Chapter 3: Don’t Panic, I Know This Routine
“All tests are complete.”
“Damn it, I have to start all over and act through it again.”
Lin Qi watched as Fang Zhen on the ground slowly dispersed and turned to ashes. He could not help letting out a sigh. Being an NPC was really not easy. Then his gaze shifted to the time displayed on his wrist, and he added a few words under Fang Zhen’s entry in his notebook.
Limit time: 2 hours 23 minutes 14 seconds.
Body perception: poor.
Overall review: kindergarten senior class candidate.
“Without any protection, this is about their limit time resisting under pollution. Looks like it’s necessary to purchase a batch of protective equipment.” Thinking of the few bits he had left, Lin Qi’s head started to ache.
The risk in the wilderness was not only monsters, but also many areas polluted by radiation. Generally, without the ability to resist radiation pollution for five or six hours, it was very hard to survive in the wilderness.
In addition, people who were physically sharp in perception could also survive in the wilderness for a long time.
This kind of person, the moment they stepped into a polluted area, could quickly move away, and thus would not be killed by long-term radiation.
But players like Fang Zhen were clearly not in this category.
Previously he had borrowed thirty thousand bits from the Gorilla Gang. After buying weapons and paying back Luo Qi’s money, plus the cost of running the martial arts hall’s generator, 18,500 bits were gone.
Adding the food and water needed for his physical recovery these days, that was another 495 bits.
On top of that, the hospital cost 2,500 bits per month. In total, that came to 21,495 bits.
If you wanted players to farm, you had to cover their daily food and drink. A player’s daily consumption, at the minimum of one box of high-protein biscuits and one bottle of water, came to about 3 bits a day. The daily expense per person was actually not big.
With the money he had now, never mind supporting ten players. Even supporting twenty or thirty players, keeping them fed until they watched him go see those gorillas, would not be a problem.
But planting blood essence rice was another matter.
Under normal conditions, planting one stalk of blood essence rice required 4 square meters of energy land, and one stalk could yield 10 grams of blood essence rice.
If you wanted to produce half a kilo of blood essence rice, you needed 200 square meters of energy land.
If you wanted to earn thirty thousand in a month, you had to open up at least thirty thousand square meters in the wilderness. If you divided it into three plantings, then ten thousand square meters each time. And that was without deducting the cost of seeds and water.
There was not much energy land in relatively safe wilderness areas. The energy land closer to the city was almost all controlled by the major gangs in the City of Light Chasing. The few scraps left still had countless unregistered nomads scrambling for them, so finding hidden energy land was very difficult.
Places closer to the city were either very small in area or very scattered. Planting there was easy to discover and hard to manage.
Farther from the city, monsters were very active, and the risk of travelling back and forth was extremely high. If you got robbed once on the way, you would not even have a place to cry.
If you now added the cost of another set of protective equipment, the risk of letting players farm to make money would undoubtedly increase a lot. Once a player died in the wilderness, the protective equipment would be gone as well. But without protective equipment, it was hard for players to operate outside the city. It was simply a dilemma.
“Good grief. A set of second-hand wilderness protection gear sells for 3,000 bits?” Lin Qi glanced at the product price shown on his wrist and almost without hesitation closed the display, feeling his eyes had been offended. Then he took out his notebook and flipped through it. “Looks like I can only carry out plan B. The deaths will be many more, but it wins in safety.”
Obsidian Martial Arts Hall was originally located in what used to be the city center of the City of Light Chasing, but due to beast tide resistance and all kinds of radiation pollution, it had become the current abandoned area.
Although most of the abandoned area was polluted, as the former city center, there were many energy veins underground. Even if they had long been hollowed out, the energy contained underground was still dense.
You could say that as long as you were willing to spend time and manpower to open up underground planting areas, even if many places were unusable due to pollution, the profit brought by the remaining plantable spots would not be low.
At least for him personally, he thought quite highly of it. It was just lower and slower than planting in the wilderness.
“Next is the rewards to motivate those players.”
