Free Web NovelChapter 135: Chapter 128: Hidden Rule 8
’Can everyone become number one in the world...?’
Guan Tong stood in his small courtyard. After listening to the Fire Thief announce the eighth rule, he found himself thinking back to the second rule—the marathon. Back then, he had relied on Shadow’s movement speed to take first place in the world.
’If it were a similar challenge, I could probably still take first place easily.’
...Though, it was hard to say for sure.
Back then, the Apocalypse Rules had only just been implemented. Every Ascender was at the starting line, and besides their own exclusive items or abilities, they had almost no other items to aid them.
But now, more than half a year had passed. The items and abilities obtained from chests had gradually become much more diverse and varied.
In this situation, no one had the confidence to say they could guarantee first place in any particular field.
Guan Tong wasn’t too worried, though. With Shadow on his side, completing this rule’s objective shouldn’t be a problem.
’Let’s see what the hidden rule is this time.’
Guan Tong opened his personal terminal and found a new function on the panel.
Create Challenge / Challenge List
Curious, he selected it and found it was a two-in-one function.
You could not only create your own challenge scenarios, goals, and rules, but also view challenges already created by others.
Guan Tong casually browsed the list. Many people had already created challenges.
"Challenge: Total Number of Push-ups Done by the End of the Rule Stage"
"Challenge: Refrain from Defecating Until the Rule Stage Ends"
"Challenge: Drink the Fewest Milliliters of Water by the End of the Rule Stage"
"Challenge: Fastest Time to Solve a Standard 3x3 Cube"
...
The variety of challenges was endless. Some were relatively normal, while others were just bizarre.
To be honest, seeing these motley challenges reminded him of his life before all this, idly watching various Guinness World Records.
Many of those records were utterly bizarre, but as long as they were in the Guinness Book of Records, it meant others could challenge them. Anyone who thought breaking a record was easy as pie could go and try.
The current rules were similar: every challenge created was public and searchable by keyword. This way, anyone with a similar idea could find the challenge and decide whether to compete against the creator.
The only real difference was that you wouldn’t know who the final winner was until the Rule Stage ended. Until then, even with just one second left, a reversal was always possible.
Guan Tong closed the interface and opened the rule details. If he was going to create a challenge, he would definitely wait until he understood the hidden rule.
[Hidden Rule 8: Never Satisfied]
[Hidden Rule Content: After this Rule Stage ends, achieving a world-first rank in three challenges will increase your maximum Psychic Power by 10 points. Each additional world-first rank will grant an extra 5 points, up to a maximum of 300 points. Note: During this Rule Stage, each person may only create one challenge.]
[Remark: For an ordinary person, achieving world-first in any single challenge is satisfying enough. But is a single world-first truly enough to satisfy the strong? If you want to become stronger, then participate in the challenges created by others and seize their number one spots.]
Guan Tong’s eyes lit up after he finished reading the hidden rule.
’If I remember correctly, this is the first time a rule has offered a way to increase maximum Psychic Power, isn’t it?’
Since Psychic Power was unlocked after the first rule, for the next six consecutive rules, there had been no way to increase its maximum limit. Ascenders could only increase it naturally through a cycle of depletion and recovery. ƒгeewёbnovel.com
During this period, it might have been possible to increase it via items, like the Genetic Optimization Base Liquid Guan Tong got from a Glory Level chest, or the Optimization Liquid others bought from the Sublimation Store.
As for whether there were other items that could increase maximum Psychic Power, Guan Tong didn’t know. Perhaps there were, but he had never seen any.
It was precisely because increasing one’s maximum Psychic Power was so difficult that Guan Tong was so pleasantly surprised to see it as a reward in the hidden rule.
Taking first place in three challenges increased the limit by 10 points, and each additional first place added another 5... In other words, if he could get enough first-place finishes, he could use this hidden rule to significantly raise his maximum Psychic Power.
It would be a lie to say Guan Tong wasn’t excited. He was in desperate need of a higher Psychic Power limit—because his exclusive Psychic Power item, the [Wordless Book], required a sufficiently high limit to unlock new pages.
’This rule is a precious opportunity for me. I have to seize it.’ Guan Tong silently resolved.
If there was anything to be wary of, it was the part of the rule that said, "each person may only create one challenge."
This meant that if a strong individual wanted to meet the hidden rule’s requirements, taking first in their own challenge wasn’t enough; they also had to seize first place in at least two other challenges created by other people.
The two people whose first-place spots were taken would then have to try and seize first place in other people’s challenges in order to complete the rule themselves.
This meant that for every strong person who completed the hidden rule, there would be two others who failed to meet the requirements and ended up with their Psychic Power decaying.
And if that strong person wanted to increase their power even more, they wouldn’t be satisfied with just those two extra first-place wins; they would have to go and snatch first place in more and more challenges.
This would lead to more and more people failing their challenges.
’So that’s how it is...’
In that moment, Guan Tong understood the meaning of this hidden rule.
