50: Chapter 50 Visitor Mode
Indian Camp.
Ninth.
Sliding from second place to ninth, the total merit value was slashed in half from 980 million to over 400 million.
In a camp with a population of 1.5 billion, after the beast tide, fewer than 100 million survived.
Amit Salva crouched on a broken floating board.
His bamboo raft had shattered on the first night of the beast tide.
The deep-sea hunter that rammed up from beneath the raft threw him into the sea.
Relying on his talent as a yogi, he barely managed to convince two passing dolphins to carry him to a piece of driftwood.
For the two days since, he hadn't eaten a single bite.
When the leaderboard popped up, he saw the numbers for the Yanhuang Camp.
34.2 billion.
He stared at it for a long time, then closed his eyes.
It wasn't despair.
It was something deeper than despair—hopelessness.
"Why?" he whispered.
There was no echo.
On the sea, thirty li away from him, a middle-aged man from the Indian Camp, wrapped in a turban, stood at the bow of his rotten wooden boat.
He was covered in filth, his clothes tattered and blackened, his body so emaciated it was just skin and bones; he looked like a living corpse.
He finished reading the leaderboard, looked at the tattered, foul-smelling Houseboat he had been barely surviving in these past few days, then turned around, faced the sea, and took a step forward.
Without hesitation.
Until he grimly lost his breath in the sea.
A beam of light engulfed his body without warning.
A second later, he vanished, and the boat drifted alone on the sea.
Suicide and exit.
This was not an isolated case.
In the sea territory of the Indian Camp, beams of light were lighting up sporadically, one after another.
The Star-Spangled Banner Camp had them too.
The Teuton camp did as well.
Gaul did too.
Not many, but continuous.
Like lamps being extinguished one by one.
Each beam of light meant that a person had made a choice—a gamble.
A gamble that after committing suicide, they would truly leave this sea, rather than truly dying.
No one knew the answer.
But some could no longer hold on, or rather, their last shred of hope had been shattered by the leaderboard, and they didn't want to continue.
Perhaps the world after suicide was a paradise.
He had returned to his warm home on Earth Star, with his wife, children, and a warm bed.
If the camp ranking leaderboard were dynamic at this moment, one could see the merit values of a large number of lower-ranked camp civilizations constantly sliding, especially the Indian Camp.
It was a pity that all of this was happening silently; even survivors in the same camp could not perceive it.
Without a communication platform, they couldn't even learn of their companions' deaths.
They could only wait for that damned leaderboard released every three days to possibly understand the tragic events that had occurred in their camp.
These suicides could only die in corners that no one cared about... oh no, there was one person who cast his gaze upon them.
Yang Hang had originally been on his golf course, playing golf while preparing to deal with harassing messages from his younger sister.
Suddenly, he perceived something, and the Power of Causality was naturally mobilized.
Immediately, his brow furrowed.
From a high-dimensional perspective, he saw this scene.
But he wasn't happy; instead, guided by Karma, he realized a serious problem.
The deaths of these survivors from foreign civilization camps didn't seem to be a benefit to him.
Because his talent as the Lord of Causality was able to exert such power, it was largely due to the Cause and Effect Fate Platform.
And what did the Cause and Effect Fate Platform rely on?
Yanhuang Civilization survivors.
But this didn't mean that apart from Yanhuang Civilization survivors, survivors from other foreign civilizations couldn't provide benefits to his Cause and Effect Fate Platform.
They were all human, and all had vitality and spirit.
It wasn't that he hadn't thought of this before, but at the time, he had just Transmigrated to the Magic Sea, camp confrontations were assigned, and based on the camp affiliations, he naturally hadn't considered this issue at all.
But now, with the Yanhuang Camp having a clear advantage and a large number of survivors from foreign civilization camps dying, he naturally received the revelation of Karma.
These survivors from foreign civilization camps might also need to become part of the nutrients for his growth.
So at this moment, every beam of light, every person who vanished, was in his eyes a lost asset and nutrient.
It wasn't sympathy—though there was a little bit of that.
It was a heartache.
