Chapter 56: The Cross-Dressing Game Streamer is Actually… (8)
To officially join a sect, besides the quest item from the advancement dungeon, there was also an entry trial ground. You got three chances in total. If you failed the test, you were advised to switch sects early.
Don’t doubt it, this wasn’t a joke. Immortal Realm really did dissuade players from certain sects. A closed beta player had once tested what would happen if they failed the trials for all 24 sects, but unfortunately, there was no follow-up during the beta. The officials just said they’d leave it as a blind box for players to discover.
In short, if you wanted to officially join a sect, you had to pass the trial ground.
The Wan Jian Sect’s entry trial ground was widely recognized as the most difficult of the 24 sects, and it was also the main content of Huo Xian’s stream today.
The trial ground was divided into three stages, categorized by increasing difficulty: Xuan, Di, and Tian. If you failed any one of them, you had to start over from the beginning.
Huo Xian closed the stream interface and entered the first level, the Xuan-tier trial.
The test was designed as a sword formation array. After the player selected ‘start,’ a diagram of the sword formation would appear. They had 30 seconds to memorize the characters on it. After the diagram disappeared, an incomplete version would be shown. This diagram had 108 words in total, with half of them missing. The system would randomly select 10 words from the missing half for the player to fill in. Under these conditions, even if a player had the complete diagram handy, it wouldn’t be easy for someone with slower eyesight to find all 10 required words within one minute.
The Son of Destiny in this world wasn’t as impressive as the last one, but Huo Xian’s soul had been gifted by the Law of Consciousness and nourished by the spiritual spring water Huo Yuan had snatched. Although he didn’t have a photographic memory, his memory was far better than an average person’s.
Thus, without a reference chart or Huo Yuan cheating, he easily filled in all 10 words. Time taken… 20 seconds.
【Holy crap??】 【…I’m already tired of saying ‘Streamer is awesome.’】 【If the stream camera wasn’t showing both the computer screen and the streamer’s face, I’d suspect I was watching a fake trial.】 【The streamer must have worked hard memorizing this just to show off.】 【Sponsor Daddy: Heh, the person above knows nothing about the streamer’s true abilities.】 【Yuanyuan’s Boyfriend is a man who knows every coordinate of the map in Xiangshan Chicken Dinner. What’s a mere sword formation diagram? (bushi)】 【…】
Huo Xian never cared about the bullet chat when he was gaming. He passed the first level easily and didn’t linger, heading straight for the second. Huo Yuan was a cat who had obtained game data through unorthodox means, and the attribute point buff included passing the sect trial ground within 30 minutes. The third level especially tested positioning and technical skill, and the time it took was variable, so it was best to save as much time as possible beforehand.
The second level, the Di-tier, involved a section of the Wan Jian Sect’s rules. It also tested memory, but the questions were ultimately presented in a multiple-choice format. Even so, with over a thousand words of sect rules and 20 questions, it really wasn’t that easy to pass.
This time, the system gave 1 minute for memorization and 10 seconds per question for answering. It had to be said, this kind of “exam” suddenly gave Huo Xian a thrill reminiscent of being buried in a sea of practice questions in the last world.
However, compared to the last memory test, he actually found this one simpler. He didn’t need to memorize the characters, just be familiar with them. The main feature of speed-reading was having a rough impression after finishing. The answers were two-choice options, and the two sentences were completely different, making it a piece of cake for him.
He finished all 20 questions. Time taken… 13 seconds. It couldn’t have been any faster.
【Did he steal the questions???】 【I f*** f*** f***, the streamer is too amazing!!】 【Followed, followed, followed.】 【”Sponsor Daddy” gifted the streamer 10x Invincible Qingguo】 【”Sponsor Daddy” gifted the streamer 10x Invincible Qingguo】 【”Sponsor Daddy” gifted the streamer 10x Invincible Qingguo】 【Sponsor Daddy: Everyone get in here and admire the streamer’s awesome skills!】 【Sponsor Daddy is truly Sponsor Daddy, 壕 (hao – rich) beyond human decency!】 【Streamer’s Other Half: Thank you, Sponsor, for the Invincible Qingguos.】 【…】
Thanks to his number one fan, Sponsor Daddy, Huo Xian’s stream was flooded with countless viewers. He turned off the gift notifications, and Huo Yuan didn’t bother him either. The third stage of the trial ground was the one that truly tested technical skill, and it also had the highest “failure rate.” Although he had faith in Huo Xian, it was still better to be cautious, just in case.
