Tang Ya was directly frightened by these new players and had already summoned her Blue Silver Grass martial soul.
"Who are you? What do you want?"
Qian Xunji: "Don't be nervous, don't be nervous. We're not bad people."
Dong'er: "Do you think anyone would believe that? Sect Master Tang Ya, we're all members of the New Tang Sect. We heard you were back, so we came especially to welcome you."
I Am Xiao Jian: "That's right. You can choose any one of us to welcome you. I recommend myself. I guarantee you'll be satisfied."
Nine-Tailed Male Fox: "Get out of the way. I'll be the one to welcome her. Sect Master Tang Ya, do you think I'm handsome?"
Zhou Xingxing: "Cut the nonsense. Let Sect Master Tang Ya choose for herself. Sect Master Tang Ya, no matter who you choose, you'll get the best welcome."
The veteran players who hadn't crowded around also came out and saw Tang Ya surrounded in the middle.
Ten-Year Veteran: "Looking at her, she hasn't turned evil yet."
Wang Zhongwang: "We've already taken back the Sect Base, and she's avenged her grudge. What does she have left to turn evil over?"
Agile Dog in the Mountains: "We discussed this before. We can put our brainwashing plan for her on the agenda now."
Spirit Hall Eternal: "We still need to trick her into joining first. Look at her right now. It's lucky she hasn't been scared off."
I Am an Angel: "How about we step in?"
Qian Xixi: "I don't think we need to. The Sect Base is right here. She can't get away."
Tang Ya took a deep breath to calm herself down, then finally pointed to Dong'er, who was also a girl.
"Then I'll choose this young lady."
A smile appeared on Dong'er's face, while the other new players looked disappointed.
Dong'er: "Sect Master Tang Ya, you can call me Dong'er. I'll show you around the Sect Base."
"All right. Then I'll have to trouble you, Miss Dong'er."
Although everyone else called her Sect Master, Tang Ya herself knew her situation very well, so she didn't put on any airs.
While Dong'er was carrying out the task of welcoming Tang Ya, the other new players couldn't just stand around watching. They had to find something to do, too.
Qian Xunji: "Looking for veterans to help with leveling! Any veteran players willing to lead?"
Invincible Tyrannosaurus Warrior: "I am! I am! Let's go once the party's full."
The new and veteran players discussed it. The usual way to help new players level was the three-veterans-to-four-newbies setup.
That meant three veteran players and four new players formed a seven-person party and went to the Star Dou Great Forest dungeon to level up.
This setup could raise the new players' soul power levels as quickly as possible.
Dong'er took Tang Ya around the sect. The Sect Base was actually rather quiet. Once the players went off to level up, only the few NPCs Tang Yi had assigned remained.
When they returned to the sect plaza, they found that everyone had disappeared.
"Huh? Where did everyone go?"
Dong'er: "They all went to level up."
"Level up?"
Dong'er: "That means they went to cultivate. They have to cultivate faster to close the gap with the veteran players."
Tang Ya was completely baffled by what she heard. She assumed they had all gone back to their rooms to cultivate, and thought that the New Tang Sect had a pretty good cultivation atmosphere.
Dong'er: "Sect Master Tang Ya, you must be tired from traveling these past few days. Why don't you rest first?"
"Miss Dong'er, you don't have to call me Sect Master. After all, I..."
Dong'er: "That doesn't matter. I'll take you to rest. The sect master has a room of her own."
Dong'er followed the map and took Tang Ya to the sect master's private room. Though it was called a private room, it was hardly any different from the rooms of the other NPCs.
As soon as Tang Ya walked into the room, Dong'er noticed the two words "Sect Master" appear above her head.
From that moment on, Tang Ya, who had been an ordinary plot character, had been upgraded to a sect NPC for the New Tang Sect.
Over the next while, some of the new and veteran players formed parties and went to the Star Dou Great Forest dungeon to level up. Almost every player who went there ended up cursing the developer-that was, Tang Yi.
That was because the promised Martial Ring Age Upgrade Cards and Soul Bones had an absurdly low drop rate.
Leveling was just the same. Going from level 10 to level 20 was quick, but leveling from 20 to 30 was much slower.
Going from level 30 to level 40 was slower still. The main reason was that most of the Soul Beasts that respawned inside the dungeon were hundred-year or thousand-year beasts. There were basically no ten-thousand-year Soul Beasts.
Respawning Soul Beasts inside a dungeon came at a cost, too.
At this stage, Tang Yi had calculated that letting players level up by respawning hundred-year and thousand-year Soul Beasts in the dungeon was the most cost-effective method.
As the plot progressed, larger dungeon areas could be opened up, or, in other words, other places where Soul Beasts gathered.
Simply put, the leveling dungeon was just there to help new players catch up. If they really wanted to level up quickly, they had to go do plot quests and change the plot.
With Tang Ya's return, another quest had been added to the sect quests: teach the sect master the history of the Tang Sect.
This happened to align with the veteran players' idea of brainwashing Tang Ya.
The quest was also mostly taken by veteran players. After accepting it, they could go give Tang Ya a lesson. They had one hour a day, and the rewards were just some experience and Gold Soul Coins-not especially generous.
Today, I Am an Angel had accepted the quest to go teach Tang Ya.
I Am an Angel: "Sect Master, I'm here. Let's continue our Tang Sect history lesson."
"All right! But the Tang Sect history you told me is completely different from what I used to know."
I Am an Angel: "That's because someone hid the real history. Who do you remember founding the Tang Sect?"
"It was the Sea God!"
I Am an Angel: "No. The Sea God, Tang San, was nothing but a thief and a traitor to the sect."
"What?!"
I Am an Angel: "That's right. This is the truth. The true ancestral home of the Tang Sect is in Bashu. Tang San was originally just an outer sect disciple taken in by the Tang Sect. But after he grew up, he stole the Tang Sect's secret manuals, fled the sect, and came to this continent."
I Am an Angel: "After arriving on this continent, he used the secret manuals he'd stolen from the Tang Sect to establish another Tang Sect here, and shamelessly passed himself off as the Tang Sect's founding ancestor."
Tang Ya felt as if her whole worldview had been blown apart. This was worlds apart from the history of the Tang Sect she'd learned growing up.
And yet, she instinctively believed this was the truth, and that everything she'd learned before was false history.
She didn't realize that someone was influencing her from behind the scenes.
Meanwhile, over at Shrek Academy, Huo Yuhao and the others had also returned to school. Xuan Zi was severely injured and had lost an arm and a leg, so he could only recuperate at the academy.
Ma Xiaotao could be said to have come out of the misfortune with a blessing, having avoided being kidnapped by the Holy Spirit Cult.
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