Chapter 262: Peak of the Four Gods, Player Ecology

【Challenger Prompt: Kill the "Dominant Sword"…….】

After the challenger prompt, Jiang Cheng and Xia Sheng's secondary Painful Painful Minghun both leveled up by 2.

The main Painful Painful Minghun, Painful Touch, remained unchanged, as it cannot grow through hunting.

In addition to the evolution point gain, the bloodied Dominant Sword yielded 230,000 Shou Shou Jili.

This was not all.

Some of the Dominant Sword's materials could still be listed on the trading market, bringing at least another 100,000 Shou Shou Jili in extra gains.

A hunting level of over 100 would normally be enough to instantly obliterate an entire player legion.

The rewards from the kill were also extremely generous, leaving Jiang Cheng and Xia Sheng thoroughly enriched.

While feeling joy, they still felt some regret.

They could not obtain the Dominant Sword's rule imprint, not even a Yan Sheng Lao Yin.

With the blessing of the artifact's rule, the strength of the Painful Painful Minghun would undergo a qualitative transformation.

In the future, besides absorbing pain from their own bodies, they could also absorb various painful emotions from their enemies.

For example, just now, when they unleashed Painful Touch upon the Dominant Sword, the immense agony the Dominant Sword endured could also be absorbed as pain energy.

But this required possessing the artifact's rule.

As for why the Yan Sheng Lao Yin on the Dominant Sword could not be stripped, the guide's answer was that even if stripped, it would be meaningless—this derivative rule's strength was utterly insufficient to form a Painful Minghun.

Even if retained, the source of the artifact's rule imprint remained in the hands of the Artifact Clan, capable of severing the connection at any moment.

Like the War Imprints on the soldiers of the Counterflow Legion, a single thought from the Counterflow God could sever the connection.

Without control over the remote's switch, a derivative rule incapable of being formed into a Painful Minghun was meaningless; the Artifact Clan's high-ups would instantly detect any change.

This would cause the painstakingly cultivated Yan Sheng Lao Yin to have its connection to the source severed, rendering it completely useless.

But overall, the rewards from this hidden quest left both of them deeply satisfied.

Deep within their hearts, a clear goal had taken shape.

Seize the Artifact Clan, steal the artifact rules.

On that day, all negative emotions in the world could become nourishment for Painful Touch.

In the future, the power released by Painful Touch would no longer be limited to pain.

It could also be fear, despair, rage, sorrow, collapse… and all other negative emotions.

But before that, they still had to accumulate Shou Shou Jili.

They knew the cost of crafting special Painful Minghun was extremely high, especially for a Painful Minghun built upon a perfected rule.

This expense could only be resolved by becoming fabulously wealthy.

Ordinary hunting gains made accumulating funds for a rule Painful Minghun far too difficult.

As the Painful Brothers discussed where to head next, the sky suddenly split open with a pitch-black fissure.

Boom!

A swordlight spanning heaven and earth erupted from the sky, and the earth collapsed instantly.

Jiang Cheng and Xia Sheng immediately activated their statue form, their bodies coated in pitch-black.

But the terrifying shockwave still hurled them violently through the air, their bodies cracking like porcelain.

"You killed my clan members—you shall die!"

A cold voice echoed from above; twelve ancient swords of varying forms pierced through the air, each radiating terrifying pressure.

The lead bronze greatsword hung high in the heavens, its body blazing with seven-colored radiance, like a colorful sun.

Seeing this, the livestream instantly flooded with comments:

"The final reward of the hidden plot has appeared—a free Huicheng ticket, we've hit the jackpot."

"Killed the little one, now the big one shows up—this life is over, try harder next life."

"Finale flowers—this hidden quest journey has officially ended."

"Made a fortune—those who sold the hidden quest info for 25,000 Shou Shou Jili are idiots. I've realized exploratory players are all brain-dead, constantly giving away opportunities, never seizing them myself—jealousy makes me monstrous."

……

Facing the two fellow players about to perish, the livestream was filled with mockery.

This was a unique trait of the player faction.

The death of clan members was always met with delight.

At this moment, Jiang Cheng and Xia Sheng looked up, gazing at the bronze greatsword hanging in the heavens.

