Su Ye's gaze swept quickly over the pleas for help.
He did not need to bother with the people complaining. He only needed to find players who desperately needed supplies and were on the verge of despair.
Before long, he locked onto a target.
A player nicknamed "Wild Wind Blade" was frantically flooding the channel with requests for fuel.
Su Ye did not speak in the public channel. Instead, he opened a private chat with the player.
"You need fuel, right?" Su Ye typed and sent the message.
A few seconds later, the other player replied immediately.
"Boss, save me! I really need fuel. My car stalled half an hour ago, and there are beasts outside watching me."
"Which tribe are you from? If we're from the same tribe, I wouldn't mind giving you ten units of fuel."
After he sent the message, the other player did not reply right away, apparently not expecting anyone to actually offer free fuel.
"Holy shit, Never Checks the Fuel Gauge! You're the Fuel Gauge boss! I didn't even notice at first."
"Boss, I'm out of fuel and can't move. I'm from the Tide Tribe. Please save me!"
As he read the messages on the screen, a playful smile tugged at Su Ye's lips.
"Just because you say you're from the Tide Tribe, I'm supposed to believe you?"
"Send me a full-body selfie so I can see what you look like."
"If we're from the same tribe, I wouldn't mind helping you through this."
This was Su Ye's plan: find players short on resources and draw out information about the appearance of the Fivefold Race.
"Sure, boss. Give me a moment. I'll take one right now."
A little over ten seconds later, a soft ding sounded, and a high-resolution image arrived in Su Ye's private chat.
Su Ye opened the image and studied it closely.
The photo showed a road in the background, with a humanoid creature standing nervously beside a car and staring into the camera.
"So this is the Tide Tribe?"
Su Ye narrowed his eyes.
The Tide Tribe member looked broadly similar to Humanity, with four limbs and a torso.
But he was exceptionally large, looking roughly half again as big as an ordinary member of Humanity, with knotted muscles that radiated explosive strength.
His eyes were slightly sunken, and his gaze was somewhat sinister.
His ears were not curved like those of Humanity. Instead, they formed rounded semicircles pressed close against either side of his head.
His skin was bronze, with faint, scale-like patterns across its surface, while his hair and eyes were a deep, dark blue.
"All right, I believe you."
Su Ye replied, "Don't tell anyone about this. I don't want trouble."
With that, Su Ye sent the player ten units of fuel through the trading system.
"Thank you, boss! You've practically given me a second life!"
"Don't worry. My lips are sealed. I wouldn't tell anyone even if they beat me to death."
The player thanked him over and over, sending a flood of tearfully grateful messages.
Su Ye could no longer be bothered and simply closed the chat window.
Ten units of fuel did not amount to even a drop in the bucket for him. Paying such a negligible price for the information was well worth it.
"Next, the other Four Clans."
Su Ye repeated the process, continuing to search the chat channel for people who had nowhere else to turn.
Time ticked by.
He posed as a generous but suspicious big shot from their own tribe, repeatedly using fuel as bait.
"You're from the Feather Tribe? Send me a photo."
"The Flame Tribe? I don't believe you unless you prove it."
"What does the Sand Tribe look like? Take a full-body photo, and the fuel will be on its way."
"A brother from the Frost Tribe? Send me a selfie, and I'll help you out."
Within just a few minutes, Su Ye had successfully obtained clear photos of all five tribes of the Fivefold Race through this simple, direct method.
Although he had spent a little over three hundred units of fuel in the process, that expense was utterly trivial to him.
Through these photos, Su Ye finally gained a comprehensive, firsthand understanding of the so-called Fivefold Race.
While collecting the photos, Su Ye also noticed an extremely important detail.
Even among members of the same Tide Tribe or Feather Tribe, some individuals had distinctly different appearances and features.
To find out why, Su Ye deliberately chose a Feather Tribe player who seemed fairly talkative and used ten units of fuel to coax some information out of him.
After asking a few questions, Su Ye finally understood.
As it turned out, the Fivefold Race adhered to an extremely strict bloodline hierarchy.
The rank of their bloodline directly determined their standing within their tribe.
The Feather Tribe was one example.
Those with gray-white hair and pure white eyes possessed pure noble blood and were born a cut above the rest.
Those with dark brown hair and pale cyan eyes were ordinary tribe members at the very bottom.
"What a rigid hierarchy. That'll make things easier for me."
Su Ye smiled. "If I'm going to transform, I might as well become a noble."
"With a noble identity, things will be much easier when I run into other Fivefold Race players. I might even be able to throw my supposed authority around."
Su Ye picked up the Illusionary Form Mask and pressed it directly onto his face.
The instant the mask touched his skin, it seemed to come alive, turning into a layer of icy liquid metal that rapidly spread to cover his entire face.
Immediately afterward, an extremely complex appearance customization interface appeared in Su Ye's field of vision.
At the center of the interface stood a virtual three-dimensional humanoid model with the same proportions as him.
Beside it was a dense array of adjustment options: height, build, skin color, hair color, eyes, facial bone structure...
"This is even more powerful than the character customization systems in those big online games from my previous life."
Su Ye clicked his tongue in wonder.
He wasted no time and immediately began making adjustments based on the photos and information he had collected.
He chose the Feather Tribe as his first disguise.
He lengthened the bones, increasing the body's size by roughly half and giving it a lean build brimming with explosive power.
He adjusted the skin to a cold, stark pallor.
He set the hair to the gray-white color that symbolized noble blood, while the eyes became an unblemished pure white.
Finally, he made a few minor adjustments to the brow ridge and jawbone, giving the face more depth and a colder look, with the commanding air of someone who needed no anger to inspire awe.
After spending several minutes carefully checking every detail and ensuring there were no flaws, Su Ye pressed the confirm button.
[Appearance customization complete. Synchronizing physical form...]
As the system notification sounded, Su Ye felt the Illusionary Form Mask on his face begin to writhe violently.
A strange energy surged from the mask and instantly coursed through his entire body.
Crack, crack, crack...
The teeth-grating sound of bones grinding together came from inside his body. Fortunately, although the process felt strange, it did not hurt at all.
Within just a few breaths, every strange sensation receded like the tide.
Su Ye opened his eyes and looked down at his hands.
His once slender hands, characteristic of Humanity, had become broad, with pronounced knuckles and skin so pale it held not a trace of color.
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