Exactly as Lin Mingfei predicted, twenty minutes later, the Polaris quartet found the "drowned" Zhou Yanjun at the nearest resurrection point.

The fat knight struggled to get up from the ground and shook off his fat, splashing water on the face of the little wizard who was closest to him.

"What's wrong with you?" Lin Mingfei pushed the unlucky little guy who kept rubbing his face behind her and asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Incredible, truly incredible." Zhou Yanjun gave a thumbs-up and said with a frustrated attitude, as if he wanted to curse but didn't know where to start. "Can you believe this? The entrance to the Scorpion Eye Trench is sunken beneath the vortex!"

"You can tell that just by looking at it," said Lin Mingfei.

Zhou Yanjun wiped his face, the past unbearable to recall. "I finally swam to the entrance, but I couldn't get in. Can you believe it?! Two dealers with fish tails pulled me over and wanted to play poker with me!"

"Play poker? Landlord or Kitty Fishing?" Shi Ya wondered.

"How would I know? I've never played such an old-fashioned game like poker!" Zhou Yanjun scratched his head in pain. "Then I died. That's it."

Bo Yu was already searching the forums for strategies: "It's about striving for the top. If you don't know how to play, you can join a group. If someone in the group knows how to play, that's fine too. It's a best-of-three game, and each win gets you one person in."

Lin Mingfei: "Xiao Bo, I remember you can play poker, right?"

Bo Yu: "Well, every year when I go home for the holidays, I play mahjong and poker with my aunt and my great-aunt."

Shi Ya showed a shocked expression: "...So you spend all your holidays with them?"

Zhou Yanjun: "Timer, isn't your focus a bit too strange?"

However, it was good to have someone in the team who could fight and get ahead, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief, contented with what they had. But then Shi Ya raised another question.

"Fire's breathing capacity isn't even enough to play cards. Are you sure any of us can survive until Xiaobo wins?"

Lin Mingfei raised her chin and said, "Xiao Bo, read the guide."

Barrage area.

[Hahahahahahahahaha, it's really funny to see these pvp nerds seriously looking up strategy guides!]

Team P used to be the ones writing dungeon guides! Now they've been reduced to having to meticulously look up guides. What kind of suffering is this? Hahahahaha!

I've cleared Scorpion Eye Trench. I bet a cucumber I can drive these PVP dogs crazy on every level!

[Let Fatty Zhou look down on PVX! ! Hahahahahahaha, now you know how cruel the PVX world is! Being a PVX isn't that easy!]

......

Bo Yu patiently read the introductory guide to Scorpion Eye Trench word by word.

"Gill Seaweed is an item that doubles your breathing capacity, allowing you to stay underwater longer. If you're raiding Scorpion Eye Trench as a group, the amount of Gills Seaweed you bring is generally equal to the number of people multiplied by 1.5 plus one. Gills Seaweed can be crafted using the Cooking skill or purchased from other players."

Zhou Yanjun is rich and powerful: "Buy!"

Lin Mingfei: "Go buy it, I'll reimburse you."

The fat knight left in high spirits, but returned in disappointment a moment later.

"What's wrong?" Lin Mingfei wondered when she saw that he had empty hands.

Zhou Yanjun: "...They said they don't sell PvP dogs! I wouldn't have said that before."

Lin Mingfei calmly raised her toes and kicked Shi Ya.

"I know, I know. I'll have to step in when it matters most." The male elf rolled his eyes elegantly and walked out with his hands spread out. "From now on, I'll have to pay for selling my body."

Team P went through a lot of twists and turns, and finally bought the fish gill seaweed under the sweet talk of Master Shi. However, this was just the beginning. They soon realized that they had greatly underestimated the difficulty of this plan.

As an institution of higher learning for pvx players to study strategies, Scorpion Eye Trench is essentially a level-breaking tower that brings together various mini-games, such as playing cards, snakes, Tetris, spot the difference, Sudoku, mazes, etc., and even a clothing matching session.

After three rounds of outfits, they still couldn't get a passing score, and the five tigers of Team P were completely broken up.

"What on earth is Wang Ling trying to do with this crappy game? Does he want to challenge the holographic game next door and travel around the world?" Zhou Yanjun roared.

"I would have believed them if they said they were planning to monopolize the gaming industry..." Shi Ya's eyes were bloodshot.

