Chapter 6

After disabling the friend function, the entire game interface became much quieter.

Xiang Huaizhi flew to the Warehouse Keeper and stuffed all the recently received golden pheasant feathers inside.

A head suddenly popped up from the upper bunk bed: “Player, how many feathers did you get?”

Hearing this nickname, Xiang Huaizhi didn’t even turn his head: “What, want to take a trip to the respawn point?”

Lu Hang immediately backtracked: “Tsk, you’re so uptight. Alright, serious talk—how many feathers have you collected so far?”

“Enough,” Xiang Huaizhi said. “From now on, collect your own stuff.”

“It’s not like I have a choice—the system restricted my trades due to logging in from a different location… This happens every time I come back from long vacation, you know that.” Lu Hang kept talking while logging in, only realizing midway that something was off. “Wait, I only asked you to collect feathers for me ten minutes ago—how did you get enough already?! How much did you pay per piece?”

Xiang Huaizhi: “One hundred gold.”

Lu Hang was furious to the point of spitting blood: “The Merchant Guild is flooded with items priced at seventy gold! And you’re buying for one hundred gold?!”

“Flooded? Go check the Merchant Guild—if you can find even a hundred, I’ll give you my account.”

“Forging a divine artifact only requires a hundred of them!”

Xiang Huaizhi raised an eyebrow: “Once? Do you think you own this game? You could play ten rounds and still not get a decent piece.”

Lu Hang’s right eyelid twitched uncontrollably: “…So exactly how much did you actually receive?”

“I didn’t count.”

Didn’t count? Then it must be at least a warehouse full.

Lu Hang took a sharp breath, calmly picked up his phone, and checked his bank account balance.

“Don’t worry, these count as my own collection. I’ll sell them to you for seventy-one each,” Xiang Huaizhi said calmly.

Lu Hang clenched his fist: “Damn, I’ll never call you a scumbag again! You’re my bro, forever my bro.”

Xiang Huaizhi laughed at this: “Piss off.”

Lu Hang: “Oh right, I almost forgot to ask—how does it feel to be a scumbag?”

“That’s good.”

“……”

Lu Hang looked unconvinced, and Xiang Huaizhi couldn’t be bothered to explain.

He wasn’t lying—it really was good. During this period, no PK teams contacted him, no guilds tried to recruit him, and even the number of girls sending him friend requests had decreased.

[Your friend Lulu is now online.]

“Hey! The remote login restriction has been lifted! I can team up now!” After logging in, Lu Hang shouted from the opposite bed, “Come on, I’ll take you to grind quests. There’s an event happening right now.”

During the event period, experience points are doubled. Xiang Huaizhi gave a brief acknowledgment and accepted Lu Hang’s party invitation.

In Nine Heroes, aside from special events and high-level dungeons which require multiple players, most regular activities like quests and PvP are designed for five-player teams. When Xiang Huaizhi checked the party, he saw that besides the two of them, the other three members were all female players.

[Xin Xiang Wang Zhi has joined the party.]

[Team] Little Darling Luo: ……

[Team] Love is Sharing with You: [dizzy]

[Team] Ji Xiaonian: Uh.

[Team] Faraway Road: What’s wrong?

[Team] Love is Sharing with You: No, Lu Lu, is this your friend?

[Team] The Road is Long: Yeah, my good bro. Heart’s Desire, you guys don’t know him? His name’s right there on the leaderboard.

[Team] Ji Xiaonian: …Even if we didn’t know before, we definitely do now [shut up]

Laughter erupted from Lu Hang beside him: “Hahaha, Old Xiang, don’t you think after all this drama, you’ve become even more famous in the server than before?”

Xiang Huaizhi couldn’t be bothered to respond. He opened his inventory to check the potions he was carrying.

“Ahem.” Lu Hang connected his headset, cleared his throat twice, then deliberately lowered his voice to ask, “Can you hear me?”

For convenient communication, Nine Heroes has a built-in voice chat system.

Goosebumps rose on Xiang Huaizhi’s skin at the sudden deep male voice.

He frowned slightly and took off one earbud.

“Ah… I can hear you.”

“Shall we go kill the new event? Is it difficult?”

“What if we can’t kill them?”

At the sound of a girl’s voice, Lu Hang seemed instantly energized: “No problem, I’m here. I won’t let you die. Just go ahead and kill the small monsters in front, and when we get to the BOSS, you can hide behind me.”

Before the girls could respond, Xiang Huaizhi interjected, “Lu Hang, mute your mic first.”

