Chapter 275: I Have a Cheat: The Mysterious Shop

Meng Yuan Chu Altar.

Qi Sheng's gaze jumped between multiple scenes.

After more than half a month of heated forum discussion, an increasing number of players were heading to the projection teleportation array to participate in challenges against the Bully Alliance.

During this period, there were several instances of coordinated combat by the Bully Alliance; it could be seen that the Earth-Will Evil Spirits' "Internet Cafe Team Tactics" improved rapidly, and every time they clashed with player legions, they secured victory with an overwhelming advantage.

But the players had also learned to be smarter.

They no longer focused solely on the Ghost Fang route, switching instead to multi-front warfare, forcing the Bully Alliance's offline five-man team (projection combat) to change to online five-man team (pure mental communication).

This caused the Bully Alliance, led by the Earth-Will Evil Spirits, to consume more resources in war calculations.

After briefly observing the situation on the five battlefields, Qi Sheng began to review his recent gains.

Recently, two more Meng Yuan Chu were successfully contained.

The characteristic effects of these two Meng Yuan Chu were both quite interesting.

The first was a fifth-generation Meng Yuan Chu monster named Wealth, contained by a squad led by the player "He Bu Cheng Xian" in the Senluo Linjing region.

Its characteristic effect was to calculate the personal Wealth carried and release a rule beam to strike the target; the higher the Wealth carried, the higher the damage.

This was the most unique Painful Painful Minghun characteristic to date, with damage intensity unaffected by Blood Qi strength or Spiritual Power strength.

It was only influenced by the wealth carried by the player and the level of the Painful Painful Minghun.

The judgment standard for Wealth was also very simple: everything carried by oneself could be calculated as Wealth.

Shou Shou Jili, armed vehicles, resonance weapons, and even spiritual ore and spiritual plants in the warehouse could all be included in the Wealth calculation range.

Only things within the player's body were excluded from the Wealth category, such as Blood Qi strength and Spiritual Power strength, and even the levels of other Painful Painful Minghun.

The judgment standard for Wealth was more like external force attached to the player.

Each release consumed Spiritual Power; the more resources carried on the body, the higher the extra damage bonus dealt.

As soon as the Wealth Painful Painful Minghun debuted, it was despised by the vast majority of players.

Whether ordinary players or players from top guilds, none generally hoarded Shou Shou Jili or accumulated resources.

When they had resources in hand, their first thought was to convert them into Shou Shou Jili, and then transform that into their own strength.

This was also the core gameplay of the Monster World in the players' eyes; Shou Shou Jili was merely a tool, while one's own strength was the core.

Therefore, the characteristic effect of Wealth was meaningless to ordinary players.

Players on the forum discussed and concluded that only two types of players could embed the "Wealth" Painful Painful Minghun.

These were the merchant players of the Gold Coin Guild and the "scalper flow" players who resold various resources on the trading hall.

The characteristic of these two types of players was that they inevitably hoarded Shou Shou Jili or various types of resources on their persons, all of which could be calculated as Wealth damage.

In the final voting stage, 73.8% of players cast their votes in the "Night Is Coming" thread for: T5 Strength Painful Painful Minghun.

The newly debuted fifth-generation Meng Yuan Chu was driven into the sewer by players through voting and regarded as a version off-meta Painful Painful Minghun.

The second Meng Yuan Chu was a fifth-generation Meng Yuan Chu named Critical Strike, contained by the player "Moon Rises Over the Sea" in the Land of Chasing the Sun.

Its characteristic effect was to consume Spiritual Power or Blood Qi to add a Critical Strike judgment to the next attack; at initial level 1 status, it could deal 1x damage.

The most interesting point of the Critical Strike Painful Painful Minghun was that all attacks could be supplemented with a Critical Strike.

The newly debuted Critical Strike Painful Painful Minghun had no flaws other than its expensive purchase price and could adapt to all schools of the damage-dealing type.

Among them, the effect that was most obviously amplified was undoubtedly the Assassin flow, as well as magic-type players following the extreme damage route.

The characteristic of such schools was to sacrifice other attributes in exchange for extreme burst damage output.

Assassin flow players, who already possessed considerable killing power, after receiving the characteristic support of the Critical Strike Painful Painful Minghun, performed explosively in the Test Tower.

Especially after stacking the "Forbidden Blade" effect to the max through shadows, the output applying the Critical Strike effect could stack 4x damage under a level 40 Painful Painful Minghun.

Thus, the Critical Strike flow was born.

But this Painful Painful Minghun was destined never to become a main-cultivated Painful Painful Minghun.

All Painful Painful Minghun chosen by players as main-cultivated shared one characteristic: their characteristic effect must be the core Painful Painful Minghun of a school.

