Chapter 60
Xue Jin'an never expected that a sandbox would activate two games, both of which are large-scale competitive games. The difference is that one is a five-on-five tower defense team battle game; the other is a tactical competitive game that can be played solo/duo/quad against players across the entire map.
Xue Jin'an didn't know what to choose for a moment, so he simply asked someone to move the sand table into the room.
The sand table prepared by Helian Cheng was for military operations. It was very large and heavy, and the stone table in the courtyard could not fit it at all. In order to ensure the integrity of the sand table, Fulu specially found three guards of similar height and build and asked them to work together from three directions to move it in.
When Lingzhi went to call someone, she immediately went into the study and tidied up the largest desk before finally putting it down.
Xue Jin'an watched as the guards carefully placed the sand table down, and nervously examined it. Seeing that the terrain inside was intact, he finally breathed a sigh of relief.
"Brothers, please have some tea before you go. It's been a lot of trouble for you." Shouquan was quite good at winning people over. Before they could refuse, he poured them tea and secretly slipped each of them a small tael of silver. "We'll be spending a lot of time together in the future, and there will always be times when I need your help. Please bear with me, brothers."
Shouquan already looks young, and his smile makes him look innocent and harmless, which makes people unconsciously feel a bit of goodwill towards him.
The three guards exchanged glances and readily accepted the money. In any case, their superiors hadn't allowed them to make things difficult for the Seventh Prince. Their captain had said that the Seventh Prince could do whatever he wanted in Zhaoyang Palace, as long as he didn't run away, they would just pretend they knew nothing.
Whether they accept the money or not won't affect their ability to turn a blind eye to the Seventh Prince's actions. So why don't they accept it?
—In fact, everyone in Zhaoyang Palace knew what these guards were thinking and understood why they thought that way. It was simply because the Seventh Prince had the Empress Dowager's backing, and the Emperor's attitude was ambiguous, so naturally they didn't dare to offend him too much.
But Shouquan and his men also understood that relying on others was never as good as relying on themselves. They could borrow the Empress Dowager's power once or twice, but not always. They still had to spend money to win people's hearts.
Shouquan then served the three guards two more plates of pastries, saying, "It's quite cold outside; you can warm up before you leave."
Seeing this, Lingzhi nodded with satisfaction. The two eunuchs beside the Seventh Prince were Fulu and Shouquan, who were loyal and devoted, and most importantly, neither of them had tried to undermine the prince. That was very good.
She went behind the screen and entered the inner hall, where she saw the Seventh Prince glance at the screen, frown slightly, but say nothing. She chuckled softly, thinking: Hmm, His Highness didn't hold them back, which is good.
Xue Jin'an did indeed hear Shou Quan's conversation with the guards, and he even discerned from the whispers that Shou Quan had slipped them silver. Xue Jin'an didn't find it immoral or anything; he simply felt the amount of money was a bit excessive.
Although since Teacher Xiao X leveled up, he has been defrauding the emperor every day and accumulating wealth that has made Xue Jin'an no longer short of money, before that, Xue Jin'an was still a poor soldier with a salary of fifty coins.
However, despite feeling it was a lot, Xue Jin'an had no intention of stopping them. He trusted Fu Lu Shou Quan quite a bit and knew they must have their reasons for doing so.
"Master!" Cui Zui arrived at this moment. He didn't act like an outsider at all, took off his cloak, casually put it on a chair, and walked in as he called out, "Master, why aren't you practicing in the courtyard at this hour? What happened?"
He went to the inner hall and immediately saw the sand table that took up the entire table. He asked in surprise, "Where did this sand table come from?"
As the saying goes, "One who stays near vermilion gets stained red, and one who stays near ink gets stained black." Cui Zui had been following Xue Jin'an for some time now, and just watching him do exercises had made him familiar with many mountains and terrains. In addition, after deciding to develop in the direction of martial arts, he read a lot of military books, and soon recognized the terrain in the sand table. "This is Qizhou, where the Northwest Army is stationed, right?"
Xue Jin'an nodded in affirmation.
Cui Zui immediately felt itchy to play a match, and Xue Jin'an did not object. He then asked Cui Zui whether he wanted to play a five-on-five team competition or a competition where one team would compete against all the players on the map.
Cui Zui chose the latter without any surprise: "Since it's a game, I'll naturally choose the most thrilling one."
"If you don't even know the rules of the game, how can you determine which is more thrilling? The most thrilling thing in this world has always been the human heart." Lingzhi chose team competition.
Fu Lu and Shou Quan said they didn't understand any of this and didn't intend to participate in their argument. Ling Zhi then called Fu Ling over, who didn't even ask what it was and stood on her side without hesitation.
“Alright, let’s go to Glory Canyon then.” Xue Jin’an immediately made the decision. “But we’re still missing one person.”
Since neither Fu Lu nor Shou played the game, the last spot was very fortunate to fall to Xuan Shiyi, who had no right to refuse.
