Buying Materials

With his speed stat of thirteen pushed to the limit, he could sprint a hundred meters in just six seconds!

Mo Dou transformed into a black sheep and charged ahead to clear the way, while Zuo Cheng'an followed behind in what could only be called a bedraggled escape.

Fortunately, Mo Dou's actions did not earn a warning from the game. Presumably, the game could only classify them as self-defense, or as a special way of moving through a crowd.

Guilds that had to recruit people everywhere and treated players on the First Heavenly Ladder like treasures naturally were not good guilds.

The people out trying to meet their recruitment quotas had not even reached the First Heavenly Ladder. They were all Not Yet on the Ladder players who had not maxed out a single stat.

Before long, Zuo Cheng'an and Mo Dou left them so far behind they could not even eat their dust.

Following the signs, Zuo Cheng'an brought Mo Dou to the safe zone's largest department store.

He needed to buy the ingredients for making "Tomato sauce" here, as well as stock up on some supplies.

It supplied a hundred thousand people in the safe zone with everything they needed for daily life without any of them having to produce anything. Just imagine how much stock it held!

Covering over a thousand mu and standing nine stories tall, it had everything the real world had, and its inventory was updated in sync.

Instant noodle brands that required a trip abroad to buy in reality could be found here simply by moving to another shelf.

You could say there was nothing you could not buy here except gamblin' and dr*gs (Xizhou did not make those typos by accident. They were deliberate. [Confident face]).

As for porn? Could you really call that porn? Those were adult products! A perfectly reasonable outlet for stress!

Fortunately, despite the enormous space, every player's stamina and speed exceeded those of ordinary people, and they also had the game's assistance.

Otherwise, buying everyday necessities would have left them exhausted every time.

With the keyword "food" in mind, Zuo Cheng'an was teleported to the food section the instant he entered the department store.

Just like in an ordinary supermarket, snacks, instant foods, fruits, and vegetables were grouped together, all on one vast floor.

"Awoof!!"

After picking out his own things, Zuo Cheng'an turned around and saw that Mo Dou had run over to the produce section on his own.

He was drooling at the fresh pasture grass beneath a protective cover.

Zuo Cheng'an silently put down the canned dog food, kibble, dog biscuits, and other products in his hands, replacing them with large bundles of fresh pasture grass.

No wonder Mo Dou had not even glanced at the pet treats section when they passed it. He was a vegetarian!

Had he spent so long as a sheep that he had forgotten what his own species ate?

Zuo Cheng'an felt helpless, but he went along with Mo Dou's wishes. Besides large bundles of tender, juicy, high-quality pasture grass, he bought bok choy and little radishes too.

There were "pets" in the safe zone. Some were followers with considerable combat strength like Mo Dou, while others were ordinary animals.

The department store even had a dedicated pet section, where points could buy even animals that were protected species in the real world.

After all, players had to enter an instance every week or pay a hundred points to skip it. They lived under enormous stress every day and desperately needed companionship.

That was where pets proved their importance. A good snuggle when stressed worked even better than popping pills.

Of course, different people had different ways of healing themselves. Keeping a pet for companionship was only one of them.

While shopping, Zuo Cheng'an also tried striking up conversations with players he encountered, asking about the "Great Purge."

He had no idea what made those words so terrifying.

Players who had been happily shopping would abruptly blanch at the words "Great Purge" and hurry away, no matter how pleasantly their conversation had been going.

The looks they gave Zuo Cheng'an practically said, "Are you crazy!? Isn't being alive good enough? Why are you hoping that thing comes?"

It left Zuo Cheng'an itching with unbearable curiosity.

Had he known, he would have gotten Yu Le's contact information back then. At least he would not now be left without anyone to ask.

And there was Red-Eyes. Red-Eyes had also said he would make him pay when the "Great Purge" came.

Could it refer to some kind of large-scale instance?

If only he could split his attention between two things. Then he would not have to worry about missing the bullet comments.

Who knew what went on in those commenters' heads? Nothing they said had any logic to it.

They jumped from one topic to another. It was like sitting in math class: get distracted picking up a pen, and nothing made sense anymore.

Setting aside his questions about the "Great Purge," Zuo Cheng'an paid and looked at the bill, marveling once again.

In the safe zone, as long as you stayed away from items and housing, points really went a long way.

An entire shopping cart full of supplies, plus two carts of pasture grass, had cost only thirteen points after rounding.

All right, that was a bit easy for him to say.

When he added Wang Guangfei as a friend, Wang Guangfei had transferred the points they had agreed upon earlier to Zuo Cheng'an-a full twenty points!

After all that running around and shopping, his points had increased by seven rather than decreased.

Zuo Cheng'an exchanged a few casual words with him and learned that most people earned between two and twenty points per instance. Those who earned over fifty were few and far between.

The two points were the instance's minimum welfare payout.

Even in instances that had been cleared countless times, as long as you were willing to enter, you would receive at least two points in the end.

Combined with the prices in the safe zone,

in other words, as long as you dared to enter instances, you would not starve!

While chatting with Wang Guangfei, Zuo Cheng'an found an opening and broached the subject of the "Great Purge" in a very roundabout way.

Fortunately, this time he received an explanation.

As it turned out, the so-called "Great Purge" was a way for the game to reduce player numbers.

With living costs so low, even the most useless people could clear low-level instances by following guides. Add in various preferential policies, such as pregnant women being exempt from instances,

and the number of newborns in the safe zones had risen for several years running.

Safe Zone 7 had been established just over a decade ago, so its growth in player numbers had yet to show much of an effect. Its population remained steady at a hundred thousand.

That was also the ideal player population for a safe zone.

But in the older safe zones, such as Zones 1 and 2, populations had exploded to over a million!

There were so many people that even the parks and spaces beneath bridges could not accommodate everyone sleeping there! Bedding had spread into all the buildings!

Once the game detected too many players in the safe zones, it would forcibly throw the players into an enormous instance along with hordes of instance monsters for a straightforward massacre with no twists or tricks.

That served to rapidly ease the pressure on the safe zones.

But when the older safe zones had their populations culled, newer safe zones with higher numbers like theirs would get dragged into it too.

Whether they wanted to or not, everyone would have to be "purged" along with them.

After hearing the explanation, Zuo Cheng'an instantly understood why the player levels in Safe Zone 7 defied common sense.

Logically, the higher the level, the fewer players there should be.

Yet there were twenty thousand Not Yet on the Ladder players and fifty thousand First Heavenly Tier players!

The latter far outnumbered the former, which did not quite make sense.

So that was where the problem lay.