WTNL Chapter 72

Streamer Hall
Chapter 72: The Strongest Newcomer

“Hey, how many days has it been since Wen Jianyan came out?” Ji Guan lowered his voice and asked quietly.

Su Cheng recalled for a moment, “Since the end of the last instance, about three days, right?”

After all, they had cross-level challenged a B-rank instance last time, so the system gave them a full half-month of rest this time. However, ever since the instance ended, they had barely seen Wen Jianyan step out of his room.

His door had remained tightly shut, and they hadn’t seen a trace of him these past few days.

“What exactly happened when the last instance ended?” Ji Guan frowned.

Su Cheng shook his head. “I don’t know…” He turned to look at Wen Jianyan’s tightly closed door, a trace of worry flashing in his eyes. “Let’s wait a bit longer. If he still hasn’t come out by six o’clock tonight, we’ll knock on the door and ask what’s going on—”

Before Su Cheng could finish his sentence, Wen Jianyan’s door opened from the inside.

The young man’s hair was a messy nest, but his expression was no different from usual. His eyes drooped lazily, and he wore a loose-fitting shirt with a slightly oversized collar hanging open, revealing pale collarbones.

He raised his eyes, looked at Su Cheng and Ji Guan gathered in front of his door, and raised an eyebrow in slight surprise. “What are you guys doing here?”

He looked so normal that Ji Guan and Su Cheng, who had been worried sick about him for three whole days, were momentarily speechless, unsure of how to reply.

“Nothing, it’s just… we’re a little worried about you,” Su Cheng probed, looking at Wen Jianyan with some concern.

Ji Guan hurriedly nodded. “Right, exactly.” He quickly brought out the new type of small cake he had specially prepared, looking at Wen Jianyan hesitantly. “I made this just for you, want to try a piece?”

Su Cheng asked cautiously, “You’ve locked yourself in your room for three days. Did something happen?”

Wen Jianyan blinked and said, “Mmm… I ran into a bit of a problem.”

The two were taken aback, looking at Wen Jianyan in confusion, clearly not understanding what he was talking about.

Wen Jianyan looked at Su Cheng. “You should still remember that ghost boss who appeared in both Decai Middle School and Fukang Private Hospital, right?”

Su Cheng nodded, while Ji Guan was completely lost.

“He showed up again in this instance, and even left a mark on me.” Wen Jianyan raised his hand, scratched his messy hair, and summarized the situation somewhat vaguely.

“What?!” The two gasped.

Although Su Cheng might not have much concept of this, as a streamer with several more broadcasting experiences than the two of them, Ji Guan was very clear about the severity of this matter.

“What kind? A curse? Did you use points to clear it?” Ji Guan took a step forward, his gaze sweeping over Wen Jianyan as he fired off questions like a machine gun. “What does it look like? Where is it?”

Wen Jianyan: “…”

He ignored the other party’s last two questions and answered nonchalantly, “It’s not a curse. I tried using points to clear it, but it was useless.”

Ji Guan frowned. Even system points couldn’t clear it? That was indeed very serious.

“Don’t worry.” Wen Jianyan’s tone shifted. “I’ve already found a way to remove it.”

The two men were stunned and raised their eyes to look at the young man. “What?”

“Mmm…” Wen Jianyan blinked, pondering thoughtfully for a few seconds before changing his phrasing. “To be precise, I have a few clues.”

The young man walked over with brisk steps, unceremoniously scooped a small cake from the tray in Ji Guan’s hand, stuffed it into his mouth, and then looked up at Ji Guan, his cheeks bulging. “Add more chocolate next time.”

His eyes curved into crescents as he said breezily, “Alright, I’m heading out first. See you tonight.”

After speaking, Wen Jianyan left the two still-dazed people behind and walked out the door with a light step.

He hadn’t been doing absolutely nothing these past three days.

After surviving three instances, Wen Jianyan had officially ended his novice period and become one of the permanent streamers of the Nightmare live broadcast room. Thus, the streamer forum officially opened in his Nightmare backend.

Upon entering the streamer forum, the first thing that popped up on the main interface was a broadcast room explicit content scale limit selection.

Wen Jianyan skimmed it briefly. It was divided into three scales: Key Focus, Fully Open, and Semi-Open.

Key Focus meant that during the broadcast, the camera would not only refuse to censor any scenes, but it would even heavily focus on key areas of the streamer’s body.

Fully Open was a normal broadcast with no explicit content restrictions, while Semi-Open meant that when the streamer was broadcasting, if a shot exposing key parts appeared, the broadcast room would choose to avoid it and focus on filming the upper body instead.

Wen Jianyan quickly glanced over it and unhesitatingly chose the Semi-Open scale.

After all, he had no fetish for displaying his body in front of a crowd.

