Chapter 47
That brother who had asked Zhang Zhiyin to help him out with the instance had a domineering name, called Fenghuo Gucheng1. In the game, he had fire-based abilities and for his ID to also be “Fenghuo Gucheng”, it could be seen that he had registered in this game quite early on in order to get this ID, which was a much sought after ID among the male players in this game for some reason.
Zhang Zhiyin was pulled into the party right after he promised him. There were 20 people in the team. In addition to Fenghuo Gucheng, many of them were familiar faces. This party was probably made up of his friends and relatives.
Within two minutes, Fenghuo Gucheng opened the instance. Zhang Zhiyin didn’t give it much a look and directly clicked yes in the “Whether to transfer into the instance” dialog box.
After a short while, Zhang Zhiyin appeared in the instance space.
The original colors of the railing had dulled down. The dilapidated high-speed toll station, the spacious and empty road — even if converted into a 3D game screen — the familiarity of it all still hit him in the face.
Zhang Zhiyin turned to his side and faced Fenghuo Gucheng who was wearing a high-grade fire armor and wielding a mountain axe. He looked like he was dressed in an outfit from a fantasy game of the last century and asked, “Fenghuo, what’s this instance about?”
“Muwo City’s instance, which is also called the forbidden instance.” Fenghuo Gucheng was typing very fast and he quickly replied in the message box. “Do you know what you should do since this is the first time you’re here? Go outside and accept the task, and I will take you to clear the task. They’ll buy medicine and repair their equipment. I will be back later.”
Zhang Zhiyin went out of the instance and accepted the task. He came back five minutes later.
Fenghuo Gucheng: “Why did you take so long?”
Zhiyin: “There was a bit of a lag.”
He was embarrassed to tell him that he was actually carefully reading the story of the task.
According to the plot, two years ago, due to inexplicable reasons, Baiyin Battlefront Station 7 and Station 3 that were sent to clear out the zombies in Muwo City were completely annihilated all of a sudden. The alliance sent out many teams to investigate this, but couldn’t find any explanation behind it. The work of cleaning up Muwo City had been put on hold, and Muwo City had become a forbidden place since then.
With the update of the new expansion packs, the “lurkers” who developed the mutants gradually surfaced, and the alliance began to suspect that the events that occurred in Muwo City were also related to them, so they asked the players to go to the mysterious Muwo City to figure out what was happening.
The mainline task of the instance was to “Explore Muwo City” and “Find the Hidden Truth”. In addition, there were many related branch tasks, one of which was “To Pay Homage to the Lost Spirits”, which was released by Master Wang, who was said to have worked in the Station 7’s canteen.
“The General Manager likes to play cards with the people in the canteen, even if he always loses; Captain Liu Zhu likes to quietly exchange the crystal nuclei for white noodles to eat; Deputy Manager Qin saved my little grandson’s life… ai, but they are not here anymore. This is a basket of white steamed bread that I want to offer to them. Can you help me pay homage to them?”
In the eyes of other players, this was a part of the entertaining gameplay, but to Zhang Zhiyin this was a very riveting nugget of information. Old Wang recounted all the members of Station 7 and everyone had distinct characteristics. It was a long list but he didn’t forget anyone. Any normal players were probably not interested in reading this, but Zhang Zhiyin read through them carefully. It was just that there was no mention of him and his second team, nor was there any mention of Shang Si.
It needn’t be mentioned that Zhang Zhiyin wasn’t normal. He was not a person from the game world. When the planning team created the story, he definitely wouldn’t have been included in the list. But what about Shang Si? Obviously, this was very unusual. Was he really a person who was a part of this world? Or was there some kind of hidden information?
Moreover, he still remembered what happened to the Captain of No. 1 Base he was in. The world of <Tomorrow> from Zhang Zhiyin’s dreams was set before the timeline of this instance, so the “past” mentioned in the game mission was very likely, or almost 100% sure to become the reality of the world.
This time, they must find a way to stop the so-called annihilation of the whole army.
Fenghuo Gucheng’s team was very familiar with this instance. They didn’t stop to dawdle about along the way. Zhang Zhiyin didn’t have to do anything, he just had to follow them.
The final boss of the instance was a Level 8 mutant with fire abilities as its primary attack, but at present, the high-leveled players in the game also had the strength of □ level ability, along with the blessing of extra equipment and items, so playing against such a tough boss with long HP and MP bar wouldn’t be too hard. The difficulty of this boss was that it was fast and had a high probability of landing a critical strike. This was a standard problem when dealing with high-leveled opponents in traditional online games. It could teleport to someone and gave them a fatal blow. The player would basically die, and taking medicine or healing them with abilities wouldn’t help them after that. So the most common tactic in the forum was to find players with restrictive abilities to control the boss and not let it move.
The best of crowd control skills2 were possessed by those with ice and wood abilities, water and fire clash against each other, and ice was a variation of water ability, they were better than water at dealing with this boss; but in the same case, the wood ability need to be at least one level higher than it to control this boss.
In the boss battle, Zhang Zhiyin didn’t need to do anything as long as he stood in a position where he could keep using his ice skills; in addition to him, there was also another ice elemental ability user and a wood elemental ability user working together with him.
Zhang Zhiyin accompanied them for three rounds. In the end, Fenghuo Gucheng gave him the things the mutant dropped and thanked him for his help. He said that he’d let Zhang Zhiyin know as soon as he found any new information in the future.
Zhang Zhiyin was depressed that they had finished the game without being able to figure out what happened to the Battle Station 7 and 3 that caused them to get wiped out in such a mysterious fashion. The only clue he had to go on was the mutant.
Zhang Zhiyin was not very concerned about the equipment and items materials in the game anymore. Fenghuo Gucheng gave him what he roughly looked at and he received it. He returned to his stronghold, the darkroom of Dr. Y in the abandoned instance of the Tianshui Laboratory. He finally took a closer look at his loot from the instance. The medicines that wouldn’t be used could be directly thrown into his cheap shop. This store was based on the item store, so it existed even in reality.
One of the little things he’d received caught the attention of Zhang Zhiyin. It was a ceramic kitten, and the article was said to be [An article of home decor, which can be used to beautify your house]. There would be a housing system in the future. Players would get a deed through a mission, and then they could purchase a house after paying a fee at the Housing Union Management Office. The prices of different sizes of houses in different locations were varied. After you own a house, you could buy furniture and other furnishings to decorate your own virtual home.
This kind of small display that could be obtained after fighting bosses was very popular among the family-oriented players, especially the female players, and the price was not low in the market. Zhang Zhiyin wasn’t very attached to the concept of family in the game and in reality, so it was useless for him to take this item.
He looked at it and decided to put the ceramic kitten in the store and sell it off. Then he looked at it some more and thought that the cat looked kind of similar to Yin Xiaoxiang. It was white all over and was chasing its tail.
Yin Nian might like it. He still remembered when his expression when he said, “My Mimi is missing.”
Zhang Zhiyin zoomed in on the character of the game. Facing the cold and faint face, he directed his character to gently hug him, and then lightly put the kitten on the ground near him.
“I probably can’t become a kitten to accompany you anymore, so can I give this to you?”
“Y, bless the Battlefront Station 7 so it would remain all right, and that everything goes well, so that no matter what issue is it, I can successfully resolve it.”
