Chapter 145-1: Rule Enlightenment, Game Cheating (1) |
Primordial Altar.
Qi Sheng’s consciousness rapidly switched among four scenes: the Emperor’s Mound Mountain Range, the Colorful Mist Coast, the Rimewinter Snowfield, and the player forum.
Among them, the starkest contrast in player activity was between the Emperor’s Mound Mountain Range and the Rimewinter Snowfield.
Both sides had organized massive warbands, confronting the terrifying Black Tide and the Purple Tide of Ecstasy respectively.
On the Emperor’s Mound Mountain Range side, the war scene was magnificent.
Countless Light Shields rapidly formed and linked together at the front of the battle line, creating a golden great shield that withstood the ferocious pounding of the Black Tide.
Accompanied by God King’s roar in the voice channel, Spell Towers rose one after another from the center of the formation like bamboo shoots after a spring rain.
Each tower’s elemental effect could be judged by the energy orb floating at its tip, glittering like stars brightening in a night sky, bursting with brilliant light.
They finally converged into a spectacular forest of Spell Towers.
The earth trembled, the elemental torrent raged, and a large number of Black Tide Evil Entities perished under this round of elemental bombardment.
On the other side.
Though also players, the combat style in the Rimewinter Snowfield looked like a different game altogether.
Newbie players were brawling with the Ecstasy Evil Entities of like street thugs.
Neck holds, choke locks, eye pokes, head thumps, biting attacks, clutching each other and rolling on the ground. Shouts and curses filled the air, the scene rivaling a village melee by the crossroads, nothing like the battle style a Monster World should have.
But while observing from the shadows, Qi Sheng still noticed that this round of Purple Tide Evil Entities had clearly grown stronger.
This was obviously a new wave of resource support granted to the test base by the Lord of Ecstasy, with a strength level calibrated precisely to keep pace with the players’ growth.
It could be affirmed that the Lord of Ecstasy had the same idea as he did, treating the other side as a whetstone for drilling troops.
The difference was that his player legion could profit from it, whereas the Lord of Ecstasy was continuously investing resources.
Even so, Qi Sheng had confidence in the Lord of Ecstasy.
On his last trip to the Palace of Ecstasy, Guide roughly calculated the reserve of the power of ecstasy stored in the main hall of Ecstasy. Converted into sacrificial power, it was about 130 billion, and that was only the reserve stored inside the Palace of Ecstasy. There were still reserves at other nodes that had not been drawn.
Meanwhile, every passing second, new power of ecstasy was being generated in other node scenes.
This was the growth rate the Lord of Ecstasy had only achieved after arriving in the Monster World.
If it were a small world, the collection speed of the power of ecstasy simply could not accelerate.
Because the output of the power of ecstasy did not have much to do with quantity.
Guide had analyzed the core logic of power of ecstasy output and found that its production paid more attention to the quality of the individual and was related to the strength of an individual’s mental power and vitality.
So called essence and qi referred to mental power and vitality.
The production process of the power of ecstasy took these two energies within a living being as the foundation, then catalyzed and fused them with rules, finally generating the power of ecstasy.
During extraction, as life lost excessive essence and qi, it would gradually move toward death.
If the Lord of Ecstasy built a palace node on Earth and targeted ordinary people for extraction, the output would become extremely low.
Because the vitality and mental power strength of the overwhelming majority of Earth’s living beings generally did not reach the minimum threshold for extraction.
They would be sucked dry of essence and qi within a few seconds inside the Palace of Ecstasy.
But the Monster World was different.
The living beings of the Monster World were all extremely strong. Any randomly captured ordinary lifeform could yield a considerable output of the power of ecstasy.
A powerhouse above level one hundred, after falling inside the Palace of Ecstasy, could produce power of ecstasy equal to the contribution of several billion living beings in a mundane small world.
So quantity was not the key. Quality was the key.
Otherwise, the Lord of Ecstasy could have set up a breeding farm for ordinary lifeforms like the Ascension race, increasing production of the power of ecstasy through rapid reproduction of lower-realm beings, without needing to capture targets the way he did now to create revenue.