Lu Hang replied, “It’s fine, I’m using push-to-talk. They can’t hear you.”

“What kind of people did you call over?” Xiang Huaizhi opened their profiles. Two of them hadn’t even reached the maximum level, and most importantly, “Three healers? What, didn’t get enough milk when you were little?”

“Hey, I checked—this event isn’t hard,” Lu Hang said. “But I have no choice, I have to bring my wife along. Just help a brother out.”

Xiang Huaizhi paused, “Which one is your wife?”

Lu Hang calmly replied, “That’s still up in the air.”

Xiang Huaizhi: “…”

    ——

During holidays, Nine Heroes would launch corresponding festival events with different gameplay, but the only commonality was abundant experience points and generous rewards.

Just as other players were grinding the event, a little Fox Fairy that had been idling in the main city for a long time suddenly moved.

The Little Fox Spirit quickly packed up her stall, hopped onto her mount in a flash, and galloped full speed to the courier station before setting off for the wild map.

Jing Huan was practically bursting with impatience.

It wasn’t that he was eager to grind for experience—having played Nine Heroes for so long, he’d never been one to enjoy AFK farming or repetitive quests.

He wanted to dig up the treasure map he had “snatched” that day.

The Thief’s Treasure Map is a special item with an extremely low drop rate. Someone with rotten luck like him back in the day spent over half a month farming without getting a single one to drop.

According to official descriptions, the Rogue’s Treasure Map can unearth many unexpected items. Jing Huan has seen people dig out worthless health buns and also witnessed others unearth rare materials worth a fortune. It’s precisely this unpredictability that creates tension and excitement.

At the same time, in the guild chat of the Idlers’ Pavilion—

[Guild] Blood Shadow: Report! My alt spotted Sweet Scenery by the West Liang River!

[Guild] Silent Pulse: Damn, this female scammer specifically chose to leave the city while we’re doing the event.

[Guild] Chun Xiao: I’m still in combat, can’t go. Anyone in the guild available to check it out?

[Guild] Fairy Cutie: I’ll go. Anyone want to come with me? I’m a bit scared going alone…[fidgets fingers]

[Guild] Silent Pulse: Don’t worry Fairy, that account’s empty, you can freely kill her.

[Guild] Xian Mengmeng: I know… it’s just my first time killing someone, so I can’t help but feel a little scared. [Pitiful] If it weren’t for the fact that I despise people who deceive others’ feelings the most, I wouldn’t have wanted to get involved.

[Guild] Maimai Buyu: Haha, then go ahead, it’s a perfect way to vent your frustration.

Xian Mengmeng quickly formed a five-person team and flew to the banks of the Xiliang River.

When they arrived, they saw Xiao Tianjing’s character holding a shovel… tilling the land.

“She’s digging up a treasure map!” someone in the team shouted. “Interrupt her quickly! If we kill her, we might even get the treasure map to drop!”

Just as Jing Huan was halfway through digging up the treasure map, an attack skill forcefully interrupted him.

Annoyed, he furrowed his brows and, without even looking to see who had attacked, immediately used a clone skill to try and escape.

The reason he had switched factions wasn’t just because the Fox Immortal Cave’s playstyle was fun—the most crucial factor was that this faction was ridiculously good at running away. Not only did they have high movement speed, but they also had all sorts of misdirection skills, making them top-tier escape artists. In fact, the most common tactic for Fox Immortal Cave players in the arena was to ditch their teammates.

The person behind reacted a beat slower than him. He was almost out of the map before they realized they should chase.

Jing Huan was about to step into the safe zone when he suddenly heard a voice from behind: “No worries, Xianxian. If we didn’t get her this time, I’ll keep accompanying you to ambush her next time. We’ll keep at it until you’re satisfied.”

It seemed like they forgot to switch the voice chat range to team-only.

In the game, the fox-tailed adult female character suddenly stopped moving, no longer running.

Jing Huan turned around and sure enough, among the group chasing him stood a loli, whose in-game ID was precisely “Xian Mengmeng.”

“Haha, she actually turned around. Is her game lagging?”

“Damn, how can she run so fast…”

“Who cares? It’s even better if she disconnects. If she disconnects, she can’t manually return to the respawn point. We can just camp and wait for her to revive, then keep killing her.” The tamer in the team immediately summoned his pet. “Quick, warlock, seal her first.”

The warlock immediately threw out a sealing talisman, but before it could reach its target, the opponent leaped up first and summoned a nine-tailed celestial fox.