Guide-posting players on the forum believed that the growth return of the Critical Strike Painful Painful Minghun was low, and it had no attribute bonuses of its own; making it a main-cultivated Painful Painful Minghun was essentially reducing one's own damage output.

Because the essence of the Critical Strike Painful Painful Minghun was a damage multiplier amplifier, the damage return depended entirely on the level of base damage.

The guide-posting players used Critical Strike and Forceful Axe as examples of these two Painful Painful Minghun.

A very ordinary level 6 Star Pulse, Warrior flow combination, was used in the test.

The embedded ones were Critical Strike, Forceful Axe, Shattered Blade, Primal Qi, Spirit Eating, and Blood Soul Tether.

With level 40 Critical Strike and all other Painful Painful Minghun at level 1, the damage value dealt to a wooden dummy was: 504.7 points.

The level 40 Critical Strike brought a 3.9x bonus damage; the damage caused by other Painful Painful Minghun plus player attributes was 103 points, which became 504.7 after the Critical Strike bonus.

With the same combination, the damage coefficient bonus of level 40 Forceful Axe was 1.45x; adding the characteristic amplification brought by the player's own attributes and the characteristic effect bonuses of other Painful Painful Minghun, this strike could deal 296 points of damage.

With the added 1x amplification of level 1 Critical Strike, the final damage value was: 592 points.

Still with the same combination, the evolution points of the level 40 Painful Painful Minghun were split into Forceful Axe at level 37 and Critical Strike Painful Painful Minghun at level 16.

The damage value dealt was: 648.

From this, it could be concluded that the Critical Strike Painful Painful Minghun belonged to the "icing on the cake" type.

With a Star Pulse combination, having level 1 Critical Strike could already deal 1x damage value.

But making the Critical Strike Painful Painful Minghun the main-cultivated one was far less powerful than making a Painful Painful Minghun that could come with attribute amplification the main-cultivated one.

This did not mean the Critical Strike Painful Painful Minghun was weaker; with the same level 1 bonus, the return of the Critical Strike characteristic was far higher than that of level 1 Forceful Axe.

As a secondary-cultivated Painful Painful Minghun, the strength of the Critical Strike characteristic, in the analysis of guide-posting players on the forum, was sufficient to promote to version T0 tier, making it one of the strongest secondary-cultivated Painful Painful Minghun in the current version.

Any damage-dealing type school, with the Critical Strike bonus, could achieve a qualitative leap.

After checking the forum players' evaluations of the latest contained Painful Painful Minghun, Qi Sheng's gaze jumped to the Earth Roar Continent region.

This continent was almost completely shrouded in fog on the player map.

There were two areas within it currently being explored by players, but the local areas needed to be zoomed in to be seen clearly.

The first location is the newly opened map scene "Land of Chasing the Sun," where a million novices are hunting and growing within the scene.

Two Spirit Mine Domain Nodes have now been discovered, and several newly established novice guilds are attempting to seize them using human-wave tactics combined with resurrection tactics.

The other location is so small on the map that it requires zooming to the absolute limit to see clearly; the name displayed on the map is: Sea of Illusory Flowers.

Qi Sheng's gaze focused at this moment.

Looking down from high above, billions of strange-colored flowers bloomed wildly across the boundless plains, forming a sea of flowers.

Crimson Blood-Flame Orchids, red as flames, rolled in the wind; golden-orange Radiance Sunflowers stretched into vast patches; silver-white Phantom-Silk Vines wrapped around the entire plain like thin mist... Flocks of Spirit Butterflies swept over the flower sea, their wings scattering fluorescent light that traced fleeting paths through the air.

Farther away, several giant Rainbow-Crown Trees rose from the ground, their semi-transparent trunks refracting the sky's light.

When the wind blew, the entire flower sea would rise in waves; flowers of different colors collided with one another, producing a "whoosh-whoosh" sound like the ebb and flow of tides.

At this moment, in one corner of the Flower Sea Plain.

On a cleared patch of land, warriors of the Spirit-Breath Clan were busy with city construction.

The dwellings built in the new clan territory were not traditional wood-and-stone structures, but composed of living tissue.

Gray-white biological matrix grew along preset frameworks, forming semi-transparent cocoon-like domes; several larger buildings extended slender tentacle-like structures from their tops, swaying slowly with the wind direction to collect energy from the air.

Neat cultivation zones were arranged on the cleared land, but what grew inside were not ordinary crops, but a type of edible bio-beast.

In the center of the clan territory stood a tower-like structure, its surface covered with coral-like architecture; a massive crystalline sphere hovered at the top, from which swarms of insect-like flying creatures occasionally emerged to gather plant energy from the Flower Sea Plain, then transport it to Gao Ta.

At this moment, inside the first-floor space of Gao Ta, Xiao Xiao Fa was burying his head in accounts.

The Spirit-Breath Clan had arrived in the Monster World for some time now.

