Chapter 77.2: Tricycle Expedition Sets Off Again
With a bunch of "advanced NPCs" leading the way, Yang Qiu hadn't come to see the players off this time.
As the tricycle expedition team passed through the streets in a grand manner, Yang Qiu stood calmly at the Crossroads, observing from a distance.
Unlike Yang Qiu's calm demeanor, Black-robed Inspector Lowell, standing beside him, couldn't contain the look of worry on his face.
After watching the bizarre caravan disappear from his line of sight, Lowell could no longer hold back and asked, "Yang, are you really okay with this? Letting these undead… be brought out by this bunch of notorious thugs?"
Lowell had spent quite some time in Exile Town. Although the language barrier meant that he couldn't communicate with the undead, he had still gotten a sense of what the former bandits and Rex were like.
Rex was a young man of integrity. All it took was a conversation or two to discern his pure and straightforward nature. When meeting players for the first time, he had been the only instructor who would advise the "undead" players against choosing the warrior profession.
In comparison, Hal and the others were rather shifty. This bunch had long been used to being bandits, and even if Yang had been educating for quite some time, the scoundrelly air they had couldn't be completely eradicated.
Yang Qiu merely smiled.
It was precisely because this bunch isn't good people that I could feel at ease letting them bring these calamities out for a stroll. In terms of causing trouble, Hal and the others are nothing compared to them.
Those were words Yang Qiu absolutely couldn't say out loud.
Bringing Mia, a healthy civilian, along wasn't just because a person who had truly experienced hardship was needed to step forward, but it was also to add an extra layer of insurance—preventing this bunch of players from being too unrestrained. This, Yang Qiu couldn't say as well.
So, when Yang Qiu finally spoke, his words were, "We must believe in others, revered inspector. I firmly believe that they can complete the journey smoothly and return unscathed."
Lowell: "…"
Right now, this black-robed inspector felt conflicted.
When Rex, the only honest young man he viewed favorably, explained the purpose of this activity at the Town Hall, Lowell's first instinct was to stop what sounded like an utterly absurd undertaking.
Letting a notorious group like the Sorensen Mountain Bandits lead the undead to the southeast border of the Rhine Kingdom to rescue destitute people in dire straits?! That sounded like a complete joke!
However, Black Mage Yang, whose line of thought was radically different from most, agreed to this.
Lowell, an inspector of the faith, found himself torn between whether to closely monitor and supervise this utterly bewildering agenda that had been set in motion. However, he was also worried that this was a scheme concocted by Yang to lure him away before secretly engaging in some dangerous matters that he couldn't even imagine…
Conflicted by these two options, Lowell felt that compared to the former bandits and undead heading to the borders of another country, monitoring Yang, who posed a greater danger to the Duchy of Shiga, was more important.
Oh well, the Goddess of Prosperity can only bless her own believers, Lowell consoled himself silently, ignoring Yang Qiu's ramblings as he made his way back to the Town Hall on his own.
Yang Qiu didn't mind at all that the black-robed inspector looked at him as if he were a loony. As soon as Lowell left, he continued to observe the players via the imprint matrix.
The players embarking on the quest would need to travel for at least a day and a night. On the way, they would encounter nothing but wasteland and monsters. For the time being, they wouldn't cause trouble for others and could be temporarily disregarded.
At this moment, Yang Qiu's focus was the super-casual players who also had no interest in this expedition quest.
There were quite a few players in this category… over 40, including the former top player of the game, Ou Huang.
Ou Huang was obsessed with leveling up his Butcher class skills. After switching to this particular lifestyle class, he would carry traps provided by Manan and use the trap techniques imparted by the former, camping outside town to catch small animals like squirrels and rabbits as practice. After that, he would enthusiastically sell the fur to the tailor shop and the meat to the Merchant Association canteen, and seemed to really take delight in this play style…
In the past, Yang Qiu really despised this type of "unproductive" player. But now, he had started to warm up to this sort of "gaming god" level of idle player. At the very least, his "output" was quite substantial.
Other than Ou Huang, there was also a group of casual players with Once Your Teacher as their leader.
This group of players didn't like camping out at the combat class work sites but were enjoying questing at the lifestyle class work sites.
This was especially so for the player with the ID "Once Your Teacher," collectively referred to as Teacher Yu Chi. Although she wasn't too productive in large-scale event quests, she would teleport to Desolate Outpost right on schedule each day to accept cooking quests from the zombie general to prepare meals for the suffering male civilian NPCs there. Once done, she would teleport back and head to the Merchant Association canteen to do assistance quests. She clearly wasn't using a "tool player" account, but she was actually very active in assisting. Yang Qiu couldn't help but like this sort of player.
