Dark Sand: My Players Are All Actors-Chapter 538 - 275 Ultimate Trial Selection Completed_2

Li Hongyun saw a box appear in front of him, square and flat enough to be strapped onto his back. By the standards of the real world, it could at best fit a set of carpenter’s tools before it was full.

But when he opened it, he discovered a whole new world inside.

It was like a dimensional space unto itself; whether for carpentry or blacksmithing, all the necessary tools were available, and it could even accommodate a small furnace.

As for the so-called "storage of a small number of finished products," that was even more exaggerated. Li Hongyun tried it out and found that it could even fit a cannon!

Aside from the space taken up by the cannon, there was still room to cram in three or four muskets and other things, such as several cannonballs and some gunpowder.

Without bringing the cannon, he could carry other items; the space was indeed quite large.

Li Hongyun couldn’t help but be amazed.

"Damn, a mobile arsenal, huh?"

Of course, the cannon wasn’t particularly large, just a bit bigger than the tiger squat cannon General Deng had used before, and it required some simple assembly and placement when taken out for use.

If he wanted a bigger cannon, he would have to use the various tools from the Divine Machine case to make it on the spot.

But no matter what, Li Hongyun no longer envied those cavalry players.

While charging on horseback was cool, it was also pretty cool to whip out a cannon and start blasting without warning!

"OK, now that I’ve got through the Divine Machine Trial, I’ll focus on grinding points in General Han’s instance.

"I wonder how many slots there will be for this ultimate trial?"

As Meng Yuan also had to pay attention to the Divine Machine Trial, he hadn’t yet had time to seriously explore the "Eight Thousand Miles of Clouds and Moon" instance and naturally hadn’t made it onto the leaderboard.

However, he felt that with the special skill enhancement from the Divine Machine, he might have a smoother run through the trial.

...

The tense and exciting ranking competition began.

Compared to the previous "Hesitant to Speak" instance, fewer people were clearing this instance. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

Because the difficulty of clearing this time was higher, neither the civil servant, military officer, nor prince routes were easy to complete.

The simplest path to clear was the civil servant line, but who wanted to play Qin Huizhi in there?

And in the military officer line, who wanted to watch General Han Fuyue being wrongfully killed?

So while the basic clearing conditions weren’t high, players didn’t want to choose the easiest path. They were aiming for 150% or even 200% completion.

Luckily, three top players had already mapped out the standard clearing routes, and following players could easily learn by imitation.

They could choose the heroic spirits that suited them best or consider making new modifications based on the standard route.

In any case, once the standard answer was available, it made it much easier for players to replicate.

To the players’ surprise, there were quite a few slots for the ultimate trial this time—forty-five!

Although it was more than half less than the one hundred slots in the "Hesitant to Speak" instance, it was still a substantial number.

As for why it was the somewhat odd number of forty-five... that was unclear.

Actually, if it were possible, Meng Yuan would have preferred to skip the ultimate trial phase like in Emperor Taizu of Sheng’s instance, dumping all the players into the Return Order Expedition.

But unfortunately, that was not possible.

Because in Emperor Taizu of Sheng’s instance, his kingly aura served as an anchor point, allowing players to be directly placed in it; but in this instance, General Han Fuyue was not an emperor, and Emperor Gaozong of Qi was a hopeless case.

In any event, the players couldn’t wait to begin their intense and thrilling push for rankings.

...

...

A week flew by in the blink of an eye.

The enthusiasm of the players for this trial was also quite high, partly because the forty-five slots were a decent number, sparking the players’ competitive spirit, and partly because of General Han Fuyue’s personal charisma, which made many players eager to enter the instance and fight alongside him.

Although it was also possible to do this in the normal Trial Illusion... it just wasn’t the same as the ultimate trial.

The players had noticed that, as more were allowed into the ultimate trial, cooperative gameplay between players became much more prevalent than in the normal trials.

And many of the truly flashy tactics, as well as the scenes that could be adapted into movies, were accomplished during the ultimate trials.

Moreover, after Wang Wenchuan’s instance, players realized that the full 100% pain setting wasn’t so terrible—after all, with more people going in, they could always play as civil servants.

The fighting was left to those players who weren’t afraid of pain.

Soon, the time for the ultimate trial arrived.

Players entered the special Return Order Space for the ultimate trial.

Meng Yuan mingled among the crowd, doing his best to keep a low profile.

This time he ranked thirty-ninth.

Among the forty-five, this was a perfect position that wouldn’t draw much attention and yet allowed him to smoothly blend into the crowd.

As for why he could make such progress compared to last time...

Of course, it was because Meng Yuan had creatively initiated the "heroic spirit summoning" gameplay in this instance!

Thanks to heroic spirit summoning, players could directly call upon historical figures to fight on their behalf.

And as a Return Orderer, adding just a bit more energy to his summoned heroic spirits to help them last a bit longer was certainly no problem, right?