Their analysis ability activated; the opponent's information surfaced in their minds:

【Evil Sword】:

Hunting Level: 325.

Target Description: Leader of the Evil Sword lineage of the Artifact Clan, master of artifact rules, tainted with misfortune since birth. Each time it betrays a host, a blood line appears on its spine—currently 998 blood lines accumulated. It feeds on its host's despair; every wielder ultimately becomes a vengeful spirit beneath the blade.

……

Seeing the Evil Sword's hunting level, Jiang Cheng and Xia Sheng were startled.

This level of power was utterly beyond their capacity to resist.

In their final moments, Jiang Cheng and Xia Sheng uttered no threats, but deep within their hearts, they had already sentenced the Artifact Clan to death.

The future is long—300+ hunting levels may yet be fought.

Boom!

The Evil Sword did not even strike; its outwardly leaking icy sword qi crushed down like a collapsing sky.

Jiang Cheng and Xia Sheng instantly vaporized into black mist and vanished—the hidden quest journey officially ended.

But in the blacked-out livestream, discussions about this hidden quest continued, especially over the Shou Shou Jili gains, leaving many viewers who watched the entire event filled with envy.

……

Meng Yuan Chu Altar.

Qi Sheng's consciousness rapidly scrolled through the latest information produced on the forum, searching for the direction of the next update.

During this period, he discovered a problem that forum players had generally mentioned.

That was, the way to return to the village was extremely troublesome.

As the territory expanded and the map's fogged regions were opened up, players had to spend long travel times reaching many places even with vehicles.

At the current stage, the only teleportation item was the "Fixed-Point Teleport" in the Enlightenment Shangcheng.

But the price was far too expensive.

By comparison, players were more willing to return to Dizhong Village by dying.

They only had to wait an hour of resurrection cooldown to skip the long travel time — very convenient.

But there was one problem.

The method of dying was too painful. Although many veteran players had already grown used to it, quite a few players still complained about having to endure the pain each time before returning through death.

Even with 90% pain reduction, it was still unpleasant.

To address this problem, Qi Sheng decided to add a "Return" function to the Challenger System.

Allowing players to return to Huicheng with a single click.

But essentially, the return still used the method of death — being extracted by Super-Dimensional, then sent back to Dizhong Village by Yan Ming.

Although the not-yet-fully-recovered Super-Dimensional needed to destroy the target's life structure to extract the target, players in the Challenger System were not affected in this regard.

When discussing the characteristics of Super-Dimensional's extraction ability, Qi Sheng curiously asked the Guide.

Among the four gods of Monster World, at their peak, who was actually the strongest in combat power.

The Guide's answer was that there was no absolute strongest among them; each possessed power that could easily destroy worlds, and also mastered the most top-tier rules.

The Guide himself mastered the ability of "Analysis of All Things."

Also known as: the Omniscient God.

With the blessing of rules, he could instantly see through the essence of things, and even the underlying logic by which anything operated.

Any attack would be seen through before him; no secrets existed, and he could instantly find the opponent's weakness to counter.

Furthermore, Analysis of All Things could also help the Guide read the opponent's thought logic.

Predicting all of the opponent's thoughts based on past growth trajectories, turning battle into a chess game whose ending had long been calculated.

The Guide's ability could also be understood as an omniscient intelligence brain countless times more powerful than the Star Net.

The Guide was also the final commander Qi Sheng designated when the future peak battlefield curtain rose; even the Star Net could not surpass the Guide.

The two were not even comparable at all.

It was just that the current Guide was extremely weak; being able to provide players with analytical ability was already the limit.

To restore power, the Shou Shou Jili consumed — the unit of hundred million was no longer sufficient.

The second of the four gods: Super-Dimensional.

She mastered the divine authority of "Extraction of All Things."

This rule granted Super-Dimensional the formidable ability to decompose all matter, energy, and even concepts down to their most primitive essence.

Facing any opponent, Super-Dimensional could instantly drain the opponent's power, or even decompose the very concept of the enemy's existence into complete nothingness.

This kind of nothingness held no possibility of resurrection on any level.

