Chapter 383: Brother Ming Hou Opens Class, You Up If You Can

The "Jinquan Travelogue" posted by Bo Yan sparked a wave of exploration fever on the forum.

Past history has proven that although Explorer players are usually poor, as long as they find an opportunity, they can strike it rich overnight.

Just as the saying goes on the forum: three months without a haul, and one haul feeds you for three years.

Bo Yan's encounter undoubtedly proved the weight of that saying.

Just the day before yesterday, he was a down-and-out Explorer scraping by on cheap pet food; after returning from the Jinquan Space, he could buy high-performance flying swords in full, batches of Evolution Pills, and eat spiritual food freely… completing a leap-frog surge in wealth.

Similar experiences are often staged on the forum by Explorer players, but Bo Yan's encounter this time was even more typical.

In a brief stint, he earned 3.38 million Shou Shou Jili.

The whole run was overwhelming, arguably the most satisfying "mob-grinding" experience among the opportunities recorded on the forum.

This also attracted more players to join the Explorer playstyle.

For other players, the growth in the number of Explorer players could indirectly bring them wealth as well.

For example, the early Snake Ancestor Temple, the Darkborn Space, the Game Space… including building a deep mutual-grinding friendship with the Lord of Bliss, were all opportunities dug up by Explorer players.

And the Jinquan Space discovered in this exploration was also regarded by A-Lan as an opportunity.

Once the timing was ripe in the future, he would make his move to take it.

Just as A-Lan was clarifying his new future goal, Brother Ming Hou, who was preparing the casino plans on Dream Island, also had a new layout in mind.

At this moment, he was browsing the heated discussions about "Jinquan Travelogue" on the player forum, and then keenly realized a key point.

The player forum, apart from being a place for intelligence exchange and discussion, is also the opinion heart of the player faction.

Those exploration discussions, battle analyses, and even complaint gossip pushed to the top of the hot posts all invisibly shape the opinion currents among the player community.

The legend of Bo Yan's overnight riches, and other big events that blew up the forum, were all accompanied by a rapid rise in the poster's influence.

He also noticed that the player IDs who frequently posted high-quality guides had a rallying power no less than some top guild leaders.

The most famous was the very active early guide-party big shot on the forum, "Night Is Coming."

After becoming a player, he had already learned the way A-Lan taught and changed his own thinking patterns.

He also began to ponder the meaning behind many of A-Lan's layouts.

During this period he discovered that A-Lan would often speak on the forum, providing various kinds of help to players in the faction.

Even producing a gold-coin plugin to help players understand prices, and rolling out various welfare programs.

These actions might look like pure giving, but in essence they were boosting the Gold Coin Merchant Guild's influence within the player faction.

Multiple trade hubs that imitated the Gold Coin Merchant Guild's model failed to make any splash at all.

This was related to the Gold Coin Merchant Guild's influence.

The output of dungeon players, and even the output of other groups, would first consider the Gold Coin Merchant Guild as their cooperation partner.

Even if other guilds were willing to offer higher prices, players were still only willing to cooperate with the Gold Coin Merchant Guild.

This caused many imitators to find it hard to catch up with the Gold Coin Merchant Guild's influence at all.

Beyond the Gold Coin Merchant Guild's strong sales channels, there was also the boost of the guild's reputation influence.

Therefore, within the player faction, influence was extremely important.

Because influence is the right to speak, and the right to speak means being able to mobilize more resources within the player faction, including combat power.

Just like how A-Lan had previously recruited the major top guilds to help a player protect the safety of the Dragon Wing Clan.

This was one way of cashing in on influence.

Browsing the forum information, Brother Ming Hou suddenly realized that he too had to start laying out his own influence on the forum.

If he wanted to lead the Mingyun Clan to become a top force within the player faction, relying solely on the "Mingyun Casino" resource-gathering channel was not enough.

He also had to plant seeds on this opinion battlefield of the player forum, and cultivate a base of his own.

As for the specifics of how to do it, the forum had plenty of reference cases.

The most convenient was to become a bestower of knowledge.

This was also the way many guide-party players gained fans among players.

After clarifying his idea, Brother Ming Hou immediately decided to post his first guide thread on the forum.

The content had already been thought out in advance.

He planned to use this post to teach players combat techniques.

Among them were usage techniques for spiritual power conversion.

The most popular technique on the forum was the use of psychokinesis, but that technique was still too basic, far inferior to the spiritual-power-converted Evil Wind he used.

Apart from Evil Wind, spiritual power could also generate multiple types of elemental energy by communicating with the elements of heaven and earth.

These techniques could all significantly boost the combat power of one's own players.

With his idea clarified, Brother Ming Hou immediately began recording the teaching content.

