A Perk for Veteran Players?

"A foreign player suffered a sudden stroke due to unknown reasons while logging into the game and died on the spot. His head swelled to three times its original size and became stuck in the Game Helmet, unable to be removed. It is currently impossible to confirm whether this is related to the Game Helmet..."

"Can hydrocephalus really happen suddenly?" After finishing dinner, Yun Yao looked at the gossip about the game and silently mourned for the player named Lincoln, but she didn't think it had anything to do with the game.

Even disregarding the number of players who Open Beta the public beta today, just considering the number of players who participated in the last closed Closed Beta, there were hundreds of thousands of players nationwide. This one in hundreds of thousands probability, even if the game were truly stimulating, is still an extremely low-probability event, just like photosensitive epilepsy caused by playing mobile games. If you're worried about something like that, then you should basically say goodbye to all Transportation Tool.

"Log in!"

As the colorful lines flowed towards the horizon, Yun Yao felt her spirit begin to break free from the constraints of her body.

This feeling arises every time the game is launched. In the beginning, many Closed Beta testers speculated on outlandish possibilities such as soul leaving the body. However, the game itself is fun enough that fewer people bother to study this so-called launch principle.

Of course, there are definitely quite a few people researching it. As for whether they can come up with anything, Yun Yao thinks we'll know once we see if any new reskinned, grind-heavy web games are released.

"Anyway, as long as the game is fun, that's all that matters. Speaking of which, I wonder how my mech is doing. I hope the new players won't mess with it."

With this thought in mind, Yun Yao's vision went black for a moment, but it quickly returned.

But at this moment, what she saw before her was not the village that was full of post-apocalyptic punk and industrial revolution vibes, but a thoroughly modern town.

Apart from the village's most important Ancestral Hall and the Big Scholar Tree, the other buildings have begun to transform into two- or three-story brick and stone structures. Although the sky is still not very blue, the pungent smell of smoke has disappeared.

The streetlights emitting a dim yellow glow illuminated the surrounding streets. Amidst the shouts and commotion of the players, Yun Yao walked over to the lamppost and, after observing it for a while, finally confirmed that this thing was indeed powered by electricity.

"So, how much time actually passed in the game during this month-long maintenance downtime? How did we progress to the electrical age already?"

Yun Yao didn't even need to use her brain to know that this was definitely a trick her master had come up with.

She determined her direction by the location of the Ancestral Hall and the Big Scholar Tree, and then headed towards her master's house.

After passing through several three-story buildings that obscured her view, her vision shifted from the rudimentary assembly area constructed by various tower cranes and gantry cranes to a massive building that resembled the wooden Water Cube.

At this very moment, one after another, clearly mass-produced mechs were emerging from the factory and striking various silly poses on the open ground outside, while a group of players were excitedly taking pictures and cheering.

"What the heck? Although the master promised to mass-produce them, this already has an assembly line? Or is it a group of Gundam assemblers inside?" Yun Yao looked at the various idiotic ten-meter-long mobile suits and walked towards the factory that covered the original site of Feng Xue's Thatched Hut.

Although there was no reason, a voice seemed to be telling her in her heart that her body was right there.

Is it a hidden tutorial mechanism in the game?

With these thoughts in mind, Yun Yao used the lightness skill that Feng Xue had taught her to overcome the junior players who had never tightened screws for the Big Locust Tree Village and could only watch enviously as their seniors extracted the machines. Amidst shouts of "Big Boss," she slipped into the factory.

Contrary to her imagination of a group of villagers standing on scaffolding assembling a machine, the Mechanical Arm, constructed from simple transmission gears and hydraulic systems, were meticulously refining and polishing individual parts in a seemingly simple way, before assembling them into a complete machine.

The entire assembly line didn't seem particularly fast, but it was full of the rhythm of an industrial assembly line. On one line, at least twenty machines were being assembled simultaneously. Yun Yao glanced at it a few times and then gave up on trying to figure out how such an exaggerated assembly line could be constructed using levers, gears, and hydraulic equipment in an ancient worldview. Anyway, she wouldn't be surprised by anything her cheap master and the sarcastic player combination produced.

He stepped past the window of the leader's mech and, guided by the feeling in his heart, passed through an employee passage. Although other players wanted to pass through here, it was clear that there was Air Wall, and only qualified people could enter.

Feeling the sensation of passing through a barrier of Internal Force, Yun Yao began to look around for her cheap master. However, she soon lost interest in looking for Feng Xue, as her attention was completely drawn to the machine in front of her.

That was still the "Guzheng" Gundam she had piloted a month ago. Although she didn't particularly like the name, it was indeed the most fitting name for it.

The standard design of the Original Gundam, except that it uses a black, gold and red color scheme. The huge guzheng on its back looks more like some kind of backpack system than a weapon.

But more than these familiar structures, Yun Yao was more concerned with a feeling, like swimming in a hot spring, enveloped by countless pieces of information.

A large amount of knowledge was entering her mind at a not-too-fast pace, but upon closer examination, she realized that it wasn't that the pace was slow, but rather that most of the influx of knowledge wouldn't be immediately detected by her consciousness.

"This feeling is like opening a skill book... Could it be some kind of martial arts intent similar to sword intent? What is this? 'Gao Da Yi'?" Yun Yao grinned and complained, but the knowledge kept focusing and eventually turned into some kind of indescribable feeling.

Following that feeling, Yun Yao took the guzheng she had been carrying on her back from behind. The moment her fingertips touched the strings, she had a completely different experience than before.

Just like the legendary swordsman's unity with his sword, she felt as if she had developed some kind of magical connection with the zither. It wasn't some mystical feeling like a meeting of minds or a magical artifact, but something more real, like completely understanding how to control it...

The feeling was like seeing addition and subtraction within ten; you immediately understood all the answers.

That was a feeling that transcended thought and was almost instinctive.

"What is this? Compensation for veteran players after the system update?"

With summer's peak electricity consumption season approaching, power outages and rationing are foreseeable. My old laptop can't even handle modern word processing software anymore. Can anyone recommend a usable laptop, preferably one that can last for several years, as I don't want to replace it frequently?