Chapter 132 – Speculation
Just when these main city’s leaders thought the situation has calmed down, an item suddenly aroused their attention. In the Ten Thousand Treasures Building section of the forum in the pub, someone actually auctioned off a City Return Stone.
People had wondered that since the world has been completely turned into a game, then surely there must also exist a city return function. But how to realize this function, everyone only had guesses.
The moment they saw the City Return Stone, everyone immediately understood.
Regarding the function of the City Return Stone, it was obvious with a glance by looking at the item’s description. Only by having such a City Return Stone in hands could people feel at ease venturing out to kill monsters. Moreover, it was now the 20th day following the apocalypse. This being the first City Return Stone to appear, it could be seen how precious and scare this item was.
Originally, they believed that there was only one City Return Stone. After the first stone was successfully bidded away, it caused others to feel extremely vexed. Everyone had the same thought. ‘Why didn’t I offered a higher price? Even if it was a one-time consumable, it was such a good item!’
But their frustration didn’t last long, as soon afterward they saw another City Return Stone being put up onto the list. This time, some people couldn’t keep their calm and quickly pushed the auction price to its peak, winning this City Return Stone.
When people thought that the auction for the stones had finally ended, another stone instantly emerged on the list.
At this point, it was clear as day to everyone that all these City Return Stones were owned by a certain individual, otherwise it wouldn’t be possible for so many City Return Stones to appear in the same time period. ‘How many stones did this person get?’ This was what everyone was inwardly thinking. If this could be figured out, bidding would become much more favorable for them.
One could imagined the outcome. Without knowing how many City Return Stones were left, many people couldn’t resist the urge to bid after considering the gains and losses.
However, after the wealthiest professions at the front of the pack obtained what they desired, prices for the stone began to decline. But even so, the total amount accumulated from selling these City Return Stones still reached an astronomical amount.
This number made some people feel green with envy, because the City Return Stones were still being put up and being sold one after the other, never seeming to end.
This was 700,000-800,000 points of power value! Perhaps, even the richest leader in the world would have a hard time coming up with such a huge number. Any sensible people would know that a powerful organization couldn’t depend on the back of a single individual alone to support it. Coupled with the adjustment to the rules this morning, these leaders didn’t dare plundered power value as they used to before. Therefore, seeing such a large amount of power value all go towards one person was enough to make anyone jealous.
In a loft in Xiangcheng City’s main city, Yuan Jianze was sitting on a chair brooding over something.
At this time, a man came in. Yuan Jianze raised his head and saw that it was Situ Fa.
“How was it? Were you able to win a few City Return Stones?” Yuan Jianze immediately asked.
Situ Fa said, “Commander, I was only able to win one. Like you ordered, I didn’t bid on any of the stones after the price exceeded 6,000. The competition for the stones was very intense. Basically, every time there would be someone placing a bid at the final moment to win the stone.”
Yuan Jianze also understood the how hard it was to win a stone. After all, he limited the ceiling price that Situ Fu could work with, which only gave him a small amount of space to operate. He immediately said, “One is fine for now. If you see an opportunity later, try to get a few more City Return Stones. This item was a one-time consumable. It’s not wise to put too much investment in it.”
Situ Fa nodded his head and said, “I understand.”
Yuan Jianze suddenly asked, “Is there any informations about the City Return Stone in the forum? For example, like where did it came from?”
Situ Fa said, “Although there are some news related to the City Return Stone, none of them had any value. The overwhelming majority of the news were about people searching for intelligence on the person that sold the stones. But so far, no one in the forum admitted to being the person that sold this item.”
Yuan Jianze said, “This is normal. In my opinion, since this man can sell the City Return Stones to the main city, then this person should definitely come from a main city. If he isn’t the leader of this main city, exposing his identity will inevitably lead to his life being in danger.”
Situ Fa said, “Commander, you are right. This person is estimated to hold more than 600,000 points of power value in his possession. If he doesn’t have the ability to protect such a sum, he’s indeed in a very dangerous situation.”
Yuan Jianze said, “For now, forget about this matter. Now this person should be hiding himself like a rat in a hole. How about the other matter? Is there any progress on it?”
Situ Fa naturally knew what matter Yuan Jianze was referring to.
Prior to encountering Cheng Yang at the entrance portal to the Undead Canyon instance, Yuan Jianze had a bold speculation that there might be other places besides the main city that could allow other people to transfer to professions. However, there was no other evidence to support his assumption at the time.
But in this recent period of time, the appearance of several items in the Ten Thousand Treasures made him feel that his guess was more and more likely to be true.
Architectural drawings, special profession-transfer props, it even has skill inheritance beads. All of these items without exception couldn’t be used in the main city. Everyone that tried to use these items only received one prompt. That was, unable to use item.
