Chapter 1 January's Chill

Even in January, the chill was biting, but the servers and forums for *Thrilling Paradise* were still blazing with activity.

Less than a week after the "Christmas Treasure Hunt" ended, Dream Inc. launched a brand new mode for the New Year: "Combined Melee."

The setup for this mode wasn't too complicated. Simply put, it was a multiplayer deathmatch game where players teamed up in pairs for duos.

However, the scripts in this mode contained several pairs of players, but the exact number... Dream Inc. stated "no upper limit." In other words, in the least populated scenario, there might only be two pairs of players... four people... engaging in a 2v2 battle, but it was also possible to have a hundred players in a script, divided into fifty teams fighting against each other.

In this mode with an uncertain number of participants, some of the rules applicable to traditional deathmatch games couldn't be used.

First, players definitely wouldn't be able to see the IDs of opposing players in the game menu. Everyone queuing for this mode could only see the status of themselves and their teammate. The total number of opposing players, their locations... none of that was known.

Secondly, given the above premise, the victory condition for this mode couldn't be based on "killing all opponents." Therefore, the victory condition for "Combined Melee" would be similar to that of a regular script, but with a "first-come, first-served" principle. For example, "obtain something before all other opponents, kill a specific target, or reach a certain location."

Of course, if all other opposing players died before someone achieved the victory condition, the last remaining team or player would naturally be the victor.

After so much explanation, you've probably guessed that the story that follows takes place in a "Combined Melee" mode script.

But before telling that story, we need to sort out what happened to Feng Bujue after he participated in the "Christmas Treasure Hunt" mode.

That morning, after waking up from the game pod, the white light in Brother Jue's eyes soon faded, and he clearly felt that his "Lie of the Truth" ability had grown to some extent.

He couldn't help but think that, tracing back to the source, he and "Destiny" could be considered fellow villagers from the same universe. Perhaps... "Destiny" knew some knowledge unknown to people in this universe and helped him in some way.

Feng Bujue sat like that, thinking until dawn.

When he snapped out of it due to the urge to urinate, he realized it was already nine in the morning... He quickly went to the bathroom and immediately returned, trying to log in to the game.

But at this moment, the game pod's voice prompt told him that an anomaly had been detected in his character, and he couldn't log in.

So, Brother Jue immediately contacted Dream Inc.'s customer service...

Long story short, he received a reply after one business day. The contents of that email were roughly as follows:

A complete rollback is impossible, because your interactions with NPCs and derivatives, and the consequences they lead to, are themselves part of the game's progress. It's like when some people's equipment is destroyed while fighting monsters in a script; this kind of loss definitely cannot be compensated. However, even having the character's attributes wiped clean is indeed a rather unusual situation. After discussions between various departments of the company, the final decision is:

1. The cleared character level will be raised to Level 55, with the bonus experience points (192,312,600) as compensation for other abnormal losses.

2. The character's specialization levels, skill points, and game currency can all be restored to their state at the time of the last login.

3. All items and equipment in the inventory and on the character, except for "Other" items, below Excellent quality (including Excellent quality) cannot be restored.

The items that cannot be restored include: [Endless Grenade Magazine] (Excellent, Tool), [WJQ-308 Military Shovel (Indestructible)] (Excellent, originally a "Tool," defined as a "Composite Weapon" in this version), [Stellar Cooling Cannon (Not Really)] (Excellent, Weapon), [The Alchemist King's Taunt] (Excellent, Armor), [Phantom Lady's Caress] (Excellent, Armor), [Smiling Face] (Excellent, Armor), [Name: i_wAnnA_Be_A_BeLt] (Excellent, Armor), [Survival Value Supplement (Medium) *5], [Survival Value Supplement (Large) *5].

4. Except for [Moonwalk] and [Rankyaku], all other skills cannot be restored.

5. The character's storage room was not affected.

The above is the result of the handling that Feng Bujue received...

If that email hadn't included a sentence at the end saying "Hehehe, please bear with us, dear player," Brother Jue would probably have stormed Dream Inc.'s headquarters.

But when Feng Bujue saw that sentence, he instantly understood many things...

Looking at the entire email, it was full of bureaucratic language and the tone didn't seem very polite. Only that last sentence... was clearly Woody's doing.

To others, this might not mean much, but Feng Bujue understood that Woody had conveyed some information to him in a unique way.

That is—this time, Woody wasn't the only one calling the shots.

It wasn't difficult to deduce this...

In this "gamble," Feng Bujue was a very crucial and conspicuous figure. There were definitely many big shots who wanted him to be finished. This time, when he was cleared by Twenty-Three, those people must have been celebrating. And among those guys, there must be one named "Uriel."