Near the teleportation coordinates provided by the guide, no racial factions were entrenched, so early development proceeded incredibly smoothly.

The ordinary resources of the Monster World were sufficient to propel the Spirit-Breath Clan into a stage of rapid development.

In the Shadow King's words, every breath taken in the Monster World was evolution.

But there were not completely without risks.

The greatest characteristic of the Monster World was the ever-possible arrival of descending factions, along with various powerful and terrifying monsters.

Several days ago, an event had occurred that left Xiao Xiao Fa trembling with fear even now.

At that time, he was inspecting the clan territory when the sky suddenly darkened.

He thought it was an occasional abnormal weather change in the Monster World, until he looked up and saw a "Sky-Veil Colossus" blocking the sky fly overhead.

That fear remained vivid in memory.

The monster's massive body hung down from the clouds like an inverted mountain range; although it had no wings, it could eerily float and fly, tearing vortexes kilometers long through the cloud layer.

Even across an incredibly vast distance, the oppressive pressure felt as if it hung directly overhead.

At that time, the entire Spirit-Breath Clan stronghold fell into dead silence.

The shadow cast by the Colossus lasted a full 3 minutes.

Long after it vanished into the northern horizon, ripples of its passage still lingered in the cloud layer.

Xiao Xiao Fa did not doubt at all that if the Sky-Veil Colossus had lowered its head and exhaled a breath upon the Spirit-Breath Clan stronghold, then the Spirit-Breath Clan's development plan would have ended prematurely.

He himself would have returned to his beautiful homeland.

This was precisely the most terrifying aspect of the Monster World in the eyes of alien races: death did not arrive according to any rational pattern.

During the years struggling in the newbie village, he could not feel this bone-chilling fear.

Infinite resurrection gave him infinite margin for error; toward unknown things, he felt mostly curiosity.

But after switching to the alien race's perspective and activating the "One-Life Mode," he finally realized how terrifying the fear brought by the unknown truly was.

The change in mindset brought an extremely strong sense of stark contrast.

During his player period, facing danger was like a child listening to ghost stories, knowing he could dive into his parents' embrace the next second, with even his screams carrying excitement.

Or on a stormy night with flashing lightning and thunder, hearing the booming sounds outside the window, yet knowing he was safe inside the house.

Or playing horror-type games... Behind such fears lay an absolutely safe safety net.

But viewing the Monster World from the alien race's perspective, the feeling was completely different.

In the Monster World as seen by descending alien races, no safety net existed; every shadow hid unknown terrors capable of ending one's life.

Every step of development was like walking a tightrope over a ten-thousand-foot abyss; every decision was a choice that gambled the clan's future.

As the "Blood King" of the Spirit-Breath Clan, he felt his pressure had become too great recently.

Natural disasters on Earth could still be predicted through various technologies.

But in the Monster World, one could never predict in what form danger would arrive.

It might be a sudden sneeze from a passing Sky-Veil Colossus, turning into a death storm leading the Spirit-Breath Clan to destruction; or it might be something like a mechanical legion suddenly targeting the underground resources of this region, and after a mechanical deus ex machina, a beam of light pierced the ground, dragging the surface Spirit-Breath Clan along into destruction... Or even a powerful race in the Monster World suddenly launching an attack during war, piercing through layers of spatial barriers and striking the Spirit-Breath Clan's stronghold, inadvertently annihilating the Spirit-Breath Clan.

From the Spirit-Breath Clan's perspective, this was a world where nightmares and paradise coexisted.

The beautiful side was obvious.

Every blade of grass and tree here was soaked in nature's grace; spring water scooped up by hand hid energy substances unfindable in small worlds; wild fruits found everywhere, once eaten, brought genetic-level optimization; even the air carried energy promoting life advancement.

It nurtured endless resources and treasures, yet was also a flesh-grinding mill that could crush the Spirit-Breath Clan to pieces at any moment.

Currently bound to the Spirit-Breath Clan, he naturally did not want the Spirit-Breath Clan to head toward destruction.

So every day he pondered how to make the Spirit-Breath Clan rise rapidly.

The normal path of rising was nothing more than seeking more resources and researching stronger technologies.

But this path was too slow.

The Spirit-Breath Clan's sole advantage was only one: the rule-infused land brought to the Monster World, which could be crafted into rules for use in the future.

But the resources required would be an astronomical number, and breakthroughs at the technological level were also needed.

He wanted to accelerate this process, but was troubled by lacking a good method.

Secondly, resource conversion efficiency was also a problem causing him great headache.

The Spirit-Breath Clan's primary method of acquiring resources at this stage was mining plant energy from the Phantom Sea Plain, or searching for nearby spirit plants.

The other Wang Zuo were quite satisfied with this portion of the gains, but he felt it was far too slow.

