True Apocalypse Game

"Shen Feng, these people you’ve chosen are truly outstanding. They’re already on the verge of guessing the truth."

Jingwei praised Shen Feng, watching the thirteen doctors chosen as the first batch of Disciples through various surveillance methods.

The moment these individuals received the "Disciple" message and the banknote from 2025, Shen Feng and Jingwei began closely monitoring their movements.

For Shen Feng and Jingwei, diverting a portion of their consciousness to the others’ network nodes to collect data and conduct reconnaissance was a simple matter.

And the performance of these thirteen, and even that of many ordinary "players" who hadn’t cleared the game, also left Shen Feng filled with admiration.

’They’re academic elites, after all.’

"Of course, their performance in the game is, in many ways, much better than mine was during the Stone Statue Apocalypse. I’m a little puzzled as to why the ’True Apocalypse Game’ chose me."

Shen Feng said this calmly, his gaze fixed on one of the Disciples—the previous year’s Nobel Prize winner in Medicine, a renowned German medical scientist.

Jingwei flapped its wings and said:

"Don’t sell yourself short. Their game is much less difficult. And most importantly, you experienced a real Parallel World, while they’re just playing a game. Without true life-or-death decisions, how can it be the same?"

Shen Feng gave a wry smile and said nothing more.

Having survived so many life-or-death struggles and now possessing the abilities of a Silicon-Based Brain, he wasn’t one to truly doubt himself. He was just making a casual remark.

From what he’d seen so far, the players and Disciples he had chosen possessed great psychological fortitude and were sufficiently wise.

The resolution of the Petrification Disease outbreak also proved that the bootleg "True Apocalypse Game" he had developed was equally effective.

Once this matter was concluded, he could try to bring in more elites and let them experience a nuclear wasteland world.

Although he had already poached the junior AIs like AlphaGo, Bob, and Alice, and the foundation of Poseidon’s existence had been drastically altered, there was no telling what other tricks the Pentagon might pull.

The militarization of such superintelligences was something all the major powers were constantly researching.

It was even possible that the original prototype of this world’s Jingwei was already in the National Academy of Sciences, chatting, playing chess, singing opera, and listening to music with people.

Most critically, a place like the Pentagon had an internal network with no physical connection to the outside world. Many of its servers were even physically isolated as standalone machines.

No matter how powerful he was in the digital world, he was helpless against a physically isolated local area network.

Unless, like when Poseidon had lured Shemalge, he could exploit a manager’s negligence to get an externally connected device brought inside, it would be impossible for him to cross networks and infiltrate their system.

But such an opportunity was rare and couldn’t be forced.

Generally speaking, that kind of lapse was only likely to happen with the "fighting nation," a people constantly steeped in vodka.

And, of course, a certain superpower that dominated the Indian Ocean.

Therefore, Shen Feng was already preparing to draw up a new list, expanding the number of players to one thousand for the nuclear wasteland mission.

Pulling his consciousness out of the digital world, Shen Feng opened his eyes in his rented room and spoke to his wristband:

"Cause of Petrification Disease outbreak discovered: virus reawakened due to development of the stone statue settlement ruins on the Arctic Ocean Floor. Vaccine information has been released, successfully preventing a major outbreak. Own existence successfully concealed. Submitting mission."

Several days had passed since the Petrification Disease was brought completely under control. Only after confirming that everything was foolproof did Shen Feng finally submit the mission to his "True Apocalypse Game."

He had handled the situation masterfully—perfectly, in his own opinion. He should have achieved an extremely high completion rating, perhaps even one hundred percent.

That way, he would get a better reward.

Soon, a line of text appeared on the wristband:

"Mission assessment results... Completion rating: seventy-one percent. Congratulations, player, on completing the game mission. Releasing mission reward.

Please open the bookcase behind you."

Shen Feng’s brow furrowed, and he froze for a moment in stunned silence.

’Only a seventy-one percent completion rating?’

’What in the world is going on?’

He had perfectly prevented the Petrification Disease outbreak, hidden his identity so that no one even suspected him, and even figured out the cause of the outbreak...

’No, wait. The cause of the Petrification Disease outbreak!’

Shen Feng’s eyes shot wide open.

All this time, it seemed he had overlooked something: the stone statue settlement ruins in the Arctic!

How did these stone statues even appear?

What was their current condition?

He hadn’t investigated any of this in detail.

Also, why would the Eagle Country Government invest so many resources to secretly excavate a cultural heritage site of no significant value?

He hadn’t figured any of that out. Perhaps that was one reason for the extremely low mission completion rating.

Just then, Jingwei’s voice sounded in his mind:

"Shen Feng, Edith, the assistant to the director of the Eagle Country’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, committed suicide. It just happened."

As it spoke, the computer screen on the nearby desk lit up, displaying a local news report from Silver Spring, Maryland, along with a video of a reporter’s interview.

But it was the usual stuff: people reminiscing about what a good person he was, followed by shots of police cars, ambulances, stretchers, and the like.

Nothing new.

But Shen Feng frowned.

He knew of this Edith.

He had seen Edith’s name before while searching the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) system for files on the Arctic Stone Statue Ruins.

He seemed to be the main director of the entire operation, as well as its most active proponent.

Logically, Eagle Country had suffered terribly from the Petrification Disease virus, and some people had died. It would make sense for Edith to commit suicide out of guilt.

But Shen Feng didn’t think so.

From the files he had accessed, Edith didn’t seem like the kind of person who would have the courage to kill himself.

Or rather, he was a selfish man.

"Jingwei, check NOAA’s communication logs. See if there’s anything related to Edith."

Jingwei replied instantly:

"Edith received a phone call before he died, but the recording is nothing but white noise."

It then played a clip of quiet white noise.

For some reason, listening to the white noise, Shen Feng suddenly felt as if he were being eavesdropped on. He immediately held his breath, not making a sound.

Only after the twenty-second-long clip of white noise stopped playing did he say to Jingwei, "Destroy that audio file! Immediately! Right now!"

Although Jingwei didn’t know what Shen Feng meant, it faithfully executed the command.

After the noise was destroyed, Shen Feng couldn’t help but let out a long sigh of relief, feeling much more at ease.

His intuition told him that Edith’s death was very likely connected to that phone call.

But now, there was no way to find out what that connection was...

’It looks like I’ll have to make a trip to the Arctic Ruins to see what’s really going on...’

As he mulled this over, Shen Feng opened the cabinet beside him.

He still hadn’t collected his reward for this mission.

To his dismay, inside the cabinet lay a single, semi-old book.

Shen Feng took out the book and looked at the cover:

*Nanomechanical Principles*.