49 Apocalypse Rules

Chapter 111: Chapter 106: The Reason for the Deception

At night, Chen Na waited for her mom, Wang Yan, to fall asleep before sneaking out.

At nine o’clock, the car arrived as promised.

"Get in, Chen Na," the short-haired woman said, rolling down the window.

"Okay."

Chen Na got into the back seat. After the car started moving, she asked nervously, "Miss, where are we going?"

"To a factory in the suburbs."

"A factory?"

"Yes. Put this on."

The short-haired woman handed her a round mask that only exposed the eyes.

Chen Na didn’t know why she had to wear a mask, but she did as she was told and put it on.

Soon, the car arrived at a factory in the suburbs. The place looked long-abandoned; it didn’t even have a main gate.

Chen Na followed the short-haired woman into a large hall inside the factory, where quite a few people had already gathered.

Some of them, like her, were wearing masks that only showed their eyes. Surrounding them were two rings of people in black hoods, holding guns. They looked like terrorists from a movie, which scared her a little.

As soon as the short-haired woman arrived, the other masked people looked at Chen Na, whom she had brought, with great surprise.

"The last one is a kid?"

"What the hell? A kid is here for the selection too!"

"The selection doesn’t distinguish between adults and children," the short-haired woman said calmly. "There are only participants. I will now explain the selection process."

"See those armed people around you? For this selection, your task is to use this factory as your field of activity and evade their pursuit. If you haven’t been caught after three hours, you’ve passed the selection."

Everyone nodded. The rules were clear and easy to understand.

The short-haired woman then looked down and asked Chen Na specifically, "Did you understand what I said?"

Chen Na nodded. "I get it! Don’t get caught by the people with the guns!"

"Good."

"So, we can only run?" a masked man asked. "If they find us, can’t we just take them out?"

The short-haired woman glanced at him. "You can. But if you attack the armed personnel, they will attack you back. Any death or injury will be your own responsibility."

The man sneered. "No problem."

Hearing their exchange, Chen Na couldn’t help but feel nervous. ’Why would a selection like this involve the risk of death or injury?’

"If there are no other questions, you may begin."

The short-haired woman glanced at her watch.

"You have a five-minute head start. After that, the armed personnel will start looking for you."

The masked participants immediately scattered, and Chen Na broke into a run at once.

She’d seen on her way in that the factory was huge. ’As long as I’m careful and use my ability, I can definitely pass this!’ fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓

Five minutes later, the short-haired woman nodded to the armed personnel. "Begin."

...

A sharp pain flared in her stomach. Wang Yan frowned, groggily opening her eyes.

She knew the pain from her cancer was starting again. It was an excruciating agony that could now only be suppressed by large doses of painkillers, but even those were becoming less and less effective.

Wang Yan fumbled for the pills on the bedside table. The glass of water on the table was full. She took the pills and whispered, "Nana."

There was no response. At first, Wang Yan thought her daughter had just gone to the bathroom, but after waiting a long while for her to return, she started to get anxious.

"Nana!"

Wang Yan raised her voice, but still, there was no reply.

Fighting through the pain, she got out of bed and searched the house, only to find her daughter was nowhere inside. She didn’t know if Nana had run out on her own or if someone had taken her.

Panic seized her.

She hurried back to her room, grabbed the phone from the table, and prepared to call the police to report a missing person.

But when she opened the phone’s call log, she found a record of a call from yesterday evening. The duration was only a little over ten seconds.

She distinctly remembered not having made any calls yesterday. Wondering if it was connected to her daughter’s disappearance, she immediately dialed the number back.

BUZZ... BUZZ...

Guan Tong, who was meditating cross-legged, heard his phone vibrate and opened his eyes.

He picked it up and glanced at the screen. It was a call from Wang Yan. He had saved her number with a note after they spoke yesterday.

He answered, and Wang Yan’s anxious voice immediately came through the receiver.

"Who are you? What did you say to my daughter yesterday?"

"...Wang? This is Guan Tong."

Wang Yan paused. "Guan? Is this your number?"

"Yes," Guan Tong said, puzzled. "When I was leaving the city yesterday, I saw your truck was still parked in the development zone. I got the number from inside and called. Didn’t Na tell you, Wang? She was the one who answered the phone."

A sense of foreboding washed over Wang Yan. She quickly asked, "What did Nana say?"

"She said your illness wasn’t serious, Wang, and that you two had left for Yong’an... Was that not the case?"

From the tone of her voice, Guan Tong could already tell something was wrong.

"Oh, dear!" Wang Yan cried out in distress. "That child, Nana, she lied to you! That’s not what happened at all!"

"Why would Na lie to me?" Guan Tong asked, confused. "Wang, what’s really going on?"

"It’s like this..." freёweɓnovel.com

Wang Yan explained that she had been diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer at the hospital and only had a month or two to live. Furthermore, they hadn’t gone to Capital Yong’an; they were currently living in an abandoned residential complex not far from the hospital.

Guan Tong was stunned. Still, that didn’t explain why Chen Na had lied.

