Cultivating in Online Games

Chapter 9 – Passing on techniques

During the mobile game era, Nine Heavens had once stumbled and never been able to recover, so the game company knew clearly that a VR game couldn’t compare to a mobile game in portability or playtime. They had to rack their brains for other ways to draw players, in order to carve their niche on the market.

Therefore, Nine Heavens had opened up an entirely new way of gaming. In order to bring the gaming experience closer to a real xianxia world, they had used a special artificial intelligence as the main system.

When instructions were inputted, the system could make decisions on its own based on those instructions.

Right now on the market, there were many AI programs available that could follow a prompt to write poems, lyrics, and music. They had a high degree of autonomy and could take on a lot of the burden for their programmers.

The ability for players to create their own skills was also a new mechanic the programmers had created. Since it gave the players more freedom, it would increase the game’s staying power.

A traditional game’s system wouldn’t be able to handle such a mechanic, but with the help of an AI, it was made possible. The programmers would just input guidelines for assessing skills, and if a new skill fit and didn’t surpass the difficulty curve, the system could verify it on its own.

When Dugu Zhuo uploaded the jade slip, the system scanned his data three times, found it was normal, and accepted his array.

The system had taken 0.001 seconds longer than usual to complete this procedure, but no one noticed the miniscule difference.

Dugu Zhuo had no idea what had happened in the game’s back-end. He was rather surprised that he could actually submit the techniques he had previously learned into this game, without anyone finding an issue with them.

This meant that as his body recovered, he would be able to use more and more techniques and gain more freedom within the game world.

Dugu Zhuo looked at the jade slip within his palm which recorded the Misdirection Array. Back when he had used the Five Phases Swordplay against the beasts of the Karmic Forest, he hadn’t received a system prompt.

The most major difference was that he had used the Misdirection Array against a player, while the Five Phases Swordplay had been used against enemy NPCs, illusory existences which could constantly come back to life.

Even though it hadn’t been approved by the system, he could use the Five Phases Swordplay against the monsters all the same, so what was different about an approved technique?

While Dugu Zhuo was considering, chaos had broken out among the players in the game.

“They made their own technique and even got a title? This game is really something. It has so many different mechanics.”

“In front of this Dugu Zhuo’s name, it wasn’t stated whether they were a player or an NPC, and it didn’t display their in-game ID either. Without an ID, we can’t find the player.”

“If they created a technique, then they’ve got to be a player.”

“The way this game doesn’t distinguish between players and NPCs is so unfair. I made my account along with one of my friends, who made a demon character while I made a human character. I thought the person who appeared in the starting village with me was him, so sent him a team request, except that guy killed me in one bite. Only after that did I know that that wasn’t my friend at all, it was one of the targets for the ghost exorcising mission!”

“That story again, finding out someone wasn’t really human. This game is seriously sneaky!”

“After searching for all this time, I still can’t find Dugu Zhuo. I can’t take it, I’m logging off to call customer service.”

A ton of players logged off to bombard the customer service with questions about the mechanics in the game, but all they received was the preapproved response and not a word more.

Long @ Aotian, following behind Dugu Zhuo, also went idle. Qingyue saw how Dugu Zhuo looked deep in thought and didn’t want to bother him.

Dugu Zhuo was studying the jade slip when Long @ Aotian’s soul suddenly departed from his body. He rushed to Long @ Aotian’s side, taking his pulse.

Aotian’s pulse was weak. His soul wasn’t present, leaving his body breathing weakly and looking blank and listless.

Curious, Dugu Zhuo slapped his face a little. He hadn’t thought that someone’s soul could leave their body in a game.

“He’s idling,” Qingyue explained. “You just found a new game mechanic and he thought you were probably also confused by it, so he went offline to find information.”

Dugu Zhuo poked Aotian’s forehead. Aotian hit the ground and then sprang back up to his feet like a pop-up toy.

This was also the first time Qingyue had seen someone idle in a VR game. She thought it was funny and joined Dugu Zhuo in poking Long @ Aotian.

“So this is what it’s like when someone idles in a VR game,” Qingyue said, chuckling. “It’s totally different than the PC. In a PC game, you don’t get to poke someone.”

Dugu Zhuo remembered how people said this game was tricky and they had never played this kind of game before. He asked tentatively, “He hardly has a heartbeat and his breathing is very weak. Why would this be?”

Thinking about it, Qingyue said, “Probably because the VR helmets can read information about the player’s body in order to simulate it in the video game. He took off his helmet without turning it off, so now that the helmet’s separated from him, it can’t collect his biometric information, so that probably leads to this.”

“That may be so,” Dugu Zhuo said.

So the VR game was played using some sort of artifact worn on the head, which transported people’s consciousnesses into this world that resembled the illusory array.

Long @ Aotian finally returned, huffing in annoyance. “I couldn’t get through to the support hotline, they were always busy. I contacted Xiaoyao[1], though, and he sent me the customer service response.”

“Xiaoyao is also offline,” Qingyue said. “Back when we asked him for help, why didn’t he reply?”

