games just can't take it anymore."

"Actually, all survival rules could be like Rule 9. As long as modern weapons are useful, the death toll can be significantly reduced."

"I think this tenth rule is alright. Losing one sense a day, and after five days all five senses will be lost. Then, persisting under these conditions for ten days... shouldn't be too difficult, right?"

"Not difficult??? Are you sure???"

"It's not that difficult, but try living blindfolded for a day first. Just the lack of vision is very inconvenient."

"I can imagine what it would be like to lose the other senses. But losing touch, I really can't imagine what it would feel like."

"Are there people in the world who can feel touch? I don't think I've ever heard of such a thing."

"Does it feel a bit like getting anesthesia?"

"I think without the sense of touch, it would be almost like being paralyzed... Think about it, how can you perceive the physical world without the sense of touch? If the brain doesn't receive the corresponding feedback, how can it send signals to the motor nerves?"

"Really? Don't scare me! Being paralyzed for ten days is pure torture!"

"It might not be ten days. Maybe the first thing to be randomly lost will be the sense of touch. There's a one in five chance. If it happens, it could mean paralysis for up to fourteen days..."

The online discussion quickly shifted from initial relief that the tenth apocalyptic rule wasn't a survival rule to a climate of terrifying imaginings and anxieties about losing touch.

Many people have seen blind and deaf people in their daily lives, and there are even similar people in their own social circles; as for the loss of taste and smell, most people have even experienced it themselves. For example, many people have a cold or fever and food tastes bland because they have temporarily lost their sense of taste.

Because people are familiar with these four types of rules, they are not afraid of them happening to them—after all, the rules only last for a short half-month.

Few people understand what it would be like to eliminate tactile sensation, so the more it is discussed, the more terrifying it seems.

Subsequently, as time went by, officials from various countries also offered some suggestions.

The official Beixing Kingdom issued a notice three hours after the rules were released.

The content includes:

The relevant factories will immediately begin producing guide equipment and hearing aids, and quickly transport them to various shelters and gathering points within the city;

There's no need to worry about taste and smell for now, as food is currently rationed and everyone is eating standardized canned goods. Even if you can't smell or taste anything, there's no need to worry about health problems due to food quality.

In terms of tactile sensation, current research is insufficient, and only temporary assistive robots can be designed and produced. If humans become unable to care for themselves after losing their sense of touch, these robots will assist them in tasks such as eating, excretion, and cleaning, according to their programmed instructions.

...These measures may seem normal, but in reality, they pose a huge challenge to the supply system. Among many countries in the world, only North Star is currently able to provide such large-scale, customized supply.

In addition to these, the official guidelines also encourage people to try other methods to bypass the rules, based on their own mental power tools and abilities.

This isn't a survival-type rule, so it's unclear whether using external aids will cause the challenge to fail. Therefore, if you can survive using psychic-related items, it's best not to use human-made aids.

After seeing the official announcement, the citizens of Beixing felt much more at ease.

As the notice said, it would be best if you could get through it on your own, but if you couldn't, the official preparations were sufficient, so there was no need to worry about any danger to your life.

With this safety net in place, people won't be overly nervous and can challenge the rules with a relatively relaxed mindset.

……

Three hours ago.

While the countermeasures research office was holding intensive meetings and discussions, Guan Tong, who was in the forest of Antai State, was opening the terminal panel to check the hidden rules.

Hidden Rule Ten: Two negatives equal positive

[Hidden rule: When randomly eliminating a sense, if the corresponding sense is already disabled, the opposite effect will be obtained.]

[Note: If you want to preserve your sight, you can gouge out your eyes before your senses are gone; if you want to preserve your hearing, you can pierce your ears before your senses are gone... But the problem is, suicide is an extremely painful act. Is it worth doing this to pass the rules?]

"this!"

After reading the hidden rules, Guan Tong suddenly stood up.

He never expected that the hidden rule of this tenth apocalyptic rule would be so terrifying.

"If the corresponding sense is already disabled before elimination, a counter-effect will occur during the elimination process... For normal, healthy people, to achieve this counter-effect, they must self-harm beforehand..."

This might be a good thing for people who are blind or deaf, whether they are born blind or deaf. They don't have to do anything; they just need to wait until that sensory organ is randomly eliminated to regain their health.

But for most healthy people, this is undoubtedly too cruel!
"...I won't use this rule."

Guan Tong made this choice almost without hesitation.

Even if a psychologically normal person harms themselves in order to comply with the rules, it will inevitably cause irreversible psychological damage.

It could be said that, aside from the first rule, [Plundering Clarity], this was the first hidden rule that Guan Tong felt he would rather reduce his mental power limit than use. However, even if he didn't use it, this hidden rule would be discovered very quickly.

Even though a year has passed since we entered the apocalyptic era, there will still be blind, deaf, and people who have lost their sense of taste and smell in the world.

When these people discover that after their senses are eliminated, they are not only unharmed, but also regain their sight, hearing, smell, and taste, they will surely realize the existence of hidden rules.

People around them will also notice, and thus the word will spread.

In light of this, Guan Tong decided to make the most of it and sell this hidden rule on the website.

After making the decision, he immediately turned on his computer and logged onto the website.

