56: Chapter 55 Refusal is Acceptable & Live Broadcast

David wasn't the only one.

At the same time, batches of Karmic energy, like thousands of silk threads, radiated in all directions from the center of the Magic Sea, touching every anchored survivor from external civilizations.

Fog City Camp

A three-finger-wide crack split the bottom of the boat.

Alan MacDonald had used his jacket to plug it for four hours, but the seawater still reached his chin. His left arm was ruined, hanging on his body like a waterlogged sausage, completely devoid of sensation. The seawater was stealing his body heat, and his consciousness began to blur.

Then, that line of text appeared.

"Hallucination," he muttered. The text didn't go away. He held on for another twelve minutes, finally clicking "Accept" on the seventeenth flash. He had nothing left to lose anyway.

The next second, his consciousness was dragged into the Karmic Void Realm.

Alan floated in mid-air, seeing a market so prosperous it made him want to curse, yet left him in stunned panic.

A middle-aged Yanhuang Civilization man stood on a boat dozens of meters long, holding a fish half a person's length, captioned "Extra meal tonight," with over three hundred replies below.

In a video, a young girl holding a device said, "Found a school of fish, anyone want to team up?" The bullet comments exploded instantly.

Someone received waterproof cloth sent by a seeker of help within half an hour. Someone could collect free fresh water every day.

These Yanhuang Civilization people had already built a material network spanning the Magic Sea.

While he was still plugging a crack with his jacket.

He looked at the camp rankings. Fog City Camp, over four hundred million merit points.

Yanhuang Camp, 34.2 billion. A nearly hundredfold gap.

He was deathly jealous. Jealous of those who could build a civilization within six days, jealous of those who teamed up to fish and helped each other. But he wanted to live more.

He fixed the boat according to the tutorial. He used his right hand to grab a wooden board and press it against the crack, tied it with shoelaces, wrapped it with cloth strips, and only on the third try was the knot tight. He dismantled whatever wooden strips he could from the bottom of the boat to rearrange them, wrapped the bottom with sea beast skin, and then sewed it shut with fishing line made from sea beast tendons. Everything taught in the tutorial worked.

Four hours later, the boat stopped leaking. His left arm still had no feeling, but he was alive.

Alan lay on the deck, spreading his fingers toward the sky. His hand was shaking, but his fingers were open.

He thought of Glasgow, the auto repair shop, and his cat. Then he thought of those Yanhuang Civilization people he had never met on the Fate Platform.

"Fuck, damn it, why would such a Spear of God favor Yanhuang Civilization first!"

---

Kangaroo Camp

Karmic Void Realm

Jack stared at the screen full of Chinese posts, his mind going blank.

He saw a group of Yanhuang Civilization people showing off their lunch—sea beast meat soup, grilled fish, seaweed salad. Someone was showing off a newly made harpoon. Someone was forming a group to hunt a five-meter-long Serrated Fish.

His eyes grew wider and wider.

He remembered what he had eaten over the past six days: raw conch, rotten seaweed, and a jellyfish of unknown species that chewed like rubber.

"These people..." He gaped, unable to form a complete sentence.

Then he scrolled to the camp rankings. Kangaroo Camp, seventh place, over 270 million merit points. Yanhuang Camp, over 34 billion.

He stared at those two numbers, silent for a full minute.

Then he closed the rankings and started searching: fishing, fresh water, survival.

He read quickly. He took screenshots of what he couldn't remember—the Fate Platform had a screenshot function; the Yanhuang Civilization people had even thought of that.

An hour later, he exited the Fate Platform and started working. Following the methods in the tutorial, he made a fishhook using shoelaces and boat nails, and twisted a fishing line from sea beast skin.

On his first cast, the hook caught something.

A palm-sized fish.

---

Taegeukgi Camp

Kim Min-jun floated in mid-air, looking at this information platform that was precise to an outrageous degree.

His first reaction was: Who built this?

His second reaction was: The Yanhuang Civilization people.

He scrolled through the posts, faster and faster, his hands shaking more and more. He saw the Yanhuang Civilization people's trading network, rescue system, and information-sharing mechanism.

He saw the "Revival Red Federation," an organizational structure of a hundred thousand people.

He saw information about the "Karmic Trading Realm"—there was actually a complete, closed-loop e-commerce platform with logistics support.

On the sixth day in the Magic Sea.

While most people were still worrying about a mouthful of fresh water, the Yanhuang Civilization people had already begun to build a civilization?

What a joke!

He pulled up the camp rankings.

[First Place: Yanhuang Camp, Total Merit: 34,232,581,770]

[Ninth Place: Taegeukgi Camp, Total Merit: 68,974,502]

34 billion.

Less than 70 million.

He closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. Then opened them.

No anger. No resentment. Because he knew that any emotion was useless now.

The spirit of Taegeukgi taught him to lie low first, then find an opportunity to dismantle it, learn from it, and finally replicate it.

Even though the Yanhuang Camp now held an absolute advantage.

But he believed that as long as the survivors of the Taegeukgi Camp possessed the Taegeukgi spirit, final victory would inevitably belong to Taegeukgi.

Moreover, now that this Divine Artifact-level Cause and Effect Fate Platform was open to them, it was too early to say that this Fate Platform belonged to the Yanhuang Civilization survivors.

Maybe it was just a temporary oversight by the gods?

He began to read the tutorials.

Hull reinforcement, fresh water distillation, sea beast weakness analysis, weapon crafting methods. He read them one by one, as if reading technical documents.

Two hours later, he exited the Fate Platform.

In his hand was a knife ground from sea beast bone.

