After claiming his mail, Su Wenqi returned to the guild territory, where Yitian Chi Shitong and Batian Chi Shitong were both waiting for him.
“Chunri, your faction outfit looks so good! I asked you to change your clothes with a cosmetic outfit a couple of days ago and you wouldn’t, but I never expected the faction set to look this good on you!” Seeing Su Wenqi, Batian Chi Shitong immediately rushed over, spinning around him a few times in admiration.
Su Wenqi self-consciously rubbed his nose with his finger. Noticing his embarrassment, Batian Chi Shitong chuckled and returned to Yitian Chi Shitong’s side, at which point Xianyuan and Feng Qian also walked over in the party group.
“Chunri, you’ve finally reached max level. Do you want to join a faction?” Xianyuan walked over, casually opening the trade window to give him a dozen stacks of refined iron ore.
The game was divided into two factions: Qingyun Sect and Bishui Valley.
Players could choose to join either faction, or remain neutral without joining one, though they wouldn’t be able to participate in faction-specific activities.
Su Wenqi had already learned about the faction system over the past few days. “Bajiu Linfeng” was a Qingyun faction guild, and its players were all members of Qingyun Sect.
He was still interested in this type of gameplay, so naturally, he chose to join Qingyun Sect as well.
The group led him to the Qingyun Sect’s stronghold, where they found the sect leader and chose to join the faction before heading over to the casting zone.
“Chunri, quick! Let’s see how your luck is when refining gear!” Feng Qian excitedly pushed Su Wenqi in front of the refining table.
The others formed a circle with great tacit understanding, their eyes filled with curiosity.
Su Wenqi already understood the process of refining gear; he had no intention of gambling with his luck, deciding instead to stack the success rate to 100% every time before confirming. However, seeing how curious they were right now, he had no choice but to satisfy their curiosity.
“How do you guys want to see this? How many stones should I put in?” Su Wenqi looked at them with a helpless expression.
The first to jump in and join the fun was Feng Qian, who eagerly placed a piece of refined iron ore onto the table and urged Su Wenqi right after, “Start with one stone to test the waters, Chunri, hurry up and confirm!”
“Isn’t this going a bit too far.” Looking at that solitary stone on the table, then at the 0.005% success rate in the refining window, he was left speechless.
Probably realizing the probability was indeed too low, Feng Qian coughed in embarrassment, while Xianyuan silently pulled another stone from his backpack, placed it on top, and looked at him with hopeful eyes.
Fine, whatever.
After confirming, a flash of white light swept across, and the two stones on the table vanished, indicating a successful refinement. If a refinement failed, the stones would have turned into debris.
“l”
“As expected of you!”
“Chunri, you’re amazing! You have no idea how unlucky my brother is at refining gear, even a 99.99% success rate can fail for him. And he refuses to give up, wanting to prove himself every time, resulting in a pile of debris two stories high Ouch! Bro, why did you hit me?! I’m just telling the facts.”
Feng Qian unsparingly exposed his own brother’s dark history, resulting in a heavy kick to his rear that sent him staggering several steps forward.
“Chunri, while the iron is hot, keep refining and see if you can succeed again!” Taking advantage of the two of them bickering, Batian Chi Shitong placed two stones onto the table.
Without a doubt, it was a successful refinement.
When it was Yitian Chi Shitong’s turn to place stones, it was a success as well.
Three consecutive successes left everyone thrilled. This time, it was Xianyuan’s turn to place stones. Su Wenqi familiarly hit confirm, only for a pile of debris to appear on the table.
“Ah, this.” The four of them turned their gazes toward Xianyuan in unison. He didn’t speak, but everyone could feel that his spirit was about to shatter.
Su Wenqi hurriedly stepped in to smooth things over: “Aiya, succeeding this many times is already plenty, let me try again.”
With that, he placed stones on the table as well. Unsurprisingly, the refinement succeeded.
Feeling the resentful gaze coming from his right, he stiffly turned his body, not daring to speak. Xianyuan’s gloomy, ghost-like voice sounded right beside his ear: “You said it wouldn’t succeed, you lied to me.”
“Ahahaha.” Su Wenqi offered an awkward laugh, having no idea how to reply.
Fortunately, Feng Qian stepped in to break the awkward atmosphere, dragging Xianyuan off to the side to whisper among themselves.
Su Wenqi let out a soft sigh of relief and hurriedly finished refining the rest of his gear. Since the success rate for the subsequent items wouldn’t stack to 100% and failed several times, he stopped gambling with the probabilities and simply stacked the success rate to 100% for every subsequent refinement.
Luckily, he had accumulated plenty of refined iron ore beforehand, so this time he was able to max out his gear’s refinement level all at once.
Refining gear didn’t take up too much time, so Su Wenqi was about to dive into the first PvP activity of his gaming career!
Guild [Xianyuan]: Gobi cart escort
Guild [Guigui]: Coming, coming!
Guild [Huahua]: Wuhu, I made it just in time for the guild master’s raid group! By the way, are we going to fight during the escort today?
Guild [Xianyuan]: Let’s see the escort situation today. If there are a lot of people from Bishui Valley, we can fight.
Guild [Pure Love Kitten]: There’s a fight? I’m rushing into the group!
