LCD Worlds’ Apocalypse Online

I'll agree with you on the other point, but i don't understand why 70 floors underground and outside the casino seems like not that big of a difference to you. 70 floors is a very long distance even with elevators that would go directly there.

There's a certain maximum speed that elevators have, and since MC and his friend just used it to go up to back up to the lobby and get out of the casino, it would double the time the ME would need to go outside the casino, even more if it's not the type that only goes to 2 floors but the regular type of elevators that stops at every floor.

Let's give their technology the benefit of the doubt and say that it won't even take a minute to make a full round trip from 1st floor and -70th floor. That's still a whole extra minute of travel time between the ME and MC to buy time for whatever enforcers might be coming/waiting right outside to catch the ME when he (inevitably) try to kill the MC.

Of course, screw the IG in that case, because who in their right mind starts a trial without waiting for enforcers to arrive first?

 

Well, you're assuming that the ME would stay on the bottommost floor. There's not really a reason to expect that. Its honestly much more likely that he'd head to a higher floor with a nicer view for the sake of his guest, if not for his own sake. Heck, he might even be on the floor that the MC is fixing to destroy. So long as he's not underground, he can just go through the nearest window and reach the MC in no time at all, provided he knows where the MC is, but I doubt the MC is doing anything to hide his position, since he's a bit stupid.

All that aside though, the amount of time it'll take is only really relevant in terms of the time it takes to go from spotting the MC to punching the MC, unless IG actually has help coming, which she's said nothing about, or the MC is planning to snipe him from ambush, which seems unlikely as it would be a clear-cut case of murder at that point. Though, if enforcers are coming, then she should have waited for them before conducting the trial or handing out the ME's properties.

On a side note, wasn't he afraid that the ME would destroy the monster parts? Why is he no longer afraid of that? Its honestly even more likely to happen now than it was then.

 

That's the thing though, the main reason why he invited the guest over was to make him weapons, and she wants to see his fighting style in order to craft it. They met on the top floor of the building, which is also his home. He could've easily had the weaponsmith stay there and wait for him, or wait at the place he would use to show her his power, instead of bringing her all the way down to the 70th floor again after she literally just went from there up to the top. I mean, why bother to specifically bring your guest to show them the scene of you bullying some children?

The MC said so himself, he was afraid he would destroy the monster part before because he exploited the rules with the crocodiles. But now that the ME is showing that he doesn't care one bit about the rules, having the part destroyed is the least of his problems.

 

She requested the fight and wanted to see it in person. Once it was clear the fight wasn't going to happen, there was no longer a reason to stay down there and they would have either headed for the exit or back to his place to discuss new arrangements so that she could see him spar a worthy opponent or whatever. Unless he had someone worthy on staff (which seems unlikely given such a person's status), there'd be no reason for them to stick around in an empty arena. Though, even if they had, it still wouldn't matter. As I said, the speed thing was specifically in reference to the amount of time that IG would expect it to take the ME to close distance with the MC after determining his location, based on the assumption that she has not summoned any reinforcements.

The ME potentially destroying the monster parts is his only problem. Its not like he cares about the merits at all, and the opinion of some random strangers should mean even less to him. The monster parts are all he cares about here. Without them, he could simply walk away and forget that that ME ever existed until such time as the ME had to come crawling to him to beg for some favor or other.

 

It feels like the author is just throwing out anything he can think of without really worrying about continuity or whether or not it makes sense.

I wonder how they came up with the game originally. If he knows, then he should try to kick off the game sooner rather than later so people can start learning to cultivate. If he doesn't, then he should give IG all the info on cultivating that he can copy from his master's records so that she can research it and distribute cultivation techniques to the masses while there's still a small chance that they might grow fast enough for it to matter. I sincerely doubt he'll do either though since the author seems more interested in him saving both worlds by himself than in having him empower them to save themselves.

If he got an S rating for that completion, I wonder what he would have gotten if he'd actually gotten the parts from IG and completed it several hours earlier.

"With any martial artist, this would be quite a decent ability" As a cultivator, this should be so far beneath his notice that he should be disgusted just reading it. Heck, even the announcement ability has more potential usefulness than this remote punch nonsense, from a cultivator's perspective anyway.

The author didn't even try to make it a difficult choice. He threw out three abilities that the MC would never choose in a thousand years and then tacked on a god tier ability at the end. Why even bother making it a choice? Why not just gift the MC the god tier ability and save us all some time?

That said, for pure practicality, the genderswap ability was probably the best choice. It was both powerful and versatile and would grow in power as he did. Whatever benefits he'll get from lightning he could likely have gotten just as easily from a spell of some sort that he could easily learn from his master's library in seconds, while a percentage stat boost is something that you can never have too many of.

