DSMC Chapter 178.1

As soon as the announcement about the new instances going live was released, it jolted awake all the players resting in Central Zone.

At this point, it wasn’t just Yan Jiyun and the others cursing the game’s shamelessness in their hearts. Players from all the guilds were cursing it too, and much more viciously. Being unable to rely on the instance system to earn points was more painful to them than having their lives taken.

The moment the new instances went online and the old instances were taken offline, it meant they could no longer live off their existing resources. Entering new instances meant deaths and casualties. They could no longer keep farming the old instances or squeeze every last bit of profit out of them. Normally, when instances merely underwent routine updates, it wouldn’t have much impact on the instance information they sold. But now the system was directly cutting off the main business they relied on. Who wouldn’t be angry? What’s more, the system hadn’t even told them exactly which instances would be taken offline.

The notification bars for players’ friends kept flashing with new messages.

Yan Jiyun was sprawled in his oversized cat bed. He wasn’t particularly agitated, though. After all, every time he entered an instance, the information he bought had never been of any use. Now that the system was taking care of things for him, it was actually saving him the time he would otherwise spend searching for new clues. He might as well use that time to improve his knowledge in various areas and train his physical abilities.

That’s right. He wanted to enter a new instance and find out why the system had suddenly launched new instances. Could it be because of the bug Qi Yunchu had mentioned during the joint guild conference?

Could the bug have been too severe for the system to completely repair, forcing it to shut down the instances to prevent the same problem from occurring again?

Still, he would know which old instances were being taken offline as soon as noon tomorrow arrived.

The players resting in Central Zone that night didn’t get much sleep. Everyone was keeping an eye on the announcement that was about to be released.

Whether the new instances were coming online or the old ones were going offline, Yan Jiyun felt it wouldn’t have much impact on him. He calmly muted the system announcement and glanced at Qi Feng’s status inside the instance.

While he was sleeping, two more updates had appeared from Qi Feng’s side.

[Your Master is fighting the mutated Pegasus. Oh my, he was knocked flat on the ground by a kick from the mutated Pegasus. He’s like an unkillable cockroach, he’s already back on his feet!]

Yan Jiyun: “……”

What the hell was this system broadcasting? Was its vocabulary really this terrible? Anyone who knew better would understand this was a high-risk Top-level instance. Anyone who didn’t would think it was broadcasting some fun children’s sporting event.

There were about two hours between the appearances of the two updates.

The second update was relatively normal, but Yan Jiyun’s heart still lurched when he saw it. These Master-Pet updates were truly torturing his nerves.

[Your Master has obtained a key item and is currently being hunted by players in the game.]

Qi Feng’s situation after entering the instance wasn’t all that different from his own.

Could it be that Qi Feng was actually the type of player who preferred fighting alone? Maybe he didn’t like teamwork at all?

Yan Jiyun recalled what had happened during the day. Qi Feng hadn’t been surprised at all by the cards brought out by Qi Yunchu and Xu Xian. At the time, all Yan Jiyun had heard was Lan Mo and the others expressing their dissatisfaction and anger, while Qi Feng had remained completely calm from beginning to end. Thinking about it carefully now, he seemed as though he had known everything beforehand.

Had he actually been preparing to enter the Top-level instance all along? And this time had merely provided him with an opportunity, while to outsiders, it looked as though he had been “forced” into it.

What a brilliant ruse.

Yan Jiyun remembered how, in the [Innocence] instance, Qi Feng had deliberately allowed an NPC to capture him in order to lure Yan Weicheng out, only escaping at the most critical moment.

During the day, Lan Mo and the others had been too concerned about Qi Feng to think clearly. At the time, Yan Jiyun had been unable to see Qi Feng’s expression from inside the backpack. Only now did he realize it.

After hearing He Yuanle’s gossip that day, he had always felt that something wasn’t quite right.

