Within the StarNet livestream room, many viewers were puzzled by Lily's actions.
[What is Contestant Lily doing? What did she just forge?]
[What is that new thing covering her face? Is she trying to keep other contestants from seeing her face? What kind of patterned helmet is that? It doesn't even fully cover her head—or is it just a decorative accessory?]
[By the way, you all heard the rules for this points match, right? What's going on this season? They're starting faction battles this early?]
[Something about this feels off. The rewards are generous, and the competition format is completely different from before. Faction battles—these brutal elimination rounds—are usually reserved for the mid-stage of the tournament.]
At the start of the match, quite a few yokai viewers flooded into Lily's livestream, looking to stir up trouble. However, her audience was already sizable, and as the barrage of comments surged, any malicious or abusive remarks were swiftly detected and automatically banned by the StarNet system.
Before long, the entire livestream room settled into peace and order.
At this moment, Lily was surveying the surrounding piles of trash. The second round of the official competition was proving to be quite interesting.
The red bracelet on her left wrist clearly declared her allegiance to a faction. To earn the 5,000 points required for progression, it was unclear how many people she would need to battle.
The previous match's arena was limited to beast-forging, and the assessment was also based on forged beasts. But this time, everything was unlocked—it was quite a bold move.
With a stretch of her left hand, delicate gloves, as thin as a cicada's wings, appeared on her hands. These small items, including the mask on Lily's face, required little to no mental energy to summon.
With the gloves on, Lily casually rummaged through the piles of trash, picking things up here and there.
The texture of the discarded mechanical parts was still vivid, and even the scent matched Lily's memories. She sifted through dozens of different pieces of trash, touching, feeling, and even sniffing each one, carefully picking and choosing.
[??What is she doing? Why is Lily picking up trash here?]
[A contestant from Garbage Star returning to their old profession in the competition, tsk tsk, no wonder they're from Garbage Star.]
The competition had already begun, with five days of gameplay ahead. Lily wasn't hurrying to find allies from her own faction or challenge contestants from other factions. Instead, she was picking up trash, leaving the audience utterly perplexed.
The trolls lurking in the livestream chat immediately jumped out to mock her.
At this moment, some viewers began to waver. This was a faction battle points match—it should have been thrilling. They hoped to witness spectacular dreamforging duels between contestants, not watch someone picking up trash.
Looking at the other contestants' livestreams, this faction battle was different from the previous match. Each contestant was randomly placed onto different maps, with each large sub-region map being unique.
The requirement of 5,000 points was no small feat. In some livestreams, contestants had already encountered their opponents and were engaged in battle.
Three hours into the competition, Lily was still picking up trash, and seemed almost to enjoy it.
Viewers were steadily disappearing from the livestream. Occasionally, Lily would bring up her competition panel to take a glance. Her score was still 0, and she remained firmly at the bottom of the leaderboard for her region.
[I'm leaving, looks like there's no point in watching this first-place contender anymore.]
[She must have been caught by the yokai, too afraid to forge dreams freely now. Let's all just leave.]
As she was wiping another pulley, a sound suddenly echoed from within the mountain of trash.
Lily quickly retreated with the pulley in hand, and from a small hole in the mountain of trash emerged a ferocious iron-eating beast.
Its round, spiky body had an almost cute appearance, but the iron-eating beast was no harmless creature. It exclusively consumed metal, with iron-like innards and sharp teeth that were second to none.
This little creature was considered a beastly plague of the junkyard, specifically targeting valuable metals to devour. The junkyard would eliminate one on sight whenever it appeared.
Lily stared at the iron-eating beast before her, her gaze fixated on the blue collar around its neck. It bore the same emblem as the faction mark on her left wrist.
Lily stared at the iron-eating beast before her, her gaze fixated on the blue collar around its neck. It bore the same emblem as the faction mark on her left wrist.
This creature was randomly assigned to each contestant by the system, and it was impossible to switch factions.
Lily's eyes shifted slightly. The fact that the iron-eating beast also wore a bracelet indicated that in this competition, it wasn't just the contestants who could earn points—hunting down beasts seemed to grant points as well.
From the first official match, Lily had known that many details in the Dreamforging Livestream Tournament were hidden. The system only provided the most basic requirements at the start; some things had to be discovered through keen observation and wit.
Just like in the previous arena match, many contestants initially thought they needed to pass through the white mist to reach the official arena .However, in reality, the arena was already within the mist.
Lily twisted her wrist, and an ultra-cold frozen crossbow materialized. She raised her hand and fired a rapid succession of bolts at the iron-eating beast.
The extreme cold froze the beast in an instant. The iron-eating beast, which had just emerged and was fixated on the pulley in Lily's hand, was instantly encased in ice, its mouth still dripping with suspicious saliva. However, the ice shattered immediately after, leaving no trace of the creature, not even a single piece of its remains.
"Contestant Lily has killed an iron-eating beast from the Blue faction, earning 10 points."
The familiar system notification sounded, and Lily raised an eyebrow. As expected, it wasn't only dreamforging battles that could earn points.
It was important to note that not all dreamforgers excelled in combat. Some specialized in forging landscapes, others in creature forging, and some simply didn't wish to fight. Hunting beasts, then, should be another viable path to earn points in this competition.
