Guan Tong felt that there were not many people in this world connected to him, so if he had a choice, he did not want those few people to take such risks.
Shi Jingyi, Chen Na, Xu Xiaotian, and the others—this could be considered a bit of selfishness on his part.
But when he saw the text message Shi Jingyi had sent, he knew there was definitely no stopping her.
He silently locked his phone and watched the screen go dark, his feelings a tangled mess.
But he had no extra time to be distracted. His attention quickly returned to converting Mind Power.
Using items that restored stamina and eliminated fatigue, he neither slept nor ate for the next seventy consecutive hours. He simply kept teleporting to gathering points for the Ascendants and receiving Mind Power.
Meanwhile, the Countermeasure Research Institute was busy coordinating personnel while gathering Ascendants who had volunteered to protect Guan Tong.
There were not many volunteers, only around a hundred. Gao Liangwei met them personally, emphasized the risks once more, and asked each person whether they truly wished to join voluntarily.
Everyone gave an affirmative answer.
One young man's words represented everyone's feelings.
"We just want to do our part for the people of this land."
Gao Liangwei was deeply moved.
Most of them exhausted themselves every day for precisely those words: they wanted more people on this land to survive in the brutal Apocalypse Rules Era.
Later, before the Level 9 Earthquake erupted, the research institute showed the hundred people complete recordings of the epicenter conditions during the previous earthquakes.
These recordings had been filmed by response personnel such as the Dragon Soul Squad, allowing them to directly witness the effects powerful seismic waves had on people.
"This is an on-site recording from the epicenter