Chapter 22: Good Heavens, What a Huge Crowd of Lunatics at the City Gate!

Su Qingyue shook her head. "Impossible. The heroine will not let me go. When a tiger falls to the plains, it is bullied by dogs; everyone wants to stomp on me now. I fear the other disciples in the sect wouldn't mind coming over to bully me just to relieve their stress."

The system was bewildered. "Relieve stress? Do they think of you as a toy?" It did not quite understand humans.

She looked up at the sky. "If not for you, I would truly be nothing more than a cripple. How would that be any different from a toy?"

Perhaps her expression was too forlorn. Xiao Mo, who had just resurrected and run back to her corpse, caught sight of it and felt her heart shatter. The young girl trotted over and gave her a hug. "Little Moon, I will protect you, big sister!"

Su Qingyue: "..." Uh, touched, but... do you remember that black bear that swallowed you whole last night and only just let you resurrect? That was something I dealt with in a casual flick of the wrist. So, who exactly is protecting whom?

The group continued forward. The system asked, "If those disciples from the Xuantian Sect really do come, what will we do?"

Su Qingyue: "...It is not a matter of 'if,' it is a certainty!"

"Didn't you say earlier that it would only take a few more days to accumulate enough points to repair my Golden Core?"

"That is true, but if I happen to run into them before then..." As a living person wandering about, how could she possibly avoid other cultivators?

"Oh—" Su Qingyue suddenly smiled with profound meaning. "Then I shall let them experience why I am the number one genius of the Northern Lands!"

The system: "Huh? Isn't it because you were the first sixteen-year-old to reach the Golden Core stage with such strong talent?"

"That is part of it, but the main reason is—" She elegantly flicked open her folding fan. "I once solo-killed a peak-stage Golden Core cultivator while I was only at the first level of Foundation Establishment!"

"Holy crap! Host, you are the actual protagonist of this novel, aren't you?" The system was stunned. She was hacking! This was definitely hacking! It wanted to report her!

Su Qingyue shrugged. "Otherwise, where do you think my pride comes from? Why do you think the heroine has to go through so much trouble to find ways to mess with me?" Because she couldn't win in a one-on-one fight! She was incredibly strong! "So, only disciples will come. I’ll kill them one by one as they arrive, letting them experience what it feels like to be the Calabash Brothers trying to rescue their grandfather."

Soon, they reached the gates of a small town. The players, who had been excited to the point of madness, looked and were struck as if by lightning. "What? This is it?"

The city gate before them was dilapidated and pitifully shabby. The low entrance could only accommodate two people at a time, a far cry from the grand city imagery seen in period dramas. "How could it be like this?"

Lan Ling remained as calm as ever. She crouched down to touch the messy axle tracks on the ground and the dirt beside them. "It's perfectly normal. This is just a small town on the outskirts of the Demon Beast Mountain Range. It's remote, desolate, and dangerous. The gates of a small place like this should look exactly like this."

"However, the realism of this game exceeds my expectations."

??? The other players were puzzled: You just touched some dirt, how did you suddenly decide the game's realism was beyond expectations?

"Look, the ground compressed by passing vehicles is incredibly soft; the texture feels different. I didn't expect the game to handle such details so well. The art and design teams must have put in a lot of effort. Generally, no one would care about this detail; even the most realistic games wouldn't put energy into axle tracks and compacted soil."

Flying Dragon in the Sky nodded in agreement. "True. Some games don't even have this setting, and you can't pick up the dirt to inspect it!"

"Damn, when you put it like that, it's really impressive!"

Several players walked over and touched the city wall, filled with wonder. "The texture is so rough and realistic!"

"There's even dust on the bricks!"

A player rubbed his face against it and winced. "It is quite rough; my face actually hurts."

The soldiers and passing civilians on the side: "..." They stared blankly at the large group of strange people who had suddenly rushed over, speaking words they couldn't understand, touching and rubbing the city wall, and even reaching down to touch the dirt on the ground.

"Could it be some kind of hysteria?"

"They must be lunatics! These people are crazy!"

Passersby: Heavens, a huge group of lunatics has arrived at the city gate! Everyone, run!

The crowd was terrified. The players watched as the NPCs passing by showed fearful and wary expressions, switching from walking to running. They even gave the players a wide berth, as if avoiding a plague, fleeing without looking back. These people occasionally cast fearful glances their way, whispering to one another.

The players went wild, exclaiming, "My god, these NPCs are so intelligent! They're just like real people!"

"They even react differently to our actions!"

Funny Guy Daily Joy added, "And did you notice? Every single one of them looks different!"

"Yes, everyone's appearance, mannerisms, and clothes are unique!"

Lan Ling marveled, "Although we've only seen a few dozen people, if every single NPC in the entire game is this intelligent and completely unique, I can't even imagine how much money the game company invested or how much terrifying effort they put in!"

It was a whole world! Tens or even hundreds of millions of people! Each person’s appearance, actions, behavior, and personality were unique, and they would react differently to players, just like living, breathing people. Just thinking about the effort behind it and the massive data calculations involved made Lan Ling’s scalp tingle.

If they could make NPCs to this level and make the game this realistic, is where they are now really just a game? A thought flickered in her mind, but she quickly found an answer for herself: Hahaha, I'm overthinking it. If it's not a game, what could it be?

Flying Dragon in the Sky wondered, "But for such an excellent, perfect, and immersive holographic game that feels like time travel, why was there not even a hint of marketing from the game company? The official website is even so crude that they could only post a pathetic little thread on a game forum!"

Lan Ling sighed. "Perhaps the game producers spent all their money on the game itself and had nothing left for promotion."

Flying Dragon in the Sky fell silent, feeling a bit melancholy. "I think so too. Sigh, I'm really worried that the company that made this game will go bankrupt because they ran out of money."

They were too conscientious, weren't they? So conscientious that the players were worried the creators would run off because they’d spent all their money! They were so poor it was pitiful—an idealist's desperate gamble, pouring everything they had into this. They could all imagine the tragic yet hopeful state of mind the game producer must have had at the beginning.

"When we log out, let's do our best to promote it!"

"Right, a game this good can't possibly let the company go bankrupt!"

"It's so touching, I could cry! They worked so hard and spent all their money, woo woo. Besides promotion, let's start a crowdfunding campaign!"

"I think that's a good idea! To keep seeing my wife Qingyue, the game must survive!"

The players were moved to tears, touched by the imagined, poor yet hardworking, idealistic game producer and the conscientious company.

Su Qingyue looked at the players, then at the terrified local commoners. She didn't know which one to complain about first. Wait a second, aren't you guys doing a bit too much imagining? What game producer, what game company, what art and design teams—it's just me! Thanks for the compliment!

Uh, and to the natives of this world, sorry for scaring you! This is nothing—if you had seen them when they first entered the game, eating grass, licking the dirt, running around like madmen, and jumping off cliffs, wouldn't you have died of fright? They’re already being quite restrained now!