The iron-eating beast was worth 10 points, but it was still unclear how much an initial fight against a blank-slate dreamforger would yield when everyone had no points yet.Hunting beasts for points was an unexpected development.
Hey, look! The bird Lily forged has returned!
A gasp echoed from the livestream chat as three small white doves flew back over the mountain of trash.
It was the white doves Lily had forged earlier!
What puzzled the viewers was that Lily had forged dozens of doves earlier, yet only three or so had returned. What was going on?
[Ah, did the other little white birds get destroyed? Or did they dissolve and vanish?]
At this moment, Lily looked up and smiled as the little white doves returned. She then crouched down, her hands moving quickly as she began assembling the parts she had gathered from the trash heap.
In just ten minutes, a retractable, floating hoverboard materialized before her.
The viewers in the livestream were left in stunned silence: !
[So she's been picking up trash all this time just to assemble a hoverboard??? Sis, you're a dreamforger, why not just forge one?]
[Exactly, earlier she forged an ultra-cold crossbow to deal with the iron-eating beast, yet now she's spending all this time picking up trash just to make a hoverboard.]
Lily dispelled the dirty gloves she had worn while picking through the trash and jumped onto the hoverboard. She whistled at the little white doves in the sky. Two of them immediately perched on her shoulders, while the third flew ahead, as though guiding her.
She gently tapped the hoverboard with her foot, gliding and weaving through the mountain of trash, her movements fluid and graceful. In her hands, she still held the ultra-cold crossbow she had forged, her black hair flowing in the wind. The mask with its strange patterns only added to her eerie, otherworldly appearance.
Emerging from the mountain of trash, the viewers were met with the sight of city ruins. Orange-tinted mist filled the air within the city, and from a distance, the bizarrely shaped houses seemed eerily empty, as though devoid of life.
Desolate and silent, the city felt empty and still. Lily controlled the hoverboard with her feet, the white doves guiding her ahead. She didn't slow the speed of her glide, moving through the eerie ruins with unwavering determination.
Lily soared past a street, the hoverboard beneath her feet heading straight for a vending machine on the sidewalk.
She eyed the high-energy nutrition bars and bundled purified water inside the vending machine. With a flick of her wrist, a resource materialized in her hand. Each vending machine could only be accessed once per bracelet, and no points were required.
This points-based match lasted for five days, and in this fully immersive virtual competition, contestants needed to eat and drink to maintain their physical energy
She casually forged a backpack, stuffing two high-energy nutrition bars and a bottle of water inside before slinging it over her shoulder. This amount of resources would only be enough to sustain her for two days.
Leaving one little white dove perched on the vending machine, Lily sped off on her hoverboard, heading toward the next destination.
With the white dove leading the way, Lily soared through the air, speeding past the stacked rooftops below.
Suddenly, a sharp explosion rang out in front of Lily, and a shimmering silver net shot toward her, its strands flashing like lightning. The strange net was about to ensnare her and pull her to the ground.
With a swift motion, Lily flipped the hoverboard beneath her feet and angled it upward, attempting to use the board's lift to deflect the massive net and send it off course.
"Bang bang—"
Two more loud bangs followed, and from both the left and right, additional massive nets were closing in on her.
[It's a laser net! I can't believe a contestant forged such a vicious thing. In the Starsea, this is used on the most dangerous criminals and exotic beasts from the exile planets!]
[I've heard of this. Once it touches you, it instantly sticks to your body, and you can't escape.]
[It's over, the competition has just begun, and Lily is already going to lose.]
The viewers in the live stream couldn't see Lily's expression at that moment. In the blink of an eye, a fierce wind arose from nowhere, forcefully shifting the three giant nets that were closing in on Lily, causing them to veer off course.
And through the gap, Lily used the hovering light-wheel skateboard as a springboard to leap out.
A mythical beast rode the wind and arrived, its wings spread wide to catch Lily.
Before the eyes of the live stream audience, Lily was seen perched high on the back of the beast. She looked towards the direction from which the giant nets were coming, and the wind heeded her call, whistling as it arrived, directly sweeping her opponents off their feet.
With a stern expression, Lily raised her hand and fired three shots in return. Just as her opponent had cast three nets at her, she reciprocated with three bullets, all the while getting a clear look at the face of this ambushing adversary.
With spotted cheeks and leopard-like ears, the figure was extremely agile, a leopard-type demon with a green bracelet on its wrist.
Extremely cold ice crystals covered the body of the demon, and at that moment, Lily heard the system's notification tone
"Contestant Lily has defeated the green faction contestant Duo Lie, earning 50 points."
What kind of mythical beast is this???]
[This mythical beast seems to be able to control the wind! But it's not the one I saw in the Shan Hai Realm!]
With the points secured, Lily didn't give the demon another glance. Accompanied by the whistling wind, the mythical beast beneath her rose up with the breeze.
It had a head like a small sparrow's, yet its body resembled that of a deer, with peculiar antlers on its head. Its wings fluttered, and its tail was akin to that of a snake.
The patterns on its body seemed to echo the mask on Lily's face, adding a touch of primal wildness.
Lily was now seated on its back, with a swift whirlwind swirling around her, radiating a dazzling divine light.
Her eyes were blazing, as if they could pierce through the competition venue right into the eyes of the live stream audience.
She gently stroked the horns of the flying mythical beast, her tone calm yet resolute
This is the Wind Master, Feilian."