Chapter 2: China’s Good Dorm Supervisor

Liu Chuan very quickly tidied his luggage and went to take a quick bath.

When he came out after finishing his bath, Li Xiang and the guys had just finished playing the game. Li Xiang turned and said, “Oh, that’s right, Liu Chuan, we don’t have many classes in the morning and the three of us sleep quite late every night. I don’t know what your habits are, what are you used to?”

Liu Chuan said, “It’s okay, I’m also a night owl.”

“Oh, that’s good!” Li Xiang relaxed and then explained, “There’s a washing machine on the dormitory’s balcony, it’s for everyone to use. Inside the cupboard there’s also a soymilk machine and an electric rice cooker, we often cook and eat in the dorm. You can use whatever you want.”

Liu Chuan was puzzled. “You normally cook in the dorm?”

Smiling, Li Xiang said, “It’s actually because we’re lazy. When we don’t want to go down to buy food, we just cook a bag of instant noodles in the dorm. Braised beef, triple shrimp, pork chop soup, stewed chicken with mushroom, we have all kinds of instant noodles in our dormitory. Help yourself.”

Liu Chuan: “……”

Fellow schoolmate, why did everything you just said about the situation sounded pitiful?

Li Xiang said, “Let’s go to Bright Moon for a dinner party. I’m the dorm supervisor so it’ll be my treat to welcome the new roommate joining us!”

Smiling, Liu Chuan said, “Then I won’t be polite. Thank you, dorm supervisor.”

Li Xiang was really a “good dorm supervisor in China”, proudly taking his wallet and bringing the three roommates together to Bright Moon which was outside the east gate of the school. He even took out some money and bought a few cans of cold beer along the way.

Bright Moon specialized in Hunan cuisine. The head chef was from Changsha so the food made was quite traditional and was known far and wide, it also welcomed quite a bit of student since it was located in front of a school gate. Right now, it was dinner time and there was a sea of people in the restaurant. Still, their luck wasn’t bad and they happened to find an empty table.

The attendant brought a menu and Li Xiang asked, “Liu Chuan, where are you from?”

Liu Chuan said, “Beijing.”

Li Xiang said, “Oh, I’m from Changsha. I didn’t ask for your opinion and invited you to eat Hunanese food. Can you eat spicy? If you can’t eat spicy, tell us so we don’t order spicy dishes.”

Liu Chuan smiled. “It’s okay, I’m not picky so order whatever you like.”

Li Xiang didn’t fussed anymore, quickly grabbing the menu and ordered a table of special Hunanese food. Afterwards, he opened the beers that were bought and poured it into the four people’s cup one by one. He stood up and said, “Come on, let us have a drink first and welcome Liu Chuan joining our Room 301!”

Liu Chuan also followed and got up to cheers with his new roommates. To give face, he downed it in one gulp and regarded this as officially getting acquainted with everyone.

While they waited for the dishes to arrive, Li Xiang once again asked enthusiastically, “By the way, Liu Chuan, has your Tangmen ever played in Ranked Arenas before? Us three roommates, along with two other classmates upstairs often team up together to battle in arenas. If you join, why not come with us to play, including you, it’ll be a fixed team of 6 players.”

Liu Chuan asked, “What battle tier did you guys reach?”

Li Xiang quickly said, “The Advanced rank in Tier Four, preparing to advance to Tier Five.”

Liu Chuan praised, “Not bad, that’s very impressive.”

What Liu Chuan said wasn’t wrong. This game, Wulin, had an official professional league and the online game’s tournament style was quite advance. The arena had a very strict “battle tier” system. From the lowest to the highest in order, it went Tier One, Tier Two and up until Tier Seven. Each battle tier was also divided into three rankings: Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. To advance a tier, it required the accumulation of points, winning in Ranked Arenas will earn points while losing will lose points so advancing was not easy.

According to players in the online game, tiers under Tier Three was where rookies and klutz persistently struggle, Tier Four was already considered at the average level, Tier Five was known as experts in the online game and Tier Six was basically a professional and a master in big guilds.

As for Tier Seven, this was far-fetched.

Experts of Tier Seven were 70% professional players and among the remaining 30%, most were players from major teams secretly opening side accounts. Here there were many side accounts and mysterious people. Perhaps the most unexpected thing in the gaming world was the stranger sitting right next to you that could destroy you in one game and who was actually the captain of his team.

( ahh… (o≧∇≦)o I couldn’t help thinking back to LX’s side accounts and even the side accounts of XZ and MY from RS)

Hearing his roommate, Liu Chuan’s praise, Li Xiang smiled cheerfully and said, “It’s not bad, right! We played for over half a year and actually reached Tier Four. Oh, by the way, what tier did you reach?”

Liu Chuan unintentionally said, “Tier S…cough, Tier One.”

It turned out he was a rookie!

Li Xiang smiled and said, “Ah, Tier One! No problem, no problem. You must not be too familiar with the arena’s playing style. There are many newbies in the first tier. Play a few more rounds to get familiar with it and you will quickly advance!”

Liu Chuan smiled slightly. “That’s right, I also just started playing.”

——Sweat, I almost let it slipped.

——Fortunately, the pronunciation of “seven” and “one” were fairly similar and Li Xiang didn’t suspect a thing. If he were to know that the roommate sitting across from him, drinking tea, was ranked the number one Tangmen across the whole leaderboard ranking, he would most likely be shocked to the point of not being able to function properly.

Liu Chuan faced his roommates, smiled innocently and continued to calmly drink his tea with his head lowered.

Li Xiang saw him smile and couldn’t help warm-heartedly stretching to give him a pat on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, you have us! Since you are a rookie just starting to play, how about coming along with us eh. Later let’s go play and watch us compete in an arena. I’ll give you a good demonstration of how to use a Tangmen!”

