96: Chapter 95 Hellish Start
Moreover, with her wealth in karma points, she could easily exchange for many more beautiful clothes. Yet, she still loved this outfit the most.
She looked down at the tactical jacket cinched at her waist and the corners of her mouth curled up.
"Fine," she still wasn't sure if she could truly recognize the Fate Master. But she was certain that as long as she got close enough, that feeling would appear again.
And the Top 1000 Tournament was the opportunity she could currently think of that was most likely to get her close to the Fate Master.
The problem was—could she get in?
In terms of merit ranking, she wasn't at the top, and regarding strength, she estimated she was even further from the level of the Yanhuang Civilization Top 1000... But she glanced at her official God-Seeing Society post; with 900 million followers, it could be said to be the largest support group for the Fate Master on the entire Fate Platform.
Her status as the president, combined with the unique label of "one of the three people who have seen the Fate Master with their own eyes," gave her influence on the Fate Platform that far exceeded the merit numbers themselves.
More importantly—the Revival Society.
Back when she first posted about her encounter with the Fate Master, the Comprehensive Coordination Department of the Revival Society had sent her a formal invitation via private message, with polite wording and full sincerity.
And later, when she serendipitously became the president of the God-Seeing Society, the largest support group for the Fate Master on the Fate Platform, she was even listed by the Revival Society in their joint framework of key focused targets.
She had never agreed. It wasn't because she was arrogant, but because she didn't want to join as the president of the God-Seeing Society; she didn't want to make this support fan group built for the Fate Master impure.
To be honest, when she founded the "Temporary Fan Club for the Only Lord Yang Hang, Who Was Seen by God" at the time, she hadn't expected it to develop into what it later became.
With 900 million followers and a conversion rate of nearly ninety-plus percent, the God-Seeing Society leaped to become the largest organization among Yanhuang Civilization survivors on the entire Cause and Effect Fate Platform, bar none; even the Revival Society couldn't reach it.
But President Lu Xingye was a smart person. Firstly, she didn't want to tarnish the purity of her love for the Fate Master, and secondly, she knew that before her Transmigration, she was just an ordinary student who had just finished her college entrance exams, lacking the high-level ability to manage such a massive, unimaginable personal group.
Therefore, until now, apart from giving all fans who joined the God-Seeing Society a fan title and releasing some red-line rules forbidding the disparagement of the Fate Master, she had almost never organized any group activities or customized any clearer rules and regulations for the God-Seeing Society.
Without a systematic set of rules and regulations, it meant all members were very loose and free, which also meant the God-Seeing Society was unlikely to turn into an ambitious organization.
With almost all Yanhuang Survivors participating, it would only turn into a chat realm similar to the Symphony Realm or the Help Realm, specifically for discussing the Fate Master and venting everyone's love, fantasies, and expectations for the Fate Master.
Not only did she allow such a massive organization to exist in a loose form without any intervention, but she also did not allow Zhao Kang and Zhang Chengming to use it to exercise their possible ambitions.
But this didn't mean her existence in this capacity was useless. Sometimes, inaction was the greatest action.
She reopened the Fate Platform, entered the World Echo channel, and found the chat box of an older sister who was an official contact person for the Revival Society.
The last closing message sent by that older sister, who used a photo of an intellectual beauty as her avatar, was: "The Revival Society looks forward to President Xingye's reply. I personally also look forward to little sister Xingye coming to the Revival Society to hang out with me when you have time, oh. We will keep ten round-trip slots reserved for you here long-term, oh."
President Lu Xingye's fingers hovered over the virtual keyboard, pausing for two seconds. Then, she quickly typed a line of text.
"Sister, based on my merit ranking and strength, I probably don't qualify to participate in this Top 1000 Tournament. Can I use one of the round-trip slots to go and visit as an individual?" Send.
The next moment, the message was replied to instantly. The intellectual beauty avatar flickered: "Of course, this is your right with us in the Revival Society, little sister. Naturally, you can dispose of it however you wish."
After saying that, she sent another emoji covering her mouth while giggling. "Little sister Xingye is here to chase a star, right..."
After replying with a sweet emoji to confirm, and chatting with her for a few more minutes, President Lu Xingye exited the Fate Platform.
She leaned back against the cabin wall, hugged her knees, and rested her chin on them. The brownish-green metal pendant pressed against her collarbone, feeling cold and cool.
"Fate Master," she said to the empty cabin. "I've come to find you."
… And besides the heated discussion on the Yanhuang Civilization Camp side. Symphony Realm · World Echo channel.
Survivors from other civilizations were experiencing a form of informational torture. They couldn't see that "Letter to All Yanhuang Civilization Survivors" exclusive to Yanhuang Civilization, couldn't see the Revival Society's mobilization order, couldn't see the selection rules for those one thousand slots for the strong, and couldn't see the spectacular scene of major organizations following up and agreeing in the posts.
What they could see were only the sporadic posts from Yanhuang Survivors that popped up in the Symphony Realm, carrying a distinct tone of showing off.
"Sequence Competition? I suggest other civilizations just surrender; it saves everyone time."