[Nightmare Live Broadcast Room Friendly Reminder: If you choose the semi-open scale, it is highly likely to cause a loss of popularity in the broadcast room. Please choose carefully]

Wen Jianyan: “…”

Although he had long known that this live broadcast room would resort to any means for traffic, he didn’t expect it to be this unscrupulous.

You even farm this kind of traffic?

He expressionlessly clicked away the prompt box and confirmed the [Semi-Open] scale option once again.

Even setting aside personal preference, Wen Jianyan wouldn’t choose the first two scales—although he wasn’t a streamer whose main selling point was his body and looks, there were plenty of viewers who came precisely for that. Wen Jianyan didn’t deny this.

He knew that under certain circumstances, the body could sometimes be a weapon, so he knew even better how to utilize his advantages.

The most fundamental point was moderation.

After all…

Desire, you see, only possesses allure when it remains unsatisfied.

The opening of the forum also meant that Wen Jianyan could now choose for himself whether or not to join a guild.

The sections in the streamer forum were fully functional and highly varied.

Although it was impossible to leak content about specific instances, streamers could still share their broadcasting experiences in the forum. Some posts were very superstitious, like what rituals to perform before entering an instance to increase the survival rate; others were very grounded, such as suggesting what streamers should do during a broadcast to more easily attract fans, and so on.

Major guilds would all post recruitment information in the forum to solicit fresh blood.

Streamers could also access the free trade zone online to buy and trade the items they had obtained from various instances.

Aside from this, the forum also had dedicated points ranking lists. In addition to the offline guild points rankings they could see, there were four extra leaderboards.

The Strongest Newbie Leaderboard. The Highest Appearance Leaderboard. The Highest Points Leaderboard. The Highest Popularity Leaderboard.

The streamers on the Highest Points Leaderboard mostly referred to themselves by codenames, and their avatars were self-selected, but their affiliated guilds and accumulated points were publicly visible. The top fifty essentially all belonged to major guilds you could name, while the top five with the highest points basically all belonged to three guilds: Oracle, Dark Fire, and Eternal Day. Their names were embellished with special lighting effects, making them exceptionally eye-catching across the entire streamer ranking list.

The style of the Best Appearance Leaderboard was completely different.

On this leaderboard, all the streamers unanimously used their real appearances as their avatars, and their faces were entirely worthy of the list. Regardless of gender, everyone who made the ranking had an exceedingly beautiful face—whether pure, innocent, or enchanting—that couldn’t help but make people’s hearts flutter even through the screen.

The talents of the streamers on this leaderboard basically all fell into the charm and control categories. They had a solid group of die-hard viewers and a phenomenally high popularity base.

Most of these streamers lacked the hard power to clear instances. Their talents could charm other streamers, NPCs, and even ghosts, but there were limits to the number of times they could use them. Therefore, most of them liked to team up with other streamers to guarantee their own survival rate.

Appearance streamers had die-hard fans and could direct traffic to their teammates.

And strength streamers had the hard power to carry them through and survive.

To put it plainly, it was a win-win collaboration.

—This was also why they displayed their faces without any concealment.

After all, streamers were not viewers; they couldn’t watch other people’s live broadcasts.

So streamers who relied on their looks to clear levels would advertise their faces to make it easier to cooperate with others in the next instance.

And the Highest Popularity Leaderboard competed on pure broadcast room popularity. Some streamers didn’t have high points but possessed strong broadcasting characteristics, so they would also appear on the list.

Those on the Strongest Newbie Leaderboard were streamers who had just recently completed three instances, left the ranks of novice streamers, and were able to select a guild to join.

Their names and appearances were kept confidential, but their contact methods were open to the entire platform, available for headhunters from major guilds to choose from and proactively extend olive branches.

As the only streamer to reach D-rank after experiencing just three short broadcasts, streamer [789326qwk] unsurprisingly crowned the top of the newbie leaderboard.

A series of achievements followed behind the broadcast room name, looking very intimidating.

Clearing Platinum achievements three times and obtaining MVP in a faction battle once—it could practically be considered an unprecedentedly brilliant record!

What kind of concept was this!

The vast majority of streamers below B-rank couldn’t manage to hit a single Platinum achievement even after broadcasting a dozen times! Even those big shots currently at the top of the rankings hadn’t achieved such shocking results during their novice periods; three broadcasts would yield at most one Platinum achievement or MVP. Yet this newbie got three Platinums in three broadcasts!

A Grand Slam!

This was simply too abnormal!

After seeing the updated results on the newbie leaderboard, all the guilds went crazy. Invitations flooded toward Wen Jianyan like snowflakes, nearly blowing up his phone over these three days.

Various guilds raised all sorts of generous conditions one after another, hoping to attract this excessively strong newcomer to choose them.

Major guilds proactively offered all sorts of high-level resources that ordinary streamers couldn’t obtain, while smaller guilds swore to the heavens, guaranteeing to cultivate him as their core streamer and pour all their resources entirely into him.