 

I sincerely agree, the last few arcs have been constant action with the occasional large cliff-hanger that lasts for whole arcs that doesn't really do much for the overall story besides filler( hell, the next arc is the same, and it lasts 20 chapters).

Comedic and expositional purposes, it took 100 chapters for the author to start throwing random exposition at us, so I actually found this welcoming, unlike other novels that spent the first 10 chapters just to throw the world setting at us. To me, this is a first look into what kind of things Thaumaturgies can be, otherwise we'd still be under the impression that all Thaumaturgies are ultra useful without draw-backs.

Practically yes, but that also depends on how you interpret it. If it's an ability that can be used over and over (like a magical girl transformation), then the percentage boost is OP. If it's just a one-time use ability that permanently turns him into a girl, that's less useful. We've seen from the announcement ability that God's Chosen Skills work as written, so without any clause that says "you can turn back", i've always thought of this as a permanent 1-time transformation.

 

I suppose it would depend on how exact the translation was, but yeah, if it were permanent, it would be much less appealing, even for a hardcore pragmatist. Well, unless they wanted to switch genders anyway, of course.

 

He really should have waited to find out how much further cultivation was going to cost him before blowing 110 points on sword arts. There's no way to know how long it'll be before he can refill his SP again after all. Though, when he does, he should probably do it in Reality if he can to try to tip the balance a bit and buy people a bit more time to strengthen themselves.

“No good, I have to remind him not to forget to cook even if he does into seclusion” lol. Priorities

 

I really wish he'd take the time to study something other than the sword. The sword is fine and dandy for protecting himself, or killing small groups of enemies, but on a global scale, it is quite worthless. Most, if not all of the Six Arts on the other hand, could tip the scale of the war in humanities favor, and, if he actually gave a damn about anyone but himself, he could bring those arts back to Reality and spread them via IG at an extreme pace. Heck, even if only IG learned them, it could alter the course of the war and not only save, but dramatically improve countless lives.

 

I disagree. I'm not 100% sure that the 6 arts has been fully listed before, but if they haven't then you shouldn't have this argument in the first place. The 6 arts are:

-Divination: very easy to be considered a hoax, and he doesn't know anyone from his past life that actually have this talent to quickly learn it (as seen from his reaction the first time he saw Bai Hua Fairy doing it)
-Formation: could be very useful, but it's established that formation users are tactical-level resources, and setting up takes a long time + it costs spirit stones/an energy source. Good for defensive purposes, but it'll take very long for MC himself to go around and set them up everywhere that needs them, and people don't learn it at a drop of a hat like he can.
-Smithing: it's a thing that already exists, sure they can gain a few techniques from it, but as a whole, what would that accomplish when the Confederate doesn't even try and use the smithing techniques that Fuxi Empire already has? (Zhang Ying Hao's spiel had mention that they don't care about the weapons revolution, and a Martial Eminence from the Confederate had to pay for a Fuxi Empire's specialist to come make him weapons)
-Talisman: this has combined problems from all the 3 above arts, in that they're easily thought of as a hoax, they can't be mass-produced without lots of people learning how to make them, and the self-destructing ways of the Confederate.
-Cooking: I mean... it's cooking, you can't do much without proper ingredients.
-Pills: same problems with talisman but more severe since they're edibles, plus no/little ingredients to actually make pills.

The most useful of all of them is formation and talisman, but since no one knows how to use spirit energy yet, they can't even use it. You're assuming that as soon as MC tell these things to IG, she'll believe and let him spread them, but since IG doesn't have a body, she can't test the usuability of any of these things. And the obstacles that are the aristocrat are still there, there's no huge incidents that directly threaten the masses yet asides from the sea monsters, and definitely no incident that'll threaten the aristocrats into thinking they must act quickly to back the spreading of these methods.

Even if he spread the methods, the people still has to agree to learn them, and with how much the aristocrats disagree with giving normal people the ability to defend themselves (Zhang Ying Hao said that they stopped the gene-modification project because they're afraid there might be too many more fighters running around), I doubt any of them besides Su family will back him up and let him spread the cultivation methods to the masses.

I'll agree that the way he's doing things isn't exactly the most beneficial to the world by just training himself. But if you really think about it, he's only returned to the past for less than a month, and the events of the Apocalypse was supposed to happen gradually over the course of 10 years. Doing things as soon as possible and rushing are two very different things. Hell, he thought he had at least 1 year to live a slow and peaceful University life while building himself up before the incidents started to happen.

