"The place where the players are sealed?"
Chen Qing looked at the other person, and her heart skipped a beat for no apparent reason. "Does such a place exist?"
Heavenly Secrets looked at Chen Qing for a long time before replying, "It seems you are indeed new here and know nothing about what happens later in this world."
As the other person spoke, he drew a simple map on the ground with a twig. Chen Qing could tell at a glance that the other person was at the level of Bai Tutou. This guy was the chief modeler in the game back then. He could draw original artwork with ease. Every time they discussed the map, based on their ideas, he could easily give Chen Qing a sketch on paper and ask: Is this roughly it? He was the person with the strongest hand-drawing ability among all the people Chen Qing had worked with.
"I told you before that the Forerunners occupied a large number of top-tier ancient artifacts, right?"
Chen Qing nodded. "Finally, you're willing to bring up this topic. I've been so pent up for the past six months."
"It's not that I don't want to bring it up." Heavenly Secrets looked at Chen Qing: "It's just that your identity is too strange. If you are Pu Yunchuan, then who is the guy who has been leading us all these years? When he gathered our Development Team together, no one doubted his identity. His habits, actions, and understanding of the game mechanics all proved that he was the chief designer who created this world. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to lead us to almost seal away all the ancient beings under such disadvantageous circumstances!"
Chen Qing fell silent upon hearing this. He was actually quite puzzled by this as well—sealing the ancient past?
How did they manage that?
He himself was the mastermind behind this world, yet he couldn't figure out how the first version of demons could possibly seal away the ancient ones.
They're not even in the same league.
But now, even if she asked, he probably wouldn't tell her. Even after spending half a year together, Chen Qing could still tell that this guy was still wary of her.
"Let's get down to business first," Chen Qing said quickly. "What exactly is going on with this player's Sealed Land?"
"It means exactly what it says." Heavenly Secrets drew on the map. "After those pioneers discovered that they could replace the ancient ones, an unprecedented cooperation among players began. This information came from a statue we sealed away back then. According to it, players were more united than ever before, just to avoid becoming food for others. But even though they were united, they still had their own factions."
"What are the criteria for dividing the factions?" Chen Qing asked, somewhat curious.
Since the players are all time travelers, they generally wouldn't all have known each other before they traveled, like us, right?
"Guild!"
"Ah?"
Chen Qing was stunned. He really hadn't expected that the player guild could survive to this point.
" King of Qin and I have also studied the characteristics of this group of transmigrators, and we're trying to figure out what it means for us to be sent in. We're completely clueless right now, all we know is that the first group to come in were those beta testers!"
"A beta tester?"
"Yes, do you remember that before the game started, we invited quite a few guilds to test it?" Heavenly Secrets asked Chen Qing.
Chen Qing nodded. "Yes, to test the gameplay and replayability, we invited guilds at the time, but in order to prevent the game from being dominated by guilds, we only invited highly reputable, top-tier guilds, so the scale of the internal beta test was actually very small."
"Did you notice later? After the game was released, many of the original guilds that participated in the game disappeared without a trace?"
"Really?" Chen Qing's eyes widened.
"You might not have noticed," Heavenly Secrets said solemnly, "But when we invited people to the test, the scale wasn't large. After your game was released, it became incredibly popular, with a huge influx of players. As a result, few people paid attention to the activities of those few guilds. After all, the game market was so developed back then, and there were countless guilds out there."
Chen Qing nodded slightly. When this game was being made, the Federation's full-scale intelligent system had already been implemented to version three, resulting in the elimination of a large number of manual laborers. As a result, the game industry was extremely developed. With high welfare guaranteed, the people of the Federation could live very well even if they had nothing to do, and the demand for the game market grew unprecedentedly. By the time the Federation's population had grown to 40 billion, this market had already surpassed any other entertainment market on the market.
Guilds are becoming increasingly common, with at least ten thousand guilds on the market, not to mention the smaller ones. After my game was released, it quickly became a hit and ranked among the top three best-selling games. The number of guilds that flocked to it was more than a hundred times greater. I was so busy at the time that I didn't even notice what those guilds were doing during the closed beta.
"You mean, back then, those guild players who participated in the closed beta came here?"
