Sharks Competing for Resources

To be fair, browsing forums was quite an interesting thing.

Especially when all sorts of "talents" sprang up one after another on the forums, with convoluted schemes, classic lines, imaginative methods, and calculations both overt and covert appearing without end—like an old general performing the Empty Fort Strategy, with flags planted all over his back...

Even Li Yun only wanted to say one thing.

—Humanity truly was exceptionally creative when it came to doing bad things and making profits.

Of course, that did not stop him, an "administrator" who was not particularly proactive about managing things, from doing what most ordinary Main God Users did: hanging around the forums all day whenever he had nothing to do, partly to see something new and partly for the fun of it.

Nothing else needed saying. Just watching these people repeatedly argue over the "GGs" they posted round after round was already worth the price of admission.

[Buying all supernatural items produced by the Main God Platform at high prices. Prices negotiable. Payment methods include anonymous Swiss accounts, BTC, or direct transfer to a designated account...]

[Seeking to purchase Main God Universal Points, 1:112. The rate can be raised further for large-volume sales...]

[Sincerely seeking to purchase surplus "visitor slots" held by first-generation Main God Users. Starting offer: 1.6 billion pounds sterling. Further discussion possible if insufficient...]

After the second round of the Main God Game had been over for a full four or five days, aside from a small number of informative posts explaining experience and analyzing missions...

These currently hottest and trendiest "GG posts" had become the perfect places for Main God Users to argue heatedly, watch the spectacle, trade insults, and rack up dozens or even hundreds of replies.

The constant stream of instant new replies meant these posts showed almost no sign of sinking down the forum.

Clearly, with Main God missions still restricted by something like a "cooldown period," aside from a very small number of users who had turned into "self-cultivation types" because of their exchanges, everyone still seemed to have plenty of free time and enthusiasm.

Take the "buying Universal Points" posts, for instance. That ratio had now risen to 1:112... and the unit following that 112 was "ten thousand."

Naturally, the currency in question could not possibly be Jinbuba Counterfeit Currency.

More precisely, on the surface, transactions were now being settled at "one point for 1.12 million US dollars."

Not to mention those "veterans"—formal first-tier Main God Users—who had successfully completed the second round of missions and received an additional "visitor introduction slot" from the Main God.

The scattered slots in their hands totaled fewer than two thousand, yet each could be freely used to select one person as a visitor and bring them into the Main God Game for the next round of missions seven days later. They had become irresistible prizes that left informed parties intensely envious.

Li Yun had even noticed quite a few comments below saying things like, "Filthy rich," "Turns out there are still more rich people," and "This must be a post from some oil tycoon"...

Sitting on the sofa, he merely shook his head and said nothing.

It was true that the Main God could provide most exchanges, but some exchanges that appeared low-level yet had deep and widespread effects on real-world order were not currently open for Main God Users to bring into reality.

The more obvious examples included things such as T-Virus Stock, Secondary Hive, and Antimatter Bombs...

Likewise, "real-world currency" was also among them.

For one thing, currency itself had no inherent value. It was merely a product endowed with value under certain "rules of credit," and had little meaning beyond that.

Once the Main God opened one-way exchanges of Universal Points for currency, it would have to use an enormous relative ratio between the two to offset that "difference in value."

Yet currency really could easily disrupt the deep order of the current world.

Considering humanity's diversity and absurdity, Li Yun did not doubt in the slightest that once this exchange was opened, someone would inevitably try to accumulate resources and directly crash the real-world monetary system by "exchanging for currency"!

That would be far quicker than having to deal with color-changing ink and acid-free paper!

And as the foundation from which the Main God was currently recruiting "newcomers," the "operating rules" Li Yun and the Main God had temporarily established included requirements to maintain a certain degree of stability in the real world.

After all, a "home base" capable of continuously producing new users naturally needed to preserve a sufficient level of order.

Therefore, even though Li Yun had noticed that many people in various countries had coincidentally taken the initiative to "put lids on" things online through various methods, muddying the waters, even staging and directing events themselves to conceal certain details and erase many "traces" that would have caused an uproar in their nations' social currents, thereby slowing a process that should have had a tremendous impact...

The Main God had not interfered too much.

And once the social networks that were the most mainstream in modern society, and in fact had the widest reach, had their normal transmission of information disrupted, many things became much easier for those in the know.

