Selling an Ash Domain

The gap between players had never been determined solely by personal skill and luck. Financial resources were also a crucial factor.

The equipment each player obtained was not necessarily something they could use or even liked. Selling off the equipment they did not need in exchange for greater benefits was a very common practice.

Players with considerable wealth in the real world could use this method to acquire more and better equipment, quickly surpassing most ordinary players.

The source of all kinds of player equipment on the Xia Kingdom market was the large number of individual players selling their gear. Of course, that was only the main source; some equipment also entered the market through irregular transactions.

Wang Zhifan inwardly lamented the advantages enjoyed by wealthy players, then followed the receptionist into a room on the upper floor to discuss selling his Fine Tier ammunition.

Since what he wanted to sell was merely Fine Tier equipment rather than high-end goods like Rare Tier items, the other side did not take the negotiation particularly seriously. The shop casually assigned a buyer to haggle with him.

At first, the man even disparaged the goods Wang Zhifan wanted to sell, saying that his ammunition was only Fine Tier and hardly high-grade merchandise. They could not offer much for it, and he could sell it or not as he pleased.

But Wang Zhifan was no stranger to the player community. He knew full well that his Fine Tier bullets held considerable value. They might not be high-end goods, but they were definitely in high demand.

So during the ensuing negotiations, Wang Zhifan also put on the air of an industry insider. He made it clear that these merchants did not need to try fooling him; he would not sell for too low a price. At worst, he would find another shop, and he believed someone else would offer a more reasonable price.

Only when Wang Zhifan finally made a show of ending the negotiation and getting up to leave did the Player Mall buyer relent. He realized that the young man before him was no novice player and would not be easily fooled, so he raised his offer somewhat to keep merchandise that was easy to sell from going to another merchant.

After that minor setback, Wang Zhifan soon left the Player Mall and returned to Tianhua Street.

At the same time, most of the box of Fine Tier pistol bullets in his personal space had disappeared, leaving only a few as reserves. He also tossed the two defective items in his space—his original body's starting equipment, a chipped Ordinary Tier shortsword and a tattered Ordinary Tier cloth armor—to the Player Mall for a bit of extra cash. He now had an additional forty-five thousand national currency, enough to cover his living expenses for the next few months.

Having achieved his goal, Wang Zhifan did not continue wandering around Tianhua Street, lest he run into an acquaintance like Brother Qiang and get dragged into wasting time.

He soon left this famous pedestrian street of Dongjiang City and took a bus back to his rented apartment.

"Every player can enter a dungeon once per day. It isn't mandatory, but you have to enter at least once per week, or you'll be forcibly pulled in. But for me, clearing only one dungeon a day seems a little too little."

On the bus, Wang Zhifan considered his future plans. Unlike many other ordinary players, he very much hoped he could clear multiple dungeons every day. Only then could he grow stronger faster.

But many other players—indeed, most ordinary players—did not share that desire. Some even quickly became highly resistant to entering dungeons.

The reason was simple: clearing dungeons carried no small risk to one's life!

Although players could return to the real world and recover perfectly as long as they still had a breath left after clearing a dungeon, the prerequisite was that they had to be able to beat it. If they died in the dungeon before clearing it, then they were truly dead. In the real world, it would simply become a missing-person case.

The reward system of getting equipment from dungeons was indeed addictive, but if players risked sudden death every single time, not many would keep doing it tirelessly.

However, Wang Zhifan was not included among those people. He was quite confident that he could clear dungeons. At least, he did not think the low-level dungeons would be particularly difficult. After all, he had obtained two Rare Tier rewards after entering only two dungeons, and his strength had long surpassed that of most novice players. As long as he continued accumulating power like this, his strength would overwhelm low-level dungeons, and things would only become easier as he progressed.

Just as Wang Zhifan was sitting on the bus and pondering how to further accelerate his growth, he suddenly noticed that the bus had become quiet.

The bus, which should have been rather noisy, suddenly fell completely silent. Not only were there barely any sounds inside, but even the bustling streets outside seemed to be separated from the bus by a layer of fog. The clamor from outside quickly faded, and his view became hazy and unclear.

"What is going on?!"

This was the first time Wang Zhifan had encountered such a strange situation. In the memories of the original owner that he had inherited, there had never been anything similar.

Confused and alert, he quickly shifted his gaze from the street outside the window back into the bus. Only then did he discover why it had become so silent:

All the passengers had their eyes closed, sitting rigidly in their seats or standing in the aisle like wooden figures. Every one of them was completely motionless, looking extremely eerie. "This is..."

A flood of information immediately flashed through Wang Zhifan's mind. He felt as though he had realized something and vaguely guessed what he was facing.

"Am I inside an Ash Domain? Did this bus just enter an Ash Domain?"

He quickly recalled what he knew, rose from his seat, and soon had a silver-bright long saber in his hand and a suit of silver-gray leather armor on his body.

The Ash Domain was named for the fact that, when observed from outside in the real world, it appeared as a gray, dim region. But according to players who had entered Ash Domains, the scenery within each one differed. Some were no different from the original area's real-world appearance, while others transformed completely into somewhere else.

Yet one thing was the same in every Ash Domain: non-player humans inside them would completely lose the ability to move, becoming like stone figures. If this state lasted too long, those people might even be at risk of dying completely.

Of course, those were not what truly made Ash Domains frightening. The real problem was that whenever an Ash Domain appeared, it meant that some Ash Domain monsters would descend from an unknown place. If those monsters were not swiftly and thoroughly eliminated, the Ash Domain would gradually expand and might eventually become permanently fixed in the real world, forming a Forbidden Domain!