A crisis of resources broke out in the Peach Blossom Village.
Two weeks after the departure of Hai Yunfan, most of the participants had now lived in the Peach Blossom Village for a month.
This was enough time for most of the participants to be on the right track. Except for a handful of princes who had screwed up midway, other people had been silently accumulating the favorability from the villagers, waiting for their time to pass the trial.
After a month, most strategies had been tested by most of the participants. Even though they did not have the enigmatic Wang Lu, who spent all of his days cooped up in his room, planning and strategizing, most of the participants who have reached this step were indeed the elites of the elite. Bit by bit, they continued to accumulate knowledge and experience.
According to everyone's calculation, the total number of villagers in the Peach Blossom Village was one hundred and twenty. It stands to reason that there were only enough quests for twenty or so participants.
Most of the participants' approach was to accumulate the favorability of one certain villager until it reached a certain point where it would trigger a special quest. After completing this special quest, the participant would be able to leave the Peach Blossom Village. However, after this special quest was triggered, regardless of whether the participant could complete it or not, it would never appear again. For example, The Village Head had completely broken his relationship with Aunty Liu, and the hairy village girl, Little Fang, who could only eat ten steamed buns per meal, could no longer give her affection to another participant.
Once the special quest was completed, whether it was an A level or C level quest, the participant could successfully leave the Peach Blossom Village. However, the degree of completion corresponded with the level of the quest.
Most of the A level quests had either been taken or wasted by some retards. No one could take those quests anymore. As for B level quests, they were highly sought after. Only C level and D level quests were still plentiful.
For those who had come out late from the Cloud Wave Map, fighting over a high level quest was nothing more than a bolt from the blue, but they never gave up. They made up the lack of quality with quantity. Surely, ten or so C level quests were comparable to a B level quest, right? If so, then twenty or thirty C level quests were equal to an A level quest. Naturally, those who already had an A level quest on their hands thought that if they had more B level or lower quests, then it would be better.
So, even if there were a hundred and twenty quests available in the Peach Blossom Village, because of the fierce competition over quests from the twenty participants, the available quests quickly depleted. The more sad thing was that the quests were not distributed evenly at all; not only did those people who came out early from the Cloud Wave Map had the opportunity to get the A level quests, almost all of them had also hogged more than ten quests, while some unlucky ones were not even able to find any; they were now facing the prospect of being stuck in the Peach Blossom Village forever.
With such a resource crisis, a conflict could erupt at any moment. At this point, those people could not help but think of one person.
The mysterious person who never came out of the Village Head's guest room, and had not even attempted any quests...
---
"Strange, what is this kid waiting for?"
Above the clouds. After observing for close to a month, the already bored Liu Xian let out a yawn.
Because he was the organizer of the gambling incident, the Disciplinary Elder had punished him to closely observe the Peach Blossom Village. For more than twenty days, apart from meditating and circulating spiritual energy throughout his body, all he could do was to watch the events unfolding in the Peach Blossom Village. Fortunately, there were many interesting events in the village. In particular, the incident between the prince and Little Fang. That incident almost caused him to laugh while circulating the spiritual energy in his body, which almost caused him to suffer from qi deviation. [1]
But, as an spectator, Liu Xian was a bit dissatisfied about something... What was the youth who had caught the Sect Leader's attention doing? He had obviously achieved an eye-popping result in the Cloud Wave Map, so why would he be a complete let down in the Peach Blossom Village?
It was impossible to see every little detail from the clouds, but it was easy to notice that Wang Lu hadn't gone out for almost a month. Even that servant type character by his side had already completed his quests, and his completion status was among the top three in the whole village. The other participants treated him like a superstar, far above his passive master.
If this went on, there would only be one outcome. Liu Xian wanted to know what that kid, Wang Lu, was thinking.
"Good morning, Senior Martial Brother."
While he was still meditating, a certain irritating female voice resounded in his ears.
Liu Xian was in a fairly good mood, so he was able to repress the anger that welled up as soon as he heard that voice.
"Oh, Fifth Junior Martial Sister, do you have any advice for me?"
"No advice, I just came here to play."
The woman in white spoke as she lightly walked to Liu Xian's side. "Twenty days have gone by, has Senior Martial Brother been moved by my genius design?"
