Chapter 309: Seas Change into Mulberry Fields, Yet I Remain (Request for Monthly Tickets)

In the Winter Snowfield region, the Black Black Tide has already receded.

Players who had just resurrected after cooling down, or those who logged off and back on, stared blankly at one another across the snowfield, at a loss.

The heavy snow still fell, the aurora still shimmered brilliantly, but the once-bustling Novice Village was gone.

A Le's Training Camp had gone bankrupt.

As players, they had truly been hurt.

Although the target of the beating was the Lord of Bliss, the ones feeling the most pain were them.

No one had expected that the Novice Village could be driven into bankruptcy by the Earth Chanting Bully.

The regional voice channel was filled with wails:

"Wait, how did the neighboring Novice Village crush our home Novice Village? Shameless Earth Chanting Bully, where am I supposed to go to happily farm monsters from now on?"

"What I can't understand most is that although the war intensity in the Emperor Tomb Mountain Range Novice Village is higher, essentially our home Novice Village has a stronger foundation of power, right? Even though the Bliss Evil Spirits and Bliss Insect Race are weak, behind them stands the Lord of Welfare at the Demigod Realm. What does that Earth Chanting Bully have to rely on? This isn't scientific."

"It's too magical; it feels like a neighboring kindergarten came over and shut down our kindergarten. We're both novice villages; how can competition like this even happen?"

"A million newbies became homeless in an instant; the era of total layoffs arrived completely unprepared. Our guild leader has gone into seclusion, saying we might have to split up temporarily."

"A Le, I can't live without you..."

The incident happened so suddenly that it caught all the newbie players off guard.

In the words of the forum players: Just moments ago they were passionately brawling in the Winter Snowfield, and in the blink of an eye, the Newbie Training Camp went bankrupt, with shameless A Le packing up their assets and fleeing.

A million newbies were left homeless, completely losing this precious ground for early-stage development.

Many players were still in a state of bewilderment.

They never expected A Le to leave so decisively.

Even the speed of a gym running away with members' fees wasn't as fast as A Le's training camp shutting down.

An hour ago it was still operating; before the Earth Chanting Bully even had time to make a move, A Le had already folded. Now, not even a trace of the tower remained on the snowfield.

Facing such a cowardly A Le, forum players cursed loudly.

Especially the newbie players.

The Winter Novice Village was their starting point for entering the Monster World; outside, they couldn't find a leveling spot that suited their needs so well.

Now that A Le had run, what were they supposed to do?

Did they consider their feelings before running?

Was the bond of long-term brawling just broken like that? Was there any prior notice?

The newbie players collectively went crazy.

Unlike the newbies, veteran players were not affected by A Le's flight and were instead analyzing why A Le had run.

The forum players already understood the full context of this incident.

The Emperor Tomb Mountain Range region and the Winter Snowfield region were not too far apart, with only one powerful faction between them: the Giant Domain.

This time, to test new unit types for the "Black Tide of Pain" system, the Earth Chanting Bully chose to push eastward, intending to find a powerful race to use as training dummies.

After the Black Black Tide crossed the Giant Domain, it entered the Winter Snowfield region without any suspense.

In fact, even without this specific encounter, contact between the Black Black Tide and the Bliss Race was bound to happen someday in the future.

But what was certain was that A Le's strength was absolutely capable of pinning the Earth Chanting Bully to the ground and rubbing their Iron Face in it; even in the "Five Bullies United" Cultivation Mode, they were no match for A Le.

Comparing the two, their intensities were not even on the same level.

In the eyes of the players, the Earth Chanting Bully had higher development potential than A Le, but that referred to the future.

At the current stage of power, the Earth Chanting Bully was just a small fry in front of A Le, not even worthy of the title "formidable enemy."

Logically, A Le should have leaped out of the Bliss Main Hall, slapped away the Black Black Tide with one palm, and made the Earth Chanting Bully wise enough to leave.

This was already the most conservative tactic the players could imagine.

If they, the players, were in A Le's position and faced provocation from the Earth Chanting Bully, they would inevitably track them down to the Abyss Domain node, uproot the tower where the Earth Chanting Bully resided, even if it required expending certain resources.

This was also the approach most consistent with logical interests: cut the weeds and dig up the roots to prevent the Black Black Tide from rapidly developing into a hidden threat.

However, A Le's behavior truly made the veteran players drop their jaws in shock.

There wasn't even a tentative skirmish; simply because the Earth Chanting Bully had the motive to act, A Le neatly packed up and fled.

