Chapter 273: Chapter 217: Team Leaderboard

Because it was really hard to decide, Yan Qing didn’t rush to choose a team skill right away.

Back in the day, this kind of issue would require a deep dive into forums for the tremendous wisdom of netizens, so Yan Qing felt he couldn’t be too impulsive.

In other words, according to Yan Qing’s own thoughts, Undying Heart is something he would absolutely not choose. It offers no help in terms of offense or defense, unless you possess a divine technique or talisman with a self-destruct function, allowing the skill to be maximized. But reality isn’t a game; Undying Heart gives oneself a bit more chance to survive. Even if rarely used, it only needs to be useful once to pay off, and isn’t much worse than other skills.

He calmed down and continued to examine the other functions of the Disaster Order, finding that its features are quite sparse. When pressed hard, a light curtain listing team members will appear, where you can perform four operations: "Invite others to join the team," "Dismiss team members," "Manage team roles," and "View team skills." That’s it.

It was at this moment that he realized a huge problem—he had just created a team immediately upon discovering he could do so, but what if some features can only be operated by players? Establishing a team isn’t a one-off deal; there are many more important gameplay elements later!

He quickly clicked "Invite others to join the team," entered ’Jiang Shi,’ and a whole bunch of inviteable names popped up in the list. But Yan Qing could easily recognize Jiang Shi, whom he personally modeled, and invited him to join the team.

Then he logged into Jiang Shi’s account on the gaming device, and sure enough, a notification popped up at the bottom right: ’You have received an invitation from ’Calamity.’

After choosing to join, Jiang Shi’s screen immediately displayed a new icon named ’Team’ at the bottom right. Clicking it revealed four submenus: ’Team Members,’ ’Team Skills,’ ’Team Tasks,’ and ’Team Rankings.’

Yan Qing breathed a sigh of relief. At least he could manage the team using a secondary account, and if necessary, transfer the team leadership to Jiang Shi. He first opened ’Team Tasks,’ finding there were already two tasks inside, both quite simple:

[Recruit three team members, Reward: +5 Team Experience]

[Raise any team skill by 1 level, Reward: +5 Team Experience]

Obviously, these two tasks are basic tasks with rewards, easy enough to be completed with minimal effort. Yan Qing wasn’t in a hurry for now, since he hadn’t even chosen his team skills yet.

When he clicked on ’Team Rankings,’ he was slightly taken aback despite being prepared for it.

He had considered many possibilities before, such as no one else in this world being able to obtain a Clan Establishment Order, making the team ranking list empty except for the [Calamity] he just created. Or this world might already have many powerful teams; it’s been less than ten years since the ’Messenger’ game launched, but how long has this world existed? Even the youngest teams could spend decades, hundreds, or thousands of years leveling up, so it wouldn’t have surprised Yan Qing if the leaderboard was full of max-level teams.

The one thing he hadn’t anticipated was—almost the entire ranking list was anonymous.

Yan Qing scrolled through the list, roughly estimating there were about forty teams—surprisingly few. It seems people in this world can indeed obtain Clan Establishment Orders from treasure chests, but the drop rate must be abysmally low. Among them, the vast majority are anonymous teams [???], with unknown team levels, member information, and team skills. In the vast ranking list, there are actually only two teams with displayed names!

One was the newly established [Calamity] at the very bottom, and the other was the number one ranked team—

[Celestial Court]!

Level 10 guild, fully staffed with 5000 members, team description: "Welcome everyone to the Celestial Court for exchanges!"

What can I say, your team name and description don’t quite match. You must have randomly chosen the first description when establishing the team and later realized there’s no way to change it... However, since people in this world can’t see the rankings, it doesn’t really matter if it’s changed or not.

But why is it that only [Celestial Court] shows its name, while the other teams are all hidden? Yan Qing pondered for a moment, then pulled out the Disaster Order and checked the team management functions, confirming his thought: The team token cannot disable team anonymity; this uncommon function can only be performed in the game.

In other words, if you choose not to make the team public when establishing it, it will never be public. Although public teams get 1 point of team skill points, how would people in this world know the importance of team skill points? Even Yan Qing isn’t too sure; he just habitually doesn’t miss any benefits.

Comparatively, the notification saying ’Your team will receive privacy protection’ is bound to be more appealing to the locals. Moreover, starting an organization from scratch is typically weak in its beginning stages, so caution is natural. As a result, among forty-plus teams, only [Celestial Court] chose to be public from the beginning, while everyone else opted for anonymity.

Although Yan Qing isn’t exactly well-traveled, he has at least toured the Three Central Plains Kingdoms, and indeed has never heard of organizations like team guilds.

Not only him, but even Shang Xinlei has no recollection of them; so where exactly are these forty-plus teams developing?

Surely, they can’t all be friendly circles never recruiting outsiders, right?

’Looks like the waters are quite deep in this world, too.’ thought Yan Qing. ’Honestly, lying low at the Thief’s House proves to be a wise choice.’

Now that he knew the third task’s location is the Chang’an Military Mansion, Yan Qing considered whether to create a secondary account to scout it out, but soon dismissed the idea after some thought.