Thinking of this, Lin Qi could not help patting all over the pockets of his clothes. As the founder of a game technology company, Lin Qi knew players’ minds all too well. It was impossible to freeload off players for nothing, but if you could offer good rewards,
then there was nothing in the world more crazy or more grind-happy than players.
But after groping around for quite a while, he did not find anything decent. Especially as the owner of a martial arts hall, he could not be too shabby.
Just as Lin Qi was about to open his wrist display to search carefully for some second-hand goods, the corner of his eye suddenly caught sight of the scattered elementary school textbooks on the passage floor.
Fitness Breathing Technique!
“Perfect, this is it!” Lin Qi strode over, picked up the Fitness Breathing Technique that was missing half its pages, and nodded in satisfaction. “Luckily the players who come to this world don’t speak the language. Next I just need to copy it down, change the name to Startling Spirit Breathing Technique, and if they can’t master it or practice it well, that’s their talent problem.”
…
In his live stream room, Fang Zhen stared at the High Martial Arts Descend icon displayed inside the virtual pod, unable to recover for a long while.
“Brothers, was I just playing High Martial Arts Descend?” Fang Zhen could not help asking the viewers in the live stream, completely unable to believe it was real.
That texture, that touch,
and that piercing pain in his body.
It was exactly the same as reality. It was insanely real.
“Brother Zhen, you are so good at acting. Tell us, did the game manufacturer pay you?”
“Brother Zhen, your performance just now was incredible. I really thought you had been kidnapped.”
“The streamer is amazing. This is the first time I’ve watched a live stream of someone doing squats for two hours without panting. That stamina is truly enviable.”
The viewers in the live stream looked at the shocked expression on Fang Zhen’s face and all teased him, feeling he was overacting. It was just a game; he made it look too real.
“Brother Zhen, you did squats for two hours. How’s the virtual degree of this game? Is it realistic?”
“Come on, Brother Zhen did squats for two hours. Isn’t that real enough?”
“But this game’s opening is a bit hard. It starts with two hours of squats, and Brother Zhen died without even getting out of the room. The game manufacturer definitely did that on purpose. They just don’t want people to refund.”
Watching Fang Zhen still in a daze, the viewers’ curiosity was piqued and they all started asking.
Watching virtual games in a live stream was like watching a movie. Viewers could not experience it personally. There were only two camera angles: a third-person view and the player’s view. Apart from the image quality, they could not feel anything.
“Virtual degree? Real or not?” Fang Zhen looked at High Martial Arts Descend on the screen. His eyes grew brighter, and even his voice trembled slightly as he said, “Brothers, I can only tell you I have never played such a real game. That sense of realism is truly unprecedented. I can hype this up all day. High Martial Arts Descend is absolutely the masterpiece of the year and will definitely explode worldwide in the future.”
“Those other masterpieces with more than 75% virtual degree have done a good job with gravity systems and body feedback systems, but compared to High Martial Arts Descend, they fall far short. I could feel the fatigue all over my body with every squat. Especially at the moment of death, the piercing pain in my body was incredibly clear, just like real life. Calling it 100% virtual degree is really not an exaggeration.”
“But this game has some flaws too. For example, there is no novice guidance, no game window. After I got in, I did not even know how to log off. There’s also no character customization. It just copies your face and body 100% as is, not giving you any chance at all.”
“And the newbie start is way too hard. It starts with two thousand squats. Without enough willpower, players probably can’t complete it. We need to have the manufacturer redo that, otherwise it will scare off newcomers.”
As Fang Zhen talked about his experience of High Martial Arts Descend, he also pointed out some of its shortcomings. Although he mentioned quite a few flaws, his gaze grew hotter as he spoke.
A second spring.
Fang Zhen felt his second spring had arrived.
The career of a professional competitive player was very short. Generally, it ended around thirty. Only those at the top tier could last to thirty-five and make a fortune.
The currently hottest mecha combat game, Mecha Continent, was something Fang Zhen had entered late. Combined with his older age, he had fought desperately just to get into a professional league team in Mecha Continent, and that team was now on the verge of being optimized out. Achieving anything big there seemed very unlikely.
