I Don't Agree to the Terms
Chapter 88 - 77: Who Would Take on Such a Meager Bounty?_2

Chapter 88: Chapter 77: Who Would Take on Such a Meager Bounty?_2

"Fine, I’m done wasting my time with you, you have ten seconds to decide, either lose your account or give me compensation," Gu Shanhai was running out of patience.

"Fine, fine, fine..." Man Yue had no other choice but to grit his teeth and pull out a skill book along with some other assorted items.

These items were naturally of much better quality than those offered before.

"Is that all?" Gu Shanhai asked again.

At this point, the other party could only put on a look of resignation, signaling that they really had nothing left.

Of course, Gu Shanhai knew that the other party surely had more, but it was very likely they wouldn’t give anything else up.

As a result, he collected the items, his expression mocking, "Just this little stuff, it really puts me in a tough spot."

After saying that, Gu Shanhai hit the other party with a crippling potion and a healing spell, and in an instant, the other party’s flesh started to wriggle as a plethora of negative passive and permanent negative statuses appeared.

"Holy shit, you broke your word!" Man Yue’s face was full of outrage, he hadn’t expected things to turn out like this.

"I said all the items in your inventory, you’re the one who broke your word first," Gu Shanhai replied, then casually killed the other player, whose body dissolved into light and faded away.

Trust? There’s no such thing as trust with someone who’s trying to kill you—not for a saint or someone out of their mind. Naturally, there was no holding back.

...

After finishing this business, Gu Shanhai finally relaxed a bit. He figured he’d probably be attacked by a few clueless players in the future, but such players were no big deal. Which normal player would dare risk losing their account for a mere hundred bucks?

Besides, Fengxue Pavilion wasn’t that big of an issue. If it were its heyday, a hundred bucks for a bounty would be an utter insult, it should at least be a thousand.

"Fengxue Pavilion’s probably lost its sugar daddy, so I guess this bounty will be taken down in a couple of days."

He knew quite a bit about how game clubs operated; Fengxue Pavilion main forces were gone, and if their backers still wanted to keep a presence in "The Matrix," they definitely couldn’t do it with Fengxue Pavilion.

After all, why would they bother cultivating a ruined force? These people came to make money, not to play around, and even those that did play for fun wouldn’t settle for a bunch of failures.

So naturally, the best course of action would be to pull out investments and restructure. Getting players wasn’t hard; as long as you’re willing to pay, it’s not a big problem.

Although this might be a hot topic on forums, Fengxue Pavilion was only left with its last bit of traffic. Once it goes bankrupt and gets liquidated, naturally there won’t be any more noise.

There’s all sorts of traffic on the forums every day, and Gu Shanhai’s incident was quickly overshadowed by other hot topics.

The popularity of "The Matrix" brought in various influencers, internet celebrities and streamers, and every day new gossip kept emerging. These people all wanted to grab the spotlight, but a declining Fengxue Pavilion thinking about trending? With their backers gone, how could they stand a chance?

Capital’s entrance was inevitable, after all, "The Matrix" was too hot, and there was no way to influence it from the backend, making it the fairest game around at the moment.

First off, you couldn’t pay to win, and although it couldn’t stop wealthy players or capital from acquiring game currency through offline means, skills and gameplay couldn’t be replicated, so the underclass still had a chance to succeed.

You could replicate someone’s skill system but not their talent and gameplay; the same set of skills wielded by different players would lead to different outcomes.

Just like when Heavenly Immortal got drunk with his summoning system, no one else could replicate it. Even if they learned the same skills, the effects were entirely different.

He was able to summon beasts to slave away for him through karmic summoning. While his frequency and number were lower than other systems, once he summoned them, he was unstoppable.

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From the very beginning, Gu Shanhai hadn’t taken Fengxue Pavilion to heart, not even caring about the potential criticism he might face on the forums. He wasn’t in the modern urban world, after all. Anyone in the game who dared to challenge him got hit with a one-size-fits-all account-ruining special. After being trashed several times, they naturally only dared to talk big without following through with action.

Gu Shanhai was confident that with the "Green Emperor Longevity Scripture," he could reach the top tier of players.

The gap between players was even bigger than the gap between a person and a dog.

Typically, Gu Shanhai looked weak, possessing only the Magic Domain skill. But in a real fight, not even an army could get close to him.

There was a world of difference between the normal state of Magic Domain and its battle state.

In its normal state, the Magic Domain barely managed to hold off the Ghost Bee’s attacks, but during combat, Magic Domain allowed Gu Shanhai to effortlessly dominate within the Ghost Bee’s nest without lifting a finger, even capable of killing the Queen Bee with a single strike from the Spirit Blade.

Thus, his combat power limit depended on whether Gu Shanhai took the fight seriously. If he did, overpowering opponents of higher levels was a trivial matter. If he was just messing around, he could only achieve a fifty-fifty win rate against weaker players.

"What a bunch of trash. It seems they were serious gunners," Gu Shanhai assessed after a brief inspection, noting the enemy really hadn’t left much behind.

Nothing but bullets, grenades, bandages, adrenaline injections, and the like.

Amongst gunner players, this was fairly standard; only the sniper rifle was noteworthy, suggesting a focus on firearms by the opponent.

However, that Skill Book was somewhat surprising.

"Bullet Time"

Yes, the very famous Bullet Time, a must-have initial skill for gunner players, the other being Gunfighting Skill for counter-attacking when enemies got close.

However, Bullet Time didn’t have the complicated follow-up developments like Gunfighting Skill, just two advancements: Time Freeze and Time Cutting, with effects altering perception and the surrounding area. But these advancements required a multitude of prerequisite skills, with Bullet Time being just one of the core components; others included Hacker Proficiency, Data Fortification, and the like.

Meaning, average gunner type players couldn’t really learn the two advanced stages. The profession truly capable of utilizing Bullet Time and its subsequent abilities was the hacker, not the gunner.

Initially, hackers had little to no abilities and were limited to instances within the modern urban world, but once developed, they could invade anything from what was so-called Magic Arrays to magic treasures, even unveiling abilities like virtual domains.

"Having only Bullet Time is indeed not much help; it could at most improve my neural response just slightly. Too trivial," Gu Shanhai was still somewhat dismissive. As for reaching the level of The Matrix? That required the professional talent and skills of the hacker profession to achieve the slow-motion effect.

"Let it be, it counts as a gain."

It was just right for enhancing the spirit-nurturing first layer of the "Green Emperor Longevity Scripture." A faster neural response was always better than a slower one.

He could also look into modifying it later to see if he could achieve a slow-motion effect within Magic Domain. He didn’t have extravagant hopes for a perfect replication; ten percent of the effect would suffice.

As for deducing the two remaining advanced stages from Bullet Time, that was outright impossible.

Better not to think too much about things that were as unrelated as horses and cows.

After all, even if the advancements to Bullet Time were formidable, they were unrelated to Bullet Time itself; without a hacker’s system to compliment it, it was merely a passive skill, at most increasing agility attributes and not as miraculous as hyped.

Gu Shanhai had reviewed it; it was a training manual without any heaven-defying effects, but fortunately, it was well-illustrated, so there was no worry about misunderstanding it.

"Find a place to keep up the undercover training and mix in the time. Now most players are at the base side. As long as the luck isn’t too bad, I shouldn’t run into this kind of thing again," Gu Shanhai pondered for a moment, planning to leave this place and continue his cultivation.

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