After reading the announcement, Liu Xuan turned his attention to the chest that stood half as tall as a person.
He excitedly walked over, rubbed his hands together, and opened it. Inside, he found ten gleaming gold coins.
With that, his total number of gold coins was now close to 193.
Then there were two pieces of equipment:
【Fish-Head Hat】
Quality: Fine
Required Level: 10
Health: +50
Armor: +20
Strength: +3
Intelligence: +3
Effect: After taking physical or magical damage, the next instance of damage of the same type is reduced by 10%. This effect can only have one stack. Taking damage of the other type immediately changes the effect.
Damn! What a rip-off!
It had the exact same effect when it was on the boss, so how come it was so much weaker after it ended up in his hands?
The damage reduction had gone straight from 50% to 10%!
Fortunately, the stats were still quite impressive.
The appearance, however, was hard to describe. It really was just a giant fish head. You put your head into the fish’s mouth, and that counted as wearing it.
The second piece of equipment was a pair of shoes:
【Waterlogged Boots】
Quality: Fine
Required Level: 10
Health: +30
Armor: +12
Agility: +5
Effect: Maintains normal movement speed in muddy areas.
Both pieces of equipment required Level 10. Liu Xuan was still one level short, so he could only put them away for now.
Beneath the equipment were four pieces of transparent leather. Liu Xuan guessed that they might be rare materials like the ones he had found before.
When he picked them up and took a look, delight appeared on his face.
【Giant Salamander Leather (Rare Material): Give a certain amount of this material to a leatherworker to craft equipment or backpacks.】
It could be used to make equipment or backpacks. However, unless the equipment turned out to be particularly good, Liu Xuan planned to have it made into a backpack.
He was still using a small backpack made from the hide of a 【Killer Snake】. It only had five slots.
The giant salamander was so much higher-leveled than the killer snake. Surely a backpack made from its hide would have at least ten or twenty slots, right?
After putting away the leather, Liu Xuan suddenly noticed that there was something else at the bottom of the chest: a sheet of golden paper.
At first, he thought it was a skill book, but after picking it up, he found that it was something else.
【Proof of the Giant Salamander Slayer: Offer this to an altar somewhere to prove your battle achievements. You may receive an unusual reward.】
An altar? He had no idea where one was.
He would ask an NPC when the time came.
Speaking of NPCs, Liu Xuan slapped his forehead as he suddenly remembered something. He quickly turned around to look for Bell.
He found that Captain Finch had already dragged Bell to the rear.
Liu Xuan hurried over and asked, “Is he all right?”
“He’s only seriously injured and unconscious. He’ll need to recuperate for a while.”
As long as he wasn’t dead, that was fine.
Liu Xuan took out several bottles of healing potion and handed them to Captain Finch. “Give these to him. By the way, the battle at this outpost should count as complete, right? What do we do next?”
With the outpost’s greatest threat eliminated, Captain Finch looked quite pleased as well. He pointed toward a wooden bulletin board not far away.
“We need to wait for the bridge across the river to be built. But you warriors don’t need to worry about that—we’ll take care of it. In the meantime, you can complete the tasks posted there.
“You can accept the same tasks over in the village. They’re mainly meant to stabilize our rear so that the coming expedition won’t have any worries behind it. Once all the tasks above have been completed, we’ll be able to cross the river.”
Liu Xuan walked over to the bulletin board and took a look. At the very top was a progress bar displaying 0/10000.
Below it were all kinds of missions, including killing various monsters—the same ones Liu Xuan had fought before.
There were also missions to complete a dungeon once, donate supplies once, or donate money once.
All the missions could be completed repeatedly, rewarding experience and money. Once the entire battlefield had collectively completed 10,000 missions from the board, they would be able to cross the river and begin the expedition.
No wonder Captain Finch had said they were meant to stabilize the rear.
Looking at the 10,000 missions, Liu Xuan increasingly felt that this battlefield couldn’t be treated as nothing more than a game.
In other virtual games, players were often competitors even when they cooperated.
Competing for monsters and resources, killing one another for loot—such things happened all the time.
But on this battlefield, everyone was a soldier taking part in the expedition.
When fighting a war, they had to work together.
If Liu Xuan hadn’t been so powerful, most of the battles so far would have required the entire battlefield to join in.
They had only been crushed by Liu Xuan’s overwhelming strength.
But when they encountered something that didn’t test individual strength, such as these 10,000 missions, there was no way he could handle it alone.
“The strength of our battlefield is far beyond that of the others, and we currently have an extremely high experience bonus as well. I imagine we should be able to complete these 10,000 missions fairly quickly. I’ll discuss it with Zhang Meng later.”
As Liu Xuan pondered this, the people outside the battlefield had already gone numb while staring at the announcement on the light screen.
