Chapter 134: The Burden of Wisdom, The Shop Closes

"Body Tempering Level 3, activate! I'm in tears, brothers—finally Body Tempering Level 3! I can inherit my Swift Painful Painful Minghun trait now, my power's about to skyrocket."

"This run earned me over 8,000 Shou Shou Jili—literally stuffing money into sacks. Forget pleasing ancient gods, nothing beats the Bliss Clan."

"Hearing you guys earn this much, my 2,000-plus Shou Shou Jili suddenly feels worthless. You deserve to die—how can you kill so many? I need to get a vehicle, speed advantage is way too important."

"Brothers, go spam the Explorer's livestream room with a tip—this ridiculous fortune all came from him."

"Black Room team-forming open. Add forum friends in advance, finish your Black Room isolation and head straight out. Brothers with vehicles, come on in—short-legs, don't DM me."

……

Players who had been kicked out of the Bliss Palace flooded the forum with screenshots of their Shou Shou Jili earnings.

This greatly stung players who hadn't taken this hidden quest seriously. While kicking themselves, they all began preparing to head out.

Players who had entered the Black Room isolation weren't idle either—they used the time to recruit teammates for a second trip into the palace.

At this point, the Bliss Clan clearly had no idea what kind of sinister force had latched onto them.

In players' eyes, profit outweighs everything.

The threat of death shrinks to nothing before profit—especially in a hidden zone like the Bliss Palace where you can grab rewards without breaking a sweat.

Normally, players have to fight tooth and nail just to take down one powerful monster, popping potions and coordinating the whole way.

But inside the Bliss Palace, you can just unload damage freely; high-Hunting-Level monsters don't fight back at all.

A hidden zone like this truly lives up to the name "Bliss."

One trip's never enough—after respawning, of course you've gotta go again.

Once the respawn cooldown ended, players quickly organized a massive force and marched in grand procession toward the branch space where the Bliss Palace sat.

On the way there this time, an unexpected surprise came up.

A player squad on the road ran into a Meng Yuan Chu monster, Hunting Level 29.

The monster looked like a mummy, with a pair of ghostly blue eyes. Its body was tightly wrapped in layers of dried, cracked bandages; through the gaps one could faintly see shriveled muscle contours and misaligned bone structure. Its eyes were sunken deep in withered sockets, and when it moved its steps were stumbling and heavy, each footfall accompanied by the friction of bandages and a low, rasping pant from somewhere inside its body.

Through player analysis, Qi Sheng received the feedback instantly.

【Ke Bing Xue (Third-Gen Meng Yuan Chu)】

Meng Yuan Chu Introduction: A Meng Yuan Chu monster that wields the Ke Bing Xue trait. Upon activating its ability, it generates a Ke Bing Xue Lao Yin above its head. Centered on itself, the Ke Bing Xue Lao Yin continuously absorbs the blood and Qi lost by nearby targets and converts it into healing energy to repair bodily damage. The coverage range of the Ke Bing Xue Lao Yin is affected by its own blood-Qi intensity (range, activation, and deactivation can be freely controlled).

……

The player squad that discovered the Third-Gen Meng Yuan Chu monster struck without hesitation.

But this Meng Yuan Chu monster was extremely tough to deal with.

During combat, a Fu Wen Lao Yin would float above its head, releasing a blood-colored shadow domain centered on itself with a 10-meter radius.

Fighting the Meng Yuan Chu monster inside the domain meant that any wound on your body would have blood drained from it nonstop, healing the Meng Yuan Chu monster's injuries—like trying to kill an unkillable cockroach.

This squad was mostly melee players, and fighting the Ke Bing Xue Meng Yuan Chu was brutally hard work.

In the end, they completed containment at the cost of two players respawning back at Imperial Tomb Village.

The containment of the Ke Bing Xue Yin sent Gargoyle-build players into a frenzy of joy.

Although the Painful Painful Minghun trait is completely useless against beings with energy-based bodies like the Hei Chao Xie Sui, it's devastatingly effective against the Insect Tide and other hostile forces that possess flesh-and-blood bodies.

Slotting in the Ke Bing Xue Painful Painful Minghun means you can stay standing longer in specific environments.

The moment the new Painful Painful Minghun appeared, it was already regarded by many Gargoyle-build players as a core Painful Painful Minghun that must be slotted in.