Why did the item fail? No one knows.
Different from these people, Yuan Jianze knew an existence like Cheng Yang. He also knows that Cheng Yang had a team of men under him that had never been to the main city to carry out a profession change, but still became professions.
Obviously, there are many things in the world that he didn’t know. Merely in the area around the main city, there were too many unknown variables that he couldn’t figured out. Yuan Jianze concluded that in the vicinity of Xiangcheng City, there was bound to be places similar to the main city. This “main city” was what the God called field station.
Cheng Yang was likely to be in possession of such a field station starting from the early days of the apocalypse, and has acquired unimaginable benefits from it. Otherwise, it was impossible for Cheng Yang to have such formidable strength.
As such, Yuan Jianze issued two orders to Situ Fa. The first order was to let people search for relevant news about the field station in the forum. And secondly, appoints some people to secretly watch a few of Cheng Yang’s men to see if they could find some clues.
Situ Fa immediately said, “Commander there are no clues about the field station in the forum at present. However, after we kept a 24 hours watch on the north and south channels, we discovered that every day a large group of people have been entering and exiting the south channel. Almost all of these people are professions. In addition, each time they return in the evening, they would rescue a bunch of refugees from the ruins of the main city.”
Yuan Jianze’s eyes were shining with elation, he said, “So to speak, the other side’s field station is in the south of Xiangcheng City? Can you figure out their number from the people coming in and out of the channel?
Situ Fa said, “I can make a guess, but it might not be very accurate. If the other side have some people that have never passed through this channel, there’s no way for us to know the exact number. However, looking at the current situation, the opposition shouldn’t have more than 1,500 professions.”
Yuan Jianze frowned slightly, he said, “1,500 people! That’s actually not much. How about their strength?”
Situ Fa said, “Their strength is pretty average and wasn’t much different from us. Perhaps, their sole advantage over us is their ratio of medium-order apprentices(first medium-order). This is what we speculate from the battle between them and the enchanted beasts, so it’s also not very accurate.”
An idea emerged from the depth of Yuan Jianze’s heart. He couldn’t contained his idea the more he pondered about it. He also knows that his approach was very risky, but if this was allowed to go on, he would soon be subjected by someone.
After a short period of silence, Yuan Jianze asked, “How is the remodeling on the artillery going?”
Situ Fa’s expression turned serious. Artillery remodeling was a top secret project of the military. Before the arrival of the apocalypse, in order to improve the effectiveness of weapons, all artillery were automatic and started through electronic ignition. But after the apocalypse appeared, everything related to electricity stopped working The weapons inside of tanks and aircrafts became a decoration, but there was still a chance that artillery could work. As long as the electronic ignition was converted to artificial ignition, artillery could still be launch and explode.
Situ Fa said, “Commander, we only have few weapons experts in our force. The main force for this project depends entirely on people with only a bit of knowledge on weapons to transform the artillery, so progress has been slow. I’m afraid that it will take at least one months or so before we can see the results.”
Yuan Jianze also knows this matter couldn’t be forced. Their military was combat-oriented. It wasn’t engaged in scientific research. It was already good enough to come up with a plan to convert the firing method of the artillery.
In fact, there were some doubts in Yuan Jianze’s heart. How powerful would the artillery be after being successfully remodeled? Since the entire world has been digitized, all damage were now measured by digits. Normal pistols would generally caused 3-5 points of damage, rifles would deal one or two points higher, while sniper rifle with the usage of armor piercing rounds could deal injuries close to 10 points. As for how powerful the artillery could be be, no one could tell.
“The project need to be speed up. At the same time, we also can’t loosen up on enhancing the strength of the army. Now that we can no longer control the profession change of the people, from now on more and more ordinary people will inevitable becomes profession. If we aren’t strong enough, let alone expanding outward, we won’t even be able to hold control over the main city.” Yuan Jianze said with a heavy voice.
Situ Fa wrinkled his brows, “Commander, after the evolution of the enchanted beasts today, the number of first medium-order enchanted beasts that was seen outside increased by a big margin. If we continue to use our previous model of combat, we may experience a huge loss after every battle.”
Yuan Jianze asked, “Do you have any good suggestion?”
Situ Fa said, “We used to divide all the medium-order apprentices throughout the army and had them lead a team to kill the enchanted beast’s group. But now, this kind of team was no longer enough to confront the enchanted beasts. Therefore, i suggest we have all the experts concentrate together and use them like a sharp knife, killing some of the larger group of enchanted beasts. The scattered monsters can be left to the normal professions to kill. It’s just that with this method, the amount of power value that one can earned each day will be reduced by a lot.”
Yuan Jianze let out a deep sigh and said, “Just do it your way. It’s not easy to train a profession. We can’t afford losses to our troops.”