Even reversing local time could not repair the decomposition effect imposed by Super-Dimensional.

For example, some powerful race in the future mastered an ability that could reverse local time.

But as long as Super-Dimensional decomposed the opponent, even if time in that region reversed, the decomposed target's body could not be reassembled.

Super-Dimensional was also a core part of the resurrection system for players in the Challenger System, extracting and reclaiming the players' destroyed physical bodies.

When introducing Super-Dimensional, the Guide also stated that Super-Dimensional had once extracted an entire great-world universe.

Then reshaped it into a brand-new world, changing the great world's rule logic.

She was also the strongest in destructive power among the four gods.

The third of the four gods: Yan Ming.

He was called the Sovereign of Infinite Dimensions.

He could dominate all spatial concepts, distort dimensions, and make the world his weapon.

For example, he could banish opponents into an infinitely looping spatial labyrinth, causing them to wander within it forever.

At full strength, Yan Ming could go anywhere in an instant.

The next second he could traverse countless worlds; there was no need for the trouble of building spatial passages — every location required only a single thought to reach.

If not for the Great Evil Moon under the Demon God's control forcibly modifying spatial rules, causing Yan Ming's ability to be severely weakened, he could not possibly have been heavily injured.

And Yan Ming's combat style was also very simple.

Besides spatial banishment, he could also infinitely fold the spatial region the opponent was in until it became a speck of dust, easily erasing the traces of the opponent's existence.

Throughout, the opponent could hardly even catch sight of Yan Ming's true body.

Space itself was Yan Ming's eyes.

The last of the four gods, Jiu Yin, was also the eldest among the four gods.

She was also called the God of Stainless Purity, mastering the power of the Purification Rule.

If Super-Dimensional was the strongest in destructive power among the four gods, then Jiu Yin was the strongest in defensive power among the four gods.

Jiu Yin's purification was not as simple as removing negative emotions or negative states — that was merely the partial power of Jiu Yin shared with players as a manifestation.

At her peak, Jiu Yin shrouded by the power of purification could be regarded as a state of "invulnerability to all laws."

In this state, Super-Dimensional's extraction was ineffective, and Yan Ming's spatial banishment was ineffective.

Even the weakness obtained from the Guidance's analysis and judgment was: None.

Any matter would be purified and rendered ineffective before it could make contact with Jiu Yin's body.

At her peak, Jiu Yin could be called invincible.

In the ancient era when the Four Gods contended for the position of Di Zhao, Jiu Yin was also the one with the strongest overall strength among the Four Gods.

But the Four Gods all knew how powerful they each were; a full-force clash would only bring catastrophe to the living beings of Monster World, so the war for Di Zhao's position was fought more through clashes between their subordinate forces.

Everyone understood this unspoken rule, competing for the top in this manner.

Unfortunately, when the Black Tide descended, none of the Four Gods succeeded in inheriting Di Zhao, and now they have become the Four Gods under his command.

If one had to say whose combat power was the strongest, even the Guidance could not give a clear answer.

Among the Four Gods, the Guidance had the highest wisdom, Yan Ming had the strongest mobility, Super Dimension had the strongest destructive power, and Jiu Yin had the strongest defense.

Therefore, among the Four Gods, there was no absolute strongest.

If one truly had to pick a "strongest," then Jiu Yin's Purification Authority might come closest to the concept of invincibility, but she still could not truly defeat the Guidance, Super Dimension, or Yan Ming.

Each one of them was a core cornerstone of Monster World.

After introducing the information on the Four Gods, the Guidance added one final remark, saying he believed wisdom to be the strongest weapon.

As long as one had enough time, wisdom was enough to make him the strongest among the Four Gods.

Qi Sheng paid no heed to this.

The Guidance's self-praise was not something he was seeing for the first time; he had long grown used to it.

Finally, Qi Sheng also asked how powerful Di Zhao had been at his peak.

To this, the Guidance could only helplessly say he didn't know.

Di Zhao was the origin god of Monster World; the power of the Four Gods was all bestowed by Di Zhao, so he was certainly stronger than the four of them.

This also made Qi Sheng realize.