One hour later, Brother Ming Hou's first combat-technique teaching post was published on the forum.

Brother Ming Hou's game ID, "Throat of Defying Fate," was already somewhat famous on the forum.

The first time it stirred forum buzz was during the previous round of newbie recruitment, when this ID took first place on the newbie leveling event leaderboard by an absolute margin.

The second time was when he took the Game Space rules and crafted his own special Painful Painful Minghun: Mingyun City.

But before this, no matter how forum players @-ed him asking for details, Brother Ming Hou never paid any attention.

So when they suddenly saw "Throat of Defying Fate" posting, quite a few players immediately clicked in to check.

The post's popularity grew along with the increase in views and replies, and it quickly stirred heated discussion on the forum.

In the post, the content shown in the teaching video was also an area players had never understood in detail before.

The video's title was 【Dragon Sparrow Casino: The Absolute Authority on Spiritual Power Usage, Lesson One: The Basic Usage of Spiritual Power.】

At the opening of the teaching video, Brother Ming Hou stood on an empty beach on the west coast of Dream Island and extended one finger.

The next second, vast spiritual power condensed into substantive black Evil Wind, roaring and sweeping past like an angry dragon, instantly eroding the distant reef into a skyful of fine powder.

Finishing the demonstration, Brother Ming Hou looked at the camera and said calmly:

"What we need to understand is that spiritual power is not brute force, but an extension of one's own will, and also the bridge through which we communicate with the elements of heaven and earth. When you learn to use your consciousness to guide the elements of heaven and earth, it can transform into any elemental form you desire."

His words done, Brother Ming Hou raised his palm upward, and a wisp of formless, intangible spiritual power flowed out from his brow, spreading through the air like a thin mist.

"Before we begin the formal lesson, I need all of you to forget every post about elemental affinity you've seen on the forum. That knowledge is meaningless. Many of those posts hold misleading views that will make you think resonating with elements is the best path for spiritual power conversion."

"So, from this moment on, your judgment on the techniques of using spiritual power will follow mine. My teaching content is the authority."

Without any roundabout talk or false modesty, Brother Ming Hou in the video, after expressing his own thoughts, went straight to the substance:

"Now to the main topic. First, we need to understand one concept: what is spiritual power?"

"Spiritual power, in essence, is a kind of currency. The more currency you pay, the more elemental energy you obtain. The higher the spiritual power's intensity, the stronger the purchasing power of the same amount of currency. The more spiritual power you have, the larger the reserve of currency on you."

"Once we monetize spiritual power, we can very intuitively understand one principle: converting spiritual power into elements is actually an interactive process of spending money to buy elements. Whatever element you want to buy, you can obtain it by paying spiritual power."

"As for elemental affinity, you can understand it as the closeness to a single element. When the closeness is high, you can purchase that type of elemental energy at a discounted price."

"And the reason I say elemental affinity is useless is because we players already buy elements at the lowest discount price. So raising spiritual power is the core; raising closeness doesn't matter. What you need to do is issue the command of which element to buy, then exchange money for elements with the world directly."

"Once you understand this concept, you'll know the essence of element gathering is equivalent exchange. You can use spiritual power to purchase nearly all elemental energy in Monster World, and the price required for each type of elemental energy is also different."

His words done, Brother Ming Hou began demonstrating the process of converting spiritual power into elements.

The black baleful wind spinning on his fingertip suddenly took on a streak of blazing red.

The surrounding fire elements gathered of their own accord like moths to a flame, condensing on Brother Ming Hou's fingertip into a leaping lotus-shaped flame. Every petal was clearly visible, yet it did not burn the skin at all.

He flicked his finger, and the fire lotus spun up into the air, suddenly bursting into countless streams of fire, which then obediently extinguished before hitting the ground.

"This is the conversion of fire element."

Brother Ming Hou's rhythm of releasing spiritual power shifted, and the scattered sparks at his fingertip instantly turned into a blue halo.

Moist water vapor was drawn in from the sea surface, condensing on Brother Ming Hou's fingertip into an ice-crystal prism that refracted a seven-colored halo.

"This is water element. Unlike the explosive nature of fire element, water element has higher plasticity. When using water element, you can give it more forms."

His words done, the ice crystal suddenly melted into liquid, then instantly froze into a dense array of ice needles:

"This is the process of altering its structure."

The ice crystal shattered, turning into water mist suspended above his palm.

He raised his hand and drew an arc; the water mist in his palm suddenly contracted, condensing into a transparent ribbon of water in midair.

Within the water ribbon, countless specks of light could faintly be seen.

In Brother Ming Hou's explanation, at this moment the spiritual power was conducting a high-speed exchange with the water element. Every flicker represented one portion of spiritual power converting into an equal amount of water-element energy.