This containment also earned the player army an achievement.

When the Testing Tower functional building first appeared, there were 729 types of Painful Painful Minghun available for testing. Aside from previously contained ones, the rest were simulated Painful Painful Minghun that hadn't been contained.

Ke Bing Xue was the first Painful Painful Minghun to go from simulated to actually usable.

Before this, players had regarded these simulated Painful Painful Minghun as something they might never live to see contained, even if their real-life lifespans ran out.

After all, Monster World is vast beyond measure—finding the Meng Yuan Chu traits in the Painful Painful Minghun library among countless Meng Yuan Chu monsters is like fishing for a needle in the ocean; the odds of finding one are extremely low.

This successful containment quickly drew the attention of strategy-guide players.

New Star Vein combo builds debuted one after another under the testing of strategy-guide players.

Many players still on the road also joined the discussion to kill time during the journey.

During this time, one Star Vein combo build saw its like count climb rapidly.

This build was called: Blood Demon Mark Build.

On the Star Vein combo, it takes Gargoyle as the core, paired in order with Ke Bing Xue, Malignant Poison, Shatter, and Forbidden Blade.

The hallmark of this Star Vein combo is that even standing still, it deals continuous damage to nearby targets, and the blood lost from enemies' wounds heals the player's damaged body.

Since the Ke Bing Xue Yin is a domain-type skill similar to Lethargy, combining it with other effect-type Painful Painful Minghun can generate a melee domain.

During this time, as long as a target is wounded, the Ke Bing Xue Yin will drain its blood; the physical damage from blood-Qi loss stacks with the Malignant Poison trait, which automatically stacks with the Forbidden Blade trait, plus the physical-penetration effect of the Shatter domain.

During this time, enemies whose wounds worsen will produce more blood-Qi, forming a positive cycle of damage output and self-healing.

Moreover, this Blood Demon build's Star Vein combo has an extremely high ceiling—more effect-type Painful Painful Minghun can be stacked on in the future, granting strong defense while maintaining sustained damage output.

The test results of the new Painful Painful Minghun sent Gargoyle-build players into another frenzy of joy.

Since the game's launch, one of players' biggest headaches has been healing.

With no Painful Painful Minghun suited for a healer class, every heal has to come from chugging potions.

As Painful Painful Minghun levels rise, the strength of hunted monsters rises too.

Basic healing potions can no longer meet Gargoyle-build players' healing needs—often several bottles are needed to refill the health bar.

To save and improve in-combat healing efficiency, many Gargoyle-build players switched to intermediate healing potions.

Daily spending on potions is no small expense; it needs to be split among the rest of the squad, otherwise the burden on one person is too heavy and easily slows down growth.

Although Ke Bing Xue can't replace a healer class, it can ease the early-game healing problem.

Gargoyle-build players unanimously gave the new Painful Painful Minghun extremely high ratings on the forum.

After the Meng Yuan Chu containment interlude, the player army trekked over mountains and ridges toward the Bliss Palace.

During this period, they also discovered a domain node.

But this domain node was guarded by a powerful monster tribe nearby; they grew on the energy nurtured by the node, making it impossible for players to approach.

Without organizing a joint operation team, players also did not dare to rashly approach the domain node.

A day and a half later, the first batch of players arrived at the entrance of the Paradise Hall under the leadership of the Divine King.

But they did not rush to enter; instead, they surrounded the entrance to ensure no other players could sneak in.

The reason for doing so, the Divine King had already explained in a forum post.

He stated that although he had not entered the Paradise Hall last time, he had watched the livestream video from that occasion.

Having learned the lesson, the Paradise Clan's reaction speed would obviously be much faster than last time, so it was safer to wait for more people before going in together.

This way, players arriving late could also profit from it.

The Divine King's actions earned the praise of many "short-legged" players, and his extremely high reputation also made many players who arrived one step ahead willing to give him face.

Although there were still players who felt unhappy about it.

But the guild led by the Divine King was the number one guild in the game, and his friends were all guild leaders ranked among the top in the game, so they were unwilling to make enemies of the Divine King.

Moreover, this idea also received support from a large number of players; raising opposition at this time would undoubtedly provoke the disgust of other players.

Time came to noon the next day.

The charge's horn sounded.