Tianzhu had 1.5 billion people; over a billion died, leaving less than 100 million.
Adding those currently committing suicide and exiting, after they go through a few more rounds of survival tests, how many will be left in the end?
Tens of millions? Less than ten million?
The Stars and Stripes had over 300 million people; he didn't know how many died, but judging by the increase in merit value, the losses weren't too great.
Teuton, Gaul, Polar Bear, Fog City Islands, each had populations ranging from tens of millions to 200 million.
All foreign civilizations added together—those still alive—probably had over 2 billion left.
Over 2 billion people.
In just six days of the Magic Sea trials, the population of over 8 billion had shrunk to over 2 billion.
Too cruel.
Yang Hang felt a strange pang of heartache.
But putting that aside.
If these 2 billion-plus people were all connected to the Cause and Effect Fate Platform...
The scale of the energy pool would skyrocket from 1.4 billion to over 4 billion.
The upper limit of the Power of Causality would be pushed higher again.
The vitality and spirit energy generated by these people subscribing to functions every day would make his Foundation increase by several times more.
Population was an asset.
No, for him, population was energy.
He made the decision in his heart, intending to add a Visitor Mode to the Fate Platform.
This Visitor Mode was very simple.
It only provided permission to browse the major Echo channels and one post per person per day in the Symphony Realm of the World Echo.
The Fate Platform's posting, map, compass, and Trading Realm functions would not be available at all.
Actually, he had vaguely had this idea when the first camp leaderboard was announced.
It was just that at that time, although the Yanhuang Camp had an advantage, it wasn't big enough, nor was it stable enough.
Furthermore, survivors using this Visitor Mode, under the functional restrictions, could not actively contact their own relatives and friends.
Therefore, his actual ability at the time was also a big problem.
Relying only on the Karmic energy generated for him by the over a billion Yanhuang Civilization survivors in three days, it was likely not enough for him to pay out of pocket to invite the billions of survivors scattered across other civilizations in the Magic Sea world.
But now, the Yanhuang Civilization advantage was stable, and the whole was developing upwards under the connection of his Cause and Effect Fate Platform; the total merit value of all foreign camps combined was not as high as that of the single Yanhuang Civilization.
And with the appearance of the Karmic Trading Realm, his reserve of Karmic energy had also ushered in a major explosion.
The Foundation for the appearance of the Visitor Mode had already been laid.
Allowing it to appear now would not only let the vast number of ordinary survivors from foreign civilizations, who were originally in a dark forest survival mode, feel the breath of civilization again.
While generating hope, they could also use the large number of strategy posts seeking survival skills in the Yanhuang Camp to improve their own survival capabilities.
Moreover, because of the posting restrictions and lack of map capabilities, their ability to band together would not be greatly improved.
While significantly suppressing the population mortality rate, it would also not pose much of a threat to the Yanhuang Civilization.
Yang Hang did not delay; over 8 billion people, and only over 2 billion remained.
Under the high-dimensional perspective he maintained, the foreign civilizations were currently wailing.
Those scattered spots of light were flickering out intermittently; every second of delay was his loss.
Time waited for no one.
He directly called upon Karma to start architecting the functional framework.
One minute later, Yang Hang had patched this Visitor Mode directly onto the existing Fate Platform framework.
Following that was pushing the function to all Yanhuang Camp survivors and sending invitations to foreign civilizations.
Invitation strategy.
He planned to invite them in batches.
This would allow his Karmic energy to flow back uninterrupted, reducing immense pressure.
Because the Karmic energy consumption required to invite the initial hundreds of millions of survivors was entirely borne by him.
Therefore, the online fees he charged were also significantly higher than those for Yanhuang Civilization survivors.
Taking 70%.
That is, 2 karma points for 12 hours online.
It would consume about half of the physical strength, spirit, or Qi/blood of an unstrengthened ordinary survivor.
That was about right; any higher, and they might not be able to afford it.
Everything was ready. The moment the patch was completed, he drew upon the massive energy pool within the Karmic Void Realm, and a colossal amount of Karmic energy poured out like a monstrous wave, then split into countless small streams, speeding off in all directions.