"I'm not bragging, but with the Fate Platform here, what are you going to use to fight us? Your faces?"
"Friendly reminder to our friends from other civilizations: Don't even think about first place; that belongs to us, the Yanhuang Civilization survivors. Fight for second place, I sincerely suggest, because even if we take first, we wouldn't bother trading for your pathetic resources."
"Right, right, right, the person above is right. You just need to fight for second place. With the Fate Platform in hand, we've already won big. Instead, you should worry about how not to be in last place; being in last place is truly miserable."
One, two, three... The sporadic posts from Yanhuang Civilization survivors dropped into the World Echo channel like scattered beans. Each one carried that kind of superiority that made people grit their teeth.
Survivors from other civilizations read through them one by one, their expressions shifting from confusion to gravity. They couldn't piece together the complete picture, but there were already enough fragments.
The Yanhuang Civilization Camp was making moves. An organized, nationwide pre-war mobilization. And—the Magic Sea Beast Tide had ended less than half a day ago.
The corpses hadn't cooled, wounds were still bleeding, and supplies hadn't been counted yet. Yet Yanhuang Civilization had already begun laying out plans for the Sequence Competition officially starting tomorrow.
This speed made all the survivors from other civilizations feel their scalps tingle. Many people instinctively opened the post button in the Symphony Realm, wanting to say something—and then froze. Gray. The post button was gray.
Each person only got one posting quota every three days, and most of them had used it up earlier today. They used it on content thanking the Fate Master, thanking the compass, and thanking the Fate Platform. They thought it was worth it at the time. Now, they regretted it bitterly.
They wanted to discuss countermeasures with survivors from their own camp, but couldn't. They wanted to ask Yanhuang Survivors for specific intelligence, but couldn't. They wanted to organize even the most basic pre-war discussion, but couldn't.
One post every three days. These four words now felt like a dull knife, carving into the hearts of all the survivors from other civilizations one stroke at a time.
David Reeves of the Star-Spangled Banner Camp stared at the gray post button, flipping through his mobile phone—no, that wasn't right, he flipped through the Fate Platform interface three times. "Damn it."
He thought of Nancy. Nancy was still alive; she had posted that message thanking the Fate Master after the beast tide, and he had seen it. But now, he couldn't even send Nancy a single message saying, "We should discuss this."
The private message function in the World Echo channel? That was a privilege for users of the Yanhuang Camp. The visitor system didn't have it.
David dropped the harpoon in his hand and sat down on the deck with a thud. What could he do? He couldn't do anything.
Yanhuang Civilization survivors had the Fate Platform, forums, group chats, real-time communication, compasses, panels, the Trading Realm, numerical bodies, and the three-colored life spring. They even had a formal military organization of over 300,000 people under unified scheduling and command.
What did he have? A broken Rotten Wood Class boat. A life picked up from the beast tide. And a gray post button. This wasn't just a hellish start. This was surrendering at the start.
… At the same moment. In a certain sea area where the wind and waves had subsided slightly. Victoria sat on the deck, her black hair hanging over her shoulders, her red eyes reflecting the personal merit leaderboard on the Fate Platform screen.
She had already looked at the leaderboard from top to bottom, and then back from bottom to top. Her gaze finally landed on the name at the top of the list. Yang Hang.
Merit points: 29,017,832,106. Twenty-nine billion. Second place, Zheng Yuanshan, twenty-one million nine hundred and thirty thousand.
Zheng Yuanshan's merit points had doubled, and the magnitude of Yang Hang's merit point increase this time was a bit small, but the gap between the two was still like mountains and seas apart.
Victoria withdrew her gaze and looked down at her own ranking. Still fifth. Merit points, over 3.3 million. The discrepancy was absurdly large.
But she had no thoughts of retreating. Because merit points did not equal combat power.
She placed the sword of the sea horizontally on her knees, her thumb caressing the blade. This Gold Tier longsword had been with her for thirteen days, granting her the Physique and strength to gamble on survival in front of super high-grade sea beasts, as well as the conditions to rely on the blade's edge to hunt them.
From the first low-grade sea beast to that seventy-two-meter-long Abyss Rift-Kiss Shark, every inch of the blade was soaked in the blood of sea beasts. Seventy-two meters. She had single-handedly killed a super high-grade overlord.
It didn't rely entirely on the compass. The compass gave her weak point marking, movement trajectory prediction, and real-time heat maps; these pieces of information were indeed key aids that allowed her to win. But it was she who swung the sword. It was she who judged the timing. It was also she who instantly turned to the side and struck a fatal blow when the shark flashed behind her.
She had seen all those rumors about Yang Hang. A single hand cut off an ocean. Raising a hand caused a boat to rise to several hundred meters. Pinching a hundred-meter giant crab to death. Crushing a three-hundred-meter overlord.
She didn't think the Magic Sea allowed such a powerful existence in the early stages. Otherwise, wouldn't that so-called individual Sequence Competition and camp competition just be a joke? As long as that Fate Master Yang Hang participated throughout, who could deal with him?