Chapter 62 Sparring

"An item dropped?"

"I told you defeating monsters might drop good loot! It wasn't a waste of time for me to dig through that Horned Gold-Eaters corpse."

"This smart watch looks so high-tech. You're the best, Old Ye! Who would've thought the loot was hidden inside the monster's stomach?"

Fang Zhen and A Pleating Cloud stared at the smart watch inside the metal box, their eyes shining with excitement. The other team members nearby also cast worshipful glances at A Pleating Cloud.

After everyone had killed the Horned Gold-Eater, they had all been thinking about how to quickly gather bronze ore. Only A Pleating Cloud had stared intently at the creature's carcass, lost in thought.

Loot drops from monsters were normal in other virtual reality games, but with the 100% realism of the High Martial descent, such a mechanic shouldn't exist.

That was why A Pleating Cloud suspected the drops might be hidden inside the monsters' bodies, requiring players to search for them manually.

As it turned out, A Pleating Cloud had been entirely correct.

Defeating monsters really did yield drops, and the loot was exceptionally good.

"You dug it out of its stomach?" Lin Qi looked at the metal box on the table, then turned to A Pleating Cloud with a look of genuine admiration.

Normally, he felt that A Pleating Cloud must be some wealthy young master, undoubtedly someone pampered since childhood.

He never expected A Pleating Cloud to endure the disgust and take on the task of gutting a carcass. The bloody, foul-pumping stench alone was enough to make someone dizzy.

Last time, when transporting the carcass of a Crocodile-Fanged Rhinoceros, he had barely managed to force himself to pack it into a crate, and he still wasn't quite used to it. He could hardly imagine A Pleating Cloud being completely unbothered by it.

"Yeah, I just happened to notice it." A Pleating Cloud met Lin Qi's admiring gaze. Though unsure why his favorability with Lin Qi had increased, he asked with great anticipation, "Pavilion Master, how many points can this thing be exchanged for?"

A Pleating Cloud cared not at all about gutting corpses. So what if the blood and gore were a bit realistic? He had played much bloodier games before.

"This smart watch is quite advanced. I'm willing to acquire it for 50,000 points and 1,000 contribution points," Lin Qi said, looking at the expectant faces of A Pleating Cloud and the others. He had no intention of shortchanging them too heavily.

Crafted from B6-grade Cloud Iron alloy, this smart watch was difficult for ordinary monsters to damage. It could be considered a professional-grade smart watch prepared specifically for martial artists, requiring no worry about damage during combat.

As a specialized smart watch for martial artists, even if sold secondhand—likely an older model by now—it could still fetch a million credits. After all, a smart watch of this tier had a field communication range exceeding ten kilometers.

Even ordinary signal-jamming equipment was utterly useless against such an advanced smart watch.

Considering all this, Lin Qi felt it was well worth recovering it from the players.

"Oh my god! Fifty thousand points! One thousand contribution points!"

"We've struck gold! We're seriously rich this time!"

"The drop rate for this Horned Gold-Eater is insanely good! Let's just exclusively hunt Horned Gold-Eaters from now on."

Hearing Lin Qi's acquisition offer, the two teams of players present had eyes glowing so brightly they were almost bloodshot.

Though everyone knew Lin Qi's acquisition price was bound to be a bit steep, which game's NPC wasn't like that? Not to mention, they couldn't even use this high-end smart watch themselves. Much like the previously confiscated smart watch, not a single word on its display could be understood.

If the text was unreadable, it clearly meant the game developers didn't want them using it directly, but it could be converted through NPCs and eventually sold back to them for player use.

It was undeniably a trap, but what could they do when the game developers had designed it that way?

Still, they had never seen the Pavilion Master act so generous before. Fifty thousand points all at once—that was enough to directly purchase an A5-grade weapon.

"Are you willing to trade at this price?" Lin Qi asked, confirming the deal once more with A Pleating Cloud and the others as they chattered amongst themselves.

"Trade! We'll trade!" A Pleating Cloud and Fang Zhen agreed almost without hesitation, terrified that Lin Qi might change his mind.

Fifty thousand points—this was vastly, vastly higher than all the bronze ore they had been mining over the past few days.

So far, all of them together could only mine a little over a thousand kilograms of bronze ore a day if they were lucky. On bad days, it was only six or seven hundred kilograms. The bronze ore inside the tunnels wasn't as easy to find as they had imagined.

Even at a thousand kilograms of bronze ore a day, that only amounted to 10,000 points.

Fifty thousand points equated to five days of their total earnings. It was an absolute windfall.

"Alright, I'll log the transaction," Lin Qi said, putting away the Cloud Iron smart watch before asking with mild curiosity, "Did you bring back the carcass of the Horned Gold-Eater you killed?"