Liu Xian sorted out his thoughts. He was indeed somewhat surprised that none of the villagers were real; all of the villagers were puppets made by an extremely sophisticated array. However, from the performance point of view, they were beyond the reach of ordinary puppets, such as the Village Head and a few handful of other characters whose performance cannot be distinguished from real people... Of course, that was not to say that this was a magnificent feat; the Spirit Sword Sect's Great Gate Array was ten thousands times more sophisticated. However, considering Fifth Junior Martial Sister's level of cultivation, as well as her field of expertise, such an array was especially shocking.
But shock was simply shock. Being moved by it was another thing entirely.
"... Do you know how much trouble you've added to everyone? The whole Immortal Gathering has been messed up by you!"
"No. I think the Immortal Gathering rose to another level because of me."
"No one needs your 'another level'!"
"Senior Martial Brother, you're being naughty again. Your mouth said no, but don't you love it when my design gives you amazingly talented future disciples? The kid who walked out of the Peach Blossom Village a week ago, do you dare to say that you were not moved by him?"
"Uhh..."
Speaking about the kid from a week ago, Liu Xian could not remain indifferent: the kid had first rate character, first rate intelligence, first rate EQ, and even though his spirit root wasn't that great, but compared to his other superior qualities, the level of spirit root was not that important.
If he was taught properly, he could be comparable to those few evildoers within the sect. For many years, Misty Peak had never produced any evil disciple, so Liu Xian could not help but feel moved...
"What does that have to do with the Peach Blossom Village? Hai Yunfan has done an excellent job in the Cloud Wave Map!"
"Well, at least I helped you eliminate the defective products from those Immortal Cultivator's families."
"Hmph." Liu Xian grunted but did not deny it. He despised those arrogant young masters like Xie Qianlong and his two companions. However, according to the accepted rules in the Immortal Cultivation World, the three of them were of high qualities. Although they were indeed heartless, but that sort of thing has already been a problem in the Immortal Cultivation World... Fortunately, they had been eliminated in the Peach Blossom Village, otherwise, if the three of them made it into the Spirit Sword Sect, they would give him headaches.
However, if someone wanted Liu Xian to admit that the Peach Blossom Village was indeed useful, they might as well refine his nine-colored Yuanying. Thus, the Misty Peak Elder very cleverly changed the topic. "So in this Peach Blossom Village, are there any punishment for those who are slackers?"
"Slacker?" The Fifth Junior Martial Sister's eyes widened. She shifted her gaze toward the cloud, looked down, and finally locked in on someone; immediately after, her complexion changed.
"Senior Martial Brother, you're mistaken. This person isn't a slacker at all."
"Speaking of which, Little Ling'Er said that someone successfully completed my chain of tasks in the Spirit Creek Town, could it be him? Tsk, working people can indeed produce highly talented people, this country bumpkin can actually complete my chain of tasks... However, this trial isn't going to be that easy. Hey, no need to talk about the next trials, it seems like your little errand boy is going to defect, what are you going to do about that?"
---
While everyone was waiting for Wang Lu to go into action, Wang Lu was first met with a surprise.
"Young Master. I think... I think my quests will soon be completed."
Inside the room, the little errand boy looked perturbed, as if he was a poor youth whose girlfriend had an unexpected pregnancy and was now meeting her father for the first time.
Wang Lu maintained the calm and indifferent look that he had showed for the past month. While flipping through some of the Village Head's book collection, he asked, "Which quest?"
The errand boy paused and then replied, "All eight are close to completion... In accordance with Young Master's instructions, I equally distributed my effort on each quest, trying to enhance the relationship between the villagers involved in the quests, which indeed more effective, and easier for the quests to progress..."
"Good. And?"
The little errand boy froze for a moment. After mulling over for a long time, he had already decided to lay down all the cards, but now all those words stuck in his throat.
Wang Lu looked at him. "Since you've almost completed your quests, then go out and finish them. Why are you wasting time here?"
The errand boy was taken aback. "Young Master, I..."
After a moment of silence, he said, "Young Master... although I don't know what you're waiting for, I'm your errand boy; it makes no sense for me to leave Young Master alone and continue to move forward."
Wang Lu gave a high pitched sneer, "Tell me, are those words from your heart?"
The little errand boy jumped up one meter high. "From the bottom of my heart!"
"Don't jump, don't jump. Saying nonsense will result in being struck by lightning. You jumped so high, are you trying to make the thunder god's job easier?"
