Chapter 30: Showdown in the Devil City (7)
In a split second, countless thoughts flashed through Number 1’s mind.
The moment the announcement sounded, he knew Jin Cheng hadn’t come back to save him. Disappointment bred malice, and courage surged back into his chest. His expression suddenly contorted into a vicious snarl, and he lunged desperately toward the toy ball.
Victory belonged to him!
Why couldn’t he win just once?!
Yet right as his fingers were about to brush against the toy ball, a metal arrow shot through the air, piercing straight through the gaps of the hollow ball and pinning it firmly to the ground.
The sharp gust of wind sliced open Number 1’s fingers.
“You’d best not move,” Jin Cheng warned amiably.
Yet he was still standing at the edge of the arena, not having stepped over yet. Stumbling to his feet, Number 1 had eyes only for that toy ball; blind and deaf to everything else, all he wanted was to grab it.
He reached out again, his eyes burning with an unprecedented thirst for victory.
Just one step away—just one more step, and maybe he could turn his life around! The rewards for this instance had to be lavish; if he could obtain them, he could definitely become as formidable as the others—
Bang! Jin Cheng’s kick shattered his delusion.
Number 1 collapsed heavily to the ground, clutching his chest and coughing in agony, yet his eyes remained fixed on the toy ball, yearning for what lay out of reach. Glaring at Jin Cheng with bloodshot eyes, he hissed, “Why won’t you let me take it?! You’re already so strong, why refuse to help me? Why… if only you lent me a hand, how could I have ended up so wretched?!”
“Tsk. You won’t even help yourself; why should I help you?” Jin Cheng cast him a cold glance, looking every bit the villain. But then he remembered having saved Number 1 back at the tightropes, feeling slapped in the face, which made his mood turn even sourer.
As though stripped of his last shred of dignity, Number 1 opened his mouth to shout, but blood caught in his throat, his face turning the color of pig liver. Jin Cheng delivered a clean, crisp knife-hand chop to his neck, knocking him out cold.
Bending down to pull out the arrow, the toy ball came along with it, hooked on the shaft. Jin Cheng didn’t touch it, turning back to ask Number 10, who had arrived right on his heels, with a smile: “Want to give it a shot? I can offer you a fair and square chance.”
Number 10 stared intently at the toy ball, her expression filled with deep wariness. Several times she wanted to step forward and take the gamble, but looking at the smiling face of Jin Cheng, she ultimately backed down.
“No need. You arrived first; it’s yours,” she said.
The little imp finally couldn’t resist chiming in: “Really not taking it? There’s a grand prize for the tournament, you know! In Devil City, as long as you dare, nothing is impossible. Do you know what kind of pet is most beloved? This is Devil City—devils hate peace the most!”
Yet the more it spoke, the firmer Number 10’s resolve grew, even taking a step back. Enraged, the little imp glared down its nose at them, but unable to interfere, it could only let it go.
“Then I’ll take it.” Jin Cheng was straightforward as well, reaching out to slide the toy ball off the arrow. The instant he took it, the familiar system announcement resonated across Devil City.
Ding!
The 72nd Devil City Pet Tournament has concluded successfully. Congratulations to all players for completing the quest “Showdown in the Devil City”!
Now calculating rewards.
All players looked up in unison. Tang Cuo leaped down from the windowsill, gazing ahead. The densely packed swarms of mobs began to retreat, rushing away like an ebbing tide just as they had arrived.
The joy of surviving a catastrophe washed over the players’ hearts like a surging tide as well.
“Showdown in the Devil City.” Difficulty: Intermediate. Participating players: 12. Survivors: 11. Rating: A-. Stat Points Awarded: 14.
Permanent Max HP Increase for all players: +10.
For other individual rewards, players may view them directly on their system panels.
Welcome back to Yong Ye City!
The instance concluded, and familiar darkness veiled their vision. Yet after the remaining eleven players were all transported out of the instance, a familiar system voice echoed across the third-stage track of Devil City once more:
Detected player carrying Mr. Crow’s feather. Resurrection condition triggered.
Yong Ye City, Zone F, East Cross Street.