To know the answer to this question, the only way was for him to contain all of the Meng Yuan Chu monsters and wield Di Zhao's full power at that moment.

But one thing was certain: the power wielded by the Black Tide God likewise surpassed the Four Gods.

Demon God-level and the Four Gods were roughly on the same combat power tier.

Inferring from this, the Black Tide God's ability was very likely on the same tier as Di Zhao, but the specific truth remained unknown.

After recording the update content regarding the player resurrection settings in the Challenger System, Qi Sheng continued to review the latest statistical data.

During this period, another three Meng Yuan Chu monsters had been successfully contained.

The first was the second-generation Meng Yuan Chu monster: Blood Wall, contained by the team led by the player "Bored Me" in Di Ku Shi Jie.

Its characteristic effect was releasing a semi-transparent blood-colored shield, with an area that could be freely expanded or contracted.

This was a characteristic suited for melee players, somewhat similar to an auxiliary-use Light Shield.

The difference was that one was woven from qi and blood, the other from spiritual power.

It was better suited for combat-type melee players.

Because tank players already possessed formidable physical defense and could take hits directly with their bodies, the defense provided by Blood Wall was far inferior to the tank players' own defense.

After detailed testing in the Test Tower, strategy players concluded that the qi-and-blood-woven Blood Wall could provide a defense effect 1.2 times that of normal damage-taking.

Take a player with 100 HP as an example.

Assuming all 100 points of qi and blood were used to release Blood Wall, the damage it could withstand would be 120 points.

Compared to the first-generation Meng Yuan Chu characteristic "Rock Shield," Blood Wall had both advantages and shortcomings.

Rock Shield's characteristic could be applied directly to the player themselves, granting 1.2 times their own defense even without holding a shield.

Whereas Blood Wall required weaving a semi-transparent blood-colored light screen structure from qi and blood to take effect.

But Blood Wall also had its advantages.

First, Blood Wall's plasticity was extremely high; in the test videos, strategy players even relied on the attributes brought by simulated amplification to pull out a Blood Wall city wall that covered the entire battlefield.

Second, Blood Wall could also resist spiritual-level impact damage.

Its functionality was stronger compared to Rock Shield.

The appearance of Blood Wall also gave melee players a path choice for a playstyle that combined offense and defense.

The second was the fifth-generation Meng Yuan Chu: Fighting Intent, contained by the player "Go to Bed Early Tonight" in the Cangxing Sea Area north of the Colorful Mist Coast.

Its characteristic effect was boosting the player's qi-and-blood intensity and spiritual power intensity, with the specific effect influenced by the Painful Painful Minghun level and the player's fighting will.

This was the only Painful Painful Minghun in the existing library whose effect was influenced by the strength of the player's will, and it was also a passive-type characteristic.

It only needed to be embedded to take effect.

Its performance in the Test Tower could be called overpowered.

The strongest effect of a Level 1 Painful Painful Minghun could grant the player a 4-fold attribute value amplification.

It was like the protagonist in a hot-blooded anime, who, facing desperate circumstances, achieved a sudden surge of power through the Xiong Xiong burning fighting will within, gaining an unimaginable boost in strength.

When a player possessed firm conviction and a strong will to win in battle, they could maximize the amplification brought by Fighting Intent.

But its shortcomings were also very obvious.

Willpower was not an intuitive attribute; it belonged to a hidden value, difficult for ordinary players to grasp.

The Guidance's explanation was that the essence of Fighting Intent was equivalent exchange.

How much will you were willing to pay for victory, and it would feedback a corresponding amount of power based on the player's own attributes.

Among the player factions, those who fit the Fighting Intent Painful Painful Minghun well were tank players who were always charging in hot-blooded fashion, as well as competitive players who specialized in the Ancient God Arena and enjoyed challenging growth.

These two groups possessed both the fortitude to endure pain and never retreat, and the resolve to climb to the peak and challenge the strong.

They were all compatible users of the Fighting Intent Painful Painful Minghun.

Forum players rated the Fighting Intent Painful Painful Minghun highly, but very few were willing to embed it.

Because there were too many restrictions, the uncertain amplification of Fighting Intent was, in the eyes of ordinary players, not as good as embedding a combat-type first-generation Painful Painful Minghun.

