Zhou Yue's live stream.
In a messy, cramped shipping container, Zhou Yue was using all his strength, fighting wits and courage with his opponent.
Last night, he and Zhong Yi were so furious that they went to Buried Soul Sea and mowed down an entire fish-monster tribe to vent their anger.
On the way back, Zhong Yi suddenly had an epiphany and told Zhou Yue about a strategy for looting in Auction King.
It was basically picking safe characters on low-tier maps, grinding out small profits of ten to twenty thousand every round.
Zhou Yue even spent Spirit Stones to buy Luna, and he found that the strategy actually worked!
Luna was Elsa from the game in his past life, with a skill that revealed the outline of a collectible's quality color each round, ranging from white to purple.
The shipping container map had pretty low-tier loot, rarely spawning anything big.
As long as he wasn't greedy, didn't get carried away, and didn't gamble on those non-existent red ones...
After identifying the white, green, blue, and purple collectibles, it was hard to lose money!
Take right now, for example. It was the fourth round, with only two single-slot items left to uncover in the massive container. Clearly a broke-man's game.
"Eighty-eight thousand, take it or leave it."
Zhou Yue's tone was cold, a little numb, completely lacking the earlier fire he'd had.
Facing the doubts from the chat, Zhou Yue answered confidently:
"If red shows up, I'll hand it over. I just treat everything like ten-thousand-coin small fry here!"
All night long, he stuck strictly to this rule and never went bankrupt again.
All his opponents were using Mai Xiaowen. Since everything they scanned was low-quality, none of them offered more than eighty-eight thousand in the end, and Zhou Yue successfully claimed the cargo hold.
"The reveal... holy crap?! Both single slots are red???"
Zhou Yue was shocked.
Sure, they were both small reds, worth less than two hundred thousand combined, but this was the luckiest round he'd had all night.
"Haha! My luck's turning around!"
Zhou Yue laughed from deep within.
Just then, the live chat started teasing him.
[Lao Zhou, I've been watching you dig through trash all night. Can you take us to someplace wealthy?]
[This really does feel like looting.]
[Other people hit treasure and dive into violent bidding wars, but you're totally doing the opposite.]
[Damn, Lao Zhou's already at 5 million? Time to go all-in on the wrecked ship!]
[Lao Zhou's luck has turned. Approve the program change!]
...
Zhou Yue's heart started racing, swayed by the chat.
All night long, grinding three to five grand per round from trash pickings, he'd gone from 2 million to 5 million—all honest sweat.
"No, no, if you want to make money in this mode, you gotta stay stable! That kind of place..."
While talking, he opened a battle-pass reward supply pack and suddenly froze.
"No way!! I pulled a golden item!! My luck really changed???"
Zhou Yue's head started spinning.
Something was off—very, very off.
He'd always thought these packs could only drop green items...
What was a golden item doing here?
One that could even see the total number of red collectible slots—a top-tier golden item!
"Fortune has come... I've got to seize it! Seize it!"
Zhou Yue didn't waste a second. He frantically switched maps to the Deepsea Wreck.
"Crap, I didn't switch characters... Is Luna gonna look way too noobish here?"
Zhou Yue felt a wave of embarrassment.
At this stage, having 5 million meant you were a player with some skill and understanding.
Two Nameless, one Deep Blue.
Zhou Yue's Luna, built for spotting low-tier collectibles, stood on the bidding platform, looking like a country bumpkin new to the city.
The chat cracked up.
[You're a dirt-farmer, so what if you look plain?]
[Whoa, this storage is huge???]
[That's a fat cache!]
[Lao Zhou hitting a fat cache? I don't believe it; it's probably all trash fish.]
[What's there to fear with that item? Just check how many reds there are!]
...
The first public bid message was explosive:
Total number of slots occupied by all collectibles: 269.
Zhou Yue's eyes went wide.
He'd picked through containers all night and never seen such a huge stash.
Reminded by the chat, he hastily used the golden item he just pulled, Rare Scanning.
Total number of slots occupied by red-quality collectibles: 86.
"???"
Zhou Yue was so excited he almost forgot to breathe.
Eighty-six slots!
The red collectibles in this cache alone outnumbered all the reds he'd looted from containers all night combined!
"Calm down, calm down... Pfft, to hell with calm! Just grab it right now!!!"
Zhou Yue instantly bid 3 million.
But to his disappointment, one of the three opponents bid 1.6 million, so he didn't manage to close the deal instantly.
Worse still, his bid fully exposed the info—now everyone knew this cache held a lot of reds.
What followed would be bloody chaos!
"Dammit, how do I bid now..."
Zhou Yue started to hesitate.
If it came down to a wealth showdown in the final round, his 5 million bankroll wasn't enough to face the others.
The live chat started giving advice.
