Chapter 576: First Kill

Xiaoshi meticulously recorded the bun-making process, feeling he had gained significant insights.

“No wonder they taste so delicious—they actually use locally unique seasonings that aren’t available anywhere else.”

Truly worthy of Human Sovereign Jiang. By following Human Sovereign Jiang, he could even learn how to make buns. After returning, he absolutely had to show off his skills at Tianji Tower.

The method for making these particular buns wasn’t even recorded in Tianji Tower’s archives, making it extremely precious.

Wait, did this actually have anything to do with Human Sovereign Jiang?

Xiaoshi thought for a moment, then added to his notes: Human Sovereign Jiang emphasizes protecting local specialty resources and stimulates domestic demand through promoting consumption.

Xiaoshi glanced at Jiang Li and noticed that after wiping his mouth and leaving some change on the table, he was preparing to get up and leave. After bidding farewell to the shopkeeper, Xiaoshi hurried to catch up.

After walking some distance, Jiang Li discovered a shop with exceptionally bustling business, with many people queuing up and chatting with friends they’d come with.

Jiang Li looked up and read the shop’s name—Holographic Projector Rental House.

Finding this quite interesting, Jiang Li joined the queue and struck up a conversation with the person in front of him, discussing this holographic projector rental establishment.

“Holographic projectors are so expensive—completely unaffordable. I’ve seen a senior fellow disciple play with one and thought it looked incredibly fun. My senior treated that thing like a treasure and absolutely refused to let me try it. Luckily, I heard there’s a place here where you can play with holographic projectors, so I came to check it out. Never expected it to actually be such a great spot.”

From their conversation, Jiang Li learned that these rental houses were spreading across the Nine Provinces at an astonishing rate. Some people couldn’t afford to buy holographic projectors, while others recognized the business opportunity and chose to rent them out.

However, even with rentals, after playing with the holographic projector for a while, users would still automatically get logged out.

Xiaoshi had also heard senior disciples at Tianji Tower mention this place, though he’d never actually played with a holographic projector himself.

“Normally this place wouldn’t be so crowded, but mainly because Mingzhong World released a holographic simulation game called ‘Myriad Worlds.’ The player base primarily consists of people from our Nine Provinces and Mingzhong World, and it’s incredibly popular. In ‘Myriad Worlds,’ you start from Qi Refinement First Stage and continuously cultivate, advancing through realms by traversing the myriad heavens and worlds, ultimately defeating demonic leaders to save all realms.”

“I heard that for this game, Mingzhong World specifically collected massive amounts of data from high-level cultivators in our Nine Provinces to ensure perfect reproduction within the game!”

“Although the game is fun, the player hierarchy is quite clearly divided.”

“Roughly speaking, players can be divided into two categories: ordinary players who started when the game launched, and those who began playing during the closed beta period. Not only did they retain their levels, but they also seized the early advantage to become high-level cultivators!”

The game world couldn’t possibly have the same cultivation speed as reality—otherwise players would die of old age before even reaching Golden Core or Nascent Soul stages.

Mingzhong World created this game to help their own people quickly familiarize themselves with cultivation, not to make them avoid it entirely.

This resulted in extreme imbalance within the game.

“Fortunately, those closed beta players don’t affect us too much. I heard they’re currently trying to find hidden enemies to achieve first kill glory.”

Jiang Li thought for a moment, then suddenly asked, “Would you consider people whose data was collected as closed beta players?”

“I… I guess so?”

“So people whose data was collected would inherit their previous levels when playing this game?”

“Theoretically that’s how it works, but those whose data was collected are all Unity Stage or even Tribulation Transcendence Stage great powers. Why would they ever play this game?” The person in front of Jiang Li felt his hypothesis was completely implausible.

Xiaoshi wrote: Human Sovereign Jiang pays attention to emerging industries and places high expectations on them.

Soon, a batch of people were forcibly logged out, and those waiting in line replaced them, putting on the holographic projectors. Jiang Li was among them.

…

“Everyone hold on! We’ll soon get to see the Dark Celestial!” A group of closed beta players followed step-by-step strategies they’d painstakingly uncovered to find the method for activating the Dark Celestial.

They believed that once they found the Dark Celestial, regardless of what level it was, as long as it had a health bar, they dared to kill it!

First kill glory, massive experience points—all these things attracted them.

“World Stone, Nine Provinces Spring, Crying Laughing Heavenly Light Mirror… all eight rare treasures collected. Time… midnight, correct.”

“Now what we need to do is arrange these eight rare treasures according to the eight trigrams positions, and that will make the Dark Celestial appear.”

“If we hadn’t completed that mission delivering letters for Dao Sect, accidentally discovered the Buddhist Sect’s lost scriptures, and found that millennium-hidden secret realm, we really would have struggled to track down this Dark Celestial.”

“Absolutely. After learning of the Dark Celestial’s existence, we had to obtain twelve hidden titles just to get the method for summoning it.”

“And we had to travel to who knows how many worlds to collect these eight rare treasures.”

Everyone reminisced about their adventurous past, feeling deeply satisfied.

“Just don’t know what level this Dark Celestial is. The scroll only says the Dark Celestial is female. What if it’s Tribulation Transcendence Stage? Wouldn’t we be completely doomed?”

“Impossible. The current map only goes up to Zombie World, and the strongest enemies are only at mid Unity Stage. Tribulation Transcendence old monsters haven’t even been activated yet.”

“I estimate this Dark Celestial is probably only at late Unity Stage.”

“Late Unity Stage? That’s still somewhat troublesome. When we Spirit Transformation Stage cultivators fought that mid Unity Stage enemy last time, we had to consume all our potions and pills just to barely succeed.”

“What are you afraid of? We have teleportation talismans—if we can’t win, can’t we just run? This time we’re just trying to figure out the Dark Celestial’s attack patterns.”

The summoning array lit up, and they raised their various weapons, watching the array nervously.

“Why is it a man? And he brought a servant?” someone exclaimed, greatly disappointed by the Dark Celestial’s appearance.

“Check his level.”

They cast Appraisal spells, but only received a string of question marks in return.

Jiang Li watched these youngsters with great interest. After logging into the game, it showed him as a closed beta player inheriting his previous level—Celestial Immortal.

Although this level was quite low, in this game world, it was already an existence that exceeded normal specifications.

“Everyone, attack!” the team leader commanded, launching probing attacks while assuming the unreadable level was just a game mechanic issue.

Jiang Li had no intention of attacking these youngsters, but this account had a passive mechanism—when the level gap was too large, it would ignore defense and forcibly kill players.

Jiang Li currently held dual identities as both a closed beta player and the Dark Demon King. All the skills the game company had designed for the Dark Demon King, Jiang Li could use.

These closed beta players didn’t even have time to react before they were killed by Jiang Li’s passive skill.

A banner appeared above all players’ heads, accompanied by fireworks:

Congratulations to Dark Celestial for achieving first kill against players.

“…This garbage game is actually this popular?” Jiang Li didn’t know what to say.

Xiaoshi pondered how he should write about this incident. Should he write that Human Sovereign Jiang warns teenagers not to become addicted to holographic projectors?