This was precisely the core reason countless outsider forces descended upon the Monster World.
The resource conditions of small worlds were limited and could no longer meet the development needs of many powerful forces.
Only a vaster heaven and earth like the Monster World could bring them new progress and growth.
Qi Sheng’s view now switched to the Rimewinter Snowfield.
In the image, several hundred newbie players were advancing in groups toward the snow ridges.
Their target was the newly discovered Territory Node, Space-Origin Peak.
The initiator of this operation was a newbie on the forum. After learning that Space-Origin Peak could produce high-value spatial spirit ores, he posted a theft plan on the forum with Space-Origin Peak as the direct target.
The post attracted quite a few newbies to join.
In a short time, they organized a force of several hundred and marched toward the Space-Origin Peak Territory Node.
Their thinking was simple. Even if they died, digging up a single stone would be worth it.
By asking Guide they learned that the value of one Space-Origin Stone was around 300 points of sacrificial power. Although the output was not high, as long as they dug up one, they could earn back the cost of death.
Most importantly, it was thrilling.
This was also one of the biggest differences between newbie players and veteran players.
Newbies had a shallow understanding of monster strength. Some even felt that as long as enough players joined this theft operation, they could turn theft into open robbery.
They would seize the Territory Node using the method of many ants biting an elephant to death.
But the veterans knew full well that a tactic that was only theoretically feasible had no meaning.
With the blessing of Quick Revival, players indeed could, through a war of attrition, defeat even the Black Tide and the Swarm, the kinds of strong enemies that could infinitely spawn troops for attrition. Yet the time and effort required would be so great that it would be better to hunt a target matched to their own strength for higher returns.
In the eyes of veteran players, the hunt level of the Snow Ridge Great Wilderness was near invincible, and wearing down even a single one would require unimaginable effort and time, to say nothing of a group.
But in the eyes of newbies, there was still a chance to fight.
It verified the saying that newborn calves are not afraid of tigers.
Newbies simply did not care about the cost performance veterans talked about. As long as there was profit to be had, they would charge even a god.
Without paying it much more attention, Qi Sheng turned his gaze toward the Colorful Mist Coast.
The dense forest behind the coast had two resource Territory Nodes erupting into battle.
Two player warbands, each nearly a thousand strong, were attempting to seize the Territory Nodes.
The gaze continued probing deeper beyond the dense forest.
At the end of the path opened by exploration-party players was a scene of an Evil Moon domain illuminated by a waning moon.
But unlike the Evil Moon domains encountered before, although an Evil Eye Tower had already formed inside, only the Evil Eye hovered above the tower platform, with no sign of an Evil Spirit warrior in command.
A sweep over every corner of the Evil Moon scene revealed no trace of any Evil Spirit warrior.
Strangely, however, the Black Tide surged beneath the tower, having already formed a scale even greater than when controlled by the Earthmind Evil Spirit.
“Where is the Evil Spirit?”
In response to the question, Guide pondered briefly before giving an answer:
[Based on player information gathered in the records, it can be basically confirmed that the Evil Spirit warrior in this Evil Moon domain has already been decapitated and killed, hence the special situation where the tower remains, the Evil Eye remains, the Black Tide remains, but the Evil Spirit warrior has disappeared.]
[And the one who most likely killed the Evil Spirit warrior was the master of players Xia Sheng and Jiang Cheng, namely Ascetic who created the Pain Brand.]
[According to the Information Database, before dying Ascetic decided to fulfill his last wish, burning life essence to battle the Black Tide with Pain Tendrils, then flying into the depths of the forest. Judging by the flight direction, it was clearly this Evil Moon domain… so he succeeded.]
Hearing Guide’s analysis, Qi Sheng suddenly remembered that such a thing had indeed happened.
About a month ago, when the flame of life was about to burn out, Ascetic, after leaving a legacy to his two disciples Xia Sheng and Jiang Cheng, resolutely chose to burn himself for one battle against the Black Tide to test whether the results of his lifelong effort were feasible.
With the Black Tide having lost its Evil Spirit warrior, and combined with what Ascetic did, the answer was self evident.
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