Forum Storm

Entering the official forum, Su Yu immediately spotted a bold red pinned post—"1V100! Mysterious Player Sweeps Bully Skycutter Guild, Ending Provokes Deep Thought."

Clicking on the post, Su Yu saw a complete third-person video about the Skycutter Guild charging an entry fee to the village, getting into a dispute with ordinary players, and ultimately being slaughtered. The player who posted the video was thoughtful, detailing the cause and effect of the incident thoroughly. At the end of the post, he called out: "The Skycutter Guild's lawlessness has reached an intolerable level! They just started the server and they're already blocking the village entrance to charge fees—what about later? Will they directly monopolize game resources?" "We must stand up and boycott the Skycutter Guild! The Skycutter Guild must apologize! They must compensate the players who suffered losses!"

This post was released twenty minutes ago and instantly exploded the official forum. A flood of player replies showed support: "Support! We can't let big guilds run rampant!" "I was there, the Skycutter Guild is absolutely disgusting!" "Treating ordinary players like this for a bit of petty profit—this guild needs to be erased from the game!" "My friend just became a probationary member of the Skycutter Guild and was bragging to me. I'm pulling him out right now! Cutting ties with these bastards!" "But that guy who went 1V100 is too awesome! Even if he had the NPC's buff." "If it were me, even with the buff, I wouldn't dare offend a big guild like Skycutter!" Players discussed heatedly. In just twenty minutes, the video post had gained several thousand replies.

Su Yu scrolled through and found that only a small portion were real players; most were ordinary netizens who couldn't afford a helmet and could only lurk on the forum. But that didn't affect everyone's condemnation of the Skycutter Guild. Soon, the entire forum was filled with posts cursing the Skycutter Guild. The forum admins, not one to miss out on the drama, pinned the video post and marked it in bold red.

The forum was a sea of criticism. But Su Yu glanced at the posts on the first few pages and noticed that members of the Skycutter Guild had already arrived in force, with many starting to refute the rumors: "Wait, everyone's got it wrong! The people charging fees in the video aren't from our Skycutter Guild!" "I'm a member of the Skycutter Guild, even an elite squad leader, and I've never heard of anyone in our guild doing something like this!" "Exactly! Our Skycutter Guild values its reputation highly. Anyone who played 'Demon Realm' should know we always focus on maintaining the game environment—how could we do something so low?" "I played 'Demon Realm,' and I can confirm Skycutter is a legitimate guild." "Someone must be impersonating us." Skycutter Guild members jumped in one after another, and soon a large number of debunking posts appeared on the forum. These posts worked well; many onlookers began to believe them, stopping their attacks on the Skycutter Guild and quietly waiting for the story to unfold. Probably in a little while, once the Skycutter Guild produced decisive evidence, the whole incident would die down.

Over here, Su Yu had already finished his takeout. He let out a light sigh: "That old geezer Skycutter Sword still has some tricks up his sleeve! At this rate, he'll smooth over the storm soon enough." "No, I can't let them get through this crisis easily. I need to think of something. Got it!" Su Yu's eyes rolled, and a plan came to mind. He pulled out his phone, glanced at it, and nodded: "Half an hour has passed. Crimson-Eyed Black Dragon should be online by now. I'll go contact him." Su Yu put on his game helmet and entered the game.

Nolan Village Cemetery. A large swath of white light flashed as Crimson-Eyed Black Dragon and dozens of Emperor Blood Guild members revived there. The moment Crimson-Eyed Black Dragon came online, he immediately checked his death log. Seeing the name of the person who killed him, he couldn't help but shout: "Fuck! It's 'Kexing'! Kexing killed us!" Behind him stood the other three Core Members of the Emperor Blood Guild: Giant God Soldier, Sky Dragon, and Winged God Dragon. Giant God Soldier was a young man with a cold expression. He looked at the death log, his face very grim: "So it was that top expert who took down the level 4 boss who killed us. We died without regret." Sky Dragon was a cute red-haired Loli, looking confused: "No way? I just watched the video post on the forum—he only killed us because he got a buff from a High-Level NPC!" "Those claims are all lies!" Winged God Dragon, a golden-haired mature woman, swept her hair back and said: "There's about a two-and-a-half-hour gap between Kexing killing the level 4 boss and killing us. Even a High-Level NPC couldn't give him a buff that long. There's only one answer: Kexing really does have the strength to one-shot us!" "He's just lucky!" Crimson-Eyed Black Dragon sneered. "Everyone's low-level right now. Once we level up and gear up, I'll show Kexing what real cruelty means!" "Alright, server time is precious. We've already wasted half an hour—can't waste more. Let's go grind." Crimson-Eyed Black Dragon waved his hand and led the guild members out of the cemetery.

But before he had taken a few steps, he suddenly received a system notification: "Ding! Player 'Kexing' requests to add you as a friend."

The Crimson-Eyed Black Dragon's expression instantly froze, and his figure came to a halt.

Noticing the Crimson-Eyed Black Dragon stop, the Winged God Dragon and several other Core Members turned back to look at him. "Crimson, what's wrong?"

"Uh—it's Kexing. Kexing actually added me as a friend!"

The Crimson-Eyed Black Dragon stared at the words "Kexing" in the system message, his eyes nearly bulging with blood.

"Ha! Weren't you going to 'show him what true cruelty means'? Go ahead and show him!" the Winged God Dragon immediately urged.

"Yeah! Uncle Crimson, you can't chicken out!" the Sky Dragon chimed in with an innocent smile.

"Alright, then." The Crimson-Eyed Black Dragon thought it over and clicked the "Accept" button.

But the moment he accepted, he unleashed the hand speed of decades as a bachelor, typing out a long string of text:

"Great Kexing! It's an honor to have you on my friend list! My sincerest apologies for the unpleasantness my brothers and I caused you earlier. I hope you can forgive us!"

Seeing this, the Sky Dragon and Winged God Dragon were utterly dumbfounded.

"Crimson? This is what you call cruelty?"

"Uncle Crimson? Can you grovel any harder?"

The Crimson-Eyed Black Dragon waved his hand with a face full of black lines. "Shoo, shoo! What do little girls like you know?"

Then he turned his back, staring intently at the private message interface, waiting for Kexing's reply.