Pretending to be a genius starts with the civilization advancement assessment.

Chapter 30 The Chain Reaction Caused by the Video

27th Floor, Hengxin Building, CBD, Chongshan City.

Documents were scattered all over the floor, and several desks were overturned and leaning against the fire exit, with dark red scratches and a few dark green scales still on them.

Wang Lei huddled under his workstation by the window, his fingers trembling as he typed and deleted on his phone screen.

He had lost count of how many times he had tried to send out a distress signal.

The WeChat group was filled with red dots. The last message in the loving family group chat was from four hours ago: "Son, hide well, whatever you do, don't come out."

The howling outside came and went, each time causing his heart to stop.

"The useless police won't come, and neither will the army."

From the workstation next to him came the bitter voice of his friend Zhang Tong. He was hugging his knees, staring blankly at a pool of blood on the ground that had turned black.

There lay a colleague who had tried to rush out to find his family.

Of course, by now he was sleeping in the storage room with the others.

"We have to try, just in case."

Wang Lei only got halfway through his sentence before he couldn't continue.

What other "what ifs" could happen? Even if they ransacked this huge office building and had enough food and drink to live on for several months, what good would that do?

It's just that I'll die a little later.

It might be even more painful.

Just then, a pop-up message with an extremely eye-catching title appeared.

[Apocalypse Survival Tutorial: Learn this and you'll kill monsters until they dare not approach! — Source Energy Tutorial from the front lines of Hongfulou in Helu City].

The message was from a friend in another city, with only two words in the caption: "Look!"

Upon seeing the game zone icon on the video link image, Wang Lei instinctively wanted to cross it out.

How can someone have the mind to post game videos at a time like this?

But the words "survival" and "front line" hooked him like a hook.

He clicked on it hesitantly.

After a brief loading, the scene shifts to a chaotic hotel, grotesque dark green monsters, whistling club shadows, and the muffled sound of bones shattering as the monsters turn to ashes. A figure clad in tattered armor and covered in blood, under the wary gazes of even more monsters, picks up a glowing crystal and calmly walks away, dragging a dripping club.
Wang Lei suddenly sat up straight, his head hitting the table with a "thud" without him even noticing, his eyes fixed on the screen.

“Source Energy. Guiding Technique. Crystal,” he murmured the keywords from the video, then suddenly grabbed Zhang Tong’s arm, “Old Zhang! Old Zhang! Look at this, you have to look at this!”

Zhang Tong was startled and turned around impatiently: "What is it now?"

"Look!"

Wang Lei practically shoved his phone into his face.

"If we can find a way to kill a monster, will we be able to survive?"

A few minutes later, the two men huddled together in front of the small phone screen, their chests heaving, their eyes burning with a fierce, rekindled light.

“There’s no need to think about him anymore. That guidance technique he mentioned…” Zhang Tong suddenly looked up, his voice trembling with excitement, “I have it in my head too!”

"What?!" Wang Lei exclaimed in astonishment.

"This morning, a monster charged in from the other side and got stuck in the door crack. I swung a dumbbell and smashed its head!"

Zhang Tong spoke incoherently, pointing to a blood-stained dumbbell in the corner, "Then it turned to ash, and a crystal fell off. I wanted to see if it was a real crystal, so I squeezed it, and a lot of random things popped into my head, which I called the Basic Source Energy Guiding Technique! But the problem is, with such complicated content, we were all just waiting to die, so we didn't have the mind to think about it carefully, and we didn't think much about it."

The two looked at each other and saw the joy of escaping a desperate situation in each other's eyes.
-
The athletes' lounge below the stands of the gymnasium at the Foreign Language School in Jiangsu Province.

The iron gate was blocked from the inside by several lockers, and faint chewing sounds could be heard from outside.

James Wilson, a tall American English teacher, leaned against a cold metal cabinet, panting heavily.

His expensive suit was covered in dust and dark green slime, and there was a deep claw mark on his arm that revealed the bone, barely bandaged with a torn flag, still bleeding.

Beside him, physical education teacher Liu Wei was in even worse shape, sitting pale-faced on a bench.

On the ground lay a fire axe, next to a pool of blood and a small pile of ashes.

There, there once lay the corpse of an abyssal wolf.

Its head was almost split open by a fire axe.

The two worked together, with James drawing its attention from the front while Liu Wei seized the opportunity to strike hard from behind.

Of course, Liu Wei also paid a price; he was whipped by the Abyss Wolf's bony tail, and he may have broken a rib.

"God bless us," James murmured, trying to dispel his fear with humor. "Teacher Liu, your kung fu is amazing." Liu Wei managed a wry smile and remained silent.

James pulled out his phone; the screen was cracked, but it still worked.

The signal bars flickered weakly as he frantically sent messages to his wife and friends in Texas, trying to let them know he was safe and to inquire about their situation, although most of the messages failed to send.