The feeling it gave the players was this:

One second, the "gatekeeper" under A Le's command was still smoking at the training camp entrance, legs crossed, pointing out strategies to newbie players and conveying A Le's thoughts:

"Any player who exceeds the passing grade, dare to come, and you shall die."

The next second, as the Earth Chanting Bully led the Black Black Tide into the Winter Snowfield, before even drawing their blade, merely making a motion to draw, A Le had already slid to their knees, clasped their fists, and said:

"Big Brother, please take a seat; Little Brother will clear the spot immediately."

Then, taking the Bliss Tower and Bliss Hive of the Bliss Legion, they packed up and left.

As a Demigod Realm expert, even veteran players felt ashamed on their behalf.

Operating in the Monster World, bearing some risk was actually quite normal.

Factions with some understanding of the Monster World actively chose to take root there; wasn't it to seek higher profits amidst the risks?

Unwilling to bear even the slightest risk, among all the racial factions players had encountered since the server launched, A Le was the only one.

This behavior also disrupted the development plans of many rising guilds.

Originally, they intended to hone their combat skills in the Winter Novice Training Camp, gradually strengthening their guilds, while absorbing many newbie groups developing in the Winter Snowfield and filtering out the elite players among them.

A million newbie players had their mental states shattered by this.

The question now was, without the Winter Training Camp, where should they go next?

At the current stage, regions capable of providing player growth and development, besides the Winter Snowfield, included the Emperor Tomb Mountain Range, the Colorful Mist Coast, the Starry Sea Domain, the Senluo Forest Realm, the Sun-Chasing Lands, the Eternal Silent Ice Firefly Lake, and the Adventurer World (formerly the Underground Cave World).

The Emperor Tomb Mountain Range battlefield was obviously off-limits.

Players in the Winter Snowfield generally had Soul Soul levels below 25; the intensity of the Emperor Tomb Mountain Range battlefield was too high, far beyond what these newbies could handle.

Although there were many derivative evil spirits similar to Cursed Soldiers under the Waning Moon.

But there were too many wolves and too little meat; they simply couldn't generate continuous profits like the Winter Snowfield region, and respawns required waiting.

The Colorful Mist Coast scene had long been repeatedly cultivated by veteran players; its current function was more like a seaport for heading to the Starry Sea Domain.

Or a transit point for heading to external mining areas.

For newbie players wanting to explore the mist-shrouded areas of the Colorful Mist Coast, even with vehicle assistance, it would take over ten days of travel.

Dying once meant returning to the starting point, making the cost-performance ratio of hunting extremely low.

The drawback of the Starry Sea Domain region was its instability; while newbies could earn growth profits from it, the problem was they couldn't generate stable hunting yields like in the Winter Snowfield.

Going into the sea to fish was also not a field most racial players were skilled in.

As for the Adventurer World, the strength of newbie players was not suitable; they would struggle to challenge even the lowest-level dungeons.

Although the Blue Lamp Race was generous, they also had minimum requirement standards.

The remaining Sun-Chasing Lands, Senluo Forest Realm, and the recently opened Eternal Silent Ice Firefly Lake region were suitable.

The drawback was that competition was too fierce.

Especially in the Eternal Silent Ice Firefly Lake region, millions of players were clearing the map fog; wherever one went, they could see other players.

Many newbies on the Winter Snowfield battlefield had actually transferred from the Eternal Silent Ice Firefly Lake, preparing to take root and struggle in the Winter Snowfield battlefield.

They never expected that this feng shui treasure land would be scared into collapse by the Earth Chanting Bully.

A million newbies becoming homeless and unsure of where to go became a hot topic of discussion on the player forums.

During this period, many players offered suggestions.

Some were making memes, while others genuinely wanted to help.

Among the more reliable suggestions was to head to the Emperor Tomb Village mining area, which was also a location for stable profit generation.

The drawback was that the process was dull and boring; it couldn't compare to the passion of the Winter Snowfield region, which allowed one to hone combat skills and make many friends.

The daily routine of a miner was leaning against the wall swinging a pickaxe, browsing the forums, or watching livestreams.

The mining area had no automatic mining function, nor did it allow the use of mining robots from the Arms Merchant Guild within the village mining area.

Everything relied on the players' own efforts, although occasionally there could be small surprises.

For example, digging up "Void Meng Yuan Stone" could be sold for a high price on the Exchange immediately, but there was absolutely no possibility of getting rich quick.

After all, the spiritual ore stones produced by their own mining area were of fixed types.

Whatever type of resource territory was previously contained determined what type of spiritual ore stone was produced; super-rare spiritual ore stones did not exist.

Dull labor plus low expectations meant only a small portion of players could experience the joy of mining.

This was also the reason why the number of mining-party players always ranked at the bottom among all major gameplay styles.