"But we're only on the fourth floor! There are thirty-nine floors in total." Xia Tong whispered, "It's already five in the afternoon. It feels like it will be dark soon, right? Aren't we having dinner?"

"Ah... now that we mention it, it seems we forgot to eat lunch," Bo Yu said. "We wasted too much time on that Sudoku round."

"Who knew you were all so bad at math?" Shi Ya said.

"Damn it, if I'm good at math, what kind of career can I play? Wouldn't it be better for me to be the top scorer in the college entrance examination?" Zhou Yanjun roared.

Lin Mingfei's head also hurt a little. These strange rules of the game were simply a torture for them, the PVP party that "fights if they don't agree".

"Forget it, let's log off and eat first." He whispered, "I'll think about it, think about it..."

Several people logged off immediately.

At this moment, a post appeared in the forum that was very appropriate.

Watching Polaris, the former Tiger Wolf Division, clear the Scorpion Eye Trench is truly a source of joy for me, hahahahahahaha!

You didn't see Island using all his life's knowledge to compete with those two carp dealers for the top spot. He must have been remembering the horror of being dominated by his relatives during the holidays, hahahaha!

[When walking on the single-plank bridge, how many times did Blink get pushed down by Fire? Was there a crowd? It makes me sad just watching it, hahahahaha!]

[Isn't it hilarious when everyone comes to find fault? It's hilarious too! Just how long did it take those five PvP nerds to figure out the rules of the game? Hahahaha!]

I can't take it anymore. I feel so sad. What's going on? They started grinding at around 10:00 AM, and by 4:00 PM, they'd already finished four floors! They still have 35 floors to go!

[Thinking about it, isn't it easier to explore the wasteland with the wild people?]

......

At dinner time, the atmosphere at the table was a little depressed. I don’t know if it was because everyone was hungry after not having lunch. Cups and plates clinked, but no one spoke.

He Youjin coughed softly. "Actually, you don't have to be so depressed. The big brawl at the entrance to the dungeon over there lasted until almost three in the afternoon. Every club put every single person under their name online. It was so massive that the official livestream was freezing up. Can you believe it? It wasn't much better than you guys."

"So which company won?" Xia Tong asked.

"It's obvious it's a saber-toothed tiger," Zhou Yanjun grumbled. "According to their team's nature, after the main force enters the dungeon, the rest of the team will guard the entrance to prevent other teams from getting close. If they get too close, they'll start a fight. It's so disgusting."

"Then I guess they have been in the dungeon for a while now, and they should have finished defeating the gatekeeper, right?" Shi Ya said.

"They've already defeated the first boss." Bo Yu raised his phone and shook it, whispering, "The forum report says they dropped some Axe Warrior equipment. It's 1480 tier, which is about 1500 if you round it up."

"So fast?" Several people exclaimed in unison.

"They're saber-toothed tigers, after all." Lin Mingfei whispered, "They didn't win the league championship for nothing." He sighed silently, cleared the dishes and went upstairs, saying, "Take your time eating. I'm going online first."

Lin Mingfei walked upstairs, but did not go directly to the training room. He stopped at an inconspicuous corner and took out half a pack of cigarettes from the crack of the window.

He secretly stuffed this here two years ago. I don’t know if it’s expired yet.

There are clear rules and regulations in the base that prohibit smoking, but he was in a low mental period at that time, and sometimes he couldn't adjust, so he would secretly come here and smoke one behind everyone's back.

Lin Mingfei reached out and rubbed the cold packaging.

He began to feel unsure whether his decision was correct...

They didn't have as much free time as PvX, and perhaps they really weren't suited to playing those puzzle games. He should have gritted his teeth and formed a wild group to go fight the saber-tooth tigers instead of wasting time here in the unruly Scorpion Eye Trench...

No, there are too many uncertainties.

Lin Mingfei raised her hand and pinched the bridge of her nose, a hint of fatigue appearing between her brows.

He had always had a good attitude before, but now, seeing the once powerful Polaris team scattered and withered like this, he finally felt a sense of regret and helplessness.

At this moment, his phone vibrated and he received a new private message on Weibo.

Lin Mingfei usually doesn't read private messages, but at this moment he somehow opened the private message interface.

This is a user who looks very much like a zombie fan. His username starts with "□□" followed by a series of numbers, but what he says does not sound like that of a zombie user at all.

Dear Z-god, could you share with me what it's like to be a PvX on your first day back in the league?