Before long, a 25-person raid group was fully formed, and the group members used divine travel to reach the mineral cart location in the Gobi Desert to pick up the quest.
Private Chat [Xianyuan]: If a fight breaks out later, try to stand in the middle of the crowd. I’ll have Batian keep an eye on your health pool.
Private Chat [Chun Ri Ci]: Got it, I’ll watch out for myself too. You guys go ahead and focus on fighting without worry.
Private Chat [Xianyuan]: Alright, stay safe.
Upon arriving in the Gobi, the surrounding environment shifted from the prosperous and flourishing capital to a desolate, scorching desert region.
“Wow, there are so many people.” The quest-taking area was surging with a massive crowd, but fortunately, each map had a player limit, allowing a maximum of 1,000 players per faction into the map. Players who couldn’t squeeze in could choose other split-line maps. Su Wenqi checked and saw that they were currently on split-line 86.
“Come gather at the marked point. There are people from Bishui Valley mining ahead, let’s hit them with a wave.” Xianyuan’s voice came through the raid audio channel, and Su Wenqi saw everyone in the raid rushing toward the marked point.
Feeling a bit eager to try it himself, he thought for a moment and followed the main force over.
Xianyuan had chosen a commanding vantage point. About twenty meters below them was a dense, swarming mass of red-name players.
In wild maps, players could freely choose to toggle their faction mode on or off. However, after accepting the quest on the cart-escorting map, the faction mode was enabled by default, so players from the opposing faction appeared as red names.
“DPS go down first, healers follow closely behind in the back and be ready to drop combat and retreat back to camp.” With that command, he led the raid members charging straight down. Su Wenqi followed the main force down, plunging right into the pile of red names.
“Chunri, get back here!! I can’t heal you! Why are you charging so far forward! And you’re still wearing a full PVE gear set!”
The moment he dropped into the red-name stack, he absorbed a barrage of skills, his health bar plummeting straight to the bottom and nearly sending him dead back to camp. Batian Chi Shitong screamed at the top of his lungs in the back, and the healers in the raid hadn’t expected him to be so reckless either, but they quickly threw all their damage-reduction and major healing skills at him, instantly pulling his critical health line back up.
He apologized sheepishly, “Sorry, I charged in too aggressively and couldn’t pull back in time. I’m coming back right now.”
By this point, both sides had already clashed. [Bajiu Linfeng] was a guild that focused on both PvP and PVE; aside from Su Wenqi, the players inside all possessed high gear scores and great mechanical skills. Thus, operating in an organized manner, dealing with the group of three below was like capturing baby chicks for them, every strike hit its mark.
Su Wenqi retreated while casting skills, and a sudden notification startled him: [“You have slain the opposing martial artist [Hongchen Yizui]!”]
He saw that his skill had landed right on a Guangling player who was already down to his last sliver of health, unsurprising claiming his head as the player transformed into a white light and returned to camp.
“Wow, our Chunri got a kill, I even got an assist! Keep it up, Chunri!” Batian Chi Shitong came up beside Su Wenqi, throwing his right arm around him to offer encouragement.
The opposing players were all solo wanderers, and once killed, they didn’t return, so their numbers dwindled the more they fought. Su Wenqi also managed to fish in troubled waters and rack up several more kills.
Before long, they cleared out the red names in the area. At that moment, the Qingyun Sect’s mineral cart had also spawned, so Xianyuan led everyone back to escort the cart.
Peace prevailed for the rest of the journey, with no Bishui Valley players showing up to tag along for free points. (Escorting mineral carts in-game required obtaining 1,000 points; mining ores, killing opposing players, and escorting the cart all granted points, and the opposing faction could also join the escort to earn points.)
After successfully escorting the mineral cart, everyone turned in their quests and left the map.
Private Chat [Xianyuan]: Come to Nanqingzhou (852, 695). We’re going to do business runs, remember to turn in your quest first.
Private Chat [Chun Ri Ci]: Mm, I’ve already turned in the quest and got 3,000 pieces of broken silver? What is this item used for?
Private Chat [Xianyuan]: These are quest items collected from stronghold trade, make sure not to throw them away.
Private Chat [Chun Ri Ci]: Alright, I didn’t throw them away, I’ve arrived at the location.
Arriving inside the stronghold at Nanqingzhou, Xianyuan was already waiting beside the NPC and beckoned Su Wenqi over to accept the quest next to him. After accepting the quest, they didn’t immediately start the business run because Xianyuan was organizing guild members who hadn’t done their business runs yet to complete the quests together.
Guild [Xianyuan]: For the business run, click [Feng Qian] to join the group, Group 2 is open.
Guild [Yanyu Luo Qingyi]: Coming! During the morning business run, the map was crawling with Bishui Valley people, and I hadn’t even finished my quest yet.
Guild [Wowo Naitang]: Oh yeah, isn’t there still a Bishui guild intercepting carts in Nanqingzhou right now? Are we going to counter-intercept them?
Guild [Big Spider]: Definitely! We let them act arrogant enough today, time to properly teach them a lesson now.
Guild [Feng Qian]: Run the business run first, fight while we run, and once we finish running, we’ll organize a counter-interception.