Tang Cuo opened his system panel to inspect his haul. He was in no rush to allocate the 14 points; his full attention was on his personal rewards.
A total of nine inventory slots had popped up:
[Recipe for Transformation Potion]
Category: Skill
Quality: Common
Description: Allows transformation into any species. Duration: 30 minutes.
[Aerial Walk · Basic]
Category: Skill
Quality: Common
Description: Suspends in midair for 1 second. Cooldown: 1 minute.
[Falling Meteors Swift as Wind]
Category: Skill
Quality: Advanced
Description: Number 12 of the card series “Poet Immortal Li Bai”. Activates the skill Meteor Fall, unleashing an area-of-effect attack on enemies. Attack radius: 5 meters. Duration: 5 seconds.
Three skill rewards. The potion recipe had indeed been brought out; Tang Cuo mused that if he couldn’t learn it, he could always sell it. The practical utility of Aerial Walk would have to be tested in actual combat. What intrigued him most was the card Falling Meteors Swift as Wind—it turned out to belong to a complete set.
Falling meteors swift as wind—drawn from Li Bai’s Ode to Gallantry?
Tang Cuo wasn’t highly educated, but he was familiar enough with the renowned Li Bai.
He continued reading down:
[Spider Silk]
Category: Material
Quality: Advanced
Description: Silk of the Thousand-Faced Spider. Garments woven from it are extremely difficult to pierce, but remember not to use it for hanging yourself.
[A Tattered Rag]
Category: Material
Quality: Trash
Description: A kitchen rag discarded by Madam Sally.
[Bronze Dagger]
Category: Weapon
Quality: Trash
Description: A rusted dagger.
[Goblin Broadsword]
Category: Weapon
Quality: Common
Description: A mediocre blade.
[Python]
Category: Weapon
Quality: Advanced
Description: Revolver. Fixed cylinder loaded with 7 rounds. When empty, automatically reloads one bullet every five minutes until full.
[Nightingale]
Category: Weapon
Quality: Legendary
Status: Bound
Description: The ring of Sir Lancelot, the most beloved bard across the entire continent. Rumor has it that when bathed in moonlight, you can hear the most beautiful song in this world. Inscribed skill: “Moonlight Tide.” Cooldown: 24 hours (Usable once repaired).
Python was the revolver Jin Cheng had tossed to Tang Cuo for self-defense. Nightingale was the ring Tang Cuo had scavenged during Stage Two. That ring had triggered the hidden quest “Kingdom of the Hidden Moon”—who would have thought it was actually a Legendary-tier item?
How do I repair it, though?
Lost in thought, Tang Cuo walked over to the window and looked down. He found another large crowd gathering below, clustered in groups here and there, with restless undercurrents swirling beneath the calm surface.
“Looks like while we were gone for those three or four hours, a few things went down here.”
Jin Cheng’s voice drifted lazily from next door. Tang Cuo turned to see him perched on the windowsill, just as he had been when they first reunited. Tang Cuo asked, “How so?”
Jin Cheng: “Meng Yufei’s blunder took down Cheng Ke. Given how cautious Cheng Ke is, since he can’t get out of prison for now, he definitely won’t let An Ning and the others remain in Zone F. Once they leave, Zone F is bound to undergo another reshuffle.”
Tang Cuo had read that in the dossier Jin Cheng provided; Cheng Ke was indeed an excessively cautious man who prioritized stability above all else. He could have ranked up to Zone E two months ago, but kept stalling, frantically hoarding gear to build up his strength.
Who could have known that by stalling, he would end up stalling himself straight into a grave?
“How often does this kind of reshuffle happen?” Tang Cuo pondered.
“Every three months at most,” Jin Cheng leaped into Tang Cuo’s room. “Zone F has the highest attrition rate. People constantly arrive, and people constantly leave. High attrition brings high mobility; more than half the rookies don’t survive their first three instances, while those with real strength will inevitably move up. A faction that rises today might lose half its members tomorrow, with the rest moving away. Collapses happen fast. In the end, the ones who survive are elite squads—the fewer the members, the easier to maintain.”
Tang Cuo understood. “So that’s why you had Chi Yan limit his scope to East Cross Street?”