The tutorial taught that the hardness and retention of bone were three times better than boat nails.

He tried it.

It worked.

---

Maple Leaf Camp

Sophie Tremblay curled up in the cabin, arms hugging her knees, nails digging into the skin of her calves.

She was counting. From one to a hundred, then from a hundred back to one.

Over and over.

This was a method she had learned in Montreal. When she was seventeen, a psychiatrist taught her to use a simple repetitive action to pull herself back from panic.

Seawater sloshed at the bottom of the boat. The boat was rocking. The whole world was rocking.

She hadn't heard a human voice for four days.

It wasn't the kind of quiet where "no one is talking."

It was the dead silence of "the whole world only has you left." The wind had no sound, the waves had no sound, even her own breathing felt fake.

Then that line of text lit up.

[The "Cause and Effect Fate Platform" has issued a formal invitation to you. Do you accept?]

Sophie didn't move. She thought her psychiatrist's method had failed and she had finally gone mad.

The text didn't disappear. She tried blinking, shaking her head, and pinching herself.

The text remained motionless, like someone had welded a screen into her brain.

"Who are you?" she asked softly. No one answered.

Another ten minutes passed. Water entered the bottom of the boat again. She scooped water with her hands; after twenty-some scoops, the text was still there.

She clicked "Accept."

Then she welcomed her new world.

---

And besides these ordinary survivors of external civilizations...

Some famous powerhouses listed on the individual merit rankings.

After their initial confusion, they were struck by an unbelievable shock as they realized something.

One after another, they seemed to turn into unmoving statues.

They didn't show the jealousy, joy, or madness of those ordinary survivors.

Instead, they fell into deep thought and a state of paralysis regarding the future of their civilizations.

...

Across the vast waters of the Magic Sea.

Different faces. Different languages. Different camps.

The same sea. The same afternoon. The same invitation.

As time passed.

The invitation of the first batch of 300 million people was completed.

The moment they sacrificed their physical strength, spirit, or vitality to exchange for karma points, that energy flowed back through the hidden channels laid by the Power of Causality.

The quantity wasn't as much as the Yanhuang Civilization survivors'. The quality was also uneven; many external civilization survivors were weak to their limits, and the essence they squeezed out looked a bit frail.

But 300 million threads twisted together.

With a "Duang" sound.

The volume of the River of Causality expanded outward by another circle, flowing even more turbulently.

Like a long pulse injected with a large gulp of fresh blood, while the ethereal Karmic Void Realm was that entwined heart, constantly throbbing and beating.

Then came the invitation for the second batch of 900 million survivors.

It took one day.

Finally, it was the last batch covering all remaining survivors of the Earth Star civilization, numbering about a billion or so.

This process lasted nearly three days to fully complete.

Not a single one was missed.

Unlike with the Yanhuang Camp, Yang Hang did not give these external civilization survivors a chance to refuse.

It concerned the Foundation of his Cause and Effect Fate Platform.

Even if they refused, they had to accept.

——

Duang~ Duang~ Duang~

Yesterday was the ninth day of Magic Sea survival.

The camp ranking list and the individual merit ranking list were announced once again.

First place was still the Yanhuang Civilization, with its merit doubling again, while the merit values of other civilizations had mysteriously increased much more than in previous days.

Although these two lists do not announce the specific number of survivors in each civilization, based on the data breakdown and comparison between the sixth day and yesterday's lists, it was obvious that the survival rate of survivors in other civilization camps had clearly stabilized.

After this report was disclosed by the Revival Society, the Little Life Society, and even a series of small groups with their own official posts dedicated to analyzing various major events in Magic Sea survival, it unexpectedly sparked a wave of heated discussion among Yanhuang Civilization survivors.

But this wave was merely curious discussion; the survivors of the Yanhuang Civilization didn't feel any threat at all.

Most people carried a sense of superiority, discussing and critiquing from a high vantage point.

This atmosphere and feeling were very strange.

Everyone was more or less aware of it, but they tacitly agreed not to puncture it.

Instead, they cast aside the external dangers of the Magic Sea that still existed, enjoying the physical and mental pleasure brought by this self-deception.

The Revival Society, as an official organization, had a specialized department monitoring the overall atmosphere of the Yanhuang Camp, regularly forming reports to be submitted to the highest-level meeting of the Council of Councilors for discussion.

Naturally, they also noticed this phenomenon.

However, the Revival Society and the vast number of Yanhuang Civilization survivors reached a tacit understanding and shared the same thought.

They believed this atmosphere helped maintain stability and the upward climb of the Yanhuang Civilization's overall situation.

They even took the initiative to post, promoting how great Yanhuang Civilization's advantages were in all aspects, how broad the future prospects were, the daily economic surges, the prosperous development of commerce, and the quality of life for survivors—karmic point savings, and daily meals rising from only one meal a day to two, and in the future to three, and so on...

The collective sense of honor and unity within the Yanhuang Camp significantly increased.

Along with it, a form of entertainment that the whole population of the Earth Star civilization participated in before Transmigration gradually began to recover.

Livestreaming.

Only, the one thing slightly different from before Transmigration was,

Most of the Magic Sea livestream content consisted of survival, hunting, tutorials on making various Magic Sea tools, and the information departments of various official media broadcasting updates on their organizations' recent developments, recruitment, and events in the surrounding waters every night at fixed times, such as 9:00 PM.

At 1:00 PM on the tenth day.

President Lu Xingye started her livestream on time.

"Good afternoon, family! Welcome to the daily livestream of the world's luckiest beautiful girl!"