The strategy-guide players who posted reviews believed that, unless a Painful Painful Minghun that directly boosts the Will stat appears in the future, the popularity of Battle-Intent Painful Painful Minghun would be hard to grow.

But there are exceptions.

After Battle-Intent Painful Painful Minghun went live, the tank squad of the Divine Hall Guild chose to equip it across the entire team.

The Test Tower's statistics showed that the average amplification brought by the Divine Hall Guild's tank squad slotting in Battle-Intent Painful Painful Minghun reached 30%+, and on an actual battlefield there was still room for further improvement.

Battle-Intent Painful Painful Minghun significantly raised the Divine Hall Guild's overall combat power.

This is what players saw as the most charming aspect of the Painful Painful Minghun Da Pei Wan Fa.

Every time a new Painful Painful Minghun goes live, it can bring a qualitative leap in combat power to certain groups.

The third was the fourth-generation Meng Yuan Chu: Misfortune, contained in the Forest Realm region by the squad led by the player "Dream-Born-in-Mountains-Seeking-You."

Its characteristic effect is to apply a Misfortune effect on the target, reducing the opponent's Luck value.

Duration and effect intensity are influenced by the Painful Painful Minghun's strength and one's own Spirit stat.

This is a Painful Painful Minghun that was thrown into the sewer the moment it appeared.

Although it had the strength of a fourth-generation Painful Painful Minghun, the amplification it could provide in actual combat was not obvious.

Its effect was similar to Great Fortune and Auspicious Fortune Painful Painful Minghun, able to directly influence Luck.

But changes in Luck would not manifest directly in combat.

For example, after an opponent's Luck was affected, normal attacks landing on them would show no change in numbers.

Nor were there cases in combat where the opponent would inexplicably trip, or be suddenly interfered with by some external force, causing their own strength to be affected.

Discussion of Luck-type Painful Painful Minghun flared up again with the appearance of Misfortune Painful Painful Minghun.

A large number of players posted their own Ji De Kan Fa on this issue.

During this period, a post published by a research-oriented player saw its popularity on the forum skyrocket.

【A detailed breakdown of Luck-type Painful Painful Minghun — well-reasoned, well-sourced, and packed with content, letting you quickly understand exactly what this type of Painful Painful Minghun's characteristic effects are.】

Posting player: Sacrifice-You-Too-Beautiful.

Content:

To ensure the accuracy of the content, I personally consulted the Guide, and for parts I didn't understand I also looked through a large amount of library material.

Next, let me give everyone a detailed interpretation of exactly where this type of Painful Painful Minghun is strong.

First, what exactly do Luck-type Painful Painful Minghun affect?

The Guide's answer to me was that Fortune brings a weighting bias within the world's operating rules.

For example, for the toddler squad that possesses the sixth-generation Meng Yuan Chu Painful Painful Minghun "Infinity," the Great Fortune and Auspicious Fortune Painful Painful Minghun can influence the probability of them rolling a high-multiplier enhancement after activating Infinity.

But for ordinary players, this influence is extremely faint.

Take combat as an example.

If a player casts "Misfortune" on a target, and both sides don't factor in technique or other variables, victory in combat still goes to the side with higher combat power.

Even if the opponent's combat power is only 1 point higher than yours.

Judging by this, the influence of Luck-type Painful Painful Minghun is negligible.

It's more like a decoration, not worthy of the prestige a fourth-generation Painful Painful Minghun should have.

But the truth is not so.

Luck-type Painful Painful Minghun are divided into two types of manifestation effects.

One is like the toddler-squad players, where the characteristic, once released, directly affects the roll's judgment.

The other is the weighting bias within the world's operating rules — this is a slow and continuous effect.

Just as in the real world, some seemingly tiny factors can, as time goes on, gradually change the direction in which things develop.

That is, the butterfly effect.

To put it simply, for Luck-type characteristics, under normal circumstances you need to wait to see results.

They have a fairly long delay.

This is clearly a characteristic logic the game designed for the sake of realism.