Besides that, there was also the bunch from Eight At Once's studio, as well as players who turned the game into a part-time job. Besides consistently completing the lumbering quests assigned by Yang Qiu via the zombie general, these individuals also took on job advancements to become gatherers and apothecaries. Even though these unpolished rune skills limited them to gathering and refining basic materials and potions, this also lightened Yang Qiu's load considerably.
At present, Yang Qiu was even more eager than these gold-farming players themselves to raise their lifestyle class skills. Once these players go through their second job advancement, he could entrust them with producing magical elixirs.
All is going well.
Feeling refreshed, Yang Qiu disengaged from the imprint matrix and prepared to return to Earth to browse Pinshaoshao. The two tool NPCs in the Merchant Association canteen wanted to grow vegetables in town, so Yang Qiu needed to source seeds and affordable fertilizers.
His real-world finances were so tight that he had to stoop to using Pinshaoshao. But, regardless, once Rex returned, he would be financially secure once more—this time, the cargo loaded onto the tricycle carts was more than when they previously went to fetch the Camore citizens. Most of it was for Rex to sell in the Rhine Kingdom!
Behind the backs of Hal and the others, Yang Qiu had also privately informed Rex that… in the event Hal and the gang got carried away and weren't returning, those mountain bikes they rode could also be sold.
While he didn't want Hal and the gang to meet their end at the hands of players, if they insisted their heads to outsiders, Yang Qiu couldn't care less.
As the tricycle expedition team continued its journey through the wastelands of Taranthan, in the small village along the eastern border of the Rhine Kingdom, where Yang Qiu had sold clothes, a cavalry unit was leaving.
Over two months of camping out had caused this cavalry unit of the Radiant Sun Church's inquisition thoroughly disheartened, but this wasn't the first time such an occurrence had transpired.
The evil and increasingly powerful black mage, who had grown strong enough to unnerve even the cardinals of the inquisition, had already "surprised" them far too many times over the years.
Having been camped out in this remote village for so long, the unit's commander realized it was necessary for his men to relax for a bit. Otherwise, it wouldn't just be the grunts who couldn't handle it; he himself was finding it quite trying.
Upon leaving the village, the commander wasted no time sending his scouts in the direction of the largest city on the southeastern border.
After traveling for half a day, a group of 300 knights and 600 squires arrived at the city of Indahl, on the Rhine Kingdom's southeastern border. The commander announced the units' deactivation, and the knights were to lead their squires for some rest and relaxation, leaving only a few officers to accompany the commander to the local Radiant Sun Church establishment.
The Rhine Kingdom was a peculiar country. Despite being overlooked by the Radiant Sun Church during the Age of Discovery and having only a minuscule number of people eligible to operate sailing ships to trade with the Outer Continent, neither the royal family nor the common folk didn't react strongly to the building of Radiant Sun Churches in this city.
The reason was simple. It was because they "offered too much"—among all the faiths in the continent of Navalon, the Radiant Sun Church was truly the wealthiest.
While the Goddess of Prosperity's knights of the Holy Legion deigned to act as enforcers for local nobles for a pittance, the Radiant Sun Church was wealthy enough to self-fund a continent-wide chase of the Nightmare Butcher. Such was the contrast…
Inside the church, a priest in a white robe with embroidered golden edges received the commander of the knights. After exchanging pleasantries, he lowered his voice and asked anxiously, "What's really going on? Was there not a single hint received regarding the origin of those wares?"
The wares being referred to were a set of bone china utensils discovered in a village about a hundred miles from the small village where Yang Qiu had first shown himself.
When Yang Qiu initially bought this set of bone china utensils for a substantial sum of money—59.9 yuan—in a supermarket in Anshi, he later discovered that the exact same set on Pinshaoshao was only 19.9 yuan, causing him no small amount of frustration…
In any case, what really caught the attention of the knight unit wasn't the old clothes Yang Qiu sold to the steward Barff but, rather, this set of bone china tableware.
The rural nobles who purchased this set of tableware at the cost of a few gold coins dared not hoard it and instead presented it to the castellan of the area the next day. The castellan, pleased with the gift, held an afternoon tea party to show off the fine craftsmanship, and through this, word spread to the Radiant Sun Church…
"Not one bit," the commander of the cavalry unit grimly stated. "We intentionally avoided the village of that rural noble and only placed spies along several main roads… but that bastard is just too vigilant. He hasn't shown himself at all."
He paused for a moment before further expressing his frustration, "As for those wares, we don't even have a lead! We shouldn't have let news about those wares circulate within the city in the first place. Otherwise, that scoundrel wouldn't have disappeared so quickly. He would certainly have come out to sell these things again!"
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