“Forget about it,” Aotian said. “He’s a willow tree yao, the big tree right there at the village gates. He can’t even move. He only logged on for five minutes before getting mad and logging off, and was asking customer service for how to level up ever since. He never even got our messages.”

“That’s tragic.” Qingyue sighed. “Good thing we chose human characters.”

“It’s fine,” Aotian said. “I’ve told him that he can cultivate with the moonlight at night.”

“Yao, spirits, and humans can be active within the starting village, but what about demons?” Dugu Zhuo asked, cutting into their conversation in a natural way.

“I have another friend who picked a demon, and he said that demons have a different starting village,” Aotian replied. “He’s leveling up over there, and he heard that he can only go to the main city at level 20.”

“How did the customer service explain the matter with the jade slip?” Dugu Zhuo asked.

“They told us a few requirements,” Aotian said. “First off, it can’t be a technique from an existing game, in order to avoid copyright infringement. Secondly, it needs to match the game’s setting. For example, an equipment crafter can’t create a mecha, and you can’t make fantasy magic spells. It has to fit with traditional xianxia conventions in order to be accepted. Finally, you have to cause harm to a player using the technique in order to confirm that the technique has an effect, to allow it to be recognized.”

“Are there any special properties to a recognized technique?” Dugu Zhuo asked.

“You can trade, teach, and gift it,” Aotian said. “A technique that you’ve created can be copied to other jade slips. Doing so costs spirit stones as well as the player’s health and spiritual energy, and different levels of player-made techniques have different limits for being copied. The higher level the technique, the fewer times you can copy it.”

“Why would there be a limit?” Dugu Zhuo asked.

“The service agent said that following the traditions of a cultivation setting, the most powerful techniques should be hidden and hard to access. Some secret techniques would just be passed down from a master to one or two disciples, right? Oh, by the way, player-made techniques can only be obtained from the creator, and can’t be traded second-hand.”

Dugu Zhuo glanced at the notes on the Misdirection Array and saw that it could be copied a hundred times.

The Misdirection Array was one of the lowest-level arrays, only able to restrict a cultivator’s footsteps while having no effect on anyone who could ride a sword or fly. Any skilled disciple in the cultivation world knew this technique, so it made sense that it could be copied so many times.

“Now let me ask the questions, dashen[2]. How did you create that array?” Long @ Aotian didn’t have any reservations about calling Dugu Zhuo such a title. He thought he undoubtedly deserved it.

Dugu Zhuo had no way to answer this question. He couldn’t explain his own origin, and could only give a simple answer. “I’m familiar with mathematics and go[3], and so gleaned an array from that.”

Aotian and Qingyue both fell silent upon hearing him mention mathematics. They instantly gave up on asking how to create an array. “Then… how many times can you copy it, dashen? Can— can you sell it to us?”

“A hundred times, so that’s plenty,” Dugu Zhuo said. “I can give it to you for free.”

“Only a hundred times?” Qingyue said, clutching her chest. “How is that plenty? Don’t you know that I want to impulse buy upon just hearing the words ‘limited edition’?”

Aotian was a lot calmer compared to her. One hundred times wasn’t too many or too few. You could tell that the game company wanted to limit player-created techniques to a particular scope, so that while they encouraged players to invent their own techniques and increased their investment in the game, they could limit the amount it spread to other players and prevent player-made techniques from upstaging the techniques already in the game.

“You ought to still name a price,” Aotian said. “I remember this array could stop that cat from leaving the forest. With everyone at low levels right now, that’s quite a strong technique. I don’t feel right getting it for free.”

“That’s right.” Qingyue nodded. “It’s the first in the whole game!”

Dugu Zhuo had offered it for free with the secondary goal of testing these two’s characters.

If they accepted it without reservation, then Dugu Zhuo and the two could go their separate ways from then on and have no more dealings with each other. Since they had shown gratitude and consideration for Dugu Zhuo, he decided they were worth being friends with.

After all, he still needed to gather information from players to understand this world.

“There’s no problem,” Dugu Zhuo said. “You can just send me two blank jade slips.”

Qingyue and Aotian never could’ve imagined they’d meet such a generous elite player and hurried to the spiritual tool shop in the village to buy two jade slips with their low-grade spirit stones.

There were two sets of currency within the game, one being normal copper coins and silver taels, which could buy necessities for daily life like steamed buns and tea. The other was spirit stones, which could be used to buy weapons and equipment, or jade slips, magic items, talismans, and so on.

One could guess that in latter stages of the game, silver pieces wouldn’t be very useful, and if the currency exchange was opened, it would surely be spirit stones which could be bought with real-world money.

Dugu Zhuo recorded the Misdirection Array onto the two jade slips, causing the replication limit to drop to 98.

After receiving their jade slips, Aotian and Qingyue said enthusiastically to each other, “Let’s go fight mobs and test it!”

“There’s no rush,” Dugu Zhuo said, glancing at the tea shack at the edge of the village. “I’m going to get a bowl of rough tea first.”