[Go all-in on the second round now. They don't know how many reds there are and won't react in time... If you stall, you'll lose it! Eighty-six slots of reds can't all be trash, right? If this ends in a loss, I'll eat the Mirage Tower on the spot!!]
When Zhou Yue saw that comment, his mind began to race.
That made a lot of sense!
Zhou Yue got pumped. Without hesitating, he pushed his entire net worth—5.16 million, every last coin—onto the table.
"All in!!"
Zhou Yue shouted.
As expected, Player No. 2, Nameless, bid 3.2 million, and Zhou Yue narrowly snagged the cache right at the edge.
"That was close..."
Zhou Yue patted his chest, still shaken, then couldn't help getting excited.
"Come on, come on, come on..."
He stared at the cargo hold.
One by one, red collectibles started popping out.
"Twenty-five slots??? What is it???"
"Imperial Auspicious Zodiac Plate... 188,000?? Is this a joke??"
"Easy, easy... Here comes something big... Fifteen slots sideways--definitely not trash!"
"Hybrid Red Hare... 290,000... You can sit at the trash table!"
"It's fine, it's fine... Keep it together..."
"Sixteen-slot Rosewood Screen for 360,000?? I freaking..."
"Another fifteen-slot one... Don't tell me it's..."
"Trash, get out!!!"
...
One red collectible after another—every last one of them a fraud.
Even Lu Ze, watching this scene from Zhong Yi's stream, was startled.
Because he knew that the cargo hold in Auction King was different from containers in Abyss Action—the items were already determined when the game started.
It wasn't possible that Zhou Yue's loot was junk while someone else's from the same cache would be good.
So how did Zhou Yue's situation even add up?
Maybe from the moment he pulled that Rare Scanning, everything was already fated?
Zhou Yue's whole face was beet red.
He never imagined in his life that 86 slots of red items would total just over three million...
A loss of 1.6 million just like that!
"Whoever said they'd eat the Mirage Tower, get your ass out here..."
Zhou Yue suddenly became furious and frantically scrolled through the barrage messages, quickly finding that long and obnoxious one.
The sender of the barrage was clearly marked: [Prodigious Cultivator].
Zhou Yue’s face turned even redder.
“Damn it!!!”
“It really is you!!!”
...
...
The gameplay of Auction King was very simple.
Gather information, appraise value, place bids, open the auction.
With the precedent of the treasure-hunting mechanic in Divine Sense Seeker, cultivators quickly grasped the concept and found it highly addictive.
The reason was simple—
Essentially, Auction King was not a bidding game at all, but a gambling game disguised as an auction.
Stimulated by skills, items, outlines of different qualities, and all sorts of random information, players were more than willing to act like desperate gamblers.
Each auction round took only four or five minutes, making the pace incredibly exhilarating.
Lu Ze launched a new event in Celestial Abyss Frontier: players could earn limited-time points by participating in auctions each day.
After seven consecutive days of participation, they could obtain a limited-edition red collectible called the [Charity Auction Jade Pendant].
This move was no different from a certain game in a previous life having its official Delta Force counterpart promote and advertise Auction King.
Back in the previous life, even a small workshop—with no marketing, straight to Steam—could still achieve impressive results.
Now, with the backing of Celestial Abyss Frontier, Auction King naturally exploded in popularity.
In just one night, seventy percent of all players had entered Auction King.
Half of those had stayed for over three hours.
Many had even played through the night.
Lu Ze looked at the backend data and nodded in satisfaction.
This number exceeded his expectations by a fair margin.
From Slayer Immortal Tower to Auction King, the enthusiasm of the cultivators had surpassed what he had anticipated, clearly showing their love for randomized mechanics.
“Looks like folks in the cultivation world really love to gamble…”
Lu Ze muttered to himself as he began dividing the user base by region in the backend.
Those who frequently appeared in the Great Qian Dynasty were marked as high-priority users.
Even if they didn’t play Celestial Abyss Frontier, he would find ways to get them into Auction King through other means.
After finishing everything, Lu Ze exited the illusion realm.
Compared to the illusion realm, which could be completed in half a day, another matter was slightly more troublesome.
“Next…”
“I need to transplant the illusion realm into the secret realm.”
【Prologue: The Beginning of It All – Use holy water to heal the saintess tainted by demonic energy, then converse with her.】 Shen Nian stared at his older sister sipping yogurt, lost in thought. So you’re telling me my sister is the saintess, and yogurt is the holy water? 【Main Quest 1: Brave Youth, Become an Adventurer! Reward: Rookie Adventurer Title.】 【Side Quest 1: Find the Adorable Kitty! Reward: 1000 Gold Coins.】 Shen Nian: "Wait, I’m a high school senior here—did some guy who got isekai’d accidentally bind his system to me?" Hold on, completing quests gives gold rewards? Titles even boost stats? Is this for real? (A lighthearted, absurd campus comedy—not a revenge power fantasy.)
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