 

His senior brother is an expert in all six arts and would be happy to teach him, but I actually meant using SP to learn using treasures and records from his shifu's collection. As for its usefulness, IG would be able to easily verify it after he demonstrated the ability a few times. It's not like an ability like this wouldn't have appeared before among the Chosen. He would just be demonstrating that it could also be learned.

Only IG needs to understand the formations. She can set them up all on her own, except for the spirit energy. There's no reason to believe that she couldn't set them up in a way that would allow ordinary cultivators to finish the formations while having little to no knowledge of how they worked or what they did. We've actually seen this already with the MC and the Formations Grandmaster. She simply needs the necessary information and a large group of cultivators to work with. He can provide both so long as she provides people willing to learn to cultivate, which would be very easy for her to do.

The smithing that the cultivators do involves incorporating spirit energy, or more accurately, building the weapons to amplify and channel spirit energy. These techniques are already stated to have been incorporated into the mech designs of the future due to their superiority to conventional weaponry. There's no reason why he couldn't speed up that process. He wouldn't even need to tell her about cultivation if these changes also aid Professionals.

Its also important to realize that the ones who don't care are the Nine, not IG. As long as she can keep them from collaboratively telling her to stop, she can do whatever she wants. Of course, they'll probably have to prepare superior cultivation resources for the Nine so that they don't feel threatened by the people they've been oppressing for centuries, but that should be enough when combined with the massive benefits to be obtained from the Six Arts, especially since it will be clear that only a small number of people can really get full benefit from the world's cultivation resources and that they'll likely be that minority.

It really depends on how talismans are made in this series. Its fully possible that they can be mass produced with modern printing technology and then infused with spirit energy after the fact, or infused during production with powdered artificial spirit stones of some sort. It's impossible to say without IG researching it. As for it being a hoax, it would be child's play for him to prove that they work, so no worries there. And I've already addressed the corruption issue.

True, but those ingredients are starting to appear and he can bring more over to speed up the process in a beneficial way. So long as he also brings over the breeding/farming techniques, IG could handle the rest.

Alchemy pill's effects are usually quite dramatic. As such, proving their effects would be trivially easy. As for the ingredients, its basically the same answer as cooking. Though, the higher tier pills will likely be out of reach for a while since they mostly require ingredients with very high maturity. Still, even the low level pills could drastically speed up the development of low level cultivators and revolutionize various medical fields.

I'm not assuming she'll believe him. She never has before. But I do think she'll test them, and finding test subjects when you have as much money as he does is hardly difficult. Heck, if nothing else both of his harem members would happily volunteer.

It wouldn't be him spreading them. It would be IG. And since it would be IG, only the full Nine could stop her. So as long as even one of them refuses to stop her, it doesn't matter what the other eight think.

I know, but he knows the truth now and he's still pursuing the sword rather than things that are much more likely to be useful on a global scale. His own personal strength is honestly already high enough. He's already one of the strongest people in Reality and has the backing of the strongest person in both worlds. His personal strength is enough for the foreseeable future as far as he knows. Considering what he's learned about the current fate of Reality, he should be focusing everything he has on trying to increase the strength of its people to discourage the abbreviated timeline of the demons. And most importantly, pursuing this knowledge would only cost him SP. He's still fully capable of learning sword techniques and advancing his cultivation the old fashioned way. At least, I assume he can advance his cultivation without SP since all SP does is teach him the cultivation method and fill up his energy, both of which he should be fully capable of doing for himself.

 

What the 9 are really afraid of is the same as every other huge aristocratic alliance that are corrupt and bands together: Change. Even the Su's family head so far has been shown to pursue pure benefit, and nothing else, he only happens to be drawn in a slightly better light than the others thanks to him being related to one of our main female leads. We've seen that he can easily brush aside someone he knows has a lot of potential and potentially friendly to his family (our MC) in peer pressure of the 8 other Lords.

Impartial Goddess doesn't have the ability to influence any of the 9 Lords, directly or indirectly. And there's nothing stopping the 9 from just hogging the entire secret of cultivation to themselves while crying words of taboo and heresy about it to others. At least, i don't see them willing to share such secret at this point in time when they're clearly still in power and there's more to be gained when only their own clans have the ability to use those precious cultivation resources in the world (for example, buying them out before anyone knows what they're useful for). Yes, they'll eventually realize that they'll be better off spreading it out rather than hogging it all, but they will definitely hog it first, and in that case, whether MC share them or not right now doesn't matter.

I mean, the low-tier healing pills that are military grade, which are the best possible one for their grade( since you can't skimp on military funds without losing a war) only barely healed MC's wounds. It took 2 of them and a night of meditation to recover just enough to go out hunting again. How do we know that Reality's current level of medical expertise can't already do that?