"I just don’t know what’s gotten into Nana. Yesterday she lies to you, and now I wake up and she’s disappeared. If anything happens to that child..."

Hearing the panic in her voice, Guan Tong tried to soothe her. "Wang, try not to panic. I’m sure Na has her reasons for doing this. Has anything unusual happened recently?"

Wang Yan thought hard, and her eyes fell on the protective suit in the corner of the room. She suddenly remembered.

"That’s right! There was one thing... Shortly after the sixth rule was announced, someone delivered protective suits and masks to us. They looked very high-end and expensive. The person who delivered them was a young woman with short hair. She seemed very sharp."

"The short-haired woman didn’t say it in front of me. She spoke to Nana privately, telling her that they had some kind of team that was holding a selection, and they hoped Nana would join. If she were chosen, they would give her Sublimation Coins to buy the medicine and items needed to cure my terminal illness..."

"As soon as Nana told me, I rejected the idea immediately. Those medicines and items are so expensive, some sell for hundreds of thousands of Sublimation Coins. Why would anyone buy something like that and give it to you for free? I know there’s no such thing as a free lunch, so I told Nana not to agree. But that child... she..."

"She probably decided to agree on her own anyway," Guan Tong said.

He knew Chen Na and her mother shared an incredibly deep bond; otherwise, she wouldn’t have acquired an ability like [Perception Realm] from the Sublimation Store. She’d gained that power precisely because her greatest wish was to know the exact moment her mother returned home from her delivery runs.

So, faced with her mother’s terminal cancer and the little time she had left, it was only natural that she would try to find any way to save her. It was no surprise she would agree when someone came to her door, promising the money for a cure if she just passed a selection and joined their team.

If Guan Tong were in the same situation, he would have likely made the same choice. It was the only possible way to save her mother’s life.

However, looking at the situation as an outsider, he could see a huge problem.

Hundreds of thousands of Sublimation Coins was no small sum. Even as an investment in talent, it would require careful consideration. Besides, what kind of organization was behind that short-haired woman? To be recruiting people right on the brink of a wartime state... what were their origins, and how did they have so much power?

"What am I going to do... I had it all planned. After the 10th, I was going to register Nana with an official agency and have her assigned to a shelter. That way she’d have a safe place to go, and I could pass on peacefully. But now..."

Guan Tong asked, "Wang, did Na mention where this team’s selection was being held?"

"She didn’t say. I don’t know."

"That’s a problem." Without a location, Guan Tong couldn’t help. "I guess the only option is to contact the police and have them check surveillance footage. They might find something."

He said that, but he wasn’t optimistic. Any organization that could offer hundreds of thousands of Sublimation Coins had to be large and would surely know how to cover its tracks.

But he kept that thought to himself; telling Wang Yan would only cause her more anxiety.

"But Wang, I have one more question," Guan Tong asked. "The only reason Na would be scouted is if her ability was revealed. When and where did that happen?"

"That... maybe at the hospital? I can’t remember clearly... I need to call the police right away! I’m hanging up, Guan."

After the call ended, Guan Tong put down his phone and sank into thought.

Chen Na’s ability was indeed special. Especially since the Challenge had unlocked the "teaming" function, allowing teammates to share the effects of Psychic Power items and abilities.

This meant she could likely transmit the information she perceived to her teammates synchronously, providing a huge advantage.

Moreover, if it were developed further, it might yield other variations. Just as Xu Xiaotian’s Instant Noodles could be developed to have different effects, her [Perception Realm], with enough development, might be able to perceive not just a target’s activities but also deeper levels of information.

It was only natural that such potential would be noticed by certain organizations. Guan Tong even thought that if Chen Na had registered her Psychic Power limit as being over 80 back in the village, she likely would have been discovered by officials and taken for special training long ago.

But even then, it wouldn’t have changed Wang Yan’s medical condition. As for whether the officials would have been willing to spend hundreds of thousands of Sublimation Coins on medicine to treat Wang Yan... that was hard to say. It would all depend on how they judged Chen Na’s potential and whether they deemed her worth the investment.

It seemed this mysterious organization thought she was worth it—though, of course, they could just be tricking Chen Na, with no intention of ever following through.

’If I’d contacted them sooner, I might have been able to do something. But now... all I can do is wait for news.’

Guan Tong shook his head. He had his own problems to deal with.

The issue of transactions on Ascender’s Home was indeed a tricky one. Though no one was using it for trades yet, it was still necessary to plan ahead.

’Direct peer-to-peer transactions are out of the question; both parties would feel it’s too risky. So if I really want to get the trading feature off the ground, I’ll have to figure out the "logistics and delivery"...’

If he had enough Psychic Power, he could consider using his sensory-enabled Shadow for ultra-long-distance transport. But that would require a sufficient amount of Psychic Power—or to be precise, an enormous amount.

’But there’s no hurry,’ Guan Tong thought. ’The site only has a few hundred users. There’s no need to get everything perfect right away. That would be asking too much.’

His current goal was to focus on the "Intelligence" and "General Chat" sections first. He needed to establish the site as a safe and secure place for Ascenders to communicate. The "Trading" and "Commissions" sections could be perfected later.