Everyone can think of Monster World as a highly complex system; any change needs time to transmit through every part, and a change in Luck needs to pass through countless intermediate links before it can manifest.

Taking combat as an example again, two players with completely identical combat power stand still.

A warrior afflicted with "Misfortune," as long as they wait long enough, could potentially be killed in one strike by a powerhouse flying in from across space.

But that strike is merely a killing move a powerhouse on the other side of space accidentally unleashed in combat — it was not aimed at this warrior.

My example may be a bit inappropriate, because the transmission of Luck's influence is not actually this fast.

What I want to express is that small changes need to accumulate to a certain degree before they trigger a qualitative shift.

The effect of Misfortune is like leaving a small pit on the afflicted warrior's thread of fate, which slowly draws unfortunate developments toward them like a magnet.

Great Fortune and Auspicious Fortune are the opposite — also a small pit, but what it draws is good things gathering toward oneself.

Just like a stone thrown into a lake, the ripples spread outward, gradually expanding the sphere of influence through the world's operation, and after being transmitted layer by layer, amplifying that influence.

Luck-type Painful Painful Minghun are all very metaphysical; they cannot directly affect combat outcomes, only the weighting bias toward good or bad things happening.

In theory, if a player constantly applies Great Fortune and Auspicious Fortune characteristics to themselves, during their long process of exploring outside, the probability of encountering opportunities will be higher than for other players.

But this kind of change is also affected by the environment.

In a scene that simply has no opportunities to begin with, no matter how high the Luck value, it's useless.

Players who focus on combat have absolutely no need to slot in Luck-type Painful Painful Minghun — doing so is meaningless.

I personally recommend that fishing-oriented and exploration-oriented players slot in this type of Luck-affecting Painful Painful Minghun.

It can let your future gaming life be accompanied by pleasant surprises, giving you more to look forward to.

This interpretation ends here; feel free to follow me.

I'll share interesting strategy content from time to time, and the livestream has fresh library-knowledge shares every day.

……

The post published by the player "Ji Ni Tai Mei" explained the function of Luck very straightforwardly.

While reviewing player information, Qi Sheng discovered that as the player ecosystem gradually enriched, even the forum had developed different school playstyles.

The first major school was the Strategy Party players.

The goal of these players was clear; their focus lay in maximizing resource utilization, pursuing the shortest time or the lowest cost to complete objectives.

The greatest characteristic of Strategy Party players was their preference for publishing review content on the forum.

Star Pulse combination guides, Painful Painful Minghun trait interpretations, latest feature reviews... these were all areas where Strategy Party players excelled.

Other branch fields included speedrun guides for the Death Space, combat technique tutorials, and so on.

Strategy Party players were also the most capable group on the forum; all their actions were goal-oriented, devising every possible way to pursue peak performance.

Besides this, the player forum now had a new school: the Research Party.

Their characteristic was a passion for digging into the logic of game settings, supplementing world-building plots, exploring deep game content, and so on.

In fact, this school had existed for a long time, but its popularity on the forum was low.

However, with player development and the growth of territory area, the importance of Research Party players gradually manifested.

The forum had a group chat organization of 300 people named: Learning Has No Limits.

This organization's supplementation of game background data had reached a state of obsession.

They meticulously organized all faction data encountered by players to date, edited them into forum posts, and shared them for discussion with other players.

For example, Tian Huo Fa Wang, this popular forum character.

There was a detailed introduction from Research Party players spanning over one hundred thousand words.

Through asking the Guide, Research Party players provided detailed interpretations ranging from the development model of the Tian Huo Clan, to the dilemmas encountered during development, and the logic behind choosing to head to the Monster World.

They even analyzed in the post why Tian Huo Fa Wang did not abandon his clan to leave, but chose to fight to the death alongside his people in the Di Zha Mountain Range region.

The characteristic of this group was viewing the background data of the Monster World as a piece of art worth studying.

They left no detail unexplored for the possibility of deep excavation.

They even compared the behavioral logic of various factions against history, literature, religion, philosophy, and other content.

What this group enjoyed most was the process of piecing together world-building information like a puzzle; they were truly the scholar faction among the player community.

In the early stages of the player forum, posts published by this type of player had no market; even in the eyes of many players, they were purely just killing time.