And normal people can't even use them, only cultivators. It would take time for the first few people to become qi training stage 1 AND get hurt to test their effectiveness. MC got handed that for free from logging into the "game" so we can't measure how hard it is, but we know it takes talent, because the newest chapters said that cultivation world is lacking cultivators.

I agree. He's making and is going to continue making questionable decisions for a while. The reasoning for these decisions are later explained, but that doesn't justify how stupid they are with how MC was supposedly a supreme commander in the past life( I'm going to note here that a supreme commander and a country's leader are very different things, the way his job was described in the first few chapters makes him essentially a general whose expertise is only leading the army, NOT how to build or maintain one).

The only thing i can actually say to justify his decisions with the current knowledge we have, is that he actually DOESN'T know how bad the forseeable future could be. He mentioned that the Man Eater and Man Killer viruses only appeared half a year after the game has launched, and it drove humanity to despair at that time. I see no reason to believe that Reality at this point in time could even do something to fight back against it if it's as deadly as he made it out to be (you can see how worried he is about Anna's safety, despite her being someone famously strong at this point in time). Not to mention any other Apocalypse that might be coming. The MC can dream and talk about saving the world however much he wants, but if he can't even survive it, there's no point to any other preparations he made.

 

I'm pretty sure that wasn't one of the directives, but even if it were, she's not bound by them anymore. They're more like strong suggestions now. Also, if she just releases the information first with her seal of approval on it (after highly secret testing), before any of the Nine know about it, it will be very, very hard to hide the information again, especially if there's a sudden, "accidental" communication blackout around one of the Nine. They'd definitely be unhappy, but once the secret is out and can't possibly be put back in, it'll become more of a matter of how they personally can benefit more than the commoners rather than how to keep the commoners from benefiting at all.

That's only one type of pill that was specifically created for cultivator use. I sincerely doubt that there aren't any intended for mortal use or non-medical purposes. Also, he can just bring everything he needs from the cultivator world for the initial tests to prove that they do what he says they'll do. Sure, she'd want to test every pill thoroughly before releasing it to the market, but that's mostly a matter of planning and logistics, which is basically what she's built for. As I've said before, I don't think it would be difficult to find people willing to try to be cultivators, even if they limited themselves to looking among the low ranked Professionals, who almost certainly all have decent talent for it.

It was stated quite clearly that he handled all the minutia of the guild's daily operations. I remember because I thought it was ridiculous and that the author had no clue just how much went into running an organization of that size, regardless of its purpose, especially when it interacted with so many world governments so frequently.

Well, honestly, this is the main reason to talk to IG about it. Her primary purpose is dealing with issues of this magnitude.

Also, as I've said, his power level at the moment is probably already good enough for protecting himself and his loved ones for the foreseeable future. With the resources he has, advancing quickly along the path of cultivation is a given with or without SP (provided SP aren't a strict requirement). It's more important to start spending his SP for the greater good than to continue to spend them on himself. If worse comes to worst, he can just ask his sifu to help him find some mid level demons to slaughter for more SP. I doubt she'd even ask any questions and just assume he wanted to train in a more dangerous environment.

And I agree with you that Reality is boned right now, but that's exactly why I'm saying he should be trying to operate on a global (or at bare minimum, national) scale. He can't possibly save everyone, but the faster he acts, the more people he can save.

 

It's not a directive or anything, it's just a fact that she can't influence their decisions. Yes she can just cut off their communication for a short while, but they'll definitely notice that something is up, potentially rebooting her( it's been said that that's a thing) after finding out. And like I said, the 9 can just spread the words that that's heresy and can't be practiced while hogging it to themselves. The fact that IG gave it her stamp of approval can just be brushed off as a malfunction or our MC messing with her programming.( remember what the original 9 Lords promised during her launched) Just imagine, something like google spreads the word that there's a miracle method to become stronger, and the Queen of England + 8 other really rich and influential people says it's bull shit, don't use it, how many British people do you think will actually try out the method?

I mean, i'm not sure why you think this, but pills have always meant to only be used for cultivators. Not just in novels, but in historical records in China as well. The reasoning is that the more potent the pills, the more it uses ingredients that are too good for you, a mortal's body can't handle the excess energy, so it turns into a poison instead. Chinese medicine is known to not be a miracle cure, but rather works to improve the body overtime (meaning, constant usage of very expensive ingredients), you're right in the fact that there are some intended for mortal use and non-medicinal purposes, but they'd essentially be what we already have today, in real life, they're called Functional Foods.

