Chapter 295: G.o.d Of Cooking “Su Mo”, The G.o.d Of The Ocean Is My Comrade-In-Arms?
After he chose to bind it, the jade pot absorbed Su Mo"s ident.i.ty information, and the process became much simpler!
Su Mo closed all the game warning alerts that kept popping up because of the authority binding. He sat on the floor and waited silently for the final division of authority.
"The game… isn"t a high-dimensional existence in the wasteland. Its role is similar to that of a majordomo.
"If it could manipulate the food rules in the wasteland before I chose the division of owners.h.i.+p rights, then after I use the jade pot and take 1% authority over the food…
"The game"s authority would disappear permanently before I die and before I return the authority. It"ll lose its authority over food forever!
"In fact, if I"m able to get the owners.h.i.+p rights for temperature, in the following disasters, the system will no longer be able to drop or raise the temperature as it wishes!
"Gaining owners.h.i.+p rights is more than just the process of obtaining power, it"s also the most powerful way to protect myself from the disasters!"
The jade pot was like a key for opening the "safe" of power and authority concealed somewhere between heaven and earth in the wasteland.
When Su Mo felt the jade pot vibrating, he set it down on the ground. Standing in this small storage room, he suddenly had a hint of enlightenment regarding authority. At the same time, he gained a whole new understanding of what ocean promotional videos called the clash of t.i.tans.
"What if the wasteland authority was previously in the hands of a group of "G.o.ds"…
"Then one day, for whatever reason, most of the authority was taken back from the G.o.ds, and only a few of them managed to retain some of it through some kind of means?
"As the game gained more and more authority, it could rain down continuous terrifying disasters. The G.o.ds whose authority had been stripped away naturally would not be able to defend themselves and would have died out forever!
"However, ent.i.ties such as the G.o.d of the Ocean probably left themselves a trump card. When they gave up most of their authority, they retained some essential powers or perhaps even a small fragment of core authority and managed to survive through these means. However, to escape being hunted down by the game, they chose to fall into a deep sleep somewhere and wait for their chance to come.
"As for the game now... What kind of situation does it want to see?"
Sitting cross-legged on the ground, Su Mo tried to comprehend the information sent to him after binding with the authority. At the same time, he was thinking about the true purpose of the ocean disaster based on the information he had been given.
Did the game want to see the G.o.d of the Ocean come back to life and take back his authority?
Impossible!
Currently, Su Mo"s authority over food now was only 1%, and the game was already kicking up such a fuss—what more the ocean that encompa.s.sed a much wider area.
"That can"t be. If the game doesn"t want the G.o.d of the Ocean to come back to life, wouldn"t it be easier to kill him off by raining down disasters?
"Unless…
"The G.o.d of the Ocean isn"t waking up and trying to get his power back like what the game says. Instead, the game"s managed to use some way to more or less pinpoint his location.
"But this way…"
Su Mo sat in the small storage room, where he could actually concentrate better to think about these questions.
With these details in hand, he continued with his painstaking investigation. A guess flashed through his mind all of a sudden.
Su Mo took advantage of the fact that the binding process was not complete yet, so his new ident.i.ty"s game panel was still accessible.
He pulled up the game panel and went into the friends list right away, then began to check and search.
The target of his search was none other than…
Yang Jian!
"So far, I can find a total of 318 players with the name Yang Jian.
"Including me, the latest addition, there"ll be 319 people for now."
He recorded this number and checked his watch. After a minute, Su Mo accessed the game panel again and ran a search.
Sure enough, the number of players he could search for had dropped from 319 to 211.
He did not get anxious. Hanging onto his guess for the moment, he waited for another minute. The number of Yang Jians had suddenly decreased to 123.
The most outrageous thing was that before Su Mo could exit, the numbers blatantly changed to 122. The implications were obvious.
These people with the same name as Yang Jian were different from ordinary players in the add friends panel. When they died, their profile turned black in color, indicating that the person could not be added to the friends list.
Without exception, all of them disappeared from the search panel immediately.
It was as if they had never come to this wasteland world and had never partic.i.p.ated in this game of life and death.