The Tian-tier was a sword formation. Unlike the first level’s diagram, this level’s formation was quite large, the kind with real swords. Flying swords would attack the challenger from multiple angles. There weren’t many, but the damage wasn’t low, and it severely tested the player’s positioning. Furthermore, eight puppets would spawn after the trial began. While dodging the flying swords, the player also had to go to each puppet’s location, activate it, and kill it. Activation required correctly answering two of the 20 random multiple-choice questions from the Di-tier. Only after killing one puppet could the next one be activated. The trial was passed after all puppets were killed.
In a word: brutal.
In the beta, countless Dashen players had fallen on the way to the puppets.
Huo Xian’s character spawned in the center of the sword formation. This formation was a bagua (eight-trigram) shape, with the eight puppets spawning in the eight corners. When he selected ‘start’ in the dialogue, a countdown appeared on the screen: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… As it hit the end, flying swords from all directions had already surrounded him.
The viewers watching his stream only felt a wave of dizziness; the screen switching was ridiculously fast. Viewers new to his stream all said they couldn’t adjust. A fan immediately explained that this was the streamer’s positioning. As if to prove the fan’s words, after another blur of movement, the game character had already arrived in front of the first puppet, initiating the dialogue to answer the questions and activate it.
After being activated, the puppet would chase and attack the player. Huo Xian didn’t stand still; instead, he kited the puppet toward the next one, dealing damage with rapid combos while dodging the flying swords.
On the screen, the plainly dressed Jianxiu moved like a phantom, weaving between the flying swords and the puppet. Meanwhile, the bright “22,” “23,” “24…” (combo counter) next to the puppet made both new and old viewers in the stream’s blood boil.
Other people’s Jianxiu were always shouting about being out of mana, but “Yuanyuan’s Boyfriend’s” [Mozun], after an initial mana drain, would have his mana bar slowly tick back up. By the time one puppet fell, he was almost at full mana.
Some expert players saw even more—although “Yuanyuan’s Boyfriend” only used basic attacks and [Cloud-Piercing Sword] from start to finish, his damage output wasn’t high. What was high, in contrast, was his movement speed.
Could it be that the true way to play a Jianxiu was actually closer to an assassin?
Huo Xian couldn’t explain it to them for the time being. He activated the second puppet, then repeated the process, kiting it to the third, followed by the fourth, the fifth… When the last one fell, the words “Trial Challenge Successful” popped up on the screen, and the viewers, who had been holding their breath, finally let out their long-suppressed screams.
“Meow.” [Huo Xian, are you tired? Want me to massage your fingers?] Huo Yuan walked over to his hand and asked.
Huo Xian extended his left hand, which had seen more action. [Come on.]
Huo Yuan walked over, held one of his fingers with his two front paws, and began to massage it weightlessly with his soft little pads. Mmm… it wasn’t that he didn’t want to use strength, but his body’s limitations prevented him from applying any force.
Perhaps I can secretly use a little of my own power?
Huo Xian was still waiting for him to exchange points for a physical body to date; if he secretly used points, what if he ended up just short? Thinking of this, he became a little distressed. As he was worrying, he didn’t even realize he had slid to the edge of the desk. If Huo Xian hadn’t caught him, he would have fallen off.
“What are you thinking about so intently?” Huo Xian asked, amused.
Huo Yuan hugged his finger and said sullenly: [A cat’s body grows too slowly.]
[Slow is good. Slower means you can stay with me for more years.] Huo Xian gave him a kiss on his little forehead.
Huo Yuan thought about it and agreed. A cat’s lifespan is only about ten-plus years. In this world, he could only accompany Huo Xian for that long in a cat’s body. Growing slower did seem better.
After all, they were… lovers now.
Thinking of this, the skin under Huo Yuan’s furry face couldn’t help but flush faintly. It was… quite embarrassing.
Huo Xian didn’t have the habit of recording his screen, or rather, his computer didn’t support it.
However, many of his fans did. Huo Xian’s attitude towards the use of his videos was that it was fine as long as it wasn’t for commercial purposes. Because he permitted their use, fans uploaded screen recordings or clips to various platforms, and after just one day, it blew up, even trending on Weibo.
Immortal Realm, with its strong story, art, and multifaceted design, had attracted players in droves. The reviews from the first three closed betas were also ridiculously good. Thus, after the open beta launched, its popularity shot it to the number one spot on the PC game charts, and its popularity was still growing, showing signs of a “unifying the jianghu” dominance.