But with the growth in player numbers, the Research Party also welcomed their own market.

Especially after the library function in Di Zha Village went online.

The knowledge they could never finish reading in a lifetime made them intoxicated, and they also found business opportunities within it.

Besides forum tipping and live streaming, Research Party players would also accept help quests from other players, helping those unwilling to consult detailed data find effective solutions to their problems.

For example, the Luck Interpretation that topped the hot list this time was posted by a Research Party player.

But the most classic case was a hot forum post from a month ago.

A guild master of a Warband posted on the forum seeking help.

The cause was that while exploring the Colorful Mist Coast, the Warband accidentally discovered a ruin beneath a lake, but the ruin was protected by a complex, specially crafted lock.

The lock was a semi-energy, semi-metal structure with extremely high strength; normal means could not break it at all.

All Warband members believed there must be a fortune behind the ruin, but the problem was how to open this shackle.

The parsed information showed that the ruin was constructed by the Monster World's native faction, the "Iron Dark Sect."

But the parsed information did not contain the method to open the ruin.

Asking the Guide, the Guide provided a relatively detailed solution, but the problem was that the item mentioned in the solution was available neither in Shangcheng nor on the Trading Hall.

The Warband master offered 20,000 points of Shou Shou Jili, seeking a breakthrough method.

Ultimately, this problem was solved by the "Learning Has No Limits" chat group formed by Research Party players on the forum.

After receiving the quest, they went to the Di Zha Village Library and consulted relevant data on the Iron Dark Sect.

They found three items within the Iron Dark Sect's totem, along with their crafting methods.

These three items were Dark Iron, Rust Wheel, and Triangular Plant Essence.

They meticulously recorded the crafting methods of these three items from the library, then individually found the Gunsmith Guild, the Alchemist Guild, and a player skilled in crafting various items within the player community to customize them.

Throughout the process, they cooperated by providing various data and followed the production workflow.

Finally, they successfully crafted the three items and personally went to the ruin location.

Following the data mentioned in the literature, and even the placement order of the Iron Dark Sect's totem, they successfully opened the ruin without causing any damage to items inside.

The entire process took 3 days and was live-streamed on the forum the whole time.

The consulted data content amounted to several million words; group chat members divided the work and cooperated, jointly striving to overcome the difficulty of opening the ruin.

Without the help of this group of Research Party players, even with the Guide providing assistance, the Warband that discovered the ruin would have found it difficult to open.

Because the solution provided by the Guide was always the plan under ideal circumstances, but in actual operation, various variables would still be encountered.

Just like when A Lan built the Spatial Teleport Array; mastering knowledge and practical operation were completely two different things.

And Research Party players were most passionate about deep learning.

Before attempting to break the lock, they had already simulated and attempted it multiple times, only acting personally once they were confident.

This success made the "Learning Has No Limits" chat group famous on the forum.

Subsequently, they accepted multiple help quests provided by Warbands, and basically completed them all satisfactorily.

For this group, Shou Shou Jili gains were Gu Ran Zhong, but the process of solving the problem was also part of the enjoyment.

The immersive experience of peeling back layers and advancing layer by layer made them more fascinated than the moment of finally opening the ruin.

To quote a Research Party player who participated in the breakthrough at the time: "Actually, the essence of puzzle-solving is not deduction or solving a crime, but an immersive story experience. When we were learning the background data of the Iron Dark Sect, it was like watching a movie, reading a novel, or studying a piece of history; this was also a deep dialogue between us and the world background."

In Qi Sheng's eyes, the emergence of Research Party players filled in the details not covered by the Guide.

The guide type just hands you the answer directly.

The research type, on the other hand, takes those obscure puzzles and makes them clear and tangible — patiently sorting through the clues, repeatedly verifying feasibility, even breaking down complex procedures into step-by-step actionable guides, walking other players through the process to help them break through their predicaments.

They can rightly be called the scholars among the player factions.

It's easy to imagine that, as the number of players grows, the game's ecosystem will inevitably become far richer.

And this, precisely, is the scene Qi Sheng has been most looking forward to seeing.

(End of this chapter)