But High Martial Arts Descend now gave Fang Zhen a chance.
A virtual degree of 100%. Just from the name, you knew it was a combat game. Once it became popular, it would definitely form its own professional competitive league circle. Its popularity surpassing Mecha Continent, which only had a 75% virtual degree, would not be a problem at all.
And as one of the first batch of players to experience High Martial Arts Descend, as long as he seized the opportunity, becoming a top-tier expert in the future professional scene was not impossible.
“Brother Zhen, you’ve given a lot of useful advice for newcomers, but have you considered one possibility… that newcomers can’t get in at all?”
“I’ve already paid a while ago, and it still shows I’m queueing for connection.”
“No way, 4,999 bucks and you guys already paid?”
“What 100% virtual degree? Fake. This is obviously the game manufacturer hiring a streamer to advertise and scam people. On the surface, it limits to ten players, but it doesn’t stop more people from paying to queue. Is that not a scam? Since real players can’t play anyway, these streamers can brag however they like.”
“This is clearly the streamer farming hype. If it really had 100% virtual degree, I’d hype it to the moon too.”
“Newbie here, is this game real or fake?”
“I don’t believe it. Unless I can play it for free.”
As Fang Zhen kept praising High Martial Arts Descend in his live stream, many viewers wanted to try it out. At the same time, many players jumped out accusing Fang Zhen of being in cahoots with the game manufacturer, deliberately tricking people into buying a game that could not really be played.
For a while, the live stream was full of arguments. Viewership kept rising, faintly pushing toward the top ten game live streamers list. The name of High Martial Arts Descend spread wider and wider, and more and more players were either questioning it or ecstatic about it.
“Everyone listen. This game is still in trial testing. The fact it can still be purchased now means they will probably release more quotas later. If you don’t believe, then forget it. I have a clear conscience. I’ll keep streaming this game.” Looking at the viewers cursing and mocking him non-stop, Fang Zhen stopped explaining and decided to strike while the iron was hot. “Family, let’s continue. I won’t end the stream today as long as I can still start.”
After he finished speaking, Fang Zhen recharged The icon of High Martial Arts Descend lit up and was no longer greyed out.
In the dark basement, the cold wind still howled, and wails echoed constantly.
“Two more this time?”
Fang Zhen opened his eyes and found there were now two more people beside him, a man and a woman, both wearing gray T-shirt long gowns.
Both were young. The man looked under twenty, with a shy student air. The woman seemed twenty-three or twenty-four, with fair skin and shoulder-length hair, her brows carrying a heroic spirit, like a wandering heroine from the martial world.
At this moment, both were newly awakened. They were confused about suddenly being in this environment, staring around in a daze. When they saw Lin Qi sitting at the iron-framed table, holding a notebook in one hand and a pen in the other, panic flashed across their faces.
Watching the flustered pair, Fang Zhen, for some reason, felt his earlier depression swept away, replaced by a hint of accomplishment.
“Everyone, don’t panic.” Fang Zhen stood up, patted the dirt off his pants, and looked at the two very calmly. “I’m familiar with this process.”
After hearing this, the student and the heroine both relaxed a lot. Their gazes turned to Fang Zhen, this bearded big brother, as if they had found their pillar of support, and their previous anxiety disappeared.
“Name?”
“Fang Zhen.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“You’re a bit old.”
“I think I still have potential. I can prove it.”
For a moment, Lin Qi asked and Fang Zhen answered, every reply firm and neither humble nor arrogant, fully displaying the bearing of a veteran player.
“Good. In that case, prove it.” Lin Qi looked at the confident Fang Zhen and nodded in satisfaction. This was the model player and worthy of his active cooperation. Lin Qi then picked up an alloy shovel from the ground and tossed it in front of Fang Zhen. “Turn right at the passage ahead. There is a small warehouse there. Limit time is two hours and twenty minutes. Dig down five meters and open up a space of ten cubic meters. You may begin.”
During the new-book period, Old Cat will update twice a day.