Otherwise, in less than half a month, news related to the "Main God Game" should not have spread so "narrowly."

Simply controlling the internet's "mouthpiece" meant controlling the influence over most information channels.

It was just that, when facing the more than two hundred thousand Main God Users now...

Those major conglomerates and collections of interests might no longer have been able to stop information from spreading further and deeper, but they still tacitly continued using methods such as "silencing, buying people off, laying false trails, locking down platforms..." in a mad attempt to delay the spread and fermentation of information, so they could keep profiting as much as possible.

Clearly, their thinking was probably—if it could not be stopped, then so be it. There was no such thing as a wall that could keep out every draft!

But as long as there was anything to grab, even a scrap of meat, they had to swallow it into their own bellies first!

With everyone acting like starving ghosts reborn, Li Yun saw one rather realistic joke in it all—

Yingjilige Secret Intelligence Service had, more than two hours earlier, initially obtained scattered and unverified information about the "Main God." But in terms of order, it had actually come after six or seven "private financial groups," including four major conglomerates, as well as a large number of civilian users...

It was like receiving a piece of sugarcane pulp that had already been chewed who knew how many times.

And even that had only happened because two or three of those groups had voluntarily leaked the information as part of an exchange of interests...

All that could be said was that, compared to them, those financial conglomerates that pursued profit like sharks smelling blood, along with all sorts of modern business families bound together by blood ties in name but actual interests in practice, possessed far sharper instincts and far greater covert influence over the flow of benefits than any so-called "official response speed."

Or rather, from the perspective of the Windsor Family as one prominent example, they themselves actually represented, in a substantive sense...

The second reason was the current situation. Since the Main God itself did not restrict the "trading circulation" of Universal Points, and had even imposed only symbolic, seemingly lenient "surface rules" such as "limited numbers of trades within a certain period" and "an additional proportional point fee for gifts"...

Even if one truly wanted to obtain real-world benefits from them, there was no shortage of channels.

Rather, if not for the Main God's trading rule stating that "transactions can only proceed when both parties are willing to a certain degree," most Main God Users would probably not have been thinking first about how to profit, but how to gain the means to protect themselves by joining major factions and using various other methods...

Even so, the various risks these users attempting to trade Main God Universal Points for money through forums and real-world channels had to bear—including the possible exposure of their identities—were still choices of their own making.

The Main God would not deliberately restrict such "freedom," but neither would it foot the bill for their actions.

Clearly, though, at present, aside from some who had no choice for various reasons, some who truly did not understand their real value, and some short-sighted people blinded by profit who could not see the bigger picture—

Most users were still maintaining a relatively watchful attitude and had no intention whatsoever of casually letting the "Main God resources" in their hands flow out.

In fact, if most people had not lacked sufficient funds, the "bidding war" on the forums would have become far more intense long ago.

—There was a price, but no market. That was the real situation now.

That was why those users backed by "big predators," who had barely tasted some sweetness, were still raising prices frantically like they had caught the scent of blood, trying to swallow up as much of the limited supply as possible before more "peers" entered this blue ocean!

Anyone with eyes could see that this "Main God Platform," which seemed to have experienced only two rounds of games within the range that could currently be confirmed...

Or rather, within a "Main God Space" that might have only just begun turning through a new cycle, these seemingly tiny and inconspicuous early resources...

Could, in the future, create a terrifying gulf between different people!

With assistance from researchers in fields that seemed to include online literature, human psychology, sociology, and others, a rough projected trajectory had already been outlined for this.

As long as one did not die halfway, this would naturally be a path from human to god, one of continuous evolution upward!

All the various resources of reality were ultimately nothing more than building temples inside snail shells, playing king among monkeys. A hundred years later, everyone would end up as a mound of earth.

But this was an alternative "Main God Space"!

Even if only one tenth of the benefits it promised, including those on that unsettling exchange list, were real—no, one percent! One thousandth! One ten-thousandth!

As long as even an utterly insignificant part of it was real!

The benefits involved would no longer be something ordinary reason could imagine.

Becoming immortals and progenitors, ascending the steps to godhood, living forever, commanding the universe, doing whatever one pleased, free and unrestrained...

These desires and pursuits that transcended mortality were the underlying color deeply imprinted, through the long history of evolution, into the instinctive struggle of lives tormented by birth, aging, sickness, and death!

Was it really so hard to understand which of the two mattered more?