"Sure enough, the game is a majordomo. It has no way to locate me; all it knows is that there"s a person called Yang Jian who took away 1% of its authority.
"Keeping in mind the thought of killing them all without sparing a single one, it instinctively picked all the players named Yang Jian and disabled all of their panels, as well as restricting all their game functions. It"s using this to force my guileless "Yang Jian" character into using the authority.
"That"s stupid, but it works!"
While he pondered, the "t.i.tle conferring" progress had continued unabated. Anyway, Su Mo did not hold out much hope for his luck. At the fourth minute, an invisible light wave flashed past.
Not only did the turtle armor and card explode into dust in the storage room, but even the game panel also seemed to be dead. No matter how Su Mo called, it was difficult to get a response.
Yang Jian was the latest addition to the wasteland with the designated number 319 when Su Mo was conferred with the t.i.tle, which meant all the other Yang Jians…
Had been wiped out!
"Hahaha, so that"s how it"s done. Not bad, not bad at all!
"Go ahead and ban him however you like.
"You"ve banned Yang Jian"s game access permissions, but that has nothing to do with me, Su Mo!"
After becoming aware of all the game"s maneuvers, Su Mo could not help letting out a sigh of relief. He started laughing.
At the same time, Su Mo could do nothing except apologize silently in his heart to the innocent Yang Jian no. 318 who had been dragged into this whole mess.
There was only one path ahead now.
If Su Mo were given the chance to choose again, the outcome would still be the same; he would definitely not hesitate.
"Sure enough, the small group of people who didn"t trust the game and chose not to use the game functions were right after all.
"This d*mn thing really can"t be trusted in the least!"
There was still 30% left on the binding progress bar; it would not do Su Mo any good to switch back to his ident.i.ty and go onto the World Channel to see whether people were reacting to this commotion. He could only wait quietly.
Fortunately, it did not take long. After ten minutes, as the jade pot that Su Mo was holding began vibrating continuously before slowly turning into powdery light particles and disappearing from the storage room, the authority binding was finally complete.
At the same time, now that he possessed authority over food, from Su Mo"s point of view, the whole world had drastically undergone a change.
All the items, including the ground beneath his feet, the shelf beside him, and even the dust in the air, had their own exclusive "flavor".
Based on this hint of flavor, Su Mo knew that all he had to do was to focus, and the aroma of red-braised pork could burst forth from even the dust.
"Tsk, is this power why the people on Earth are so obsessed with being watchdogs in positions of authority?
"Color, aroma, taste…
"Authority over food doesn"t just refer to its grade and the attributes. No wonder it takes up a whole 1% of authority."
The more Su Mo sensed things, the more he understood how miraculous this power was.
After gaining authority over food, why was it that it could be only used once every fifteen natural days?
The reason was very simple. For example, say he wanted to add an attribute to the food that would allow it never to deteriorate.
What he needed to draw on was not just the authority over food—he also had to utilize authority related to its physical form, as well as the authority for exposure to air, internal microbial fermentation, and ten other authorities.
These complex authorities had to be interwoven before a simple attribute could be formed.
Furthermore, if he wanted to invoke these other authorities to be used on food, he could do so, but it would take time.
It was like working in a big company. If one needed the a.s.sistance of another department for a project, this was naturally permissible, but one would have to submit a report for approval. Only after approval could this a.s.sistance be implemented; one could not simply do as they pleased.
Of course, there were exceptions. For example…
When one became the immediate boss in charge of these departments or the president of the whole company!
At that point, one could do whatever they wanted. Even if they wanted to dissolve the company immediately, that would not be a problem!
"If I look at it like that, then the purpose of the ocean disaster is far too obvious!
"The general location of the G.o.d of the Ocean has been exposed due to whatever reason. The game, as majordomo, wants to retrieve the remaining authority that the G.o.d of the Ocean still holds.
"However, what"s frustrating is that first of all, the G.o.d of the Ocean doesn"t need the game panel, so the game can"t penalize him. The second is not knowing the G.o.d of the Ocean"s exact location. The game"s been forced to use some kind of means to hunt for him, and that"s why there"s this version update.