The spatial spirit-runes behind the ancient tree flashed continuously, sending batch after batch of players to the Paradise Hall.

Passing through the first door, after breaking free from the spiritual corrosion of the Force of Bliss, the players once again launched the Happy Exorcism operation.

This time, with the addition of several major guilds, many high-level Fallen that previously could not be hunted also became focus-fire targets.

The efficiency of producing Shou Shou Jili through exorcism increased significantly.

During this period, an amusing incident occurred.

In the Wicked Desire Gate scene, a strangely shaped monster suddenly spawned. Its build was burly, roughly as wide as two horses standing side by side, its limbs strong and powerful, its skin a deep grayish-brown covered with rough, ancient bark-like textures, and the most striking feature was a pair of giant ram horns on its head.

This was obviously a monster that had entered the Paradise Hall scene through spatial spirit-runes from other regions.

Having just entered the scene, it was corroded by the Force of Bliss, but its eyes still held clarity.

The players who saw this scene did not hesitate to exorcise it on the spot; the whole process took less than 1 minute.

The player who killed the monster gave the reason that this was a being about to fall into the demonic path, and they were helping it find release early.

This was precisely the characteristic of the Paradise Palace.

Every branch node scene had multiple spatial passages connecting to the Monster World; new beings could enter at any time and become new machines for nurturing the Force of Bliss.

And the passage the players discovered was merely one of the multiple passages this node scene used to interface with the outside world.

……

Paradise Main Hall.

Countless spatial ribbons wrapped around the Zhudian, continuously infusing the Force of Bliss into the Zhudian.

The Lord of Bliss, standing on the altar of the Zhudian, was like a spider at the center of a web, able to sense the status of every node on the great web through consciousness and pinpoint them precisely.

Just then, the Lord of Bliss suddenly opened his eyes, a hint of doubt surfacing in his heart.

Because he once again sensed that an anomaly had appeared in the third spatial node scene of the Pale Continent, and the Force of Bliss produced was continuously decreasing.

"Xie Yu."

"Your subordinate is here." Not far ahead, a purple figure materialized as the air twisted.

"Go again, there's a problem there once more."

Xie Yu nodded respectfully, his form transforming into a streak of light before vanishing.

20 minutes later, Xie Yu's figure returned, kneeling on one knee before the Lord of Bliss:

"My Lord, it's that player clan coming in to cause trouble again; they are about to slaughter clean all the Fallen in the three spatial nodes of the Pale Continent."

Hearing these words, the Lord of Bliss became somewhat unsettled.

The first time could be a coincidence, accidentally entering the Paradise Hall scene, but the second time was clearly a targeted attack.

Based on Xie Yu's description, the player clan's strength was weak; he could not figure out why the player clan dared to challenge him.

Just one Xie Yu was already a being the player clan could not contend with; every time the player clan entered the Paradise Hall, they had to lose a large number of clansmen, yet they could not take anything away—what was the purpose of their actions?

Could it merely be to satisfy their desire for wanton slaughter?

Thinking of this, a strange look appeared in the Lord of Bliss's eyes.

He thought of a new force wreaking havoc in the Monster World.

This force's characteristics were extremely similar to the behavior of this group of players: fond of bloodthirsty slaughter, unafraid of death.

But unlike the player clan, this was a force with limitless growth potential and an extremely powerful foundation; they were called the Battle Bug Race by other races.

Beings of this race had also been captured by the Paradise Hall.

At the time, it shocked him.

He discovered that the captured Bug Race warriors, after entering the Paradise Hall, launched bloodthirsty attacks on those Fallen, completely unaffected by the Force of Bliss.

The conclusion of the investigation was that Bug Race warriors had no memory or thought logic at all.

Their memories could not piece together any images; they could only act through commands issued by the Bug Race Overbrain, and when not receiving any commands, they would attack all targets driven by their bloodthirsty instinct, even if that target was far stronger than themselves.

Therefore, all Bug Race warriors were emotionless monsters, with only slaughter in their eyes.

Upon learning this news at the time, he attempted to decipher the signals through which the Bug Race Overbrain issued commands to the Bug Race warriors, to see if he could control the Bug Race warriors.

But not understanding the principles of Bug Race life construction, he found he simply could not do it.

Later, by a chance opportunity, a spatial node scene captured a low-level Bug Race Overbrain.