In short, it was imaginable how much pressure Woody was under during this incident... The opponents in the gamble would definitely hold him accountable, arguing that "restoring Feng Bujue's data is unfair." It seemed... that the fact that Brother Jue's character could be restored to its current state was already the result of Woody doing everything he could to mediate.

In this situation, if Feng Bujue didn't let it go, he would only push himself and Woody into a worse situation.

Brother Jue was good at calculating, understood the situation, and was also quite willing to reflect on himself. This time, it was originally caused by his own "miscalculation." Thinking of this, he no longer hesitated. It was only right that he pay for his own mistakes.

And so, Feng Bujue, "back to square one," returned to the game...

The first thing he did was to organize his existing resources.

Thankfully, he received a "clearance reward" as soon as he logged in. Clearly, Honghu and Snow had completed the script's main quest after he "died." Of course... Brother Jue only received a portion of the experience; he didn't get the rewards for clearing the script alive.

Afterwards, he asked Honghu what had happened, and the other party told him that after Twenty-Three instantly killed him and "Ken," Blackbeard immediately handed over what Twenty-Three wanted in a timely manner, and Twenty-Three left after achieving his goal.

Honghu also assessed the situation and quickly expressed his attitude towards Brother Jue's death to Blackbeard—he was overjoyed. Then, he negotiated a deal with Blackbeard.

In the end, after helping Blackbeard investigate the mystery of his son's and "Shadow of Dance's" disappearance, Honghu and Snow successfully obtained the "Original Translation of the Ramayana" as a reward, completing the script.

By the way, the truth was actually very simple: Shadow of Dance and Blackbeard's son were discovered by several members of the Nine Gods who were still active on the island when they met. Afterwards, they were ambushed by the Church of Illusions and died together. Shadow of Dance used his special ability to leave a message before his death and passed it on to Blackbeard, but it wasn't very clear because he didn't quite understand the opponent's overall plan, nor did he know that there was a super-powerful derivative controlling things behind the scenes.

After learning all this, Feng Bujue was relieved of a worry. The game still had to go on...

The frustration of the [Must-Break Defense Blade] breaking was still vivid in his mind, but now it seemed that this loss could only be called an "appetizer."

Let's take a look at Brother Jue's current character attributes—

Feng Bujue: Lv55

Title: [Dark Vanguard], Title Ability: [Demon Subjugation Descent]

Experience Points: 321,805,600,000,000, Skill Points: 105,681, Game Currency: 10,145,000.

Specializations: General A, Machinery A, Reconnaissance B, Fighting S, Shooting B, Medical D, Spiritual Arts A, Summoning A.

Inventory (14/25): Chuck Norris' Autobiography, Deception Pocket Watch, Chuck Norris' Razor, Oxygen Pipe, Yi Da, Qi Xu Ru Lin, Dong Ru Lei Ting, Sealed One's Right Foot, Sealed One's Left Foot, Sealed One's Right Wrist, Sealed One's Left Wrist, Rat Hammer, Just_We, Tiangang Di Sha Box.

Equipment: Mad Poker (Psionic Weapon), 1920's Harsh Armor, Ta Xu, Bell's Everyday Knife.

Storage Room (3/15): "Poker Hero" Hero ID Card, Puzzle Card - Sparrow, Puzzle Card - White.

Skill Bar (2/13): [Moonwalk], [Rankyaku]

Unequipped Skills: [Ice Mage's Persistence], [Not-So-Hasty Repair], [Kikouhou], [Nanto Flying Dragon Fist]

Soul Intent: Zero Time Difference Calculation, Rewrite (Second Order).

This was much cleaner... The few skills he had left in the storage room were lucky enough to escape. And the equipment that was Perfect grade or higher and a few key "Other" items were restored, which was a stroke of luck amidst misfortune.

After sorting things out, Feng Bujue naturally took the remaining skills and hero ID cards from the storage room with him. Anyway, his inventory and skill bar were now much emptier, so he might as well take them.

In a sense, the loss caused by this "miscalculation" added some fun to Feng Bujue's game because his strength was weakened. In the days that followed, he queued for many scripts with combat difficulty that seemed quite low compared to before, but that's not what we're talking about this time...

This story still has to start from that night of New Year's Day, when he and Ruoyu teamed up for a "Combined Melee."

…………

[Feng Bujue, Level 55]

[Si Yu Ruo Li, Level 52]

[Please select the game mode you wish to join.]

[You have selected Combined Melee, please confirm.]

[Confirmed, script is generating...]

[Loading begins, please wait.]

The familiar system prompts flashed by one by one, followed by an opening line with a very strong wuxia flavor, spoken by a rough male voice:

"Wind and snow fill Zhongzhou, the martial world has no old friends. Let's drink a cup of wine, and roam the world with a sword."

