Chapter 3 - Xiao Tianjing
In order not to disturb the prices of each server, 《Nine Chivalrous Heroes》 players could not transfer their characters between servers. Once a character was born in a certain server, it could only stay in that server. As soon as there was a large number of people in a certain server, the officials would close the registration for that server. This rule was an odd one amongst games similar to it, but the miraculous thing was that there wasn’t a single dead server in 《Nine Chivalrous Heroes》 even though the game had already been in operation for ten years.
Beyond that, there weren’t many restrictions — you could switch sects, change your appearance, and change your character’s facial features.
As long as you had money.
Because of the large leeway for change, Jing Huan paid more attention to cultivation points and basic skills when he was choosing a character. After all, these not only cost money, but also a lot of time.
Jing Huan didn’t face much difficulty in choosing. After ten minutes of comparison, he decided on a character, 35,000, empty character, with not a single piece of equipment or gems.
It was very much to his liking. He liked the feeling of getting stronger step by step.
It took him only half a minute to pay.
It took time for the system to transfer data, and he could only login normally in half an hour. During this interval, Jing Huan opened up Star TV’s stream and saw that the only streamer he followed was broadcasting live. He found the other party from his list of friends and sent him a message.
Happy Everyday: Xiaoyan, are you free?
yanxyan: Yes, what’s up?
After graduating from high school, Jing Huan would play PUBG with Gao Zixiang and the rest when he had nothing else to do and watch streams every once in a while. The streamer he watched most often was yanxyan, and he had even magnanimously smashed the other party with a lot of gifts.
They became friends because of money.
yanxyan: Wanna play? I have 3 people with me, we can play squad.
Happy Everyday: No. I want to buy a voice changer, but those Taobao stores selling it don’t have high ratings. Do you have any recommendations?
yanxyan: Voice changer? What type do you want?
Happy Everyday: The kind that can change my voice into a loli one and knock people three kilometers back with its sweetness once I speak.
yanxyan:…
Yanxyan: … that’s a bit difficult, you might need a sound card too. I know a few friends, I can help you ask around.
Happy Everyday: OK, I’ll wait for your info. Thanks.
yanxyan: It’s no big deal.
Before long, the other party sent a store address over. Jing Huan tapped it, and he bought the most expensive one straight away without even reading the introduction to the product because he was too lazy.
The customer service personnel was also someone who had seen the ways of the world; after listening to his request, he assumed remote control over the microphone without saying anything else and quickly adjusted his sound card for him.
Jing Huan tried on his thousand-yuan microphone and gave them a five-star positive rating as he was greatly satisfied.
Now, only the last step remained — his face.
Like other online games, Nine Chivalrous Heroes allowed its players to customise their characters. Although Jing Huan had never seen what his new character looked like, a new character should come with a new atmosphere, so of course everything had to undergo a change before it would feel more comfortable to play with.
He opened the search bar, entered “Nine Chivalrous Heroes Character Customisation Data”, picked the store with the highest rating, and clicked straight into their customer service chat.
Happy Everyday: In?
Customer Service Chick: I’m here, oh [blows a kiss], Customer Service Chick at your service.
Happy Everyday: Your name isn’t very civilised, is it?
Customer Service Chick: …you’re overthinking it~ May I ask what I can help you with?
Happy Everyday: Customise a face for me.
Customer Service Chick: No problem dear, do you have any requirements or references?
What requirement can Jing Huan have? He thought about it for a bit, then typed.
Happy Everyday: I want a face that will make men want to marry me at first glance.
Customer Service Chick: &#k2026;
If I had that sort of capability why would I still need to set up this damn Taobao shop?
Customer Service Chick: Dear, can you be a little more specific?
Happy Everyday: Okay. It has to be cute, lively, erotic, and charming; not too young, and not too old, it’s best if it feels a little mysterious too. I’ll leave the rest up to you.
The customer service personnel at the other end took a deep breath, turned around, and harshly hammered the venting doll next to the mouse.
Customer Service Chick: I’m sorry, dear. I’m afraid we can’t meet your request. But it’s okay! Taobao has a lot of amazing people in the same trade as us, so I’d suggest for you to go to this store.
