Underworld Player

By the time Bai Zhi returned to town, the hours had silently slipped by, and it was noon.

After struggling painfully with the dilemma of whether to go back to his apartment or go to school, which took all of two seconds, Bai Zhi decided—reluctantly—to skip his classes.

It was only right—one should always finish what one started, and since he'd skipped the morning class, skipping the afternoon classes was the natural thing to do. After all, "forget not where you started from and your path shall prove true" was a great virtue of the Chinese people, faithfully passed down through the generations.

As soon as Bai Zhi got off the bus, the first thing he did was buy a slingshot and launch a few small rocks at a certain apartment's windows*, taking care to avoid the security cameras along the way.

"It's never too late, even ten years on, to take righteous vengeance" as they say. Bai Zhi had always honored his word, making it worth its weight in gold—no retribution was left unmeted.

Returning to his apartment, Bai Zhi opened the curtains, letting the light from outside land across the floorboards. He turned on the air-conditioning, got a cold herbal tea that had been sitting in the fridge all day, then sat by the coffee table as he turned on his laptop... All this he did in a smooth, continuous motion, as if choreographed, with the air of a lord in his mansion.

As he sipped his herbal tea, Bai Zhi tapped the familiar keys that took him to the Player's Forum. The forum might not contain anything as critical as a state secret, but it would help him stay informed, all the same.

Naturally, he found nothing on the organization known as the Nightwatch, but the keyword "Chu Tsi" got plenty of hits. Real information, however, was sparse.

It was mostly things like "the Concerning Department has, under Chu Tsi's leadership, successfully extracted a mid-sized Game, becoming the major organization in possession of the most Games in the world..." and so on.

Come to think of it, I wonder if Chu Tsi would sell me a ticket to a Game? That large Game under the Concerning Department's control has a chance of dropping Attribute Potions. Though those potions only improve a Player's basic attributes, there's nobody who would say no to more attribute points... thought Bai Zhi as he sipped.

The higher a Player's Level, the harder it became to raise it, thus one's Level tended to be less impactful than equipment, support items and Skills.

Bai Zhi was Level 6 now, but his arsenal still felt woefully limited. Even a Normal-quality equipment would greatly improve his combat ability—better still if it was a Rare.

A sum of 3,000 Coins was nothing to scoff at, but with it, he would be able to buy Rare equipment—two at the most, and not particularly powerful ones—before proudly declaring himself well and truly bankrupt.

Right now, the best thing to do is probably get some armor or defensive items. If I get hurt in the middle of a quest with no way to heal myself, I'd be a sitting duck.

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With easy movements, Bai Zhi added the free Attribute Point he had gained from leveling up to his Strength, then began browsing the Marketplace.

Every Player's Marketplace, or Shop, was unique to them. It held a total of ten items and was restocked regularly. One of them was always a PODS**, and Bai Zhi had bought Bane from the Shop, which left eight other items in the Shop for this month.

After browsing for some time, Bai Zhi decided to buy a pack of talismans.

[ Item Name: Warding Talisman ]

[ Type: Consumable ]

[ Quality: Normal ]

[ Effect: Auto-ignites in the presence of supernatural entities or powers. The talisman holder is immune to spiritual damage while talisman is burning. ]

[ SE Consumption: None ]

[ Requirements: None ]

[ Note: Not even ten thousand fiends shall touch the holder of these talisman—provided they hold millions of them. With a million talismans, one could unleash the deadly technique, Million Talisman Formation*** ]

The Warding Talismans were your typical cinnabar-on-yellow-paper scrawls, featuring inscrutable looping patterns that looked like wreaths—or wraiths—of smoke. There were only sold in packs, and Bai Zhi had paid 200 Coins for this pack of ten.

The talismans were not expensive, exactly. Buying ten for some degree of self-defense was a reasonable decision, since monsters that could strike from the shadows without a corporeal form were much harder to deal with than those that could be hurt by the proverbial sticks and stones.

Bai Zhi made a mental note to buy some cinnabar and paper online to see if he could make his own replicas by tracing the strange lines.

Then, considering his experience during the last quest, Bai Zhi grit his teeth and decided to buy one more thing from the shop—a Rare defensive equipment.

[ Item Name: Pendant of the Holy Spirit ]

[ Type: Defensive Item ]

[ Quality: Rare ]

[ Durability: 100 / 100 ]

[ Effect 1: Holy Spirit - The wearer is imbued with the power of the Holy Spirit, increasing defense and reducing damage taken. ]

[ Effect 2: Barrier - Upon activation, creates a protective barrier in a 1-meter radius. Strength and duration of barrier depends on Spiritual Energy used. Automatically activates if wearer would take a fatal hit. ]

[ SE Consumption: 10 SE per day / 0 – 1,000 SE ]

[ Effect 3: SE Storage - The Pendant of the Holy Spirit can store up to 1,000 Spiritual Energy. Maximum of 1,000 SE can be charged at one time. ]

[ Current Stored SE: 0 ]

[ Requirements: Intelligence of 12 or above ]

[ Note: Once, there was a fool who tried to swim in lava with this pendant. He lasted a minute before floating away, ashes in the wind. The barrier does not grant invincibility. ]

This Rare item had cost Bai Zhi a whopping 2,000 Coins. He was lucky to have made that small fortune from the last quest, or there was no way he could have afforded it.

Defensive items were rarely cheap, and those that could be charged were even less so. Bai Zhi currently had 300 Spiritual Energy, and by his calculations, it would take him about an hour to recharge all of it from zero. In other words, he could fully charge the pendant in a few hours.

After observing the pendant for a short while, Bai Zhi readily put it around his neck.

With one thing and another, Bai Zhi's 3,000 Coins quickly dwindled to 800.

"Jeez, this won't do. I gotta find a way to make more and spend less from now on..." Bai Zhi muttered to himself as he turned his attention back to his laptop screen.

It took a day and a half, not including the twenty-four hours that his account was suspended, but Bai Zhi eventually managed to rack up a thousand comments on the forum, thus earning one Point.

There was an art to spamming, after all.

With a tired sigh, Bai Zhi checked what few threads there were about the Hell Coach, then picked the ones with the most replies to investigate further.

A minute later, Bai Zhi snapped the laptop shut, his mouth a tight-lipped grimace, then stretched out stiffly on the couch.

I knew I shouldn't have fallen for it!