Chapter 090: Gaming the Rules

After booting up, Lin Jia first logged into the account he had already transferred to the Light server. Sure enough, there were far fewer high-level players in the Desert City area, while Bichi and the Beginner Village were packed to the brim. Newcomers, who had been dwindling because the servers were already nearing capacity, had suddenly multiplied like flies in a restroom. A look around the Beginner Village safe zone showed naked newcomers who did not even know how to equip their gear jammed together as densely as sardines in a can. And this was on the Light server, the least crowded of the three; who knew what the other two were like.

Lin Jia made his character run a few circles, savoring the exhilarating speed he had not enjoyed for days. Many players, while everyone else was busy transferring their accounts, took the chance to rush off to the many empty maps and power-level, reveling in the blissful feeling of being swallowed by monsters.

Lin Jia, however, had no intention of leveling. Instead, he emptied every item from his backpack and bought a large supply of teleport scroll packs, then sprinted all the way to Venom Valley. From there, he successfully followed a few players leveling in Venom Valley along the cliffs on the right side of the map and headed for Bichi Province without getting lost even once.

After so many days of play, a great many players had already figured out the trick: if you followed the steep cliffs on the right side of Venom Valley, you would reach Bichi Province. Venom Valley had three exits in all: one entrance from Bichi into Venom, and two exits at the top of the Venom map, one on the left and one on the right. If you wanted to enter Venom, you had to find the cliffs; the best way was to come in from the lower-right entrance of Mengzhong Province’s map. Otherwise, if you came in from the left, you would still have to run sideways for ages before you got there.

Just as he ran back into the Beginner Village, Lin Jia heard the door to the room suddenly open. Oldest Brother and Old Four came in, drenched in sweat and carrying big shopping bags. Lin Jia asked in surprise, “What were you guys doing? Why did you buy so much stuff?”

Oldest Brother grinned and pulled out five or six boxes of instant noodles, sausages, bread, a huge pile of snacks, packets of coffee, tea leaves, and three enormous plastic tea cups, along with four big 1.25-liter bottles of cola.

Lin Jia was stunned. “You planning to stay away for a whole week?”

The reason those three plastic tea cups were called enormous was that each one could hold a full liter of water, practically the size of a thermos flask.

At that moment, the door was pushed open again. The internet café attendant, Momo, squeezed through the gap with her cute, round little backside, backing into the room while carrying four hot-water flasks. Seeing the huge pile of things on the computer desk, she widened her pretty eyes in amazement and said, “Wow! Are you guys planning to live here or what?”

Oldest Brother said smugly with a chuckle, “Hmph. We’re going to beat those guys these next few days no matter what.”

“I give up on you idiots. Here’s your hot water. Luckily almost nobody asks for hot water these days, or where would I even find four flasks for you? Hand me the cups. I’ll take them downstairs and brew the tea for you first.” Momo rolled her eyes and took the three oversized tea cups. Oldest Brother then tipped about a liang of tea leaves into each cup.

Old Four watched Momo, wearing short denim shorts and swaying her sexy, slim waist as she walked out, and quietly said to Lin Jia with a lecherous grin, “That girl has such a sexy butt.”

Lin Jia had also been staring at the other girl’s bare legs for a long time. Thinking of that soft touch, he could not help saying, “Yeah. So soft.”

Before he could finish, Oldest Brother brought a fist down on each of their heads and roared, “Log in already! You two perverts!”

The two of them yelped in pain and rubbed the bumps on their heads, then hurried to log in so as not to anger the infuriated Oldest Brother. Soon Momo brought up the three tea cups, in which only the tea leaves were visible and no water could be seen, and set them in front of the three computers. Before leaving, she did not forget to pinch Lin Jia’s arm hard in revenge for the butt-grabbing he had just done. Caught off guard, Lin Jia let out a miserable cry. Clutching his arm, he glared bitterly at Momo, who fled with a clear, tinkling laugh.

Lin Jia had naturally fair skin, much paler than most people’s, and exceptionally delicate at that. According to his own shameless self-praise, this was “an inborn beauty that cannot be concealed.” According to Oldest Brother and Old Four, it was simply “a pretty boy face.” For some reason, the moment his skin took even the slightest knock, it would bruise immediately and badly. Momo had pinched him hard, and before long a large patch of alarming bruising had appeared on Lin Jia’s arm, blood-red mixed with blue-purple, nearly the size of a palm.

Old Four stared at Lin Jia’s arm in terror and said shakily, “Are you okay? That looks pretty serious.”

Old Four swore he would never provoke that violent Momo again. She hit far too hard.

Though it looked horrifying, it did not actually hurt that much. It felt about the same as a normal person being pinched. It was just more frightening to look at. Lin Jia rubbed it a few times and left it alone, then turned his attention back to the game.

After running to Ginkgo Village, Lin Jia turned to Oldest Brother and Old Four and said, “I’m already in the Beginner Village. Hurry up!”

While Old Four kept his head down, typing in his account and password, he said, “Once you’re set up, log in with your alt first. I’ll take over after you transfer it.”

Hearing that, Lin Jia logged out of his account and began logging into the alt character he had parked in the Beginner Village warehouse before the transfer. Ever since the system began issuing red-text notices about this account transfer, Lin Jia and the others had started preparing for this secret operation. Considering that a large number of newcomers would flood into the new server, they created many alt accounts, planning to buy up any equipment from every system shop that the shops themselves did not sell.

That sounded a little awkward, but it made sense if you thought about it. Because the Thunder server had opened earliest, the players there already had a solid level foundation. Unlike Lin Jia and the others, most players were obsessed with leveling. Some items not sold in system shops could be sold to low-level players, but many people did not have the patience to stand in the safe zone shouting advertisements. Moreover, some items were too low-level to be sold locally and had to be carried all the way from Mengzhong to Bichi before they could be sold. So the gear they brought back usually ended up dumped into system shops for whatever small amount of money it would fetch, just enough to count as potion money.

By comparison, most novice players were in Bichi, and very few people actually knew that the system shops in Desert City, Mengzhong Province, sold the equipment they needed. Even if they did know, not many were willing to make the long trek through the maze-like Venom Valley.

That was why Lin Jia and the others had launched this “smuggling” operation. Their plan was to buy out every piece of equipment that players had sold into the system shops, then transfer these warehouse alts to the Light server. After that, they would resell everything at high prices to the new players who were about to grow into power on the Light server, making enormous profits from the whole thing.