This discovery made him think he had found an opportunity to control the Bug Race; he wanted to study the Bug Race Overbrain to understand the signal characteristics for controlling Bug Race warriors, and then simulate issuing commands through the Zao De Huan Jing created by the Force of Bliss.

But this research made him feel a bone-chilling cold.

He could basically conclude that the Zerg Overmind had no intelligence of its own.

The entire species shared a single brain resource.

Every action of the Zerg Overmind had to be uploaded to a superior Overmind first, relayed layer by layer, then processed by the Supreme Overmind which issued feedback, and only then would the lower Overmind issue commands to the Zerg.

This meant that unless one directly controlled the Zerg Supreme Overmind, there was no possibility of controlling the Zerg.

Although this was only his speculation, he felt it was infinitely close to the truth.

Because the lower Zerg Overmind was likewise unaffected by the Bliss Power, like a machine birthing slaughter soldiers — once it entered the Bliss Space it would madly spawn Zerg warriors and launch slaughter operations.

If not controlled in time, the Zerg Overmind would utterly destroy that branch node.

An emotionless slaughter machine perfectly countered their Bliss Race's most powerful mental-control ability.

He also regarded the Zerg as one of the greatest challenges of the future.

Contact with the Zerg also gave him a new idea — or rather, an inspiration — for the future development of his species.

He discovered that several superpowers shared a common trait.

Concentrating intelligence in extremely few individuals, while the warriors were all emotionless slaughter machines.

The Terror Black Tide was no different.

An extremely small number of intelligent evil spirits controlled the vast Black Tide legion.

The Zerg example was even more extreme — likely a single Supreme Overmind controlling warriors that spanned multiple worlds, conducting multi-front warfare through unimaginable information-transmission speeds.

This discovery made him begin to ponder a question: why did these Catastrophe legions build this kind of war-legion structure?

After racking his brains, he thought of one possibility.

In the eyes of these Catastrophe-level forces, intelligence was merely a tool, not a trait beneficial to survival and development.

Intelligence breeds emotion, and emotion breeds sentiment.

When a group of intelligent beings gathered together, a great many unstable factors would emerge.

Power, schemes, desire… these emotions were all factors that affected a force's growth, and could even lead to internal infighting and wasteful internal strife.

And the Zerg legion structure avoided this problem very well.

Intelligence concentrated in a single individual; the rest were machines perfectly executing slaughter orders.

With no internal strife or any internal contradictions born of emotional influence, the species' development efficiency was like a precision instrument, with no breakthroughs from within.

Recalling how, when he had once ruled the five great worlds, many small forces had indeed collapsed under accumulated internal contradictions and been easily destroyed by enemies.

Through this reflection, the Lord of Bliss understood one principle.

Too much intelligence within a species could very well become a burden on development.

Therefore a legion structure with minimal intelligence was very suitable for super Catastrophe legions like the Zerg Tide and Black Tide.

Having understood the principle, he also began the Bliss Race's reconstruction plan, wanting to emulate the legion structure of the Black Tide and Zerg Tide.

But at this stage the plan was still in its infancy, showing no results for the time being, and many problems remained unsolved.

For example, how to let a single individual easily command a vast war legion like the Zerg Tide and Black Tide.

Information-transmission efficiency and information-transmission range were a hard-to-solve problem.

Next was the creation of slaughter machines — how to build a troop-type structure with multiple combat systems like the Zerg Tide and Black Tide.

These were all long-term prospects he wanted to attempt, yet could never find a direction to solve.

Coming back to himself, Bliss looked at Xie Yu kneeling on one knee before him.

The situation of the Player Race described by Xie Yu was completely different from the Zerg.

They possessed intelligence and emotion, yet could also block the influence of Bliss Power like the Zerg — this indeed seemed very unreasonable.

But no matter how unreasonable every phenomenon that had already occurred was, it could only be attributed to his own shallow understanding.

This was clearly a special life-structure beyond his cognitive grasp.

He did not dwell on this question.

The weak Player Race could be easily slaughtered by Xie Yu alone; even if they possessed traits that perfectly countered the Bliss Race, they would not cause him any trouble.

"Xie Yu, withdraw."

Xie Yu nodded at this moment, his form vanishing.

……

Two days later.

The Lord of Bliss suddenly opened his eyes.

