Chapter Fourteen: Equilibrium
Below the Q&A section, there were hundreds of scattered hyperlinks leading to the official websites of various regional and national organizations, as well as civilian guilds. Unfortunately, only registered forum members could access them; visitors had no permission.
Li Sheng carefully read through the names of these organizations and found familiar ones such as the Special Affairs Administration, Prometheus Laboratory Corporation, the United Nations-backed Global Supernatural Alliance, and the Bureau of Extraordinary Incidents under the American Federal Investigation Bureau.
In one corner, he also discovered Changsun Yao’s World Peace House, indicating that it was not as makeshift as he had initially imagined.
“Countries like the UK, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, Japan, Korea, and India all have their own official organizations. The Vatican has an Inquisition, the European Union has European Heavy Industries, and Middle Eastern countries jointly established the Middle Eastern Anomalous Objects Recovery Department. This shows the importance each side places on these matters.”
Li Sheng lightly tapped his temple, opened a search engine, and began researching breakthroughs in scientific fields over the past four and a half years, comparing them to the pace of scientific advancements in the previous decade.
“As expected.”
After nearly an hour of diligent searching, he exhaled heavily, his gaze growing serious.
People living in periods of rapid development tend to have a severely distorted estimate of the speed of technological breakthroughs.
The Wright brothers invented the first airplane in 1903; just 66 years later, humans officially landed on the moon.
Today, the computing power of any ordinary smartphone far surpasses that of the Apollo 11 navigation computer.
A century of explosive scientific progress has given people a wonderful illusion—that technological breakthroughs are naturally inevitable and will continue at this rapid pace.
But the reality is quite different.
In 2017, Russia unearthed time capsules buried fifty years earlier, containing letters filled with boundless optimism—“We have only just taken our first steps into space, but by your time, you should be able to travel to other planets. Many secrets of nature yet undiscovered by us should already be unveiled by you. Nuclear energy should be under control, elemental quantities controllable at will, climate change managed, gardens cultivated in the Arctic. We are still building communism; by your time, you should be living in communism.”
These letters, now sounding almost like a cruel joke, reveal a simple truth—human civilization’s scientific progress is slowing down, and the pace of breakthroughs is gradually decelerating.
“This doesn’t mean that people in the twenty-first century have grown less intelligent, but rather that the division of fundamental scientific disciplines has become increasingly specialized, making mastery more difficult. Scientists may spend their entire lives achieving breakthroughs in only one or a few fields.
However, in the past four years, the speed of scientific and technological breakthroughs in human civilization has been astonishingly fast—far exceeding that of the past ten or twenty years.”
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Controlled nuclear fusion reactors have achieved a Q-value (fusion energy gain factor) greater than 1, sustaining fusion for over thirty minutes, with grid integration and commercial operation expected within two years;
Gene-editing technology has made further breakthroughs, capable of completely curing certain types of diabetes, familial hypercholesterolemia, and even Alzheimer’s disease;
At the Paralympics, mechanical prosthetics helped paralyzed athletes stand again, even breaking world records in Olympic sprinting;
A new space race has begun, with the U.S., China, Russia, and the European Union all building permanent lunar bases;
In recent years, the media has unanimously praised humanity’s leap to a new stage of civilization, yet wars and chaos in certain regions have never ceased.
One day an African warlord massacres a village, the next day a South American drug lord executes a mayor, and the day after, a developed country suffers a terrorist attack.
These incidents rarely surface in the public eye due to media neglect.
Li Sheng pondered, “In the real world, all unreasonable technological progress, anomalous events, and supernatural powers stem from what is called the Killing Field and its players. The selection criteria for players require outstanding traits in certain aspects, whether positive or negative.”
This is easy to understand—for example, a person who severely lacks empathy and guilt is naturally viewed negatively in society, but in the Killing Field environment, this might not be a disadvantage.
Traits are neither good nor bad; their value depends on suitability to the environment.
“The webpage mentions that currently, about 270,000 players are alive worldwide. In the early days of Killing Field game intervention in reality, 70% of new players didn’t survive the first three months. Although the exact timing of this early period is unclear, a rough estimate suggests that at least 500,000 players have existed on Earth.”
Half a million supernaturals, even if each only wields the most basic powers, would be enough to cause social upheaval.
The reason mainstream media can still conceal these truths likely has two causes.
First, regional official organizations like the Special Affairs Administration and European Heavy Industries work tirelessly to block information.
Second, players and players, players and organizations, and organizations and organizations have reached a certain balance.
The webpage explicitly states that non-selected individuals who personally kill selected players can inherit their abilities. This rule alone implies a deeply malicious intent.
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Players gain supernatural powers and access to technologies from different civilizations through the Killing Field, essentially holding a golden ticket to prosperity.
Strong state apparatuses naturally want to seize all resources and control every source of social instability.
Players who are willing to comply are treated favorably and recruited into their ranks. Those less willing can be negotiated with or cooperated with. Players who are unruly or disruptive are tried and executed, with their abilities transferred to reliable subordinates.
For multinational corporations and giant enterprises, everything is profit-driven—they will trample any earthly law and commit any crime for profit. If chaos and conflict generate profit, they will encourage such turmoil.
They are even more unscrupulous than governments, openly placing bounties to buy player qualifications—that is, hiring players to kill on their behalf.
For individuals, this dark, jungle-like environment breeds constant insecurity.
Even when two players who have never met encounter each other, their first thought is whether the other will attack them for a huge bounty.
After this atmosphere persists for some time, players who gain some power inevitably refuse to be mere prey; they form civilian guilds to gather allies.
In turn, this creates a balance with state machines and multinational corporations.
“...The activation of the Killing Field game has accelerated technological explosions and shaped today’s international landscape.”
Li Sheng mused, “Although urban legends frequently emerge domestically, overall social order remains stable.
From the interactions between the Special Affairs Administration and Prometheus Corporation back then, it seems various forces have formed a subtle balance—outwardly united and cooperative in developing the Killing Field, but fiercely competitive behind the scenes.”
At this thought, his eyes suddenly brightened.
Since the Killing Field represents infinite possibilities, then the seemingly unsolvable “Lord of Insects” infection in the eyes of the Special Affairs Administration might still have hope elsewhere among other organizations.