Qi Feng had already been a Hard-level player long ago. He didn’t know why Qi Feng hadn’t entered the Top-level instance before. Perhaps he had his reasons and deliberately avoided Top-level instances for the time being. But it was possible that he had wanted to enter one for a long time and had merely created the impression to outsiders that he had become weaker.

From an outsider’s perspective, his performance that day had seemed overly submissive, as though he had been “soft-hearted” and “left with no choice.” But what if everything had actually been within Qi Feng’s expectations? Perhaps he had already prepared himself to enter the Top-level instance, and today had simply presented him with a rare opportunity.

Once Yan Jiyun looked at things from this angle, everything suddenly made sense.

No wonder when Shi Yan blocked their path, Qi Feng’s first reaction had been to grab a chair and smash the café window. And when it was almost time to be pulled into the instance, he decisively threw his backpack to Lan Mo. Given Qi Feng’s abilities, after smashing the window, he could have easily jumped out himself.

Could all of this have been an act?

Qi Feng had been capable of establishing his own guild three years ago. He had saved so many new players in instances, and he had always managed to overshadow Su Qiuming in every way. How could he possibly have become weaker? If he really had become weaker, how could he have continued performing at such a high level in the Hard-level instance? 

Was he lying low and biding his time? Why?

Had he discovered some important bug in the system without telling anyone else?

Judging from the system suddenly launching new instances, there was probably a bug that had forced it to take the old instances offline. But what kind of bug had actually appeared?

Yan Jiyun went over everything related to the instance bugs. Could it be that bugs appeared whenever an NPC developed abnormalities?

The Cruiser Fleet wanted to find the system’s bugs and then escape the game. But after finding a bug, how could they break through the system? And even if they found players capable of farming NPC Favorability, what then?

If they simply relied on NPCs to disrupt an instance, the system could keep taking those instances offline and then launch new ones. As long as the system patched and supplemented the instances afterward, wouldn’t that solve the problem?

Was every instance closely connected to a particular NPC?

If that NPC developed an intense sense of self-awareness within the game, would it affect the instance’s storyline? And the only players capable of influencing or changing an NPC’s consciousness were those who had raised that NPC’s Favorability to maximum?

Yan Jiyun suddenly sat upright in bed.

He turned back into human form, found a notebook and pen, and wrote down the instances he had entered and the NPCs whose Favorability he had maxed out.

Going Home After School — Li Muyang.

Midnight Diner — Lin Xie and Jiang Yan.

Hide and Seek — Tang Shi and Liang Yu.

Crazy Zoo — the eight NPCs whose consciousnesses had been projected into animals such as the black panther.

Peak Competition — Lucifer.

Mermaid, Innocence, Mingya High School, and Mingya High School 2.0 — Qu Wanqiao.

The first four instances had all produced new endings. As for Lucifer’s Peak Competition, it seemed that the ending hadn’t changed. He wasn’t sure whether he had actually maxed out Lucifer’s Favorability, since NPC Favorability from the Peak Competition wasn’t included on the leaderboard.

Qu Wanqiao’s Favorability had definitely reached maximum because he had appeared on the Favorability leaderboard. He knew that much. During the instance, however, the sly system had stopped giving him notifications about NPC Favorability.

If Qi Yunchu was searching for players capable of farming Favorability in order to destroy instances, then Yan Jiyun suddenly had a bold theory.

Could it be that the NPCs in the instances he had cleared — those whose Favorability he had maxed out — had developed consciousness of their own and left the instances? Or perhaps they had stopped following the predetermined plots inside the instances and stopped properly playing their assigned roles, causing one bug after another until the system was eventually forced to delete the problematic instances or NPCs.

If the system’s instances were simply completed by predetermined NPCs carrying out assigned tasks, then it could just replace any NPC that caused a bug.

But it hadn’t done that.

Was it because NPCs with maxed-out Favorability had become too closely connected to their instances?

If the system couldn’t remove an NPC from an instance, then it could only delete the entire instance.

All the instances associated with Teacher Qu had been shut down. Did that mean the system could no longer control that NPC?

Then how exactly were these instances constructed?