"Yes!" Mr. Heavenly Secrets nodded. "This is the information we have so far. Because many of their gameplay mechanics come from the version information during the closed beta, it was because of these loopholes that the Laoda —when he mentioned the Laoda, he gave Chen Qing a strange look, and then continued: "Found some loopholes and seized the power of many sealed players."
"So the Xuanbing he mastered that time was obtained from a sealed player?" Chen Qing asked curiously upon hearing this.
"Almost," Mr. Heavenly Secrets nodded. "According to our investigation, after that group of pioneers united, they did indeed successfully kill and replace a large number of ancient beings. We originally thought that it would be a golden age for humanity, but that's not the case. Human hearts are unpredictable. When you become a top-tier demon, your initial mentality changes. First and foremost, you crave the flesh and blood of humans. This desire is inherited after becoming a demon, and very few people can resist the temptation."
"Secondly, there's the desire to control power after gaining unprecedented strength, and the yearning for immortality." Heavenly Secrets sighed and said, "This world's resources are limited. As more and more powerful ancient beings are unlocked, and players acquire more and more ancient beings, they will soon find that resources are insufficient. The more powerful the demons, the higher their energy consumption requirements. This world cannot support a large number of top-tier demons coexisting."
"So that's how the civil war started?" Chen Qing immediately thought of what would happen next.
"Yes!" Heavenly Secrets continued, "At first it was just minor friction, but it grew bigger and bigger, so they started restricting new players' access to top-tier demons. But the new players also wanted to climb up the ranks, so they weren't going to give up easily. As time went on, the conflict became irreconcilable, and it eventually led to a major war."
"Since it's a war, there are winners and losers. But there's one characteristic of this world that gives the victors a real headache: the demons of Samsara in this world are unkillable!"
"Didn't you say it could be replaced?" Chen Qing was taken aback.
"The premise of replacement is that you are willing," Heavenly Secrets said with a smile. "For example, I am a very powerful demon myself. If I kill you, why would I replace you? I am most comfortable using my own talents and abilities. Unless you are much stronger than me, what benefit would it bring me to replace you?"
"That's true." Chen Qing stroked his chin, then immediately realized why some players had been sealed.
It's a very simple principle: powerful demons, once killed, will be Samsara, and after Samsara, they will naturally seek revenge again, endlessly.
If you encounter a truly formidable one, you're not even sure if they'll actually succeed in their revenge. In Chen Qing's demon design, while demons possess immense talent, their potential is ultimately limited. Otherwise, how could demons grow indefinitely? What would players possibly use to fight these monsters?
In other words, once you reach a bottleneck, it becomes very difficult to grow, while the other person, after Samsara, only needs a few decades or a hundred years to regain their former peak and continue to cause trouble for you.
You can't expect to win every time, can you?
If one wants to secure their position and rule, then sealing away these defeated players is the only sensible course of action.
Sealing the other party prevents them from Samsara, making them more controllable.
"So this might be a player's Sealed Land?" Chen Qing asked, looking around in confusion.
"It should be," Heavenly Secrets stood up and said, "Didn't you notice that the map of this world is different from before? That's because many spaces have been used as sealed places by those pioneers. When we were searching for these sealed pioneers, we used the difference between the old map and the current incomplete map to slowly find some. In fact, I suspected half a year ago that we had been transported to some sealed place. The reason I didn't say anything was that I was observing the terrain to see where it was."
"Oh, I thought you were just taking me for a stroll."
"I'm not as bored as you!" Heavenly Secrets rolled her eyes at Chen Qing.
"Any clues?" Chen Qing asked seriously, "Where could this be?"
"If I'm not mistaken, this should be a missing piece of land in the Southern Barbarians lands, because the terrain and biological characteristics here are very similar to those of the Southern Barbarians. According to the intelligence we previously gathered, the Southern Barbarians have three Sealed Land. We can only pray that we're not currently in the most troublesome one."
"The most troublesome piece?" Chen Qing's heart skipped a beat. He stood up and looked around. "The most troublesome piece refers to..."
"One of the most illogical monsters you ever designed!" Heavenly Secrets stared at Chen Qing with a chilling gaze. "The sealing ground of the Sparrow Wasp Queen!"
Chen Qing: "."