"And the most cunning part is, it hasn"t directly asked the players to search for the G.o.d of the Ocean. Instead, it"s using an ingenious way to guide all the players, claiming that the G.o.d of the Ocean is about to wake up, and telling everyone how awesome he is. Not only that, it"s tempting people with a gimmick, saying that those who get there first can become divine messengers.
"It"s even shamelessly been hinting that the G.o.d of the Ocean is currently very weak, and the players can easily dispose of him.
"A ploy like this seems like utter rubbish, but it"s actually very useful indeed, at least for now. I even fell for it half a day ago."
The truth was, the game"s purpose had already been achieved the moment it announced the contents of the updated version and all the living beings on the wasteland had not cast doubts on anything at all.
From the very beginning, the game grasped this point, decking itself out as a G.o.d and sending disasters for punishment—at the same time, creating a game function that made everyone struggle for survival.
Under these carrot-and-stick circ.u.mstances, all the living beings did not have the time or energy to question what the game actually was, why it was sending disasters, and why it had created a game panel. What was its purpose for doing this?
Of course, after three rounds of disasters, the game thought that its status had been firmly established. After making sure there were no other problems, it had begun to reveal its true nature.
It had deliberately released some false information about the G.o.d of the Ocean waking up and might even have given some other missions to the Five Royal Clans of the land-based foreign races, or the several flouris.h.i.+ng, powerful human shelters.
People subconsciously believed in the game, so the players who thought they had received a covert mission would naturally want to seize the chance to lure out the G.o.d of the Ocean and obtain ma.s.sive "rewards".
They would not choose to tell the others about their mission. Instead, they would charge ahead with their comrades and secretly go off to complete it.
That way, as long as the G.o.d of the Ocean could be found, the game would have achieved its purpose in transporting this batch of living creatures here!
"So, in a sense, I, Su Mo, who become the "G.o.d of Cooking" just a few minutes ago, am actually comrade-in-arms to the G.o.d of the Ocean who is still asleep—in fact, I need to protect him to make sure that he won"t be found by someone else?"
The game and the rules of the golden light were actually very inflexible. In Su Mo"s view, it was not something a creature of wisdom would do; it was more like a logical decision procedure that had been set up.
It was similar to the verification of the golden light earlier. It was obvious it had discovered something was very wrong in the Underground Shelter, but since Su Mo was s.h.i.+elded by the system and it could not detect anything wrong with the shelter"s owner, it still overlooked the anomalies in the shelter, choosing to ignore them.
This had indicated that regardless of whether it was the game or the golden light, raining down punishment required a "stone hammer" of conclusive evidence!
Without this evidence, even if they discovered that there was a problem, they would not be able to break through logic limitations and implement another judgment approach.
Therefore, all the game had to do right now was to find that piece of evidence and break through the limits of its own logic.
The most important step in gaining this evidence was to find out where the G.o.d of the Ocean was.
As for the people who were just tools a.s.sisting in the whole process—the Five Royal Clans were not aware that the moment they found the G.o.d of the Ocean, they would probably face their deaths.
"A range of 500,000 kilometers, and 500,000 times increase in disasters. If I, this werewolf, reveal myself now, I"m afraid even the G.o.d of the Ocean won"t survive either."
He recalled that just half a day ago, he was still thinking of sitting back and reaping third-party benefits. He wanted to wait for all the foreign races to strike first, and then it would be his turn to deal with the so-called "G.o.d of the Ocean". Once he had obtained the ma.s.sive rewards, he would bring them with him to develop the new world.
In the end, half a day later, he had become comrade-in-arms to the G.o.d of the Ocean, who was in the same camp. Not only did they need to stick together, but he also had to do the part-time job of protecting this "sleeping beauty" from being discovered by the soldiers sent by the evil queen. Su Mo was amazed by this.
"That won"t do. If I reveal myself as a traitor and the G.o.d of the Ocean dies, then if the G.o.d of the Ocean reveals himself to be a traitor, I"ll die too.
"Two werewolves can be comrades under certain circ.u.mstances, but one would have to make sure that the other won"t betray them.
"So, a.s.suming that we"re still alive after this disaster, what will I be thinking then, and what will he have in mind?"