Customer Service swiftly sent the link of an enemy store over.
Jing Huan clicked on four customer service chats in a row and finally found a shop that was willing to take his order.
After spending 999 yuan on a face, Jing Huan felt satisfied as he opened the game.
When he entered the character selection page, he paid special attention to the features of his character.
The avatar really was beautiful, one could tell that the original owner had some aesthetic sense. Even its name was quite lyrical – Don't Frown.
Jing Huan shifted his gaze and entered the game.
A slender and beautiful character appeared on the bank of Bianliang River.
Bianliang River was a low-ranking wild map. There was barely anyone killing the monsters here, and small monsters could be seen everywhere. Jing Huan only took two steps before a battle was triggered.
The sect of the character he bought was called Mount Putuo, an immortal tribe healer sect. Because immortal female characters were more beautiful, and their sect only had a single skill tree that didn’t require much finagling, Mount Putuo naturally became the first choice sect for many female players.
But spawning was slow in Mount Putuo, and there wasn’t much leeway for operations in PKs, so Jing Huan did not like this sect.
He uttered a soft “tsk”, then threw a skill out to kill two monsters and prepared to return to his sect with a skill.
【Regardless of Lovesickness has initiated a compulsory PK with you.】
A talisman fell from the sky — it was the skill of a human tribe sect, a sealing talisman.
Jing Huan was stunned, but his hands reacted quickly, and he avoided that talisman.
But who knew that right after he moved to another spot, a huge net would suddenly surround him. Jing Huan couldn’t avoid it in time, and he was firmly entrapped by that huge net.
Several people appeared in front of him, the weapons in their hands glistening splendidly. He could tell that their equipment wasn’t bad, and two of their sealers were still saving up their sealing skills.
[Current] Don’t Frown: ??
[Current] Regardless of Lovesickness: Bitch, you’re back to court death?
The other party spoke viciously as soon as they met. Jing Huan reacted quickly; it was presumably an old grudge with the original owner of this account.
[Current] Don’t Frown: This account has changed hands.
[Current] Regardless of Lovesickness: Trying to use that trick again, do you think we are all fools? Who would fall for your lies every time?
[Current] Don’t Frown: …
If it hadn’t been because this character had a special purpose so he needed to maintain its image, he wouldn’t have been able to hold back from cussing.
[Current] Don’t Frown: I bought it half an hour ago, 35,000, I have its purchase record.
[Current]Regardless of Lovesickness: When have you never had a purchase record? I’ll tell you this now, as long as I, Regardless, stays in this server, you don’t even need to think about ever leaving the safe area!
Jing Huan wanted to continue, but the other side had already started an attack with a whip.
There were five people standing opposite, while the character he bought was completely empty in the first place, so it couldn’t even handle a few attacks.
Fuck.
Jing Huan sat upright and skillfully used the common moves that every character had – rolling, jumping, lift-off, to avoid their skills one by one.
[Current] Don’t Frown: You T…
[Current] Don’t Frown: Can’t you be reasonable?!!
[Current] Regardless of Lovesickness: I have no reason to speak of with a female swindler like you.
[Current] Don’t Frown: But this character really changed hands… What do I have to say before you’ll believe it?!
Right after typing this line, Jing Huan accidentally pressed the wrong key.
Oh no.
On the game interface, all he saw was his feeble body getting hit harshly by an axe, and only a tiny sliver of his HP was left in an instant.
[Current] Regardless of Lovesickness: Either return the money, or die until your level drops. You choose.
After that, the other side continued their triumphant pursuit. Jing Huan stopped struggling and was quickly killed back to the rebirth checkpoint.
He hadn’t even snapped out of his daze from being killed so inexplicably when he saw a huge server megaphone popping up in the lower left corner of his screen.
[Megaphone] Regardless of Lovesickness: Idle Pavilion will be hunting down Don’t Frown 24/7, old rules apply, we won’t be responsible for accidental injuries to any team that does missions with her. ]
What kind of situation was this?!
Jing Huan stood at the rebirth checkpoint and pondered for a while. Then he got on his mount and flew towards the forum NPC.
