The atmosphere in the Internet Cafe lobby had turned bizarre.
Ning Fengzhi and Chen Xin, two heavyweights whose every move carried immense weight on the Douluo Continent, sat in their gaming chairs with utterly bewildered expressions.
"Rongrong, is this so-called illusion... really safe?" Ning Fengzhi felt the cold, silver-white helmet on his head and grew uneasy.
He was the master of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect. What if this helmet contained some Evil Formation that extracted souls?
"Oh, Dad, relax! Just close your eyes and follow the game prompts to confirm!" Ning Rongrong stood beside him, urging him on with little waves of her hands.
After a brief spell of dizziness, Ning Fengzhi and Chen Xin opened their eyes at the same time.
They were greeted by the Watson District's pungent industrial fumes and a dazzling array of neon holographic advertisements.
A massive Aero Car roared overhead, its blue exhaust flames illuminating the stunned faces of the two outsiders.
"Hiss—what filthy air! What a strange place!"
Chen Xin frowned deeply and instinctively tried to summon his Seven Kill Sword, only to discover that he had become an unarmed ordinary old man without a single muscle to his name.
Alarm surged through him. "My soul power really has been completely sealed by this world!"
"Sword Grandpa, Dad! Stop spacing out! Time is money!"
Ning Rongrong came rushing over and, without another word, shoved a battered canvas backpack into each man's hands.
"See that alley up ahead? A few Maelstrom Cyberpsychos are having a shootout with the Night City police! Your job now is to crouch behind that trash can. Once they're all dead, rush out immediately, strip their clothes, and pick up the guns they drop!"
The venerable master of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect and the peerless Sword Douluo could barely process what they had just heard.
"Scav... scavenging trash?!"
Chen Xin was so angry that his beard bristled.
He was a revered sword sage, upright and honorable his entire life, a man who would break rather than bend and had always regarded money as dirt. How could he stoop to looting in the midst of chaos and stripping clothes off corpses?!
"Rongrong! Though my soul power is gone, my mastery of the sword remains! Let me break off an iron pipe and slay those villains. Why should I pick up their scrap metal?"
Chen Xin proudly flicked his sleeves, ready to put on a display of swordsmanship that transcended his mortal body.
"Oh, Sword Grandpa! How many coins can you get from killing someone? The best way to make money right now is to pick up the heavy weapons left behind after gang shootouts!"
Ning Rongrong stamped her feet in frustration, interrupting the Sword Douluo's attempt to show off. "One battered Skippy sniper rifle sells for over three hundred Euros! You'll spend ages whacking a mech with an iron pipe and only get a few dozen bucks. That's a terrible deal! Do you even want to see me win the championship and bring that peerless hidden weapon called the Smart Tracking Rifle back to the sect?!"
At the words "bring it back to the sect," Chen Xin's straight back stiffened. Then he let out a tragic sigh.
"Fine, fine! For the sect's future, I... I'll scavenge!"
Ten minutes later.
A surreal scene unfolded on the streets of Night City.
An elderly, white-haired swordsman whose bearing should have been as ethereal as an exiled immortal's was now furtively crouching behind a trash can reeking of sour refuse.
The instant the gunfire ahead stopped, the old swordsman shot out like a blur, relying on his freakishly fast reflexes.
"Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!"
In less than three seconds, Chen Xin had swept the Assault Rifles, Kinetic Pistols, and even the cheap leather jackets and ammunition boxes beside the three corpses into his canvas bag, employing the exquisite techniques of his Seven Kill swordsmanship with speed, precision, and ruthless efficiency.
"Rongrong! What do you think of the condition of this Achilles I picked up?!"
Chen Xin held up a bloodstained rifle, his eyes shining.
Driven by this simple promise of profit, the distinguished sword sage actually began to experience the strange pleasure of "acquiring stock at zero cost."
"Great job, Sword Grandpa! Hurry, hurry! There's a Tyger Claws hideout up ahead. If we're late, someone else will grab everything!"
Meanwhile, Ning Fengzhi, the master of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect, took an entirely different approach.
After joining in on two rounds of scavenging, the business instincts of this top merchant of the Douluo Continent awakened.
"Rongrong, scavenging like this is far too inefficient."
Ning Fengzhi sat on a bench by the street, studying the "Crafting and Dismantling" system on his virtual panel with a thoughtful expression.
"I've discovered that the junk and low-tier weapons in Night City can be dismantled into basic 'components.' With these components and blueprints, we can directly craft brand-new, high-tier weapons and sell them to shops. There's a profit margin of at least three hundred percent!"
And so, the master of the world's foremost support sect transformed into a ruthless cyber-sweatshop manager in Night City.
He directed Chen Xin to buy and scavenge large quantities of the cheapest junk all over the streets, while he sat in a safe zone, frantically clicking "Dismantle" and "Craft."
Through this snowballing strategy, he extracted Euros from the game at a terrifying rate!
Watching the account balances of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect's "golden grinding duo" soar like rockets, Qian Renxue could no longer sit still.
"Hurry! All of you, get online!"
The Internet Cafe's doors were pushed open again. More than a dozen burly captains of the Heaven Dou Imperial Knights, dressed in plain clothes, marched in neat formation and booked all the dozen or so newly added computers.
"Your Highness, whom are we to assassinate? Or which fortress are we to capture?"
The knight commander knelt on one knee, awaiting the crown prince's military orders.
"Your mission..."
Qian Renxue drew a deep breath and pointed at the big screen through gritted teeth. "Go to the Badlands desert outside Night City and dig up land mines and scavenge junk for me! If you come across a gang shootout, overwhelm them with numbers and snatch their equipment! Even if you have to die today, you will scrape together enough money for my legendary Gorilla Arms!"
"...Huh?"
The knight commander was utterly dumbfounded.
But military orders were absolute. With tears in their eyes, the dozen or so royal knights entered the game and became Night City's most imposing "royal beggar gang," sweeping through the streets and alleys like a swarm of locusts.
Among this entire army of grinders, Zhu Zhuqing was the loneliest.
She had no sect heavyweights to protect her and no royal knights to command.
Although Dai Mubai wanted to help her, Lin Ye had permanently banned his account. He could only sit in humiliation on a plastic stool in the corner, raging helplessly.
But the Hell Spirit Cat's tenacity had always been unmatched.
Without anyone to help her, she took on the most dangerous bounty missions herself.
With her increasingly proficient control of the Sandevistan, Zhu Zhuqing became the deadliest reaper in Night City's darkness, constantly dancing along the edge between life and death as she deposited one bloodstained bounty after another into her account.
The entire Origin Internet Cafe entered a feverish final push before the tournament.
Tang San sat on a stool with a little notebook in his hands. Watching these people fight until their heads bled over a few Euros inside the illusion, he had grown numb to the destruction of his worldview.
"Boss Dai..." Tang San murmured with lifeless eyes. "Tell me, Senior Sword Douluo is using Seven Kill Sword Intent to poke through trash cans, and Sect Master Ning is frantically handcrafting hidden weapons on the spot... could this be some profound cultivation method? Are they tempering their hearts through worldly life to understand the truth that the greatest way is the simplest?"
Dai Mubai watched the lonely Zhu Zhuqing on the screen, his face crumpled as tears pattered down. "Little San, stop analyzing it... all I know is that in a few more days, Zhu Qing will get real god-tier gear, while I... I'm not even qualified to pick up trash for her."
Seated behind the counter, Lin Ye watched the revenue and game activity skyrocket on the system's backend and took a contented sip of ice-cold Cola.
"Grind away. Compete like mad! If you don't keep pushing each other, how am I supposed to unlock the next new game sooner?"
Before you continue