’The increase to your Psychic Power limit doesn’t come from nowhere. It’s the very Psychic Power limit that decays from the person you steal first place from.’
Faced with this somewhat cruel reality, Guan Tong wasn’t surprised.
Because from the very first rule, the hidden rule of [Pillaging the Awake] had already laid the fundamental nature of this world bare before him.
That time, Guan Tong’s choice was "No," but this time, his choice was different.
If he had a bottom line, it was that he didn’t want to stain his hands with the blood of innocents.
That time, with [Pillaging the Awake], knocking people unconscious could actually kill them. But this time was different. Failing the rule this time only resulted in Psychic Power decay.
Although Psychic Power decay was also a painful blow for an Ascender, it was nothing compared to a human life. Therefore, Guan Tong could make a different choice this time. He wasn’t a saint, after all.
Besides...
Guan Tong thought to himself, ’This hidden rule could be the first piece of information I sell.’
Ever since establishing the Ascender’s Home website, he had never sold any information. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, but that he hadn’t found anything suitable.
This current hidden rule was a typical example of one that "could not be proven within the Rule Stage."
Many people would surely guess that getting more world-firsts would yield extra rewards. But before the rule ended, unless someone could see the hidden rules like Guan Tong, they would have no way of knowing what the specific rewards were.
Only Guan Tong knew that the reward wasn’t Sublimation Coins or some item, but an increase to one’s maximum Psychic Power—the most precious thing for any Ascender.
In his eyes, this news was worth a fortune to the strong, but it might not be as important to those who lacked power.
For the latter, it would be difficult enough to get even one world-first within the 15-day Rule Stage, let alone the three needed to meet the minimum requirement for the bonus reward.
But for the strong, even without knowing the hidden information, they would definitely be actively trying to secure more first-place finishes.
In this case, Guan Tong wasn’t worried that selling the information would create more competition, because the competition would exist whether he sold it or not.
So, Guan Tong was going to sell this information. Not only would he earn a large sum of Sublimation Coins, but it would also further increase the credibility of his information as the webmaster. However, he didn’t plan to reveal the specific point values of the reward.
’I’ll sell this information, but I should probably only say that getting more first-place finishes will be rewarded with an increase to maximum Psychic Power. I won’t mention the specifics, like 10 points for three wins and 5 for each one after.’
He knew that if he laid out the exact reward points in detail, everyone would know that he had access to the detailed hidden rules.
But if he was vague, only mentioning a reward that increased the limit without giving specific numbers, others wouldn’t be able to determine just how much detail he knew.
There was a difference.
It was like playing the stock market. Someone telling you that Stock XX will rise tomorrow versus someone telling you exactly how many points Stock XX will rise by are two completely different concepts.
In the first case, you might think the person has good judgment or just got lucky with a guess.
But in the latter, you’d only feel a sense of dread. Does this person have foresight, or are they a time traveler from the future?
Guan Tong didn’t want people to think he knew every single detail of the hidden rules, so he would only sell vague information. Vague, yet still valuable enough.
With that thought, Guan Tong immediately returned to his room and opened the website.
The special section he had never activated before, the "Webmaster Realm," was officially opened today.
This section was different from the other four. The biggest difference was that only he had permission to post.
He then published the first post in this section.
Title: Selling Secret Intel Regarding the Eighth Apocalypse Rule
Details: Intel price is 50,000 Sublimation Coins. Information will not be delivered immediately, but will be sent out to all buyers uniformly after 24 hours.
Guan Tong designed the 24-hour delay to prevent the first people who bought the information from reselling it.
As for the price of 50,000 coins, it was very high, which made his stance clear: he wasn’t targeting the poor.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go for a low-profit, high-volume strategy; rather, he felt the information would be of little use to ordinary Ascenders and would just be a waste of their Sublimation Coins.
Once the post was published, a flood of user comments poured in within just ten minutes.
"The Webmaster has hidden intel related to this rule?!"
"Fifty thousand coins? Sorry to bother you..."
"Holy cow, as expected of the ’Webmaster Realm.’ The very first post is this explosive!"
"So expensive? And you have to wait 24 hours after buying to get the intel? Is any sucker actually going to buy this? Besides, what if it’s fake info meant to rip us off?"
"Based on the Webmaster’s previous posts, I think his intel is very credible. It’s a shame about the price, though. His target customers are probably the major Ascender organizations. Not many individuals can afford this."
"How could it be fake? Have you forgotten the intel posts about the Holy Grail and the Sound Hunters? Especially the Sound Hunters—the Webmaster posted about them before any official announcement. I was shocked back then."
"Webmaster, sir, why not sell it cheaper? If it was 100 Sublimation Coins, everyone could afford it. With so many users on the forum, if everyone bought a copy, your profit might not be any lower than selling it at a high price, right?"
The news that the Webmaster of Ascender’s Home was selling high-priced intel on the newly announced eighth rule spread quickly throughout the entire forum. It also reached the major organizations and official departments that were monitoring the site.
And every one of those organizations, including the official departments, received a unanimous response after their staff consulted their superiors.
Buy it!