Wherever there are people, there will be Jianghus, and the game world of Nine Chivalrous Heroes could be considered a small Jianghu. Similarly, there would be friction wherever there was a Jianghu, and only forums would be most well-informed on such catfights and 818 news.
Jing Huan flipped through the pages and found posts about himself… no wait, posts about this account.
【Idle Pavilion will be hunting down Don’t Frown throughout the server.】
Jing Huan briefly glanced through them and finally knew why enemies were coming after this character right after he logged in.
The original owner was a swindler. Two years ago, she first tricked the leader of a small guild, cleaned out the other party’s account, and even transferred out the funds of his guild. After the incident came to light, she uploaded the character onto the marketplace and slipped away.
But who would have thought that that wasn’t the end of it. Within half a month, the character was bought, and its buyer claimed to be a Ms. Perfect, and wanted to find a strong guild to play missions and PK with. She soon got into the number one guild of this server, Idle Pavillion, and successfully hooked up with one of the bigshots in the guild. The two of them got married and enjoyed conjugal love for six months. But in the end, after the bigshot returned from a business trip, he found out that not only had his account been cleaned out, but his little wife had also borrowed a lot of money and equipment from his guild’s brothers and sisters under his name, then disappeared again without a trace.
It wasn’t until someone found out that the card number she used to borrow money with was exactly the same as the original card number that everybody realised the truth – the account had never changed hands from start to finish!
After reading up to this point, even Jing Huan had to admire her.
With this sort of capability, what could she not do?
Cheating both money and feelings — this provoked a lot of bigshots in Idle Pavilion, and the 200 people in the guild began lying in wait 24/7 without any breaks in between for Don’t Frown. After Don’t Frown was killed twice, she once again put up the account on the marketplace.
Unable to swallow this down, Idle Pavilion sent out numerous service-wide megaphones and posts on the official forum, claiming that as long as someone dared to buy this character, they would still kill it no matter if it changed hands or not. This led to the poor sales of his character; its price fell again and again, until it finally encountered an unfortunate person who bought the account with his eyes closed——
That is, himself.
… No wonder the price of this character was so low.
Jing Huan expressionlessly scrolled to the bottom of the post, only to see the latest reply that said——
1932L: There are two major slag women in this server. One is Don’t Frown, and the other is Ran Xin. They can form a slut team and make their debut.
Jing Huan kept the ID of this poster in mind.
The one who didn’t even frown when he got killed was now eager to cross through the screen and beat up the person on the other side.
Regardless of Lovesickness blasted a whole 30 megaphones, and the world channel was now abuzz with heated discussion
[World] Confused from Squandering: What’s the situation? Don’t Frown has returned? Did she finish spending all the money she got from swindling?
[World] Peachy Fate: I’d like to see which guild will suffer this time!
[World] Youth Chasing the Wind: Regardless is formidable!
[World] The Wind is Freer than Me: No wait, Don’t Frown Jiejie, why do this? Can’t you just make a new character and restart? Why must you stake it all on just one character?
[World] Peachy Fate: Fuck, the one upstairs, shut up! Don’t give her ideas! What if she takes your advice?!
…………
The World Channel was so noisy, and so many people were talking that people could barely see what everyone was talking about.
It was so bad that the players only reacted to the yellow font system announcement long after it was displayed.
【System announcement: Player “Don’t Frown” has used a Rename Stone to change their name to “Xiao Tianjing”. Henceforth, Player “Don’t Frown” will be formally renamed to “Xiao Tianjing“. 】
[World] Peachy Fate: ???
[World] Confused from Squandering: ??
[World] The Wind is Freer than Me: ???
[Megaphone] Xiao Tianjing: I’ll be saying this for the last time, this character has changed hands, hunt me if you will, I’ll be glad to fight all who try.
Jing Huan regretted it as soon as the server megaphone went out.
Would his tone make him sound too much like catfish?
So, while the crowd was still in shock, he quickly added another megaphone.
[Megaphone] Xiao Tianjing: QAQ of course, it’s best not to fight, long live harmony!
The author has something to say:
Xiao Tianjing: sigh, got off on the wrong foot!
—
Juurensha: We haven’t even met the other guy, and we’re already in trouble!