Chapter 122: Game Update

“Bro, forget about the warehouse thing, but you can join our Six Paths Guild. We can sell you some gear at a lower price.”

Another player walked over and said with a smile.

“Heh, Six Paths Guild is a scam. Bro, don’t fall for it. If you want to join, join our Seven Heavens Guild instead.” The guy Chen Mo had spoken to earlier chuckled.

“Seven Heavens Guild? Hah! Bro, whatever you do, don’t join them—that’s the real trap! Someone joined Seven Heavens Guild before. They promised at least ten Beast Cores in five days, but their leader Qi Se Yu Yi turned on him and killed him over and over until he quit!” The player from Six Paths Guild snorted coldly and started exposing Seven Heavens Guild’s history.

“Your Six Paths Guild dares to talk about that? That guy was your spy—don’t think we didn’t know!” The young man from Seven Heavens Guild frowned angrily.

“You could… join our Snow Night Guild.”

As the two argued, a timid female player timidly stepped forward.

“Little Qing Tian, your guild should just give up. Your Snow Night Guild only has you and your leader Xue Ye Hua—what can you even do?”

When Qing Tian appeared, the two young men immediately stopped arguing and laughed mockingly.

“Leader Xue Ye Hua has special privileges here! You can’t compare!” Qing Tian’s face turned red as she argued back.

“Stop arguing. Can someone first explain why you all want me to join your guilds?” Chen Mo asked curiously.

The three of them had nothing else to do anyway, so they didn’t mind spending some time explaining. They took turns talking, occasionally breaking into arguments. Chen Mo listened carefully and finally understood what was going on.

It was all because of the special rules of the Land of Exile.

The Land of Exile was a giant prison. He was currently on the lowest level of the prison. No one knew how many levels the prison had. Among the Blacklisted Players in the prison, there were over forty people, and they had only been up to the Second Level. No one had gone higher.

The Second Level of the prison was also divided into separate rooms. Every day, 100 monsters would respawn on that entire level. Killing these monsters didn’t give any Experience, but they would always drop one Beast Core. If you were lucky, you could also get gear.

Beast Cores were the most important items in the Land of Exile. With 10 Beast Cores, you could ask the administrators in the Land of Exile to reduce your Crime Value by 1 point. You could also exchange them for a decent amount of Experience Points.

But the number of Beast Cores was very small—only 100 per day. With so many people competing for just 100 Beast Cores, the competition was fierce.

To grab more Beast Cores, Blacklisted Players formed groups to fight for them. By the time Chen Mo arrived, only two large guilds remained in the Land of Exile, plus fewer than ten individuals or teams who refused to join them.

The monster respawns followed a strict pattern. Starting at midnight every day, monsters respawned every six hours, with 25 monsters appearing each time for the Blacklisted Players in the Land of Exile to fight over.

Except for the First Level, every level of the Land of Exile prison was huge. The Second Level had far more than 25 rooms. No one knew which room a monster would respawn in until it actually appeared. Guilds with more members had a big advantage here—they could send members with low damage output to search for monsters, then have high-damage players quickly kill any monsters found. Players who hadn’t joined the two big guilds might be unlucky and not even see a single monster. Even if they did find one, if they couldn’t kill it quickly, the two big guilds would steal it without hesitation.

Here, strength was everything. No one cared if you attacked the monster first.

Even so, a guild with a dozen or twenty members typically only got 30 to 40 Beast Cores per day. Split evenly, that was only two or three Beast Cores per person. It would take four or five days just to clear 1 point of Crime Value.

This rate of clearing Crime Value was very slow. Blacklisted Players started with at least 50 Crime Value. At this speed, it would take over half a year to leave the Land of Exile.

Chen Mo voiced his confusion, and then he learned that every five days, by using 10 Beast Cores, they could teleport to a special area for reducing Crime Value. There, unless you were very unlucky, you could usually clear a few points of Crime Value. The real use of Beast Cores was actually as an entry ticket.

Chen Mo immediately lost interest. He didn’t have any Crime Value himself. He had come to the Land of Exile only because of the Heinous Crime Title. Once three days passed, he could remove the title and become a regular player again.

However, as Chen Mo continued listening to the three of them, he couldn’t help but frown.

He had thought he could leave the Land of Exile in three days, but that wasn’t possible at all.

The Land of Exile was definitely not a place you could enter and leave freely. There were hardly any NPCs here. Even if your name turned white, you couldn’t return to the city immediately. You had to wait for the NPC who activated the Teleportation Array to come down from a higher level. Only then could players with cleared names teleport away.

The teleport NPC, like the warehouse NPC, only appeared once a month. Unlucky players might have to stay in the Land of Exile for two months.

Chen Mo was one of the unlucky ones. Just yesterday, both the warehouse NPC and the teleport NPC had appeared. The next time they showed up would be almost a month later.

