Chapter 55
Chapter 55: Player Death
The players who stayed behind at the sect discovered a new kind of task—strange, petty, and oddly urgent.
Collect food. All kinds of food. Preferably something already pickled, something you could toss over a fire for a moment and eat right away.
Anything too fussy was beyond the Daoist four-man squad. And to make the System post the task at all, they had to pay. Not just a little transfer fee in points—every errand runner got paid a point, too, and that point came straight out of the Daoists’ own pockets.
The Daoist tried to be clever. He attempted to cram dozens of ingredients into a single task.
The System rejected it.
“…”
Damn System.
The players were bored anyway. There were always people willing to take missions, no matter how weird. Someone even mailed over a few links of smoked sausage Zhou Xiao had figured out two days ago. Fan Gu Zhou sent several bottles of liquor on top of that.
Out in the wilds, the training players discovered the System’s real advantage.
All they had to do was donate demon beasts to the sect. The players staying behind would accept the tasks to sell demon beast materials, and the spirit stones would show up in their hands almost instantly—or they could buy medicine and have it shipped out to them right away.
The System only skimmed a tiny cut in points. Small enough to call it nothing. Big enough to make you grit your teeth anyway.
The players settled into a rhythm: hand in part, spend part. As long as they kept their farming pace from slowing, they could squat in First Mountain like Song Jiu Lai and live off the land until the end of time.
The only condition was simple.
Don’t get noticed.
Because other sects couldn’t do this. Not really. Qi Refining Stage and Foundation Establishment Stage were barely the threshold of being a cultivator—spatial rift travel was out of the question. Deep in First Mountain, there was a teleportation Grand Array, but that was for Myriad Immortals Sect’s people. Rumor said it burned through high-grade spirit stones like tinder.
High-grade spirit stones were the kind of money that existed only in myths.
The current players didn’t even have a way to hear about them.
Han Tian’s stream was blazing. His group had assumed that with a few top players teamed up, their demon beast hunting speed would be in the top tier.
They never expected this.
Someone could still latch onto a big shot from another sect and cheat the system.
Lv Rong Yu—late Qi Refining Stage—didn’t even need First Rank demon beast materials. He gathered herbs, and on the way, he casually hunted a few demon beasts, stored them for the Daoist group to take back, and even dissected them like it was nothing.
He claimed he was from Medicine Sect. Work like this was second nature to him.
And his background wasn’t simple either.
After watching for two days, the Daoist finally became certain: Lv Rong Yu might not even be an ordinary disciple of Peach Blossom Sect.
For one, that mustard seed pouch of his could hold dozens of demon beasts at once. He hauled them back like they weighed nothing. And he’d casually given the Daoist four Second Rank spirit pills.
Mostly because the Daoist’s flattery hit the sweet spot. That, and they’d been eating well these past few days. Lv Rong Yu handed the pills over like he was tossing scraps.
That meant Second Rank pills were ordinary to him.
But to the Daoist and his crew, each Second Rank pill was worth ten low-grade spirit stones.
A killing blow.
Three or four days of hunting demon beasts might not even sell for forty low-grade spirit stones, unless they also gathered wild spirit materials on the side.
To keep Lv Rong Yu from getting suspicious, they even staged a little theater: Wu Da Hu stayed in a “safe” area for a few days, then returned with an extra mustard seed pouch, making it look like he’d gone back for supplies.
By the time the players were finally running smoothly, Song Jiu Lai was already carving through Second Rank demon beast territory in First Mountain until the sky went dark and her arms felt numb.
At first, she’d been proud of her Fireball Technique. She’d compared herself to Lin Qian and other sect disciples and decided she had talent.
Then the System told her Mu Qiu’s performance in First Mountain wasn’t any worse than hers.
Mu Qiu excelled at water arts. She could drag a demon beast into mud and drown it alive, slow and brutal.
And other players were cultivating faster than the local disciples of Yun Zhou Continent, too.
It was obvious: the System’s Spirit-Root Opening Core Pill didn’t play favorites.
Song Jiu Lai had gone quiet.
A sharp sense of crisis drove her these past few days. She threw herself at Second Rank demon beasts like she was trying to outrun a shadow.
Good thing she’d reached mid Qi Refining Stage first.
After killing the Second Rank Devil-horned Snake, she’d learned what mattered: distance, timing, and never letting fear make your hands hesitate. Today, she set her sights on a flock of Wild Ant Cranes.
Wild Ant Cranes were a nightmare wearing a bird’s shape.
They had the body of a crane, but the whole thing was parasitized by a highly poisonous ant. From afar, they were merely dark silhouettes.
Up close, you could see the truth: writhing ants, weaving into the outline of a crane. A moving sculpture of crawling venom. One glance was enough to haunt your dreams.
And they lived in groups.
Their abilities were simple, but vicious. They were fast. They could split into ants in an instant. If those ants climbed onto a cultivator, then in sufficient numbers, they could drain spiritual energy in a blink and burrow in to parasitize.
They were also terrified of fire.
Song Jiu Lai had to kill them. Not for pride—because the place they nested held a patch of Second Rank spirit herbs.
All wild. All thriving.
Even their growth looked better than what the sect raised behind walls.
Free things always looked the most beautiful.
Five Wild Ant Cranes wandered lazily through the clearing. If you ignored how their bodies kept twisting like coiled incense, the scene might have looked peaceful.
From a distance, Song Jiu Lai counted them. Five. She’d faced the Devil-horned Snake. She’d reached mid Qi Refining Stage. Five Wild Ant Cranes wouldn’t be hard.
And she wasn’t going to fight them the traditional way.
She fixed their positions in her mind, then snapped her hand forward and used the Water Control Technique. The ground beneath their feet darkened, soaked through, turning slick and heavy.
Three of the cranes sank immediately into the mud.
They sensed the threat and broke apart—ant bodies spilling outward—but mud and water made everything slower. Only the remaining two cranes split cleanly, turning into swarms that surged toward Song Jiu Lai like a living tide.
Where the cranes had stood, a strange, glowing skeleton remained—an empty crane frame lit from within. A material you could sell. Nothing rare.
The ants rushed her.
Song Jiu Lai lifted her hand and fired a Great Fireball.
Then another. Then another.
Five fireballs in rapid succession, bright as sudden suns. The swarms shrieked—a thin, dense chorus, like children screaming all at once.
Song Jiu Lai’s fireballs flew like she was throwing stones into a river. She blasted every angle, full circle, refusing to let a single ant touch her.
Shot after shot. Heat and light. The stink of burning insect flesh.
When her spiritual energy began to thin, she didn’t hesitate. She popped a Second Rank Qi Replenishing Pill, swallowed hard, and felt the surge return like a tide.
Then she resumed.
She didn’t have style.
She had money.
Other cultivators could fight like this, in theory. But resupplying in the wild was a nightmare, and most people didn’t have the power to brute-force battles this hard.
Song Jiu Lai did.
By the end, all five Wild Ant Cranes were burned clean. To be safe, she swallowed another Second Rank Qi Replenishing Pill, keeping her spiritual energy steady instead of letting it dip into danger.
“These dozen-plus Second Rank spirit herbs are all mine!” She grinned, bright with victory.
Two pills down. She still turned a profit—just not much.
But as long as she stayed in First Mountain, the speed at which she earned spirit stones was something other cultivators could only stare at from below.
A cold notification chimed.
[Ding. Player “Zhen Wei Da” fell into a bottomless abyss. Body shattered. Death confirmed. Account permanently banned.]
Song Jiu Lai blinked once.
Then again.
“What?”