The Level 20 sect trial ground could be called a major feature of Immortal Realm, and it also fit the logic of an immortal sect recruiting disciples in a xianxia (immortal hero) setting. The problem was, the high difficulty of the trial ground still stumped a large number of players, especially for the Wan Jian Sect. There were already several hundred complaint threads, with the most popular one having tens of thousands of replies, forcing the developers to consider lowering the difficulty of the Wan Jian Sect’s trial ground.
But the Wan Jian Sect was already one of the five-star difficulty sects to operate, and the trial ground was one of its defining features. If you couldn’t handle the difficulty, why not just play an easier class?
Now, with the release of Huo Xian’s trial ground video, Wan Jian Sect players, whether they had passed the trial or not, were all stunned. How could someone pass the trial ground in under twenty minutes? Why was there an attribute point reward, and a full 10 points at that??
Following the trial ground recording going viral, various bloggers successively uploaded other recordings of Huo Xian’s streams, among which the solo clear of the Level 10 dungeon [Wild Wolf Cave] became another hot video.
Disbelief was followed by conspiracy theories. Players all believed that the video’s protagonist, [Mozun], was an official employee, just there to show the vast number of Wan Jian Sect players that the trial ground wasn’t actually that hard, in an attempt to quell their resentment.
As a result, the trending rank was pushed higher and higher. At the same time, “Players Conspiracy Theory Official” also started trending, which actually pushed Immortal Realm‘s popularity even higher.
When Huo Xian streamed again, he was shocked to find his follower count had broken 1.9 million and was heading straight for 2 million. What on earth had happened while he wasn’t aware?
[Your trial ground recording was pushed onto the Weibo hot search list yesterday. It’s now in fifth place. The blogger was questioned and posted your stream’s address,] Huo Yuan explained.
[So that’s why.] Huo Xian understood. No wonder the stream had so much attention today.
[A lot of people suspect you’re faking it, that you’re an actor hired by the officials. Don’t get angry if you see nasty comments in the bullet chat.] Huo Yuan gave him a heads-up.
Huo Xian was actually quite happy to see this. He scooped Huo Yuan into his arms, looking at the dense bullet chat, unable to read the content even if he wanted to. So he said, “As a xianyu (lazy/slacker) streamer, I’m quite surprised to get so much attention from viewers. I looked into the reason why new friends are coming in, and, well, it’s actually a bit funny.” He paused, freed one hand to pick up the camera, panned it across his computer and mouse-keyboard setup, and said, “I’d actually love it if the officials hired me as an actor. That way I could get a better rig to play games on.”
The bullet chat scrolled even faster, making it even harder to read.
Huo Xian gave up trying to read it and put the camera back in its original position. He continued, “Before I became a streamer, I was a professional game power-leveler and pilot, so I have an advantage in terms of technical skill. Also, if you want to pass the trial ground based on my recording, my advice is to put your character’s attribute points into Agility as much as possible. However, I wouldn’t recommend players with slow hand speed or inflexible reactions to copy this.”
[A lot of people are asking how you passed the first two levels.] Huo Yuan relayed the main content of the bullet chat.
Huo Xian pretended he had seen it too and replied slowly, “The Xuan-tier and Di-tier both test memory. While I don’t have a photographic memory, the Xuan-tier only has about two hundred characters; a quick scan and I remember most of it. Personally, I think the Di-tier is simpler than the Xuan-tier. As long as you have an impression after reading it, you can choose the correct answer. Even if you don’t remember, you can figure it out from the context of the sentences. It’s hard to get it wrong.”
The viewers in the stream: We feel like we just got fan’ersai‘d (humblebragged at).
“Alright, I’ve explained what I needed to explain. I welcome the officials to hire me to act or endorse their product. Now I’m preparing to continue today’s leveling. Those who want to know what my skills are really like can keep watching.” Huo Xian said this as he typed his account and password to log into the game. Before turning off the bullet chat, he added, “Oh, right, the streamer doesn’t have the bullet chat on while gaming and won’t interact. New friends, please mind the bullet chat etiquette. Be civil, for you and me.”
After saying this, he closed the bullet chat, entered the game, and prepared to start today’s leveling journey.
The dorm room door was suddenly pushed open heavily. Huo Xian looked towards the sound and saw Zhao Xiyou’s face alternating between pale and green. He was looking at him with an unfamiliar gaze, as if seeing him for the first time.
Huo Xian greeted him as usual, “You’re back. I’m streaming.”
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