Even though there would be a surge during each newbie recruitment phase, the vast majority of "miners" would choose to quit once they had sufficient strength, leaving Emperor Tomb Village to start a new growth model.

The only place where one could earn long-term profits through boiling-blood team battles like in the Emperor Tomb Mountain Range was A Le's Training Camp; there was no other.

Unable to find a suitable development model, newbie players collectively wailed on the forum. "A Le, I can't live without you, A Le, come back quickly! Next time I definitely won't use the eye-gouging tactic; I will fight properly and train your unit AI."

"Once there was a sincere training scene placed before me, but I did not cherish it; only after missing it did I regret it deeply. If I had known A Le's Training Camp would go bankrupt, I would have trained 24 hours non-stop in the early stage to make up for all future training."

"On the first day since the training camp closed, I miss it. I used to think A Le's unit strength was getting higher and higher, and the unit AI was improving rapidly in combat, even learning our players' eye-poking and groin-kicking tactics. Now I realize the wild monsters outside are even more ferocious... A Le, how can I live without you? (Explorer shedding tears.jpg)."

"Now all the server's newbies are searching the world for substitutes, but after going in circles, they discover that either the intensity is ridiculously high, or finding monsters is time-consuming and laborious, they don't respawn, and one needs to frequently change regions. Looking back at A Le's training camp, it was truly the conscience of the industry. Now the last bit of beauty has collapsed; let the world be destroyed. (Brick-moving decadent look at the sky.jpg)"

It was not difficult for players to find a way out.

The Monster World lacked neither hunting scenes nor resource areas to be mined.

But at the current stage, there was no substitute for a scene like A Le's Training Camp where one could "infinitely farm monsters and infinitely enjoy."

At the same hunting level, among the regions players had explored, one could no longer find units weaker than A Le's.

Just as the forum buzzed with heated debate over where the million novices, now collectively laid off, should go next.

Inside the Bliss Main Hall, A Le was also pondering a question: where to build the Bliss Legion Training Camp next.

For the construction of the new system legions, it had already invested massive resources; naturally, it could not abandon the project after encountering a setback.

At the current stage, whether Bliss Evil Spirits or Bliss Insect Tides, all had been equipped with Combat Memory.

They could automatically learn and grow based on the enemy's fighting style.

On top of being controlled, they could also engage in autonomous combat.

This was also the reason why Bliss Evil Spirits and the Bliss Insect Clan could learn from players a series of hooligan-style fighting techniques like groin kicks, eye pokes, and hair pulling.

Moreover, as long as a combat method proved effective, the Combat Memory would deeply learn that skill and continuously strengthen it.

Through this Combat Memory system, the development potential of the Bliss Insect Tides and the Bliss Purple Tides was already unlike what it had been in the past.

It placed great hopes on this.

Now that the Winter Snow Plains were lost, it must quickly find a new location to set up a testing ground for the Bliss Legions.

This would ensure the construction of the new system legions could proceed steadily.

However, to satisfy the environmental requirements for building the new legion system, three conditions had to be met.

First, there must be a vast number of monsters or other types of lifeforms, allowing the Bliss Legion units to engage in high-frequency combat, since optimization also needed to occur through such frequent fighting.

Second, the individual combat power could not be too strong; otherwise, the resource consumption per battle would be too high. Ideally, they should be slightly weaker than the Bliss Purple Tides and Bliss Insect Tides.

Finally, the combat environment had to be highly controllable.

Just like the Winter Snow Plains battlefield, the addition of the Player Clan fell entirely within the controllable range, and the rotating Bliss Main Gods on watch could guarantee that no external force could interfere with the legions' optimization and development.

Finding a region that satisfied these three conditions was not easy.

Fortunately, during its long years of lying low, it had collected environmental information on many regions of the Monster World.

It was just that whether the environments of these regions had changed still required investigation to determine.

The Monster World changed too fast; every day, a huge number of factions descended, rendering intelligence on many regions long outdated.

Perhaps those locations that had once been suitable were now already occupied by descended factions.

With its intent clarified, the Lord of Bliss, sitting cross-legged on the altar, opened its eyes, its ever-changing Iron Face becoming blurred.

The power of Bliss seeped out from its body, spreading along the threads connecting to the Bliss Main Hall toward the Bliss Branch Halls.

Every Bliss Branch Hall was one of its eyes, capable of detailing what happened in the outside world, and could also serve as a relay station for consciousness, allowing rapid travel to different regions.

The next second, countless scenes floated up in the mind of the Lord of Bliss.

In the Endless Molten Abyss region, its consciousness descended upon a hall suspended over scorching magma.