But even if he had come one day earlier, Chen Mo couldn’t have left right away.

“Is there no other way to leave here?”

Chen Mo felt a chill in his heart. If there was no other way, he would be stuck in the Land of Exile for a whole month.

There weren’t many monsters to kill here. Even if he camped out all day, he wouldn’t be able to kill many monsters, and the Experience he could exchange for was extremely limited—far less than leveling up by killing monsters outside.

“Nope, you should just give up and join our Six Paths Guild!”

“Join Seven Heavens!”

The two young men argued fiercely. Qing Tian opened her mouth to speak too but ended up mumbling quietly without saying anything.

“I’ll look around first.”

Chen Mo had no intention of joining any of them. Either he didn’t need Beast Cores at all, or he needed a large quantity. Joining a guild here offered him no benefits.

Because of the Heinous Crime Title, he respawned in the Land of Exile after death. But he hadn’t forgotten that in the Land of Exile, he belonged to a privileged class. While other players had to wait a month to leave, he might be able to leave early.

Chen Mo wanted to explore around, but after talking with the three for over half an hour, his online time was almost up. He glanced at Sesshylow in his pet slot.

Looking at Sesshylow, Chen Mo pondered quietly.

Sesshylow was definitely not an ordinary Pet. He looked at the pet panel, but all of Sesshylow’s Attributes were displayed as “???”.

He couldn’t see Sesshylow’s Attributes directly, but if he let Sesshylow out to fight for a while, he could get a rough idea. Unfortunately, he didn’t have time right now.

“No problem. If you want to join a guild, remember to look for me.”

The two young men didn’t try to persuade Chen Mo further, nor did they use threats. They just smiled.

New Blacklisted Players who just arrived here were usually pretty arrogant. But once all their gear dropped and they didn’t even have a weapon, even if they encountered a monster respawn, they couldn’t kill it. In less than two days, this guy would come running to them begging to join a guild.

Chen Mo logged off, planning to browse the Forum, rest well for the night, and test Sesshylow’s Attributes tomorrow. He also wanted to find out what secret Sesshylow held that made that old man Bevicent want to capture her.

But when he went to the Forum, Chen Mo was shocked to find that since he was in the Land of Exile, he couldn’t access the regular player Forum. He had entered the exclusive Forum for the Land of Exile.

This exclusive Forum had strange rules—all posts were only kept for five days. After five days, the System automatically deleted them. The Forum had only one board, and there were pitifully only three posts on it.

Chen Mo had heard of the people who posted these three posts: Six Paths Maniac, leader of Six Paths Guild; Qi Se Yu Yi, leader of Seven Heavens Guild; and Xue Ye Hua, leader of Snow Night Guild.

Other than that, there were no other posts.

Chen Mo could only sigh, deeply experiencing what it meant that Blacklisted Players had no rights. In this place, it was no wonder some people who ended up here preferred to delete their characters and start over rather than suffer.

Chen Mo could only exit the virtual network and check news about the Genesis Game on the traditional internet. When he looked, he found that at noon that day, the official site had posted an announcement that the Game would undergo maintenance for an update.

At midnight that night, the Game would shut down for an update. After this update, Players would no longer have time limits for being online. However, the Virtual Reality Helmet would monitor the Player’s fatigue level. When fatigue or sleepiness reached a certain point, the connection would be forcibly disconnected.

At the same time, Hibernation Pods would be launched simultaneously in all countries worldwide. Using a Hibernation Pod, Players could rest while playing the Game. With a Hibernation Pod, playing 24 hours a day was no problem.

However, the Hibernation Pod couldn’t completely replace real sleep. Depending on the person, every two or three days, Players would need to have a proper sleep.

There weren’t many updates to the game content itself, but to ensure the stability of the Hibernation Pods, the Game would be shut down for nearly three days. It would reopen at 6 PM on the third day.

During this time, Players could order Hibernation Pods.

“Two hundred thousand Huaxia Currency for one Hibernation Pod—this thing really isn’t for average people.”

Chen Mo went to the official site to check the price and found that ordering a Hibernation Pod now cost a full 200,000 Huaxia Currency.

The price was steep, but Chen Mo didn’t hesitate and bought one.

Even if he didn’t play the Game, the rest function of the Hibernation Pod made it worth the money.

After he paid, his phone immediately received a message informing him that the Hibernation Pod would be delivered to him by noon the day after tomorrow, and he should remember to be home to receive it.

“It’s been over half a month since I transferred to the Chinese department. It’s about time I showed my face.”

With nothing to do for the next two-plus days, Chen Mo thought about it and decided to visit the university, fulfilling his duty as a student.

However, the next morning, just as he was about to head back to school, Fatty Tian called him: “Bro Chen, are you in the Land of Exile right now?”