Lin Mingfei raised her eyebrows.

The smell of bad intentions is almost overflowing from the other side of the screen.

Many speculations flashed through Lin Mingfei's mind, but she did not respond to him immediately. Instead, she deleted the private message chat box directly.

There's no need, really no need.

He inadvertently recalled the earlier time, before Polaris won three consecutive championships.

There were stronger championship teams at that time, but they also had bumps and bruises, and worked together, running endlessly on a road with no light and full of uncertainty.

Because they have no fixed position and are not afraid of falling, they are fearless.

Before they gained fame and fortune, some people called them a fake team. What’s the difference between now and then?

We're already at the bottom anyway, how much worse can it get?

Lin Mingfei raised the corners of her lips indifferently.

Because of this provocation, his heart sank and became as steady as a rock.

He dusted the cigarette box into a corner again, turned around, and ran into Xia Tong.

The two looked at each other for a moment, and Lin Mingfei hesitated and asked, "Why are you here?"

Xia Tong blinked and chuckled softly, "Obviously, he came to see you!"

Lin Mingfei asked rather unnaturally: "...Then how long have you been here?"

Xia Tong pursed her lips: "...actually not long." He suddenly raised his phone and shook it, smiling: "I have a big discovery I want to share with you!"

The two of them put their heads together and stared at the phone screen for a full minute.

"1234 Mini Game?" Lin Mingfei finally read the title of the website that looked extremely unreliable. "Where did you find it?"

"My own favorites! When I first learned how to use the internet, I often played online games on this site! But the ones I played were all role-playing games... don't they look childish?" Xia Tong said a little embarrassedly, "I felt very familiar with it when I was in the Scorpion Eye Trench before, but I couldn't remember it for a while. Later, I thought about it for a while while eating, and found that it really is similar to the 1234 game! Look, there are so many categories in it, puzzles, action, dress-up... The prototypes of the games we encountered in the Scorpion Eye Trench today are all here!"

Lin Mingfei took the phone from him with a slight shock and clicked on it one by one.

The mini-games in this website are obviously of extremely low production cost, with crude graphics and mechanisms. They are just for players who are not good at e-sports and may not even have played general large-scale terminal games to kill time.

It has to be said that Lin Mingfei felt like she had opened the door to a new world.

When he first started gaming as a student, he played a multiplayer shooter that was all the rage among teenagers at the time. The download alone took up a ton of space, and the win-loss mechanics were complex, making it difficult to get started. He then moved on to various PC and mobile games, all boasting high-end development teams, stunning graphics, and demanding hardware specs. It wasn't just him; the rest of the Polaris team felt the same way. Their experience with high-end games made it so easy for them to pick up the holographic game "Wang Ling"... On the other hand, it was like someone used to expensive steak being presented with a plate of grilled snails they'd scavenged from the gutter for a few bucks a pound. They'd be at a loss, even doubting whether they were edible.

Lin Mingfei suddenly remembered that they were in the Scorpion Eye Trench just now, and the Sudoku... was solved by Xia Xiaotong.

"I didn't know there were such things in the world..." He opened the categories one by one, browsed through them one by one, and exclaimed in surprise.

"It's just a casual game." Xia Tong said with her hands behind her back, "And I think this mode is much simpler than the holographic mode. If I practice this two-dimensional mode first, then going to the Scorpion Eye Trench will be much easier!"

"What you said makes a lot of sense." Lin Mingfei laughed: "Xia Xiaotong, you are not that stupid!"

"I'm not stupid, okay? I'm that...that's called - wise but appearing foolish!" Xia Tong said.

"Yes, yes, great wisdom appears foolish." Lin Mingfei felt as if the clouds had cleared and the sun had appeared. She grabbed his hand and said, "Let's go and show them the world!"

After being the first to enter the Galalan Ruins, the Sabretooth Team successfully defeated the Gate God - the so-called pre-boss, and then quickly passed the first boss without much trouble. The five of them were quite elated, feeling that the God of Fate had favored them. However, before they could boast for long, they fell into an endless dilemma in front of the second boss.

After the team was wiped out several times in a row, Dylan became a little annoyed. He looked at the time and successfully missed the lunch time, so he said he wanted to log off and rest first.