Lin Qi didn't care much about the high-end smart watch. While it was valuable, selling it carried high risks, whereas the Horned Gold-Eater's carcass was a different story entirely.

As pure monster meat, he could easily sell it onward to the Phosphorus Fire Trading Market.

"The carcass? Why would we bring that thing back?" Fang Zhen asked with a straight face. "Does the martial arts hall buy rat meat too?"

"Why wouldn't you bring it back?" Lin Qi nearly choked on his breath. So in the players' eyes, monster rat meat wasn't considered meat? That was over two tons of monster meat! Suppressing his speechlessness, he took a calm breath and said, "The martial arts hall purchases all kinds of monster meat. One hundred points per ten kilograms, and bringing back an entire intact monster grants a bonus of five hundred contribution points. Since you didn't bring it back, never mind."

As Lin Qi's words fell, the entire room fell dead silent.

"Damn it! My twenty thousand points!"

"Hurry! Go back! The carcass might not have despawned yet!"

"Whoever runs the fastest, get over there right now! You have to secure that body!"

Hearing Lin Qi's valuation, Fang Zhen and the others felt as though they had just missed out on a fortune. Twenty thousand points—just think of how many good items that could buy! They could even directly exchange for the lower volumes of the Crashing Stone Fist or the Leopard Shadow Steps, yet they had simply left it behind in the tunnel.

If Luo Wushang and the others ever found out about this, they would probably laugh themselves to death.

Just as the two teams prepared to rush back immediately, A Pleating Cloud suddenly stiffened as if suffering a seizure and collapsed straight to the ground, motionless.

"No way! Wake up, Old Ye!" Fang Zhen stared in utter shock at A Pleating Cloud, who had suddenly dropped to the floor. He hadn't expected him to be so fragile against psychological blows, and turned to look at the surrounding players. "Does anyone here know how to perform CPR?"

For a moment, everyone present fell silent, looking at each other awkwardly.

They all felt that performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on A Pleating Cloud just for the equivalent of a hundred-dollar game pack wasn't quite worth it.

"Leave him be, he's just fallen asleep," Lin Qi glanced at the motionless A Pleating Cloud and reminded Fang Zhen and the others.

Fang Zhen and the rest might not have known what had just happened, but as the system host, Lin Qi knew very well that A Pleating Cloud had just disconnected—or rather, his soul had returned to where it came from.

"Did he get so angry he logged off?" Fang Zhen looked at A Pleating Cloud on the ground, finding it somewhat understandable before giving instructions. "You two carry Old Ye back to the resting quarters. The rest of you, hurry back to the tunnel with me and see if there's still a chance."

Everyone present nodded and immediately sprang into action.

Meanwhile, on Blue Star, in Cloud Sea City, Spark Fitness Center.

"Big sis! Why did you pull my network cable?"

A Pleating Cloud snapped back to reality inside his gaming capsule, glaring with irritation at the figure standing before him. She was a woman over one hundred and eighty centimeters tall, wearing a blue and white short-sleeved compression top, her slender yet voluptuous figure radiating the ethereal grace of a celestial maiden.

"Ye Yun! You tell me why I pulled your network cable?" Ye Qingluo crossed her arms, her gaze sharp as she interrogated him. "I told you clearly just recently that you need to seriously work out and do more practical combat training during this period so that I can recommend you to join our Firmament Travelers Adventure Troupe to prepare for the upcoming open beta of *Eternal Immortal Path*. But what did you do?"

Facing her interrogation, A Pleating Cloud managed only an awkward smile.

"I forgot! I got too caught up playing and lost track of time." Looking at the woman before him, A Pleating Cloud showed none of the pride of a wealthy young master; there was only the absolute submission born of genetic suppression.

Ye Qingluo!

This name might be entirely unfamiliar to the broader virtual gaming world, but any major gaming guild or studio had certainly heard of the Firmament Travelers—an adventure troupe composed of over twenty free players.

Because this was a legendary adventure troupe that had conquered over a dozen wildly popular masterpiece games, leaving behind a trail of legendary achievements. Even the super-guilds dominating multiple masterpieces tried desperately to recruit them.

Unfortunately, the true identities of these members had always remained deeply mysterious, and no guild had ever uncovered who the members of the Firmament Travelers really were.

Ye Qingluo was the vice-leader of the Firmament Travelers, and it was precisely because of this status that she was able to recommend him—an ordinary expert—for admission. Otherwise, he wouldn't even have had the qualifications to queue for the trials.

"Forgot?" Ye Qingluo chuckled softly upon hearing this. The smile on her face was like the spring breeze of March, sending a shiver of dread down A Pleating Cloud's spine. "Fine! Since you forgot, let me properly train you myself."

"Go change your clothes and get on the combat stage! Let me see what kind of skills you've managed to pick up recently!"