He already has a lot of private messages. Although he didn't sell the hidden information in the previous rule, it didn't stop many people from leaving messages for him and asking if he had any hidden information related to the rule to sell after the new rule was released.

Guan Tong followed the same procedure as before, opening the special section "Webmaster Domain".

In this forum where only he has the authority to post, there is currently only one post, which is the one about selling secret information related to the eighth rule of the apocalypse, which was posted last time.

This time he posted a second message.

Selling Secret Information Related to the Tenth Rule of the Apocalypse

Details: The price of this information is 100000 Ascension Coins. Not immediately announced; a unified notification will be provided 12 hours later.
The moment he pressed publish, the number of replies to the post visibly increased rapidly, exceeding one thousand in less than a minute—an astonishing speed.

Guan Tong hadn't expected so many people to be paying attention to him, but upon reflection, it made sense. The website had been online for several months, and its user base was already enormous, so this performance wasn't surprising.

Refresh the page; there are so many comments in the post, it's impossible to read them all.

"Is the stationmaster going to sell information again?!"

"The price has doubled this time, 100,000 per piece. Tsk tsk, the website owner is going to make a fortune again."

"Support the website owner for not ripping off the poor! We poor folks just need to wait for the official announcement from the Northern Star Kingdom after they've bought it all. Since they announced it last time, they'll definitely announce it again this time, right?"

"That's different... If it were hidden information like a refreshing mint, do you think the authorities would release it?"

"I hope the website owner earns more cryptocurrency; he deserves it for developing such a great website!"

"I wonder if there's any information in the hidden intelligence about how to solve the loss of tactile sensation. I've watched so many videos explaining how terrible it is to lose your sense of touch, and they've scared me half to death."

"Me too, upstairs... I hope there's a solution."

Guan Tong noticed that many people's replies expressed their hope that Beixing Kingdom would release the intelligence after purchasing it, and that the intelligence could solve the problem of tactile desensitization.

It must be said that Guan Tong also has no answer to the question of tactile elimination.

The hidden rule is "negative times negative equals positive". For a blind person, negative times negative equals positive means they are not blind, and for a deaf person, negative times negative equals positive means they are not deaf... But how can a normal person first make themselves lose their sense of touch to trigger the effect of the rule that negative times negative equals positive?

The hidden rules weren't mentioned, and he didn't understand them either. Did he have to paralyze himself first? But what if that didn't work? Or what if he went too far and killed himself?
Guan Tong thought about it and decided not to dwell on it anymore. Anyway, he didn't plan to use this hidden rule, so there was no need to think about it too much.

He opened his private messages, and as expected, within minutes of posting the information for sale, customers were flooding in with requests to pay for it.

Last time, he priced the intelligence at 50,000 Ascension Coins and only sold eleven copies. This time, he doubled the price to 100,000 Ascension Coins, and more than thirty users messaged him to buy it.

Guan Tong naturally accepted all comers. Following the old rules, he asked these people to state their terminal numbers, and then added them as friends to conduct the transaction.

The transaction lasted nearly an hour, and a total of 34 intelligence reports were sold. At 10 Ascension Coins per report, 34 reports totaled 340 million!
After the transaction ended, Guan Tong looked at the total number of 4085620 Ascension Coins on his panel, and a catchy melody of "I made money, I made money, but I don't know how to spend it" suddenly popped into his head.

He now possesses a staggering four million Ascension Coins! Compared to the current average of around 1500 coins per Ascension user, his four million is equivalent to the combined total of over 2700 people!

Having a total amount of Ascension Coins belonging to nearly three thousand people is already terrifying. Keep in mind that a group of three thousand people is definitely considered a large organization.

Guan Tong now controls the total currency of a large organization and can dispose of it at will—meaning he can spend it all to strengthen himself or to recruit soldiers.

That's right. Although he had no intention of recruiting soldiers, he could easily use this huge sum of money to build an Ascended team in a short period of time if he wanted to.

According to his understanding, many non-governmental organizations and even some national governments are now using the method of "paying wages" with Ascension Coins to recruit casual Ascension Investors.

The previous methods of violence, suppression, and coercion have gradually become ineffective over time.

The reasons for this are similar to the way feudalism defeated slavery and capitalism defeated feudalism.

Between capturing people to enslave and exploiting them, and hiring people to work for you, the latter definitely involves more initiative.

This wasn't just Guan Tong's personal opinion, but the result of his observations. His observation platform was his own website.

Indeed, as the number of users in the Ascendant's Home increases, many users have begun to spontaneously engage in entrustment and trading.

In particular, Guan Tong had looked at the commission section once before and found that even "international mercenary groups" had appeared.

As long as you have enough Ascension Coins, these mercenaries located in various countries around the world are willing to help you solve your problems, which can be described as very market-oriented.

　I've been writing 10,000 words a day for 30 days straight! And I've done it for a month straight – yay!
　　I should get the badge tomorrow. Only about two thousand books on Qidian have received this badge for updating 10,000 words a day for 30 consecutive days, which is even fewer than 10,000 subscriptions. It doesn't look at grades, only at the author's own persistence and effort, so it's really not easy to get it.

　　I am very grateful for the support and companionship from the experts. If I were just writing alone without feedback, I definitely wouldn't have been able to keep going.

　　Finally, I wish all the big shots a happy National Day.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)