Xue Jin'an explained the rules and gameplay to them, including the top, middle, and bottom lanes, and the roles of jungler and support. The few people who were hearing about it for the first time listened very attentively, and their eyes showed a strong desire to try it out.
Since they were all newbies playing for the first time, they agreed on their positions from the beginning to avoid conflicts: Lingzhi would go top lane, Fuling would go mid lane, Cui Zui, the marksman, would go bottom lane, Xuan Shiyi would jungle, and Xue Jin'an would fill in as support.
The five people stood in front of the sand table. Xue Jin'an started the game, and his magic flowed into the game panel through his fingertips. The panel instantly exploded with countless tiny shooting stars, dazzling and mesmerizing.
Match successful, please select a hero.
After the adaptation, all the hero characters in the Glory Canyon have been replaced with celebrities from this world. Different skins also have subtle differences in skills. For example, if there is a hero named Xue Jin'an in the game, then there will be the original skin Xue Jin'an and the spirit skin Xue Jin'an. Although they are judged as the same hero, they are not actually the same person, and their skills are naturally very different.
The heroes they possess depend on the people they interact with, and the level of intimacy or interaction with those people can activate which skin... In short, because the hero selection process itself is full of uncertainty, the game system simply does not disclose the other party's choices.
A blue page pops up in front of each person, showing the heroes they own.
Xue Jin'an felt that he had been quite well-behaved since he came to this world and had not come into contact with many people, so he should not have many heroes. However, when the page popped up, he saw rows and rows of countless avatars.
The front row consists of: Consort Zhen skin Zhou Yuting, Chu Wenjing skin Zhou Yushu, original skin Empress Dowager, original skin Lu Bingzhu, original skin Cen Fuzi, Fuzi skin Cui Pengfei, apprentice skin Cui Zui... These are heroes activated through intimacy.
Many more interaction indices were activated later, and surprisingly only Li Hechun and the Fifth Prince had positive indices; the original Emperor skin, the Relic skin Chu Wenwan skin, the Zombie skin Xiao Shu skin, the Bipolar skin Fourth Prince skin... all had negative indices.
Actually, if Xue Jin'an weren't playing the support role, he would really like to try out heroes with negative stats.
It's important to know that these heroes' skills are all based on their personality traits, life experiences, and other aspects. Characters like Chu Wenwan (the Relic Child) and Xiao Shu (the Zombie) sound very interesting. Whether I play them or not isn't important; I mainly want to see how their skills work.
Unfortunately, the time to select heroes was short, not enough for Xue Jin'an to scan their skills into his mind one by one. But it didn't matter, since the game wasn't going to end, he could just save them for next time.
Based on the data analysis, Xue Jin'an chose Zhou Yushu.
Zhou Yushu, the actor who played Chu Wenjing, had a life experience that can be divided into three parts: researching Gu worms in Dianzhou, infiltrating the Chu family under the identity of Chu Wenjing, and finally participating in the struggle for succession and revenge as depicted in the original novel.
Therefore, Zhou Yushu's first and second skills are named after the Gu worms, with effects of stacking Gu poison damage and removing control effects, respectively; his third skill can randomly swap the positions of any two people on the field; and his fourth skill sacrifices 60% of his health to deal 200% damage to marked enemies.
Soon everyone had made their selections and clicked "ready," and it was only then that the heroes chosen by both sides were revealed.
Well, the opposing team consists of three Helian Chengs and two Chang Dafus. It's obvious they're from the Northwest Army. Luckily, this is a low-level match, which allows hero repetition.
Xue Jin'an's team consists of: Lingzhi (top lane, original skin - Empress Dowager), Fuling (mid lane, original skin - Lu Bingzhu), Cui Zui (bottom lane, rebel king - Cui Zui), Xue Jin'an (support, Chu Wenjing - Zhou Yushu), and Xuan Shiyi (jungle, original skin - Emperor).
...Wait, has something dirty gotten mixed in? Xue Jin'an looked at the emperor and fell silent.
"Why did you choose him?" Xue Jin'an asked the crucial question.
Xuan Shiyi swallowed hard, her face contorted with a bitter expression, and said, "Your Highness, this servant has only activated one hero."
Xuan Shiyi lied. In fact, he activated many heroes, so many that he himself couldn't count them all.
He was, after all, a member of the Imperial Guard, and who knows how many secrets he had uncovered and handled for His Majesty. It could be said that all the living officials of the Great Qi Dynasty with names and identities were among them.
Despite the large number of them, Xuan Shiyi dared not show them, especially his own skin from the clothing department. Releasing any of them would expose his identity as a spy—although everyone seemed to know it, but no one called him out on it.
However, Xuan Shiyi's pride as a spy wouldn't allow such a mistake, so he decided to go all the way and lock onto the original skin of the emperor.
"His Majesty is quite capable," Xuan Shiyi whispered in defense.
"Really? I don't believe it." The emperor's cooking had already deeply impressed Xue Jin'an.
Xuan Shiyi immediately promised that he would play the game well.
As it turned out, Xue Jin'an's suspicions were quite reasonable.
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