In reality, when the progress of the Chinese light screen had begun jumping from 25% to 50%, many countries had already started wailing.
The first and second stages were completely different. During the first stage, everyone’s progress had risen gradually, with some moving faster and others more slowly.
But the second stage only had three thresholds: 25%, 50%, and 100%.
As a result, many countries that couldn’t conquer the lumber camp remained stuck at 0%, without moving at all.
Meanwhile, China’s progress was leaping forward at an astonishing speed. It had only been an hour since they reached 50%, yet the progress had already jumped to 100%.
The announcement also stated that China’s battlefield had received a seventeenfold experience bonus before Level 10, and an experience bonus of more than twenty times before Level 3!
The other Chinese battlefields had received half as much.
In other words, if a newcomer joined a Chinese battlefield now, they could level up after killing just two or three monsters.
How were they supposed to play like this?
Had anyone ever seen a game that dared to give its players such a ridiculously high experience bonus?
The nations of the world wailed in protest, all claiming that it was unfair.
But the light screen simply ignored them.
The battlefield’s difficulty was right there for all to see. According to the calculations, you pathetic Earthlings needed five or six days to take down an outpost. The Chinese battlefield had done it in only six hours. That was because they were strong, and according to the rules, they deserved a twentyfold bonus.
What, were they unhappy about it?
At that moment, the light screen began displaying the second-stage results.
Everyone around the world, whether inside or outside the battlefield, stared intently at the screen. No one even dared to blink. They all wanted to know how China had managed to accomplish this.
As before, a gray overhead map appeared, marking out the basic locations and monster distributions.
It showed that almost all the green dots representing the players in Battlefield 2468 were concentrated around the beginner village, with quite a few more near the farm and fields.
In other words, most players had only reached Levels 1 to 3 at this point, no different from the other battlefields.
There was only one green dot that had ventured alone deep into the shrubland to the west. It wandered around there for a long time before suddenly accelerating for some unknown reason.
It headed straight for the lumber camp without stopping along the way. Almost the instant it arrived, the lumber camp changed on the map from a monster-occupied area into a friendly region.
After that, the green dot swiftly returned to the Newbie Village, then immediately headed for the quarry. In no time at all, the quarry had also been converted into a friendly area.
Next, he went north to the banks of the Orchid River. After lingering there for a moment, a simple fortress icon appeared by the river.
The outpost was captured in an instant as well.
As everyone watched the results screen beneath the glowing display, they all involuntarily cried out:
“Huh???”
They genuinely couldn’t make sense of it. Where did he go, and how did he get there so fast?
“Is it just me, or did he spend less time fighting monsters than he did traveling?”
“I’m getting dizzy. Why does this battlefield look so easy?”
“Then why don’t you go in and try it yourself?”
“No way! Do you think I’m stupid? Look how many people died.”
“So you do realize that a lot of people died.”
“Damn it, this battlefield couldn’t have been made by the Chinese, could it? Why is it favoring them so much? One person can clear it solo.”
s + Rent Collection Wealth】 At the start, he inherited a rundown house in the urban village from his grandfather. The house had no tenants, but the moment he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, a self-proclaimed empress from the Tianxuan Continent arrived as his first tenant. Ye Chuan soon discovered that with every new tenant moving in, not only did he receive massive daily payments, but he also obtained unique items related to their backgrounds. 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Tiger Strength Pill—dramatically enhances physical power!】 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Deer Blood Pill—significantly boosts vitality!】 …… From that day on, all sorts of bizarre tenants began appearing in the house: the empress from Tianxuan Continent, an apocalyptic sorceress from the Magic Realm, a mysterious scientific girl who fell through a spacetime rift… Every single day, he received strange, powerful items and endless money. Then one day, he suddenly realized—he had become invincible. Enough, enough! Stop giving me more!
he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...
orn and Humiliation】【Forced Love】 In his past life, Lin Ran was betrayed and murdered by his girlfriend and family, while the yandere female aristocrat, who had treated him as a mere plaything, avenged him by doing in his enemies. Upon seeing the yandere female aristocrat lying in the same coffin, ready to die with him, Lin Ran realized how profoundly mistaken he had been. Reborn, he abandoned the fickle campus beauty and wholeheartedly embraced the yandere female aristocrat's arms. "Ran! If I dig out your eyes and turn them into a specimen, you'll only be able to look at me!" Lin Ran: "Darling, kiss me!" "Ran! If I break your legs, you won't run away anymore, right?" Lin Ran: "Love, hold me tight!" "Ran! If..." Lin Ran: "Hush now! Love me more!" Luo Yao: ... Seeing his scumbag dad: "Take him out!" Seeing his stepmother: "Get rid of her!" Seeing his brother: "Eliminate him!" Seeing his white moonlight: "Send that to Southeast Asia!"
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