Firstly, Chang’an Military Mansion is heavily guarded, and the mission location is at the core of the military mansion’s secret realm. At most, a small account can only investigate outside, which isn’t as effective as observing the sand table directly; secondly, unless Yan Qing is determined to abandon the Power of Calamity, he cannot casually sacrifice the lives of minor accounts, at least he must cancel the accounts himself.

Most importantly, Yan Qing knows that the local snake, Pharmacist’s Wish, will definitely investigate the most detailed intelligence, so he doesn’t need to waste his effort.

Thinking of this, Yan Qing logged into the Rabbit Heroine’s account. Still, it was pitch dark, although the sand table indicated that she should be near the cataclysmic forging factory, nothing could be seen or heard due to the "hibernate" status on her health bar.

Although "Messenger" is a third-person perspective game, some effects in the game resemble first-person perspective characteristics, such as eating flash makes the screen explode brightly, eating dizziness freezes the screen like a crash, eating chaos flips the screen up and down, left and right, eating slowness causes a 0.5-second input delay... Techniques PvP players must practice include operating normally under these negative statuses, as PvP players have two development directions, either pursuing strength or pursuing gloominess, or both strong and gloomy.

Among them, those that completely prevent player operation are only "hibernate", "coma" and a few others, and their duration is much shorter than other negative statuses. In the same realm, it’s very difficult to get caught. What’s happening to Rabbit Heroine is akin to Foundation Establishment executing against mortals.

In fact, seeing Rabbit Heroine bound by the Golden Lock in the sand table made Yan Qing give up the idea of rescuing her. She can’t save herself; someone else must destroy the Golden Lock to potentially free her, yet entering means crossing molten outer rivers... the risk is too high.

Moreover, outside is Chang’an Military Mansion, where could she run to?

In fact, Yan Qing feels pity; the Rabbit Heroine’s life-taking messenger strength is considered triple turn pinnacle, though not significant for secret realm strategy, it’s indeed the high-end strength Yan Qing urgently needs. If he could effortlessly get her out, Yan Qing would certainly lend a hand... after all, once he or Pharmacist’s Wish reaches Foundation Establishment, Rabbit Heroine’s strength would no longer assist.

Therefore, Yan Qing scheduled the next meeting for tomorrow early morning, allowing a day’s buffer. Pharmacist’s Wish should calm down by then. Compared to rescuing Rabbit Heroine, her priority should be leveling up and planning for the Foundation Establishment Pill. Once strength is attained, everything will come naturally; why hastily act now? Yan Qing understands her emotions but cannot fathom her persistence.

As the time approached, Yan Qing prepared to switch to the Mouse Monk account to try the secret realm. Before logging out, he suddenly remembered something and opened Rabbit Heroine’s personal warehouse.

Three days ago, he had moved Rabbit Heroine’s important items to the public warehouse, but her personal warehouse still contained some miscellanies. Yan Qing now planned to clean it thoroughly since this account most likely won’t be used anymore.

First were numerous candied haws, roast chicken, and wine, since these foods can stack, Yan Qing straightforwardly bought a large pile for Rabbit Heroine’s warehouse. Actually, it’s mainly for feeding Pharmacist’s Wish, who once discovered Rabbit Heroine eating candied haws and stared intently, if offered she’d decline unless Rabbit Heroine shared one with her... This woman is actually quite troublesome and loves drinking.

Then, there were four hairbands. They both found plain braids too simple and lively lacking, thus made some cloth hairbands for decoration, storing them typically with Rabbit Heroine.

Continuing, there was a booklet Yan Qing had no recollection of receiving, likely collected during Rabbit Heroine’s automatic evolvement.

The booklet lacked a title, and upon opening, he found it was a travel guide:

"The glutinous rice cake in Ba River County is delicious, lounging under the willows on a sunny afternoon is pleasant."

"The Little Wild Goose Pagoda in Chang’an County Town is great, the outer streets lively and offers food and tricks, make sure not to miss it while passing."

"The sunset at Lishan is splendid, though camping at the foot may encounter wildlife."

Inside were numerous listed points of interest and food recommendations, clearly a travel guide for Zhou Kingdom. Yan Qing realized that Pharmacist’s Wish might believe she and Rabbit Heroine would eventually part ways, hence preemptively compiled a guide pointing where to explore. Yan Qing thought she would continually cling and deter Rabbit Heroine from leaving.

Flipping further, it read "If confused where to go, look at the map I provided."

Yan Qing opened the warehouse and indeed found an item named "Folded Papers." Extracting it to reality and upon unfolding, it was Zhou Kingdom’s detailed terrain map, delineating highways and major towns, the layout resembled not a travel map but more a military map.

The bottom right corner of the map had a line of small text, "If you don’t understand the map, turn to the back."

Yan Qing flipped to the back, finding only one sentence:

"Come with me."

Unexpectedly, Pharmacist’s Wish who appeared carefree usually, was coaxing little sisters with trick after trick, each move saying ’don’t leave’ ’don’t leave’ and ’don’t leave’, which little sister in the world could withstand such an elder sister special attack?

Yan Qing gradually understood Pharmacist’s Wish’s persistence... if you care about someone, you wish they have happy days every day.

Perhaps, a day and a half might not be enough to calm her down. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

Yan Qing rubbed his temples and looked down at the Disaster Order in his hand.