"Xie Yu, the third spatial node of the Pale Continent…"

Upon once again receiving news that a spatial node had been invaded by the Player Race, the Lord of Bliss could no longer hold himself together.

This was already the third time.

The Player Race clearly treated the Bliss Palace as a place to slaughter for amusement.

But this pleasure was not granted by Bliss Power — it only harmed his interests.

With the same node scene once again in crisis, he even had the thought of stationing Xie Yu permanently at the third spatial node.

But thinking it over carefully, he gave up on the idea.

Xie Yu and the other 31 confidants were important forces for him to oversee the vast Bliss Palace network; for the safety of a single scene, there was no need at all to dispatch a general to be permanently stationed.

By comparison, there was another, easier way to solve the problem.

That was to completely shut down the spatial passage through which the Player Race entered the Bliss scene.

As long as the spatial passage was closed, the third spatial scene of the Pale Continent could still operate normally, and other passages could continue to be used to capture Fallen and produce Bliss Power for him.

As for the loss of closing one passage, it could be ignored.

After all, every node scene had dozens of spatial passages connecting to Monster World.

The third spatial node of the Pale Continent that the Player Race had entered had 67 external spatial passages — closing one had no impact.

……

Another two days passed.

When the players arrived at the coordinates, circled around the ancient tree, and tried to enter the Hall of Bliss through the spatial spirit pattern—

They were shocked to discover that the spatial spirit pattern on the ground had vanished.

Unwilling to accept it, the players dug three feet into the earth, hoping to find the spatial spirit pattern that might be buried deep underground.

But the facts proved that the spatial spirit pattern had truly disappeared.

This meant the gateway to the Hall of Bliss had been completely shut.

This discovery left countless players pounding their chests and stamping their feet, wailing in lamentation.

After finally finding a spot to happily grind Shou Shou Jili, the good days hadn't even lasted a few before the scene actually closed down.

Players who arrived later learned the news and felt as if struck by lightning, regretting that they had missed the last train.

Players flocked to the forum to launch a heated discussion about the closure of the Hall of Bliss passage:

"It's all your fault for being too brutal—you crashed the hidden dungeon, and now they've shut up shop. Everyone's happiness is gone."

"I remember your ID, upstairs. Yesterday on the regional channel you were the loudest one cheering. How can you blame us for crashing the hidden dungeon? Search your conscience—how much Shou Shou Jili did you rake in? Post a screenshot of your combat log record (eating dirt and slamming the table. jpg)."

"I knew it would end sooner or later if things kept going like this. Every time you lot went in, it was kill, kill, kill. I hadn't even gotten to experience the joy of the Door of Depravity before the passage closed. So painful."

"Too many zero-yuan purchases, of course they'd shut the door. What shop can withstand endless zero-yuan purchases? Once you've made your money, that's enough… Oh, and to stir up some hate—I earned fifteen thousand Shou Shou Jili, hahaha (combat log screenshot. jpg)."

Just as the players were lamenting the closure of the Hall of Bliss passage, some players offered a hopeful outlook.

They said they had already consulted the guide, and that there were still a large number of spatial passages connecting to the Hall of Bliss within the Monster World scenes. Perhaps in the not-too-distant future, this lost happiness would be continued.

This comment was quickly liked by countless users and pinned to the top.

Having tasted the flavor of happiness, the players were all full of anticipation for the next encounter.

By then, what would come to the Hall of Bliss would be a far more powerful version of them. Whether killing speed or killing efficiency, both would see significant improvement.

When that day came, the happiness would double, and the gains would double.

The happy event of the Hall of Bliss came to a close with this.

The importance of the Explorer-type players was also proven in this "Hall of Bliss" incident.

Although this group of players had weak combat power, they could always bring new opportunities to the entire player faction.

The last Snake Ancestor ruins, as well as this time's Hall of Bliss—both were benefits brought to them by the Explorer-type players.

Especially the forum player "Explorer," who was revered by countless players as the leader of the Explorer faction.

But this did not stop players from using the Explorer series of memes to play with the joke. Even many newbies who had just joined the game, after learning about the previous game history, also joined the ranks of those playing with the joke.

(*≧▽≦) The "Daily Update of Ten Thousand Words" achievement for 30 consecutive days of explosive updates has been reached—it's the first time out of so many books.

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(End of this chapter)