Deep within a safe house converted from an air-raid shelter in Kazan City, White Bear County, Meng Wenfei sat before a desk, watching lines of information race across her computer screen.
The only major guild powers in the Eerie Game were Nine Provinces, Listen Wind, Sariel, and everyone else—at most, one could add the Church of the Scales, which wielded considerable influence in reality, and Unnamed, which had recently been stirring up trouble.
Most smaller guilds either attached themselves to larger ones, even being established directly at the larger guilds' behest as vassals, or merely served as loose mutual-support groups, appearing unnoticed and vanishing without a sound.
Wind and Rain Guild belonged to the former category. From the very beginning, Meng Wenfei had been prepared to follow Nine Provinces Guild. It was not only because she had long held a certain admiration for Lin Jue and Fu Jue, but also because she knew that humanity's interests were fundamentally incompatible with those of ghosts. Uniting to fight the Eerie Game was the only responsible choice for the future of their species.
Over the past year, she had first led Wind and Rain Guild in publicly announcing its cooperation with Nine Provinces Guild, then cultivated friendly relations with players from all sides to preserve its reputation. In the end, she had secured a relatively stable path for Wind and Rain Guild amid the changing circumstances. Though some members had died, the impact they suffered was nearly negligible compared to guilds of the same tier.
A week earlier, Si Qi had made a post on the Eerie Game forum, using the eerie entities under his control as leverage to challenge Fu Jue.
Meng Wenfei vaguely remembered meeting the young man once at a guild representatives' conference. At the time, Lin Crow had only