This was likely what was called a conceptual shift: replacing the concept of a gang with the concept of a territory.
The Chopper Gang was a gang belonging to an individual; it would inevitably have a boss. But East Cross Street belonged to all its players; the core of maintaining stability lay in rules and decrees.
A gang could collapse in a heartbeat, but East Cross Street wouldn’t—as long as the rules established for East Cross Street could hold firm.
Most crucially, this ensured Jin Cheng and Tang Cuo wouldn’t be tied down by any so-called gang, allowing them to keep their distance. While Jin Cheng had teammates like Wen Xiaoming and Lilith, deep down he was just like Tang Cuo—he disliked rallying in crowds.
Thinking this, Jin Cheng teased, “When I was talking to Chi Yan that day, you completely ignored me, but didn’t you take it all in anyway?”
Tang Cuo thought to himself: None of your damn business.
Jin Cheng shrugged and continued, “Little Brother Chi has some talent, but he’s still too green; he might not be able to hold things down. Now that Zone F is reshuffling, the higher zones might reach their hands down to fish in troubled waters.”
“The higher zones?”
“Yong Ye City is survival of the fittest. Do you know what Zone F looks like to most people in the higher zones? It’s a patch of leeks ripe for harvest.”
“You want to challenge them?”
“No, obviously they’re the ones looking to pick a fight with me.”
“I forgot to ask: you said Meng Yufei hunted people for points. How many points can you get from killing someone?”
“Half of their unallocated points.”
Killing for points was also a gamble on luck. If a player had already allocated or spent all their points with zero balance left on their account, killing them yielded nothing.
As for who was the fattest fish in Zone F right now—Jin Cheng.
Tang Cuo looked at him intently, feeling a tiny spark of temptation.
Jin Cheng silently cursed him as a little bastard in his mind—betraying his master, committing insubordination. Still, Tang Cuo’s ability to change the subject was unmatched: “Earlier, the system reward mentioned that every player’s max HP increased permanently by ten points. Does everyone have a different max HP?”
“Of course. It’s tied to your Strength stat.”
Tang Cuo’s Strength was currently only at 6 points—squishy, with thin health.
Leaning against the window frame with crossed arms, Jin Cheng smiled and asked, “Want to know how many points I have?”
Tang Cuo fell silent. He had zero desire to have his ego crushed.
Jin Cheng: “There are three primary stats in Yong Ye City: Strength, Intelligence, and Charm. Strength dictates your health pool and physical constitution; Intelligence dictates your mental and spiritual power. You can specialize your points, roughly equivalent to the difference between a warrior and a mage.”
“What about Charm?”
“Raises NPC favorability, making it easier to obtain instance clues. And of course, its most important effect is age reversal.”
“Age reversal?”
“Haven’t you noticed that since arriving in Yong Ye City, you hardly see any elderly people?”
It wasn’t that the elderly didn’t exist. There were many over sixty years old; even if their ratings weren’t high, they possessed points. Age sixty was a watershed: as long as you lived past sixty, you received relatively more points.
Jin Cheng: “An elderly player capable of ascending to the higher zones is bound to be terrifying. Not only do they possess formidable power, but their life experience and shrewdness far exceed any youngster’s—even if they wear the face of a teenager.”
Hearing this, Tang Cuo couldn’t help recalling the old man he had encountered at the plaza. Thinking of that, he asked, “What about infants? Those who die shortly after birth versus those who already possess mobility and basic cognition—how are they divided?”
Jin Cheng: “Young children are pure and innocent. The vast majority enter directly into the Karmic Cleansing procedure, and their cleansing time is very brief. Only a tiny fraction of special cases are ever sent into Yong Ye City. Here’s a piece of advice from your instructor: in Yong Ye City, never underestimate the elderly or children.”
Tang Cuo agreed wholeheartedly.
By now, he roughly understood how Yong Ye City operated. It appeared cold and ruthless, yet possessed an absurd sense of fairness. Late-game stat allocations granted everyone every possibility, with everything revolving around a single creed: Survival is Justice.
Turning around to pour a glass of water, Tang Cuo gave it no further thought. Pulling out the ring, he said:
“I triggered a hidden quest.”