Suddenly, a video link popped up in a student group chat. The title was Xia Guowen. Although Xia Guowen's reading and writing skills were not very good, he could still understand the keywords "teaching," "monster," and "source energy."

He clicked on it instinctively.

The scene is shaky; the battle is intense but brief, focusing on the boy in armor.
It's so powerful it's almost inhuman!

When the boy began to explain the profound "source energy guidance technique," especially mentioning "perceiving the vortex between the eyebrows" and "a tingling sensation like the warm winter sun," James's eyes widened suddenly.

He suddenly turned his head to look at Liu Wei, his breathing becoming rapid.

"Liu! Look! Look at this!"

He excitedly handed over the phone, exclaiming, "This! This is what's in your head!"

Despite the pain, Liu Wei leaned closer to look.

A few minutes later, an amazing light shone in the eyes of the robust physical education teacher, as if he had forgotten the excruciating pain in his body.

"Yes, yes, that's it! I actually understood a tiny bit of what he was saying!" Liu Wei's voice trembled with excitement. "How...how did he do that? In such a short time!"

“Genius,” James murmured, and without hesitation forwarded the video link to everyone he could still reach in his contacts, including his family across the ocean.

"They need to see this! Everyone needs to see this!"
-
The capital city, the Western Hills, deep underground.

Inside the National Crisis Response Center, codenamed "Longyuan," the atmosphere was so heavy it seemed to drip water.

On the huge circular screen, divided into numerous areas, satellite thermal images of major cities across the country, fragmented images of key areas under surveillance, and constantly updated casualty reports and military unit status reports were displayed.

As far as the eye can see, large areas are marked in red, indicating that communication has been interrupted and contact has been lost.

A few scattered points of fire flashed, but more often the green friendly markers disappeared quickly.

"The vanguard of the 71st Group Army encountered a giant biological unit on the outskirts of Xucheng and suffered heavy losses. It has retreated to build a temporary defensive line!"

"The communications team reports that over 60% of ground base stations are damaged, and some satellites have lost contact!"

"The energy team reported that more than 70 percent of power plants have completely stopped operating, and backup power is expected to last less than 24 hours."

One bad news after another arrived, and each report made everyone's faces grow increasingly grim.

"Why panic!"

An old man slammed his hand on the control panel.

"The most important thing now is to stabilize the existing defenses, consolidate our forces as much as possible, and figure out the weaknesses of these monsters! How's the Academy of Sciences doing with their analysis?"

A middle-aged man wearing gold-rimmed glasses next to him quickly bowed and reported: "Sir, the team that is making the most progress is Professor Jiang Weihua's team. They have preliminarily confirmed that those crystals contain an unknown energy structure with extremely complex internal information flow. It is a completely new storage method and is extremely difficult to crack."

"As for the information recorded in the gray crystal, Academician Jiang said that the current analysis progress is about 10.7%, mainly the most basic energy attribute analysis. There has been no breakthrough progress on the core part of the so-called 'guidance technique'."

10%
Li Zhenguo's heart sank.

Time, time is what we lack most right now!

Just then, a middle-aged military officer hurried through the busy crowd and came straight to Li Zhenguo. His expression was somewhat strange, a mixture of excitement and disbelief.

"report!"

"speak!"

Li Zhenguo frowned; at this point, any report was unlikely to be good news.

"Sir, the Cyber ​​Security Bureau and the Third Bureau of the General Staff have simultaneously detected that a video is spreading like wildfire on the remaining civilian networks and some military backup channels. It has an extremely high popularity index. The content is about how to use the Source Energy Guidance Technique and cultivate using the Source Energy Crystals obtained after killing monsters. It also includes detailed practical demonstrations and instructional explanations!"

The middle-aged officer spoke very quickly, but his pronunciation was very clear.

No sooner had the words left his mouth than an elderly man beside him immediately turned furious. “Nonsense! At a time like this, people are still making these kinds of misleading fake videos! Immediately register them, and handle them like those videos that spread rumors and heretical ideas. Tracee them and shut them down!”

"Wait." Li Zhenguo suddenly raised his hand to stop him, and instead stared at the middle-aged officer, asking in a deep voice, "Since you've come to us to discuss this, you must already have a conclusion?"

"Yes, sir. The source is a civilian Moyin account in Helu City. The poster is called 'Ayu loves to play'."

The middle-aged officer's expression was very solemn. "The technical department has conducted a preliminary analysis of the battle footage. The physics engine simulation of the lighting, sound, and monster reactions on site is extremely difficult, and we have largely ruled out the possibility of it being fabricated. As for the teaching part, its content is highly consistent with the fragmented information on the difficulties of the guidance techniques that we have obtained from multiple channels, and is even more systematic and intuitive."

He paused, then added, "The person in the video claims to be a recent high school graduate named Lin Yi."

　Ah~ let's water the seedlings~ Ah~
　　
　
(End of this chapter)