As far as the eye could see, exploding fireballs and boiling magma intertwined into a net of destruction.

The environment here was too violent; abandon.

Its consciousness shifted, crossing millions of miles in an instant, arriving at a peculiar city constructed from countless mirror surfaces.

The scene, originally overrun by monsters, had now taken root by the Phantom Clan, who had established a Nightmare City here, with every mirror displaying different combat illusions.

After a brief investigation, the Lord of Bliss chose to abandon it once again.

The view switched again; emerald giant trees stood towering into the sky, their canopies layered like clouds, vines coiling like dragons.

This land, originally barren and inhabited by large numbers of Poisonous Insects, had now been occupied by a clan capable of manipulating nature, which had established a Tree Sea environment here.

All plants would automatically attack intruders.

A scene that had been absolutely homogenized was clearly unsuitable for development.

The speed of consciousness jumps grew faster and faster; scenes constantly flashed through the mind of the Lord of Bliss, its sensory tentacles streaking across thousands of scenarios like meteors.

In a trance, it recalled that the last time it had observed the Monster World so meticulously was a very long time ago.

Now, seas had turned into mulberry fields; the world had undergone tremendous changes.

Once-familiar territories had been carved up by unfamiliar factions.

Clans that were once as weak as ants had now become regional overlords.

And those powerful clans that had once charged forward triumphantly, aiming to claim the peak of the Monster World.

The scenes they once ruled were now nothing but ruins; as far as the eye could see lay broken walls and shattered stones.

The glory this clan had once possessed perhaps remained only as fragments in its memory.

With every scene its consciousness swept across, a wave of memories surged into its heart.

Many images filled it with immense emotion.

For instance, the Fire-Wing Clan that had emerged in the Endless Molten Abyss region.

From humble reptiles, they had now evolved into regional overlords capable of commanding magma.

Yet at the beginning of its memories regarding this clan, they were merely weak creatures living in cracks within the lava; now, however, they had built magnificent city-states spanning seas of fire.

Silently observing the scenes within different locations, the Lord of Bliss saw history shift, yet it proved one thing.

Survival had never relied on momentary bravery.

The search continued; memories flashed like images on a revolving lantern.

It had never interfered with the rise and fall of these races, serving only as a witness, watching them rise, flourish, and then, in all probability, march toward extinction.

What was fortunate was that it had always remained.

The Bliss Clan was the iron fortress; the clients were the flowing water.

Old clients might die, but the Monster World never lacked for clients; there would always be new challengers arriving with ambition, only to push open the doors leading to the Bliss Palace on some future day.

Leveraging the Monster World as a super platform, the Bliss Palace never feared a lack of clients.

Although the Bliss Clan's method of development was not as fast as the model of occupying nodes.

Yet this model excelled in stability.

Descended factions in the Monster World came in wave after wave; each time, it could harvest a toll from a very small fraction of these groups, thereby gradually strengthening the Bliss Clan.

History had already proven that its own choice was the most correct path.

But it also knew that it would eventually have to take the all-or-nothing step of entering the Monster World itself.

The Era of Descent was the Monster World's final carnival.

If it could not establish a foothold in the Monster World during this era, then once the era of myriad races competing to cross over ended and the age of peak powerful clans carving up the territory began, it might not even be able to find a place to rest its feet.

This was also the reason it attached such importance to the construction of the new legion system.

When the moment came to reveal its trump card, it would wager everything to contend for the peak of the Monster World.

Comparing past memories with present scenes, seeing so many promising newcomers appear, the corners of its mouth lifted slightly.

"New powers rise together, stars shine bright... this world has always been so interesting."

It was precisely these brilliantly talented clans that made this gamble toward the peak worthy of staking all its chips.

It greatly looked forward to what kind of sparks would fly when its new legion system was perfected and collided with these promising clans.

Deep in its heart, it longed to enact the most spectacular final battle alongside the powerful clans of the Monster World.

The end of lying low was a sky-burning blaze.

Even if it ultimately failed, it must, within this final stage where myriad races competed to cross over, burn a brilliant trajectory that would shake the entire Monster World.

This was the lifelong pursuit it had striven for during its long years taking root in the Monster World.

The roar suppressed in its heart now surged like a raging Black Tide, restless and eager to move.

Perhaps in the near future, it would personally Iron Face this world that haunted its dreams and daydreams, roaring out the declaration it had been building up for so long:

"Monster World, the Lord of Bliss has arrived!"

Thanks to Hai Tian Hen for the donation of 2000 Qidian coins~

Today is still 5000+ words; once I finish my busy work, I'll start exploding updates~

(End of Chapter)