Buying Information
After killing Golden Boy and Jade Girl, Meng Jingtian felt his heart relax. At last, he had vented some of the resentment from his last gaming experience.
“The hell sort of damage is this?!” Back at the spawn point, Jade Girl madly howled.
She had also been on a mission. While going to the mission area, she had received a message from her superior ordering her to kill Meng Jingtian. The two of them, confident and assured, had noticed that he wasn’t far, so they had planned to just take care of the job now.
But while attempting to steal the chicken, they had lost the rice they used to lure it. She had now failed the mission.
“Let’s report it to our superiors!”
Ten minutes later, Bai Wensheng, who was hiding in a bush and had all his attention focused on kill-stealing a boss, was startled by a system notification and instinctively threw out the skill he had ready.
But that boss didn’t die and still clung to a sliver of HP.
The group of unaffiliated players that had been fighting the boss instantly noticed him. Someone shouted, “It’s Tian Xuance! Forget about the boss! Kill him!”
Even in ‘Tomorrow’, Bai Wensheng had not changed his shameless ways. Though the game had only been up for two days, he had already stolen equipment from people and kill-stolen quite a few field bosses. The players of Seaside City all basically knew who he was by now.
A variety of skills came rushing in, instantly turning Bai Wensheng into a white beam of light that returned to the city.
He angrily opened the message but saw that it was from someone of Godslayer Hall, and that he had been invited to a discussion in their group.
Bai Wensheng was taken aback, but he quickly logged off, connected with the virtual internet, and entered the ‘Godslayer’ chat group.
“Is the mission complete?” Bai Wensheng immediately asked.
“No!” a member of the group called ‘Godslayer No.7’ replied.
“The information you provided to us was incorrect. Through our various assessments, we have determined that he is at least at the Earth Level, and pursuing him will require 50,000 alliance coins.
“Moreover, the assassins who attacked the target all had a permanent debuff placed on them. You did not inform us of this beforehand, so you must compensate us with ten thousand alliance coins.”
“What? You were the one who took the job. This is entirely your problem! Why should I give you money?” Bai Wensheng angrily replied.
“But you swore that the mission target was only an ordinary player, and you only paid for an ordinary one,” Godslayer No.7 very calmly replied.
“I’ve already paid you the money. You’re not getting any more out of me! You don’t think I won’t make a post on the forum exposing Godslayer Hall’s untrustworthiness?” Bai Wensheng wasn’t a good person and had a violent temper, so he immediately resorted to threats.
“That is your answer? Alright; we understand,” Godslayer No.7 calmly replied. But Bai Wensheng instantly panicked.
A threat! This was definitely a threat!
Even though Godslayer No.7 had replied in a very calm and flat tone, his threat was even more frightening than Bai Wensheng’s!
“Wait! Wait, wait! Can I withdraw my request? And also, that debuff can be removed. You just have to go to a shrine and get a blessing from a god.” Bai Wensheng hastily yielded.
He had been the first to receive the ‘God Forsaken’ debuff, and since his complaints had not come to anything, he could only ponder the words of customer support and find a resolution in-game.
In the end, he really did manage to find a way. Obtaining a blessing from a god could remove the debuff.
But the blessing of a god was not easy to obtain. It was completely random. Every time one worshiped a god, one had a very small chance of obtaining their blessing.
And the more people that worshiped the god, the smaller the chance was.
Bai Wensheng had wasted several hours of each of these last two days at a shrine before finally managing to remove the two stacks of debuff on him.
“We can put aside the matter of compensation, but you must pay the price increase!” Godslayer No.7 replied a few moments later, his stance extremely firm.
Bai Wensheng’s face darkened. Fifty thousand alliance coins was no small sum to him. He was in no way happy to pay so much for the sake of an enemy in the game.
But it didn’t matter if he was happy or not. When it came to unaffiliated assassins, they could just give up on a mark if they wanted. The problem was that he had gone to Godslayer Hall!
Once Godslayer Hall took action, it would not rest until it had eliminated the target. The employer wanted to take back the job? Impossible!
“I’ll send it over soon!” It took Bai Wensheng a whole five minutes to muster the will to type these words.
He did not dare to offend Godslayer Hall. He still wanted to keep playing this game!
In ‘Grand Desolation’, he had been able to make several hundred thousand alliance coins. ‘Tomorrow’ was the global online game published by the government. There would definitely be more opportunities to make money here than in ‘Grand Desolation’.
“Happy to be working with you!” Godslayer No.7 ended the conversation, but now, that phrase that should have represented good fortune seemed to be a jeer to Bai Wensheng.
Meng Jingtian had no idea that Bai Wensheng had gotten his just deserts before he had even taken action.
Now that he had avenged himself on Golden Boy and Jade Girl, he felt much more refreshed. Many of the dark clouds hanging over his head had dispersed.
Humming along, he went looking for Cai Minghou. Meanwhile, he opened up the forum, found a topic made by Bai Xiaosheng, and sent the topic poster a private message.
“Is the waiter here?”
“Here! Guest, do you wish to buy some information?”
‘Waiter’ was the nickname that outsiders called the members of the Bai Xiaosheng network. This was because they were like the waiters in ancient times, privy to all sorts of rumors.
“Godslayer Hall,” Meng Jingtian replied.
After successfully killing assassins from Godslayer Hall three times, Meng Jingtian was now confident enough to begin his counterattack.
But an assassination organization like Godslayer Hall probably had its own intelligence network. It could obtain information on Meng Jingtian, but a loner like Meng Jingtian didn’t have the same ability.
Fortunately, the game had the greatest ‘shared intelligence network’: Bai Xiaosheng!
As long as one paid the fee, they would provide information on anything, whether it was Godslayer Hall, the number one guild, or the strongest player in the game.
From a certain perspective, Bai Xiaosheng was perhaps the most terrifying existence in the game, as it was practically omnipresent.
“Information on Godslayer Hall is not cheap. Do you know which information you want specifically?” the waiter replied after a few moments.
“I want a list of all of Godslayer Hall’s assassins in Black Tortoise City and their exact locations,” Meng Jingtian replied.
“It can be done. The fee for one day is 150,000 alliance coins!” the waiter replied.
This was undoubtedly a game that only the ‘nouveau riche’ could play, and Meng Jingtian certainly wasn’t a member of this class. Of course, he had never planned to use alliance coins.
“I’ll pay with in-game currency,” Meng Jingtian continued.
He had earlier auctioned off the Guild Formation Token for 4.5 million gold coins, and in the early stages of the game, in-game currency was worth more. This was why Meng Jingtian was so confident in his ability to buy this information.
...
“50,000 gold for one day,” the waiter stated.
As expected, in-game currency in the early stage of the game truly did command a high price. It had an exchange rate of basically 1:3.
After all, one could only trade with NPCs using in-game currency. Many rich people who were used to getting their way in real life were crazily buying up in-game currency so that they could continue their extravagant lifestyle in-game.