The Lingxi Clan had once been a flesh-eating predatory force—how had they come to Monster World and turned into bees flitting about gathering nectar everywhere?

As a player, growing without cheats made him feel uncomfortable all over.

Having come all the way to Monster World, the act of not using hacks was tantamount to slow suicide.

No matter how heaven-defying the talent, how firm the will, how diligent the growth, none of it compared to having a hack in hand.

A forum brother once said: Can you work hard? So what if you can—working hard is useless. Coming to Monster World to muddle along, you need hacks, you need a system. No matter how high the talent, how strong the will, you're still just a little punk.

Therefore he had always been considering one question: how to leverage his advantage as a player to accelerate the Lingxi Clan's development speed.

In fact, he already had a viable plan.

That was to use the player shop and Jiao Yi Xing Gong functions to assist the Lingxi Clan in maximizing the efficiency of resource conversion.

The specific method was to hand over all the spiritual resources the Lingxi Clan obtained in Monster World to himself, have him resell them through the Jiao Yi Xing Gong, then use Shou Shou Jili to purchase from the player Shangcheng all kinds of goods needed for the Lingxi Clan's development.

Even the most ordinary healing potions in the Shangcheng were miraculous elixirs capable of saving near-death Lingxi Clan warriors.

But although this plan seemed viable, it required a reasonable explanation.

He couldn't think of how to explain this to the Shadow King and the other Wang Zuo.

He had asked the Guide, but the Guide couldn't be bothered with such constructive questions.

As for posting on the forum to brainstorm… his situation was rather special; on the forum he wouldn't get any useful answers, only various forms of "verbal artistry" trailing him like a shadow.

Technical research, rule creation, racial evolution… all of these required resources.

The efficiency of resource conversion determined how fast a race could develop given the same resources.

Out of 100 points of resource energy, the Black Tide system could absorb 98 of them; the Lingxi Clan, at best, could only handle 15.

But as long as the player system provided assistance, the Lingxi Clan's development potential would receive an unprecedented boost.

His own Painful Painful Minghun plan could also be perfected with the Lingxi Clan's developmental assistance.

As thoughts churned, Xiao Xiao Fa's gaze grew firm.

What reasonable explanation? Monster World doesn't need reason—immediately convene the Eight Kings' Meeting and put forward the demand to oversee the Lingxi Clan's developmental resources.

Having an idea, Xiao Xiao Fa acted at once.

One hour later.

The seven Wang Zuo of the Lingxi Clan who had received the notification arrived at the decision chamber at the top of the central Gao Ta.

By this time Xiao Xiao Fa had already taken his seat and was waiting in advance.

Once the arriving seven Wang Zuo were seated, the Bone King was the first to look toward Xiao Xiao Fa and ask:

"Blood King, what matter have you summoned us to discuss?"

Facing the question, Xiao Xiao Fa had no intention of dawdling and went straight to the point:

"Starting today, I demand control over all of the Lingxi Clan's developmental resources, including the harvested spiritual plant essence energy, as well as the resources from the underground spiritual mine district recently discovered and about to be mined, and also all the resources we brought with us to Monster World."

Hearing these words, the seven Wang Zuo fell silent, their gazes toward the Blood King filled with incomprehension.

"The pressure lately really has been a bit heavy," the Fungus King spoke up, breaking the calm.

"Reason." The Soul King stared straight at Xiao Xiao Fa and asked in a hoarse voice.

"Last night I had a dream. This dream granted me a special ability—I can interface with a mysterious shop. Inside this shop I can use various spiritual resources to purchase goods. I calculated the value of the goods and can clearly state that using this mysterious shop to convert resources can bring unimaginable improvement to our race's development."

Hearing these words, the seven Wang Zuo fell silent once more.

"I'm not joking, and I don't want to joke. Starting today, I take charge of all our race's resources."

Knowing the seven Wang Zuo still suspected his mental state had gone awry, the prepared Xiao Xiao Fa tossed a pure energy crystal purchased from the player shop onto the conference table, producing a crisp sound.

The seven Wang Zuo's gazes were immediately drawn to the crystal slowly sliding across the conference table.

Liquid radiance flowed within the crystal, like a droplet of frozen star river, emanating incomparably pure energy ripples.

This was simply not a pure energy crystal that the Lingxi Clan's technology could create.

They suddenly realized the Blood King might not have been joking.

Connecting it to the environment they were in—

In this wondrous world, anything was possible.

Perhaps there really did exist the possibility of receiving some powerful race's inheritance, or some special opportunity, within a dream.

When they raised their heads, shifting their gaze from the energy crystal to Xiao Xiao Fa, their expressions changed.

"Blood King, describe in detail the mysterious shop you mentioned." The Soul King's tone was even, but his eyes could barely conceal his excitement.

(End of this chapter)