To Wen Jianyan, this was simply a godsent opportunity!

Although he had always worn an alt-identity before, mixing around the Streamer Square, interacting with bottom-tier streamers from major guilds, and collecting information without leaving a trace, the social circles of these streamers were limited after all. It was almost impossible for them to come into contact with Nightmare’s core mechanisms and some high-difficulty, high-level instances. Some streamers hadn’t even seen hard-level hidden items more than a few times.

The amount of information was simply too restricted.

And what Wen Jianyan currently lacked the most was information.

After analyzing and consolidating all the information he currently had on hand, he finally came to a conclusion: this “Father God” who had left a mark on him was absolutely not an ordinary ghost.

Although the forum also mentioned that individual ghosts could appear multiple times across different instances, these matters were often confined to two places in extremely close geographic proximity. Something like the “Father God” was completely unprecedented.

Every time Wen Jianyan was by the other party’s side, aside from his talent being barely usable, even his backpack couldn’t be opened, leaving him completely unable to retrieve items.

The first time they met in the [Decai Middle School] instance, the bizarre task the system suddenly popped out ultimately resulted in the other party being awakened.

On top of that, the mark he created couldn’t be cleared even by the Nightmare system.

After linking all these experiences together, the final conclusion made Wen Jianyan shudder.

This ghost named Wu Zhu likely possessed an extremely high level of authority, perhaps even able to influence the system to some extent, making it issue tasks completely unrelated to the main storyline!

What was even worse…

This wasn’t even his full strength.

Wen Jianyan hadn’t forgotten that the other party should still have a portion of his soul fragments sealed away.

In other words, Wu Zhu hadn’t yet fully recovered to his peak state.

…Even when the seal hadn’t been fully undone, the strength this ghost displayed was already this terrifying. Wen Jianyan didn’t dare to imagine what kind of scene it would be if the other party completely unlocked all his seals.

As well as that transaction where they “gambled on the ownership of his soul”…

Whenever he thought of this, Wen Jianyan couldn’t help but feel a chill down his spine, his whole body tensing up.

It was as if his skin still retained the touch from his memories—ice-cold, eerie, terrifying, filled with a strong sense of oppression. His own life was so fragile, easily pinched within the ghost’s pale fingertips; as long as he wanted to, it could easily be taken away.

Whenever he recalled that exact moment, his lower abdomen seemed to throb in pain again. From the branded mark, it was as if he could still feel the other party’s sharp fingertips.

Not only had he been targeted by a ghost eyeing his soul like a tiger watching its prey, but he was also branded with a mark that could be tracked no matter where he went.

This feeling of being controlled by a higher existence… was too detestable.

Wen Jianyan was a liar.

A cowardly hedonist.

He loved life and hated slaughter; he greeted people with a smiling face and a mouth full of lies. As long as he could solve things by steering with the wind and dealing with people superficially, he would absolutely never get into a direct conflict with anyone else.

When encountering an enemy overly targeting him, his first reaction was definitely not how to cut the Gordian knot and eliminate the other party, but rather to evade and avoid, running away if he could.

Unless it was necessary…

Wen Jianyan rarely harbored murderous intent toward any existence.

The young man narrowed his eyes slightly, his amber pupils hidden within the drooping shadows of his eyelashes, like a light-colored clear sky overtaken by a haze.

He had tried running away.

But even when in a different instance, the other party still caught up.

He had tried hiding.

But even when he had tried his best to avoid breaking the soul-locking urn, the seals on the other party’s body were still undone.

Now… no matter where he ran, the other party could obtain his whereabouts.

Although the other party couldn’t enter the Streamer Hall, he couldn’t hole up in the Streamer Hall endlessly without broadcasting; the system wouldn’t allow it.

Since that was the case, Wen Jianyan believed he had already been pushed to the point where he had to defend himself.

The system’s voice sounded in his ear:

[The appearance you purchased has been activated.]

In the next second, the young man’s slender figure was replaced, and a sharp, beautiful woman with hair as red as fire appeared in his place.

She elegantly pushed back her long hair, pulled out her phone from her pocket, and casually tapped the screen with her slender, bamboo-shoot-white fingertips, scrolling rapidly through a long list of message invitations.

Over these three days, Wen Jianyan had successfully played the role of an eccentric, highly demanding, and indecisive expert.

He wandered between different guilds, extracting information, weighing interests, and striving for more advantageous space, before separately making appointments to meet with various guilds.

“Finding a way to remove it” wasn’t a lie.

In this live broadcast room, items capable of killing bosses did exist.

Wen Jianyan narrowed his eyes and smiled coldly, but deep within his eyes, there was a rare lack of even a trace of mirth.

If I just kill you, won’t the mark be gone?

__

Author’s Note: 

Wu Zhu, in danger!

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