The Alice Instance had offered three rewards in total.
Portable Door *1 (could grow or shrink at any time, making it easy to carry; looked like a rectangular shield and could actually be used as one)
Bottomless Water Bottle *1 (a fine product for home and travel, and a must-have for the poor)
Downgrade Card *1 (lowers an instance's difficulty by one level; bet that makes you happy, noob)
Those were the three items Zheng Xun received.
Perhaps because he had only earned an S-rank, there were no subordinates to recruit this time. But after thinking it over, the only monster he had encountered in the instance was that ugly painted corpse. It wasn't very cute, and it was boring too, doing nothing but opening its enormous mouth to bite people.
He hadn't been interested in recruiting it anyway.
With the mission complete, Zheng Xun turned his two subordinates and the rewards back into data and stored them in his wristband. Then he headed out of the White Tower as if nothing had happened.
The livestream chat still hadn't processed what had happened.
: It's... over already?
: An absolutely thrilling thirty minutes...
: I didn't expect it to really take thirty minutes...
: Did Zheng Xun really clear Azure Mist's marked instance that easily?
: More than that, Erchui's strength is terrifying.
: Where did Erchui even come from? S-rank, solo clear, thirty minutes!
: I'm speechless.
It wasn't just the ordinary viewers in the livestream who were shocked. The core members of the various guilds also took a long time to recover.
At the Eternal Guild, a few team members had gathered together, and one of them clicked his tongue twice.
"That rookie is terrifying."
"It's my first time seeing someone clear an instance so violently."
"Maybe he'll start a new trend? Nobody will need to solve puzzles anymore."
"Give me a break. You'd still need Zheng Xun's stamina and strength. That corridor was pretty long. Could you keep running for half an hour with an unbeatable monster chasing you?"
"Why brute-force it? Isn't there still the puzzle-solving part?"
"Yuxing, what do you think?"
He Yuxing had started out watching for entertainment, but now his face was grave.
"I need to go find the captain."
"What for?"
"To ask him if we can buy Zheng Xun out."
"That'll be tough. Didn't Zheng Xun start his own guild?"
"Then we'll just have to take him out."
"...Buddy, get a grip. Stop thinking in extremes. You don't have to destroy everything you can't get."
"Oh, you don't understand." He Yuxing couldn't keep a straight face for even five seconds. "What if Zheng Xun decides to target us one day? We'd be in serious trouble."
The Azure Mist Guild had felt firsthand the kind of trouble He Yuxing was talking about.
For twenty minutes after the Alice Instance ended, no one spoke.
The other team members had been utterly stunned by the overwhelming strength Zheng Xun had displayed. Once they came to their senses, they saw the grim expressions on their captain's and vice captain's faces and were even less inclined to say a word.
A thief had fired a cannon at their front door, successfully robbed their home, and escaped unscathed.
Meng Yijia nearly ground her back teeth to pieces.
"This Zheng Xun... He's gone too far!"
Once the vice captain spoke up, the others chimed in.
"Exactly. He didn't solve any puzzles, just brute-forced his way through. Who clears an instance like that?"
"He got lucky. The monsters in this instance weren't high-level."
"That's what I think too..."
More voices joined in, and the more they talked, the more justified they seemed to feel. Eventually, their emotions grew a little hard to control, and they started cursing Zheng Xun again.
Huo Ziyan stood outside the crowd, feeling that they were wrong. He wanted to say a few words in Zheng Xun's defense, but then he remembered what Zheng Xun had asked of him.
Someone knocked twice on the table, not hard, but just enough for everyone to hear.
It was Xu Guan.
Captain Xu stood up, turned around to face his agitated team members, and spoke in a low voice.
"When you see someone perform well in an instance and dismiss it as nothing but luck, that's arrogance."
"Every player who survives an instance has their own abilities and skills."
"If you have time to talk about other people, you'd be better off reviewing your performance. Have you finished watching the replay of the last instance?"
At Xu Guan's command, all the team members hurried into action. Those who needed physical training trained, and those who needed to watch the replay watched it.
Only after the training room returned to its usual rhythm did Xu Guan get up and leave.
Meng Yijia wanted to call him back, but seeing the oppressive mood around Xu Guan, she had to give up.
Before stepping out, Xu Guan gave Huo Ziyan a long look, then closed the training room door.
The look left Huo Ziyan feeling somewhat at a loss.
After leaving the White Tower and avoiding all the media and fans, Zheng Xun got into a black sedan with no guild emblem.
As soon as he opened the door and got in, the car drove off without stopping for a moment.
The driver wearing a baseball cap was Cheng Jie.
Cheng Jie was in a wonderful mood. Songbird and Azure Mist had no major grudges, but there were plenty of minor conflicts between them, so this had given him some satisfaction.
But he still had to take a couple of digs at Zheng Xun.
"You're really a big shot now. Even a ranked star player like me has to drive you around."
Zheng Xun took out his phone and fiddled with it, answering casually.
"Once your bro has money, you'll get your share."
"Yeah, right. Stop making empty promises." Cheng Jie turned the steering wheel and rounded a corner. "Who are you messaging? What are you doing next?"
"Do you have Xu Guan's contact info? Send it to me."
"Ask Brother Xiao. Xu Guan doesn't usually add people as friends."
"Oh."
It wasn't until evening that Zheng Xun got Xu Guan's contact information from Xiao Jun and sent him a friend request.
Xu Guan had just finished training and taken a shower when he saw his phone screen light up.
He unlocked the screen, and the friend request popped up.
[Zheng Xun] has sent you a friend request.
Xu Guan sat on the edge of the bed and thought for two minutes before tapping "Accept."
Then he put his phone on the bedside table and was about to look for his wristband to watch the replay of today's instance.
Three buzzes announced new messages.
They were from Zheng Xun.
: Hello, Captain Xu. This is Zheng Xun.
The opening line looked perfectly normal.
The second message followed immediately.
: Sorry for the sudden message. I have something to discuss.
The tone was reasonably polite.
Then came the third.
: I'd like to rent your guild's player Huo Ziyan. What do you think, Captain Xu?
After Xu Guan finished reading the three messages, a fourth arrived.
: If you don't agree, I'll crack open your 547 instance tomorrow.
The map of Yan was far too short. It had taken only four messages for the dagger to be revealed.