"I..." The errand boy was shocked by Wang Lu's words. After a long time, he sighed. "Young Master... two months ago, no matter what anyone said, I could have never imagined that I would reach this point. I am just an ordinary village errand boy, yet I was fortunate enough to have an affinity to Immortality, and I even had the opportunity to be accepted as an Inner Court Disciple from one of the top sects. I know that all these are Young Master's gracious gifts. If it wasn't for Young Master, I wouldn't be able to make it here. Young Master's overflowing kindness, I..."
"Don't, what's with this overflowing kindness, there's only one way to go after that, which is hate, if I give you even more kindness, wouldn't that mean we become mortal enemies?" Wang Lu said with a playful smile, "Actually, you might as well tell me the truth. You've been living in this village for about a month, and also exchanged a lot of words with the other participants, so you should know what it meant to walk past the Golden Bridge. Affinity to Immortality is affinity to Immortality. I didn't give it to you nor was it given to you by the wind. Even if you didn't join the Spirit Sword Sect, other sect would eventually find you. For you, the path of Immortal Cultivation is inevitable."
The errand boy did not speak, because before he decided to lay out the cards in front of his young master, this was how he had convinced himself.
"So now that you're going to walk out of the Peach Blossom Village with outstanding completion, you have ninety percent chance of being able to directly pass through the next trial and go straight to the Misty Peak. Why bother wasting time to wait for me? The Immortal Path is like a long dream, you can never be sure until you reach the end... Besides, you should've already arranged to travel together with someone, right?"
The errand boy's heart immediately thumped. The young master was indeed the young master, his young master clearly never left the Village Head's guest house, yet he seemed to grasp every single gossip and every little thing that had happened in the village!
The errand boy had indeed made an alliance with someone else. The other person was an incredibly talented noble prince. When he saw the errand boy's potential, he immediately made every effort to get close to Wang Zhong. Soon, Wang Zhong agreed to join his group.
The reason why Wang Zhong wanted to go now was because, apart from Hai Yunfan, no one else had left the Peach Blossom Village yet. So if they left now, they would still be counted as one of the first group. Secondly, although Wang Lu was being mysterious and inscrutable, he had done nothing for a whole month. It seemed that he had also run out of ideas, not to mention his problem was not his little errand boy's problem.
"Whether you want to live as an errand boy for your entire life, or come out of the closet as 'Wang Zhong'... I think you should really consider it."
However, the result of Wang Zhong's consideration was already clearly seen by Wang Lu.
Unlike the little errand boy who cannot stop worrying, the young master didn't even care of his defection, so much that one could say that Wang Lu seemed to have looked forward to this moment for a long time ago.
"Your act of pretending to be entangled here is very ugly. I really don't care whether you're here or not, so please unburden yourself from this mental pressure and get the hell out of here."
Wang Zhong's face instantly reddened, but he did not say a word. Instead, he silently kneeled on the ground and kowtowed three times towards Wang Lu, then he stood up, turned around and left.
After the errand boy left, Wang Lu could not help but smile.
"Becoming so bold and righteous after kowtowing a few times, sure enough, he has really decided to be the master of his own fate... Little Hai, you were right: this kid really isn't anything good."
Wang Lu's smile gradually became self-deprecating. "As for I, this father... I even helped him designed such a plan for him!"
As he spoke, Wang Lu swung his arm, sending over a hundred pieces of paper filled with writing from the table into the air. They scattered around in the room, but no one knew that each of them was worth more than gold.
"After following me for seven years, he still can't recognize who the main character is... I fucking failed to teach him properly! Alas, I guess this is how a silly father feels when his daughter elopes with a man."
"Forget it, why do I need to care about him? This father's preparation is finally complete... and now, I can begin to implement them."
After saying that, Wang Lu got down from the bed, walked to one of the walls in the room and torn down the gauze covering the wall.
If Wang Zhong was still here, he would have definitely wet his pants out of fright.
On the wall stuck hundreds of pieces of paper. Each one described the strategy to complete the quest of each of the villagers, which included illustrations; the content was very informative. Compared to the version that was compiled together by the other participants, this was several times more detailed!
Although it was true that Wang Lu had not left his room for a month, but he had not wasted a single day. As the participant who had walked out of the Cloud Wave Map with superior result, the advantages that Wang Lu received were far more than what the little errand boy had seen. The relationship between him and the Village Head was far more than merely landlord and tenant.
...
[1] [Visit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zou_huo_ru_mo].