Chapter 142: Chapter 134: Righteous Judgment
Guan Tong was deeply shaken after reading the post.
He had actually heard of this before, and even had firsthand experience with it—after all, what was the goal of the mastermind who manipulated Shen Zuohu’s gang in Yunhua City to kidnap High Spirit Users? It was most likely to turn those people into the "Supporters" mentioned in the post.
What shocked him, however, was that there were actually entire nations doing this—and not small ones, either.
As a major power formed after the onset of the Apocalypse Rules from several smaller nations that had collapsed under the first rule, the Tulip Federation was actually quite formidable. Its combined population and land mass were not inferior to those of the Soloma Empire.
’Was it because this Federation was newly established and its people were restless that it championed the supremacy of violence, creating such a twisted Supporter system where the entire population was treated as a "flock of sheep"?’
’If that’s the case, then with custom challenges from so many Supporters, the number of first-place finishes the Tulip Federation’s "Alpha Wolf" can seize must be staggering. Still, there’s a cap. Even by taking the most firsts, they ultimately can’t exceed 300 points...’
But Guan Tong found it strange. Was the Tulip Federation really betting everything on this so-called Alpha Wolf? Weren’t they afraid the guy might die during one of the rules, or be killed by someone else?
Or would they just pick a new Alpha Wolf from the "Wolf Pack"? How could they ever make up for such a massive waste of resources? The Psychic Power lost by the entire population couldn’t be recovered!
Guan Tong saw that someone had already posted a similar comment on the thread.
"The Tulip Federation is insane, isn’t it? The entire population is forced to support a Wolf Pack and an Alpha Wolf? How has a rebellion not broken out yet?"
"That place has always been a chaotic mess, crawling with warlords. It feels like nothing’s too crazy to come out of there."
"I have a thought: what if the person being supported gets a ton of first-place finishes and then suddenly croaks? Do those first-place rewards get returned?"
"Someone already posted about that. If the person who got first place dies, the first-place title is passed down to the runner-up."
"This post is making me so mad. Let’s start a crowdfund. Anyone willing to go take out that damn Alpha Wolf? I’ll put up 500 coins!"
"Give it a rest, OP... He’s the chosen Alpha Wolf for a reason. You think he’d be easy to take out? He’s definitely got guards. Oh wait, I guess you’d call them his Wolf Pack."
"Speaking of which, does our North Star Country have a similar system?"
"Don’t the shelters have official information channels? Just ask the officials and you’ll find out."
"...Never mind. It feels safer to discuss it on this website."
As Guan Tong read through the discussion, his own experiences in the industrial park and on Holy Grail Island came to mind.
The squad he’d encountered twice, the one led by the guy with the scimitar, he figured they had to be one of the Official Teams.
However, unlike the Tulip Federation, which was promoting its system with great fanfare, the North Star Country’s government had never publicly announced the formation of an official Ascender squad. While some speculated that the third-place team from Holy Grail Island, led by "Dragon Soul," was an Official Team, there was no evidence to confirm it.
The other major power, the Soloma Empire, also hadn’t publicly announced that it was specially cultivating anyone. However, a person from their country nicknamed "Lucifer" had gained a certain level of worldwide notoriety for his outrageous behavior.
His recent act of publicly posting the "kill count challenge" he created had caused a massive uproar.
According to some videos online, protests had even broken out in the Soloma Empire over the matter. People were demanding that the King and the Senate issue a verdict and use the power of the state to execute Lucifer, as his challenge was clear proof that he had committed a capital crime.
But the Senate’s response was that without direct evidence, a verdict could not be reached.
And it was true. Although Lucifer had claimed online to have created the kill count challenge, no one could prove it. The creator of every challenge was anonymous.
Unfortunately, the Ascenders of the Soloma Empire weren’t buying that explanation. Furthermore, rumors began to spread that Lucifer had started killing, triggering even greater chaos.
Guan Tong didn’t care much about what was happening abroad. He was more concerned with the situation inside the North Star Country.
In the replies below the main post, quite a few "Providers" had shared information about their challenges.
Guan Tong noticed that some of them were from within the North Star Country.
This made him perk up.
The final paragraph from the original poster had struck a chord with him.
A system like this was absolutely inhuman. If you could persuade people through reason to voluntarily give you their resources, then perhaps others had no right to interfere.
But if you used violence, imprisoning people and forcing them to cooperate, then that was a situation that called for a heavy hand.
At the end of the post, the OP had called upon truly strong individuals to take action and dismantle this Supporter system.
As it happened, Guan Tong considered himself one of the strong. And besides, he detested this kind of thing from the bottom of his heart.
The post that had caught Guan Tong’s attention was from a user nicknamed "Cafe Cultivator." The message read:
"Seeing this post, I want to beg the site admin and all the experts out there to rescue us. There are over forty of us here. We all fled the city with our company’s boss. At first, things were more or less peaceful, but after the information about the eighth rule was released, our boss forced the twenty-something of us who hadn’t set up our challenges yet to create them based on an item he has.
"When we refused, he and his handful of henchmen beat us and threatened to kill us. We had no choice. We had to agree, and we all created similar challenges."