We know this for a fact, since he has plot armor, but he doesn't. He doesn't know what kind of thing is waiting for him and the world in the "foreseeable future", and so he's paranoid. What would the foreseeable future look like when the world is rapidly changing? I'll remind you that just before MC went to cultivation world again, the world was still fine, but as soon as he left, things started burning and there were panicked people screaming in fear. We don't know what the things that tried to attack Anna and Feng Huo De was, but i'm going to guess they're Man Eater Fiends.

 

OOOOOOOOO, an LCD with in depth discussion on a novel I'm following daily.
What fun.

 

Honestly? Hundreds of thousands, but IG has a much better reputation than Google. Also, IG is quite capable of manipulating them in various small ways, she's simply never done it before because it hasn't occurred to her, likely as a side effect of the core directives.

Because in pretty much any cultivation novel in which the MC has non-cultivator family members, they'll try to prolong their family's lives via alchemical products that are only really useful for mortals. It's honestly quite common.

Honestly, I thought it was pretty obvious that it was the zombie plague victims. That said, he's already strong enough to deal with both viruses within himself. As for future threats, if he strengthens IG's forces, then he's strengthening himself. Well, as long as he's confident in the changes he made to her core programming anyway.

Its a matter of efficiency really. He can strengthen himself by 1 right now and the nation not at all, or his entire nation by .25 in the near future with more to come and himself by 1 over a much longer period. Obviously, in the vast majority of cases, the latter is drastically superior to the former, which he should know as a military commander. Its important to remember that the longer he waits to strengthen humanity, the lower their odds of survival as a species will be. Even if he dies, it would still be worth it if he brought about enough change to save those he loves and his species. Or at least, that's what he's supposed to believe from what I remember of his stated characterization.

 

I wonder if his harem can learn those elemental secret arts. They almost certainly have the appropriate spirit roots, but I'm not sure if the arts can be used without spirit energy, and he still hasn't taught either of them how to cultivate for some reason.

“Can you beat Qing Shan?” lol. I love this conversation

I'm mildly surprised that the saint didn't send any clones to watch over them in secret.

It's nice to see the MC's status being acknowledged for once in a series like this. Normally, that guard wouldn't have been stopped until he'd caused a scene.

I'm assuming that this is a tournament of some sort. I wonder if Xiuxiu will manage to keep it together well enough to show any of her skills, and if her opponents will have the good sense to not harm her more than necessary.

 

“Bai Hua Sect only sent two people, if you can’t come up here then you’d better just leave” Exactly how stupid is this guy? And how did someone so stupid become the direct disciple of a saint? He personally knows a saint, and should have heard many things about Bai Hua and even met her personally, and yet he thinks she's incompetent enough to have not prepared a way up for her disciples? He should just kill himself to absolve his master of the embarrassment of having picked such a fool as a disciple :/ (by the standards of his society btw. I don't advocate suicide for the mentally challenged as a general rule.)

I thought they (or at least, the MC) were supposed to show off a bit? Or is it just not their turn yet and he's keeping her entertained by watching the other testees? If so, then I wonder if that girl who hates sword cultivators will be the one watching over the weapons test

 

“I’ve really wanted to try the path of the Blade, but Shifu told me to train with the sword, no matter how much I beg, she wouldn’t give me a chance to take up the Blade” lol. I think his teacher would probably laugh about this, after teasing him a bit and maybe pretending to be angry

lol at the other sword cultivators. I wonder if any of them will be foolish enough to try to copy his excuses when she goes to beat him up

[The others held their secret art jade tags, then all at once: “Full marks!”] Her friends are easily bribed

Did the MC skip right passed the first three rounds because he was already in a sect? Also, in what way did those first two rounds eliminate cowards? They were just demonstrations of knowledge and technique.

I think his sifu would be quite angry if he accepted randos as his disciples. I'm not sure if she'd be angry enough to kick him out though. That said, I wonder if he'll use this loophole to get his harem into the sect. Well, assuming that anyone else is ever allowed to log into the game world, which is looking less and less likely with each passing chapter.

 

well, like they explained earlier, most people who participate and to try their best wants to get into a better sect, or a higher position in their sect. But since Bai Hua sect have so few people, there's no need to compete for resources, and as he's already a disciple of 1 of the 3 Saints(there's simply no sect that's better), there's no real reason for him to actually do anything unless his Shifu told him to, and she very specifically told them just to see their world and expand their horizon.

The 1st 2 rounds weren't designed to elimate cowards, but they were designed so that each person who passes had to go under a lot of scrutiny from a council of 3-6 judges. I think if they manage to keep their cool and pass under all that pressure, even if they are cowards, they wouldn't be the hopeless kind that'll just waste resource.