Chapter 14: Balance

Below the Q&A section were hundreds of scattered hyperlinks, each pointing to the official websites of regional and national organizations, as well as civilian guilds. Unfortunately, only registered forum accounts could access them; guests had no permission rights.

Li Cheng carefully read through these organization names and found familiar ones such as the Special Affairs Administration (Special Affairs Bureau), Prometheus Laboratory Corporation, the United Nations-backed Global Supernatural Alliance, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Special Incidents Division.

In the corner, he discovered Changsun Yao’s World Peace House—apparently, the latter was not as amateurish as he had imagined.

“The UK, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, India, and others have all established their own official organizations. The Vatican has the Inquisition, the EU has European Heavy Industry, and Middle Eastern nations jointly founded the Middle Eastern Anomalous Item Recovery Office. Clearly, all sides take this seriously.”

Li Cheng lightly tapped his temple, opened a search engine, and looked up scientific breakthroughs across various fields over the past four and a half years, comparing them to the pace of scientific advancement over the previous decade.

“As expected.”

After carefully searching for nearly an hour, he slowly exhaled a deep breath, his gaze heavy.

People living in an era of rapid development have a severely distorted perception 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, even a basic smartphone has far greater computing power than the navigation computer of Apollo 11.

The explosive development of science and technology over the past century has created a delightful illusion—that technological breakthroughs are naturally inevitable and will always proceed at this pace.

But that is not the truth.

In 2017, Russia unearthed time capsules buried fifty years earlier in various locations, each containing overly optimistic letters—“We’ve only just taken our first steps into space, but you must already be flying to other planets by now. Many natural secrets yet undiscovered must have been found, nuclear energy must be controllable, elemental quantities must be manipulable by human will, climate must be adjustable, gardens must be cultivated in the Arctic. We’re still building communism—surely you’re already living in it?”

This letter, now sounding like a dark joke, reveals a simple truth—the pace of human civilization’s technological progress is steadily slowing, and the rate of scientific breakthroughs is gradually declining.

“This isn’t because 21st-century people have become dumber, but because the fields of basic science have become increasingly fragmented and harder to master; scientists spend their entire lives achieving breakthroughs in only one or a few areas.”

“Yet over these past four years, the pace of human scientific and technological breakthroughs has been absurdly fast—far exceeding the speed of the past ten or twenty years.”

Controlled nuclear fusion reactors have sustained operation for over thirty minutes with a Q-value (fusion energy gain factor) greater than one, with grid connection and commercial deployment expected within two years;

Gene-editing technology has broken through again, capable of completely curing certain types of diabetes, familial hypercholesterolemia, and even Alzheimer’s;

At the Paralympics, mechanical prosthetics enabled paralyzed athletes to stand again, even breaking the Olympic world record for sprinting;

A new space race has begun, with China, the US, Russia, and the EU all constructing permanent lunar bases;

In recent years, media outlets have uniformly praised humanity’s ascent to a new level, yet wars and chaos in localized regions have never ceased.

Today, a warlord in Africa massacres a village; tomorrow, a South American drug lord hangs a mayor; the day after, a developed nation suffers a terrorist attack.

Due to deliberate media neglect, these stories rarely surface in public view.

Li Cheng mused: “In the real Earth, all irrational technological progress, anomalous events, and supernatural powers originate from the so-called Arena and its Players. The selection criteria for Players are possessing outstanding traits in some area—whether positive or negative.”

This is easy to understand: someone who utterly lacks empathy and guilt is clearly a negative trait in real society, but in the Arena’s environment, it may not be a disadvantage.

Traits are neither good nor bad—they matter only in relation to the environment.

“The webpage states that the current global number of living Players is roughly 270,000. In the early days of the Arena’s intervention in reality, 70% of new Players did not survive the first three months. Though we don’t know exactly how early ‘early’ was, a rough estimate suggests that at least half a million Players have ever existed on Earth.”

Half a million supernaturals—even if each possessed only the most basic supernatural power—would be enough to trigger societal upheaval.

The reason the mass media can still conceal the truth may be due to two factors.

One: regional official organizations like the Special Affairs Bureau and European Heavy Industry are fully suppressing the information.

Two: a balance has been reached among Players and Players, Players and organizations, and organizations and organizations.

The webpage specifically notes that a non-Selected who personally kills a Selected can inherit their qualification. Anyone with half a brain can see how deeply malicious this rule is.

Players gain supernatural powers and technological achievements from other civilizations through the Arena—equivalent to a direct ticket to a mountain of gold.

For powerful state machines, naturally, they want to seize all resources and control every destabilizing factor.

Players willing to obey are granted privileges and recruited. Those less willing can be negotiated with. Unruly or disruptive Players are directly tried and executed, their qualifications transferred to reliable subordinates.

For multinational corporations and giant enterprises, everything is driven by profit—they will violate any human law and commit any crime for profit. If chaos and conflict generate profit, they will encourage chaos and conflict.

They will be even more ruthless than state machines, even openly putting prices on Player qualifications—meaning they will kidnap and kill a Player.

For individuals, this hellish, dark-forest-like environment leaves everyone in constant fear.

Even two Players who have never met each other will, upon encountering one another, immediately suspect the other might attack them for a massive bounty.

After this atmosphere persists for a while, Players who have gained some power will inevitably refuse to become helpless prey and form their own civilian guilds, recruiting allies.

Thus, a balance emerges between these guilds, state machines, and multinational corporations.

“The opening of the Arena game has accelerated explosive technological development and shaped today’s international order.”

Li Cheng pondered: “Although urban legends in our country are endless, overall, social order remains stable.”

Judging from the interactions between the Special Affairs Bureau and Prometheus Laboratory Corporation, all factions have formed a delicate balance—publicly cooperating to jointly develop the Arena, while privately maintaining fierce competition.

Thinking of this, his eyes brightened.

Since the Arena implies infinite possibilities, then what the Special Affairs Bureau considers an unsolvable [Lord of Worms] infection might not be hopeless in other organizations.

(End of Chapter)