This opening line was unique to this script, and its style had already revealed the world view of the script.

[Loading complete. You are currently playing Combined Melee.]

[This mode provides a script introduction and has a chance of side hidden quests and special worldviews.]

[Script victory reward: 10,000,000 experience points.]

[The script introduction will be played soon. The game will start immediately after the playback.]

When he saw the clearance reward, Feng Bujue was a little disappointed because the one thing he didn't lack right now was experience. After the data corruption incident, if there was any positive compensation he received, it was experience... He got nearly two hundred million free experience points.

Therefore, what Brother Jue urgently needed now were equipment and skills.

Of course, he hadn't been completely without gains in the past few days. Many people might have forgotten that Feng Bujue could actually "manufacture skill cards" (Spooky Electric Company), but the activation mechanism of that ability was very complicated and had to be done at the right time to succeed.

In addition, the [Tiangang Di Sha Box] was also an item from which he could learn skills. However, Brother Jue hadn't yet fully understood all the functions of this thing and was still exploring it...

[Ming Dynasty, Qifeng Year 9, Twelfth Lunar Month.]

The narration quickly began the plot introduction, and as soon as it opened, it reported a fictional reign year that didn't exist in history. Like the so-called "Shengping Year 22" in the script where Brother Jue met Lin Yan and Eunuch Cao last time, this was undoubtedly a fictional dynasty in a parallel universe.

[The emperor strives for governance, the people are prosperous, and the world is at peace.]

"Huh? The Ming Dynasty emperor strives for governance?" Brother Jue couldn't help but complain in his heart after hearing the second sentence.

[However, in the martial world, there is a bloody storm.]

[In the Mid-Autumn of this year, the entire family of the Jiang Family Fortress Master, "Horizontal River Sword" Jiang Sanye, sixty-three people in total, were found dead in their home. Including Jiang San himself, all the dead were killed by the same sword, with the same sword technique, in an instant, with one move.]

[Jiang San was born in the Yunnan border area and was the direct disciple of the Cangshan Sect's head, "Cloud Exploring Swordsman" Duan Keyi. After the incident, Duan Keyi personally led his disciples to investigate. A month later, things gradually became clear...]

[According to legend, Jiang San accidentally obtained a sword manual that had been lost overseas from a wandering Japanese swordsman a few days before his death. The swordsman didn't know the true value of this sword manual and pawned it off at a low price. After several twists and turns, it fell into the hands of Jiang Sanye.]

[Jiang San's martial arts were already among the best in the martial world, otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to build the foundation of Jiang Family Fortress. After obtaining the sword manual, Jiang San discovered that this manual was actually the peerless martial art written by Pei Min (one of the Three Perfections of the Tang Dynasty, the Sword Saint who was as famous as the Poet Immortal Li Bai and the Grass Saint Zhang Xu).]

[Jiang San was overjoyed and immediately handed over all the family business and other matters to his younger brother to manage, while he himself went into seclusion to practice the sword.]

[Unexpectedly, the news leaked, and a few days later, Jiang Family Fortress suffered a massacre.]

[A month later, when the details of the case gradually became clear, the tragic death of the sixty-three members of the Jiang family was no longer important.]

[The focus of the entire martial world was all on that sword manual...]

[By the twelfth lunar month, there were reliable reports that the sword manual would appear on New Year's Eve in a town a hundred miles away from Shanhai Pass...]

The narration stopped abruptly, and Feng Bujue and Li Ruoyu both regained their ability to move.

In the blink of an eye, the two were in a snow-covered wilderness. The feeling brought by the sharp drop in temperature could be described with just one word: cold.

Even though the sun was directly overhead, indicating it was noon, the warmth that the sunlight could provide was truly limited.

[Main quest triggered]

Similar to deathmatch games, this Combined Melee mode also revealed the ultimate goal right from the start.

[Obtain the "Sword Dance Manuscript" before other players and maintain its ownership for one hour.]

When this quest appeared in the quest bar along with the system voice, there was also an annotation below it—"Sword Dance Manuscript" cannot be placed in the inventory. Please click here to view the detailed rules for determining its "ownership."

The word "view" was a hyperlink, and focusing attention on it would display a more detailed explanation.

"Looks like..." Feng Bujue only took a few seconds to read all the relevant information mentioned above. He immediately said to Ruoyu beside him, "... the difficulty of this main quest lies in 'holding' it, not 'obtaining' it."

"Is it that difficult to keep the sword manual from being snatched away for an hour?" Ruoyu asked.

"Heh..." Feng Bujue smiled. "Let's talk as we walk. Standing still like this... I estimate that we'll lose survival points from the cold in a little while."