After walking for nearly half an hour with the thick, long wooden pole laden with game on his back,
Li Xing spotted a conspicuous stone stele standing in a clearing in the woods beside the road.
It was carved with patterns he did not understand but found impressive, and a faint pale blue glow shimmered across it. Like the first glimmer of dawn in the night sky, that pale blue filled him with joy and anticipation...
Li Xing walked up for a closer look, and the familiar boulder told him everything.
"Isn't this the Resurrection Stone from Warcraft III?"
Only at that moment
did Li Xing fully realize which world he had transmigrated into—the disaster-prone world of Azeroth!
"I..."
"What kind of luck is this? How did I end up transmigrating to this godforsaken place?"
Now that he understood his situation, Li Xing felt like crying, but had no tears.
He wasn't a Blizzard fanatic, and only played Warcraft games for casual entertainment, so he knew little about this world.
Even so, Li Xing had learned about this cruel, turbulent world from various transmigration novels and the comment sections under those damned news articles.
After adjusting his mindset, Li Xing stepped forward and began touching the structure that appeared so often in the game.
Anyone who had played fan-made Warcraft III maps in the early days knew.
The Resurrection Stone was often used at the start of a map, as a landmark for choosing initial skills, heroes, and the like.
Li Xing naturally understood how extraordinary this structure was in this world.
So he eagerly reached out to touch it, hoping to see whether he could obtain a corresponding opportunity.
When Li Xing touched the Resurrection Stone, a level-up sound immediately rang out in his mind.
In the blink of an eye, this simple, straightforward data appeared in his consciousness.
Name: Li Xing Profession: Peasant (Dimensional Traveler) Race: ??? Level: 3
Dimensional Traveler? Just because I transmigrated here! That counts as a profession? And this data is way too bare-bones! Don't tell me all I did was register here, and all I can do is check my data! Li Xing grumbled inwardly.
In the Azeroth Li Xing knew of, transmigrators were nothing unusual. First there was Garrosh, who had shouted "Times change" and traveled back to alter history; then there were the bronze dragons in the novels, whose duties involved monitoring time.
In fact, the Resurrection Stone Li Xing had touched was just as he had imagined. It was merely the equivalent of registering himself on the planet Azeroth, gaining the recognition of Azeroth's world-soul, and officially becoming a part of Azeroth.
A long wolf howl came from the woods on the distant horizon.
Li Xing came to his senses, realizing this was no time to let his thoughts run wild.
"The mountains and woods around here are a bit dangerous! I can't waste time here. I need to hurry along the road and find somewhere with people where I can rest."
Then he picked up the pole and continued down the road.
Li Xing wasn't disappointed by the data provided by the Resurrection Stone.
Although he didn't have a cheat like the protagonists of other novels, his enhanced physical abilities still gave him confidence in this unfamiliar world.
As for his profession, having grown up under the red flag, he had no aversion to being a peasant. On the contrary, he felt a little fortunate.
In Li Xing's view, the peasants in Warcraft were less farmers than jacks-of-all-trades.
First of all, the unit's profession was peasant, so logically its main job should have been farming!
But in the entire game of Warcraft, aside from building farms, which had some connection to farming, everything else this profession did was practically a demonstration of working-class trades.
They forged iron in blacksmith shops, chopped trees outside lumber mills, panned for gold in mines, and built towns by remote deposits;
Helped one another speed up construction, made repairs with a hammer in one hand, built structures barehanded on empty ground, and gathered and transported resources;
At the sound of the warning bell, they donned armor and took up swords to charge the enemy, led the attack, and fought to the death rather than retreat, returning wrapped in shrouds!
Those dependable fruits of labor, that contribution to society, that solid professional competence, that heroic militia spirit.
Damn, it was perfect!
The way this character was designed was unbelievably cool!
If I didn't know where it came from, I'd have thought this game was developed by a certain red superpower from the last century!
"Holy crap!? Wait, did I just discover something?"
In short, in this game world,
don't ask whether the peasant comrades can do it! First ask yourself whether you've planned your tech tree properly!
Li Xing believed that, once conditions improved and their needs were met, the peasant profession would surely dominate the continent of Azeroth one day!
"Heroes? They're just a bunch of puppets whose skills were built up with resources. All they do is bully people with their unique hero armor! If those monopolized resources were directed toward the common people, everyone would have a chance to develop skills unique to themselves."
As for the rest,
"Can you fix things? Can you construct buildings? Can you increase the population?"
"What! You can't do any of that? You can only kill enemies! Here in Azeroth, who can't kill enemies?"
In short, if you told me peasants would dominate the world in a Japanese-style hero novel, I'd have my doubts. But peasants ruling the world of Warcraft wouldn't surprise me at all!
So Li Xing was not only not disappointed with the profession he had been assigned, he even wanted to laugh.
"Haha! Azeroth, here I fucking come!"
As for strength, Li Xing was even less worried. When he saw the level displayed on his panel, Li Xing knew what he had to do!
And so Li Xing followed the forest path to the town at the end of the road!
The dirt road beneath his feet ended at a small town.
By the standards of the world he had come from, what lay before him would have been better described as a manor or a village.
Walking along the town's road, Li Xing noticed that the surface beneath his feet was slightly different from the muddy road he had been on before.
The roads in town had clearly been hardened. Their surfaces were silvery gray, and their roadbeds were noticeably higher than the yellow-green dirt road outside the village. Up close, though the road wasn't as smooth as concrete, it didn't hinder pedestrians.
The road itself was laid with large chunks of crushed stone, with all sorts of smaller stones filling the gaps. Here and there, he could also make out pebbles of different colors.
The gaps between the larger stones and the pebbles were filled with a grayish-white binder made of some unknown material, which had given Li Xing the illusion from a distance that the road was silvery gray.
The town's road layout was simple, with no distinction between main and secondary roads.
Every now and then, a few children would cross from the roadside, and the road's width varied with the density of the surrounding buildings. Li Xing estimated that the wider sections could fit roughly two cars side by side, while the narrower parts had only enough room for two or three people to walk abreast.
Although most roads were only wide enough for one vehicle, a blacksmith shop and a large open space stood in the town center, with the village's buildings arranged around the shop. Viewed from above, it was neither square nor round. The layout was quite haphazard!
The blacksmith shop in the town center was surrounded by the hardened silvery-gray road, making the whole town seem especially open.
The town's houses also looked much the same as the ones he remembered from the game, except their details were richer and more pronounced. In particular, there was the huge anvil outside the blacksmith shop in the town center, and the tavern with its bright red roof on one side of town!
Li Xing walked along the town's stone road.
He carried his spoils as he went, looking around at the town.
The townspeople looked at the unfamiliar, spirited, and handsome young man before them. His eastern features, black hair, and black eyes added a touch of the exotic to the remote town.
Noticing the appraising gazes of the townspeople by the road, Li Xing returned them with a friendly smile. At once, the girls by the road blushed and shyly turned their faces aside, watching Li Xing stroll through town out of the corners of their eyes.
"Hello! Visitor from afar, may I ask what brings you to our town?"