Player Reload

Below the Q&A, there were scattered hundreds of Super Links, each pointing to the official organizations of various regions and countries, as well as the official websites of civilian guilds. Unfortunately, only registered forum accounts could access them; visitors did not have the permissions.

Li Cheng carefully read the names of these organizations, among them he found familiar entities such as the Special Affairs Administration, Prometheus Laboratory Company, the Global Supernatural Alliance backed by the United Nations, and a Special Incident Department under the FBI from the United States.

In a corner, he also discovered Zhangsun Yao's World Peace House, which seemed to be more established than he had imagined.

"England, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, Japan, Korea, India, and other countries all have established their own official organizations. Vatican has the Inquisition, the European Union has European Heavy Industry, Middle Eastern countries have joined forces to create the Middle East Abnormalities Retrieval Office. This shows the importance placed by all parties."

Li Cheng lightly tapped his temple, opened a search engine, and started to look for breakthroughs in the field of scientific research across different areas over the past four and a half years. He compared this to the pace of scientific breakthroughs of the previous decade.

"As expected."

After carefully searching for nearly an hour, he slowly exhaled a breath of turbid air, his gaze becoming grave.

Those living in an era of rapid development had a severely distorted estimation of the pace of technological breakthroughs.

The Wright brothers invented the first airplane in 1903; just 66 years later, humanity had officially landed on the Moon.

Nowadays, the computing power of a mere smartphone far surpasses that of the Apollo 11's navigation computer.

The explosive development of science and technology over the past century has given us a wonderful illusion—as if technological breakthroughs are a matter of course and that they will always proceed at such rapid pace.

But this isn't the case.

In 2017, Russia unearthed time capsules buried around the world fifty years prior, containing letters filled with immense optimism—We've just taken our first steps toward the cosmos, but you should be able to fly to other planets by now, right? Many secrets of nature that have not yet been discovered are uncovered now, aren't they? Nuclear energy can be controlled, can't it? The quantity of elements can be managed according to human will, right? The climate can be altered, can't it? Gardens can be developed in the Arctic, right? We are now building communism; you must be living under communism already, aren't you?

This letter, which reads like a hellish joke today, illustrates a simple truth—the pace of technological progress in human civilization is slowing down, as is the speed of scientific breakthroughs.

"This doesn't mean that people in the twenty-first century have become less intelligent, but rather that the domains of basic sciences have become increasingly specialized, and the difficulty of mastering them has risen significantly. Scientists spend their whole lives and might only achieve breakthroughs in one or a few fields.

However, these past four years, the pace of breakthroughs in human civilization's science and technology has been unreasonably fast—much higher than the pace of the last ten or twenty years."

Controlled nuclear fusion reactors have achieved a Q value (fusion energy gain factor) greater than 1, with sustained durations of over thirty minutes, and are expected to connect to the grid for power generation and commercial use within two years;

Gene editing technology has made another breakthrough, capable of completely curing certain types of diabetes, familial hypercholesterolemia, and even Alzheimer's;

At the Paralympics, mechanical prostheses helped paralytic athletes stand up again, even breaking the world sprint records of the Olympics;

A new round of the space race has commenced, with China, the United States, Russia, the European Union, and others constructing permanent bases on the Moon;

In recent years, media from all quarters have praised human civilization for stepping onto a new stage, yet local wars and chaos have never ceased.

Today, an African warlord slaughters a village, tomorrow a South American drug lord hangs a mayor, the day after there's a terrorist attack in a developed country.

Due to media oversight, such news rarely comes into the public eye.

Li Cheng pondered, "On the actual Earth, all the unreasonable technological advancements, anomalous events, and extraordinary powers, all come from the so-called killing fields and players. And the selection criteria for players are to have some kind of exceptional trait. Whether positive or negative."

This is quite understandable. For instance, a person who severely lacks empathy and a sense of guilt would naturally possess a negative trait in society, but in the context of the killing field environment, it might not be a disadvantage.

Traits are neither good nor bad; they simply must suit the environment.

"The website mentions that there are currently about 270,000 players still alive worldwide, and during the early stages when the Slaughter Field Game began to interact with reality, 70% of the newcomers did not survive the first three months. Although it is unclear how early these early stages were, a rough estimate indicates that there have been at least over half a million players on Earth."

Half a million Transcendents, even if each only possessed the most basic extraordinary power, would be enough to cause social unrest.

There could be two possible reasons why the mainstream media still manages to cover up the behind-the-scenes happenings.

One, regional official organizations like the Special Affairs Bureau and European Heavy Industry are fully blocking the news.

Two, a certain balance has been reached between players, between players and organizations, and between organizations themselves.

The website also specifically mentions that a non-Summoner who personally kills a Summoner can inherit their qualifications. One can easily infer the intense malice contained within this rule.

Players can obtain extraordinary powers and technological achievements from different civilizations in the killing fields, which is akin to a direct ticket to a gold mine.

For powerful state machineries, naturally, they would want to grab all resources and control all factors of social instability.

Obedient players would be treated favorably and recruited under their command. For those less willing, cooperation and negotiation are possible. For those players who are restless or even causing trouble and destruction, they would be trialed, executed, and their qualifications transferred to reliable subordinates.

For multinational conglomerates and giant corporations, everything is aligned with profit. For the sake of profit, they can trample any law of the mortal world and commit any crime. If turmoil and strife can bring profits, they would encourage turmoil and strife.

They would have even fewer scruples than the former, even offering their buyout of player qualifications – that is, paying for the murder of a player – in public.

For individuals, an environment as perilous as the Dark Jungle leaves everyone in fear for their personal safety.

Even when two players who have never met before encounter each other, their first thought would likely be whether the other might attack them for a large bounty.

After such an atmosphere continues for some time, players who first gain a certain amount of strength will inevitably be unwilling to remain as lambs to the slaughter and will form their own civilian guilds, bringing companions into their fold.

Then they would establish a balance with state structures and international conglomerates.

"...The initiation of the Slaughter Field Game has prompted explosive technological development and has also shaped today's international landscape."

Li Cheng contemplated, "Although urban legends abound within the country, overall social order remains relatively stable.

Looking at the interaction between the Special Affairs Bureau and the Prometheus Company at that time, it is evident that a delicate balance has already formed among the various powers. On the surface, there is unity and collaboration in developing the killing fields. Under the table, fierce competition still persists."

At this thought, his eyes suddenly brightened.

Since the killing fields imply endless possibilities, then the challenge of the Master of Insects infection, which seems difficult to solve for the Special Affairs Bureau, might not be without solutions in the hands of other organizations.