The coach and Zhao Xin did not stop them. After all, they had been fighting in a melee for a whole day and had cleared two bosses in a row. The workload was almost enough. They were definitely the best teams in the alliance, so it was normal for the players to feel tired. So they tacitly approved them to eat and rest without saying anything more.

As the first day of preparation, this battle was a resounding victory for Sabretooth. While there were a few minor unpleasant incidents along the way, overall, the merits outweighed the flaws and were encouraging enough. However, Dylan, who considered himself a "professional player," was still unhappy. He finished his meal with a sullen expression and quietly returned to his bedroom.

After resting for a while, the irritability and frustration did not get relieved. Dylan suddenly felt that as a "superior person", he should go and see the current situation of the "lower people". Maybe he would be "content with what he has".

So he went to the official forum and saw a post about the Polaris team struggling to survive in the Scorpion Eye Trench.

It must be said that these contents also became a source of happiness for Dylan. He was in a good mood when he saw Polaris and the others being frustrated in that weird little game. He suddenly felt that although he did not pass the second level today, it was nothing compared to them.

I didn't expect Lin Mingfei to end up like this. Dylan thought with joy and emotion. He even registered a Weibo account, secretly searched for polaris-zero on Weibo, and sent a private message pretending to be a fan.

Dear Z-god, could you share with me what it's like to be a PvX on your first day back in the league?

He really wanted to witness how Lin Mingfei would respond. He thought that whether she cried or forced herself to smile to cover it up, it would make his current happiness even greater.

However, there was no movement on the other end of the phone.

Dylan waited for a long time, but still got nothing. Lin Mingfei played dead so thoroughly that Dylan found it utterly boring.

He turned over in bed, thinking that when they went offline just now, the people from Polaris also went offline, which seemed quite pitiful as if they had fled in a panic. He didn't know whether they would be online again in the evening.

The saber-toothed tiger continued to clear the land all night long.

The more people participate in the dungeon, the lower the fault tolerance rate. Therefore, the difficulty of the 25-person large secret realm is the most difficult of all dungeons. I don’t know what tricks the official played this time. The mechanism of the second boss is mysterious and unpredictable. Sabretooth and his men fought until after three in the morning, but they were still all wiped out in front of the second boss.

Because when people are tired, their mental concentration and physical agility will decrease, so there are more and more mistakes in their team. Later, Dylan felt that he really couldn't fight anymore, so he angrily dismissed a group of people and logged off.

At that time, he specifically found someone who had added Lin Mingfei as a friend to inquire about it. It was said that none of the five members of the Polaris team played the game that night.

What is this? Did they all fall asleep? Early to bed, early to rise, good health!

What kind of hellish health regimen is this for the elderly? What modern drug-addicted teenager doesn’t stay up late?

And now we're in battle mode!!! Every club is on edge, desperate to squeeze in as little sleep as possible. Has everyone in Polaris given up?

Dylan was shocked and racked his brains to figure out what the Polaris people were up to.

Not only he couldn't figure it out, but the onlookers in the forum couldn't figure it out either.

The guard team stationed by Sabretooth at the entrance of the dungeon was withdrawn after about five o'clock in the afternoon. Shadow and Rainbow teams entered the dungeon one after another to open up new land, but their new land formations were far less powerful and reliable than Sabretooth. They were entangled in the positions of the gatekeeper and the boss respectively, and they were entangled until after twelve o'clock. The other teams probably gave up their plans to open up new land temporarily, and went to brush small dungeons or practice cooperation in the arena, and they all stayed up late into the night to varying degrees.

Only Polaris, the five people never played the game again after they logged off in the afternoon.

Polaris fans were also shocked.

[Now, unless the official announcement is made that they have died one by one in the base, I cannot accept it!!]

[Wow, what the hell is this!!! Are they really preparing for battle?!!! This makes me so anxious!!]

[Wake up!!! You're no longer the legendary team that could win the championship without even lying down!! You can't be so arrogant!!]

[I think they're just getting carried away. After beating a sleazy team, they probably think they're invincible, right?]

[I'm quitting being a fan, I'm quitting being a fan. What's the point of being a fan of a team that goes to bed earlier than me?]

......

This is the storm of public opinion during the war preparation period, which sometimes rises and sometimes subsides. They never know what kind of speculation and discussion their actions will trigger from others.

However, the five people of Polaris knew nothing about the changes in the outside world. They did not go to bed early, but continued to play the 1234 game in the living room as steady as a rock.