Damn it. If Qi Feng hadn’t been dragged into the Top-level instance, Yan Jiyun could have asked him about it.

Now several guild leaders had been pulled into the Top-level instance. Did Qi Feng know something? Could it actually have been the system’s plan all along, using the little cards to drag these guild leaders into the Top-level instance and eliminate the players who wanted to oppose the system?

That was truly terrifying when he thought about it.

But if he were really asked to summarize how to farm NPC Favorability, he couldn’t exactly discuss it with other players. Their species were different, after all. This particular Favorability system was self-explanatory.

Yan Jiyun tossed down the pen in his hand and flopped back into his oversized cat bed. Once the time limit was reached, he returned to his cat form.

His individual strength was still rather weak. Of course, their little team was also growing stronger, so they would have more confidence when entering Intermediate Area instances next.

By noon tomorrow, they would probably have a definitive answer.

He hadn’t been in the game for very long. His conclusions were based only on his limited experiences, and there might still be many important pieces of information hidden from him. There were also many discoveries Qi Feng was keeping to himself.

More importantly, the most fundamental questions remained unanswered: What exactly were the instances in Destiny made of? Where had they come from? How were they created? Why could NPCs affect an entire instance? And how did the system actually operate?

They still didn’t know the answers to any of these questions.

The veteran players who had been trapped in the instances for so many years hadn’t figured them out either. Clearly, the system was hiding things very deeply.

Yan Jiyun also remembered something else. He recalled that yesterday, while Qi Feng had been chatting with Sister Jixiang, he had mentioned encountering an instance bug with Su Qiuming in the past and getting that instance sealed off by the system.

However, the instance Qi Feng had mentioned hadn’t been completely shut down. It had later returned under a different guise.

He needed to find someone and get a clear explanation about that instance. For some reason, it had been bothering him.

After putting all of this aside, Yan Jiyun glanced once more at the latest notification in the Master-Pet system.

Qi Feng was clearing instances alone at a pretty impressive speed. He had snatched someone else’s key item as soon as he entered. [Sweet Christmas] was really a misnomer; it really didn’t seem sweet at all.

Could it be that [Sweet Christmas] didn’t have enough players, so the system had created the little cards to drag people inside, and conveniently eliminate several guild leaders who wanted to destroy the system?

Yan Jiyun couldn’t figure it out. The little cards for these instances seemed to have been secretly slipped to people by Xu Xian.

There were still eight hours until noon.

Yan Jiyun got up, ate something, and then went back to sleep.

Worrying about Qi Feng wouldn’t help him. He might as well clear a couple more instances first and improve his experience. Clearing only one joint Mermaid instance was nowhere near enough. It might have just been a special case. Who knew whether other instances worked the same way?

Yan Jiyun lay on the bed thinking about all these things. Eventually, he fell asleep.

Perhaps he was still growing. He slept deeply and soundly, and every day he needed more than ten hours of sleep to feel rested.

When he opened his eyes, it was already noon.

He left his personal space to find something to eat. Qiu Xi had already brought food back for him and Gu Wenzhu.

Yan Jiyun told them that he was working on building muscle, so he was eating mostly eggs, boiled chicken breast, fish, and similar foods.

Looking at the food in front of him, Gu Wenzhu’s appetite seemed to diminish. “You don’t eat staple foods?”

Yan Jiyun nodded. “I can, but not too much. I’m trying to build muscle.”

Cats could actually eat rice too, but they couldn’t eat it every day, or they would become malnourished. They still needed to eat more meat and occasionally some vegetables to supplement other nutrients.

Just after Yan Jiyun finished eating, he received several messages from He Yuanle. He told them to wait for the instance announcement and asked where they were, as well as whether they could discuss which instance to enter together next.

He was pretty enthusiastic.

Yan Jiyun replied that they were waiting for the noon announcement. After a whole night’s anticipation, the players resting in Central City, as well as those who had just returned from game instances, were already impatient to find out which instances would be taken offline and which new instances would go online.