The team’s mage laughed: “What’s this? Does she actually think she can counterattack?”

“Where did you scam another nine-tailed celestial fox from?”

At that moment, Xian Mengmeng suddenly spoke over the mic: “Sweet Scenery, just stand still and let us kill you once, and I won’t camp your corpse. Just stop scamming people in the future—it really brings shame to us women.”

Teammate: “Haha, Xianxian, your way of speaking is just too soft and cute.”

“Stop laughing,” Xian Mengmeng said shyly. “I was seriously trying to persuade her.”

As soon as the words were spoken, Xiao Tianjing moved into action again.

She charged up for half a second, and a sealing spiderweb leaped from her palm, heading straight for them. The warlock and mage in front instinctively dodged.

The spiderweb shot straight through the two of them, heading directly behind—hitting the team’s healing monk.

The monk froze, but before he could react, Sweet Scenery instantly vanished.

“It’s stealth teleport! Dodge quickly!” The team’s warlock realized and shouted.

But his warning came too late.

A few seconds ago, Xian Mengmeng had been leisurely tossing buffs to her teammates, but in the blink of an eye, she found herself entangled in layers of spiderwebs.

She froze: “What is this?!”

“Oh no! Break free quickly! Spam left-click! It’s a debuff—it can seal and lower your character’s stats…” the Warlock exclaimed in shock.

How did this person pull off an instant web combo, stacking so many layers of silk in mere seconds?!

Fairy Mengmeng panicked: “I can’t break free…”

Right at that moment, the Nine-Tailed Immortal Fox, following its master’s command, spewed flames toward the spot where Fairy Mengmeng stood.

Fairy Mengmeng’s equipment wasn’t particularly good to begin with, and with so many debuff stacks on her, this single flame attack burned her health down to zero.

[System Announcement: Player Fairy Mengmeng was accidentally killed during forced PvP and lost her Jade Ribbon.]

As the announcement appeared, Xiao Tianjing turned around and ran away again. Only then did the others realize—this person had never intended to fight back from the very beginning! Instead, they wanted to take down one of their teammates!

Snapping out of their shock, the group couldn’t help but curse loudly and immediately gave chase!

“Holy shit.” On the other side of the map, Lu Hang widened his eyes and exclaimed, “Lao Xiang, did you see that move just now?!”

Xiang Huaizhi remained silent.

They had finished their tasks early and were now taking turns at the wilderness map, having clearly witnessed that counter-kill just moments ago.

This Fox Immortal Cave maneuver was truly impressive.

But…could someone tell him why this Fox Immortal Cave was named “Sweet Little Scene”?

Lu Hang was still rambling: “Tsk tsk tsk, with so many layers of nets, even the top Fox Immortal player on the Watercolor server might not be able to pull this off, right?”

“As long as his opponent isn’t me, he can pull it off.” Xiang Huaizhi withdrew his gaze, “Are we still doing the quest?”

“Yeah. Wait, no—don’t you want to watch a bit more?”

“No.”

Fine then.

Lu Hang lightly clicked his mouse, about to leave the wild area, when he saw the little fox spirit in front suddenly turn around to dodge a warlock’s skill and charged straight toward them.

“Hey! She’s coming this way!” Lu Hang squinted and leaned closer to the screen. “Wait, Sweet Jing… that name sounds vaguely familiar?”

A female teammate reminded him, “She’s the female scammer that the Idle Pavilion is hunting down.”

Lu Hang suddenly realized, “Oh right! It’s her! I mean… since when did scammers become so skilled?”

Xiang Huaizhi watched the little fox fairy flying towards them and suddenly remembered the wild monster that had been stolen that day. A faint unease stirred in his heart: “Are we leaving or not?”

Lu Hang: “We’re leaving, we’re leaving right now. Why are you in such a hurry…”

“Ah.” An unfamiliar female voice suddenly came through both their headsets.

It wasn’t an overly sweet voice—clear, crisp, and somehow inexplicably pleasant to listen to.

At this moment, the voice was full of surprise and excitement.

“Brother—”

Lu Hang was stunned for a long moment before realizing the voice was coming from Sweet Little Scene.

Lu Hang: “…Who is she calling?”

Xiang Huaizhi: “No idea.”

No sooner had he spoken than Xiao Tianting suddenly turned back from midair, rushing straight toward Heart’s Yearning with the little white fox at her side—

“God of War, big brother! Save me, ahhhhh—”

The only player in the district with the title of “War God,” Xiang Huaizhi: “…”