I’ll give you a demonstration of how to use a Tangmen……

Liu Chuan almost spat out the tea inside his mouth.

After dinner, the four people walked along the street for about a hundred metres and sure enough, they saw an internet café right around the corner called “Qinghua Internet Club”.

Liu Chuan lifted his head to take a look and realized this internet café was quite big. A gigantic sign hung on the second floor. The entire three floors, from the second to the fourth floor, was encircled by a ring-shaped coloured light of the same colour, similar to a fish pond.

Li Xiang saw his roommate beside him squint at the upper floor and couldn’t help asking, “Liu Chuan, have you ever been here before? This internet café just opened at the beginning of the year and is also one of the officially designated registration locations for the municipal tournament to fight for the championship1.”

Liu Chuan touched his nose and said, “It’s my first time here.”

Li Xiang smiled and said, “We often come here. Come, we’ll bring you inside to take a look! The environment inside is very good!”

The group entered the internet café on the second floor and as Li Xiang said, the environment inside really was quite good. The lounge was extremely spacious. Inside, there were hundreds of excellent high-end gaming computers neatly arranged with a glass fender between the seats to separate them. The lounge on the second floor had a “No Smoking” sign written and with the green plants, the air was very good. There were also a variety of snacks sold at the bar counter around the corner and to the side of it was a row of sofas used for resting.

It was obvious that Li Xiang often come to this internet café. Being familiar with the inside, he quickly brought the roommates to the bar counter and took out a golden VIP member card and passed it to the manager at the front desk. “Beautiful, is there still any space in the private rooms on the fourth floor? I want 4 computers.”

The female café manager checked with the computer quickly and said with a smile, “There’s space. Give me your ID card, I’ll help you get access to it.”

The four people swiped their ID card. When they got to the private room Room 406, they each took a seat and sat down.

Li Xiang turned on the computer and logged on to the game and looked at his friend’s list. Discovering that both He Xuyang and his roommate weren’t online, he then turned around and said to Liu Chuan, “My two other friends aren’t online, it appears we’ll have to wait a moment. Let me first play 1V1 for a few rounds to show you Tangmen’s techniques for PK!”

Liu Chuan smiled. “Okay, you go demonstrate.”

Li Xiang paused and turned towards Liu Chuan. “Say, what class of Tangmen do you play? It’s the Archer class right?”

Liu Chaun said, “I play the Puppet class.”

Li Xiang: “……”

Killed in a second with that single phrase.

As the saying goes: how do you still play happily if the classes are not the same2?

What was special about this game, Wulin, was this——

In the game, players could choose to join a sect out of the eight choices: Shaolin, Emei, Wudang, Xiaoyao, Mingjiao, Beggars, Tangmen and the Five Poisons. These were the most common sects that were often seen in martial arts novels but what was different from the martial arts novel was that in the game, each sect also had three different classes, adding up to a total of twenty-four classes.

Eight major sects and twenty-four classes, this was the most basic design setting in this game, Wulin.

With the sects’ classes, it caused the gameplay in the game to be very diverse. Even if you and your friend were apprentices of the same teacher, the playstyle wouldn’t be the same and would even sometimes be like a chicken talking with a duck, it was basically impossible right from the start.

The Tangmen’s Puppet class…

This was commonly known to all players that it was practically the most complicated and most difficult class to play…

Li Xiang thought with a headache: Rookie! As a rookie, why did you choose such a deathly class?

In the game, Tangmen was a fairly popular sect among the players. It was divided into three subclasses with gameplays that were completely different——

The Archer class, Assassin class and the Puppet class3.

The Archer class: their weapon were longbows, relying on long-distance bow and arrows to control the opponents, attacking from long distances and has a wide range. It was understood that the “remote archer” was extremely important in instances and arenas.

The Assassin class: their weapon used hidden weapon bags, darts, silver nails, poison darts and so on as the assassin’s main method of attack. Taking the high critical and damage “assassin’s” route with fierce assassination skills that often catches the person unprepared, very suited for individual field combats.

The Puppet class: their weapon was a wrapped hand, the wrapped hand had many threads used to control puppets, relying on the manipulation of the puppets to attack and control the opponents, it could be understood as the “puppet master carrying puppets to battle”.

The Tangmen’s Puppet class was a big achievement and the class had an extremely unique set up. Many players thought that the Tangmen controlling the puppets was also very cool but it was a pity that this class’s control style was too complicated. The beginners and experts formed two extremes——rookie puppet masters, the puppets would go off on their own, nowhere to be seen, let alone controlling the puppets to go attack enemies. The rookies’ puppets were often stuck in the corner because of the foolish master and wouldn’t be able to crawl out…

But on the other hand, expert puppet masters could control several puppets at the same time, surrounding and killing the enemy!

In the online game, a Puppet Tangmen with a high skill level could flexibly control between four to five puppets at the same time.

And in the history of the Professional League, there happened to be a first-class Puppet god——it was said that he could control seven puppets at the same time!

A person had a total of 10 fingers. Controlling seven puppets at the same time and in such a short time, a formation was completed simultaneously in a burst of speed, the extremely difficult play and gorgeous lighting effects simply left people eyes wide and tongue-tied!

This person was the great Tangmen god that had shocked the professional circle and the online gaming world. His ID was “Hundred River Flows into the Sea4” and was the team captain of the Huaxia team who had once received the brilliant achievement of taking the Professional League’s Annual Grand Slam. Affectionally called “Captian Chuan” and “God Chuan” by the fans, he was even regarded in the hearts of countless Tangmen players as their god.

This person rarely appeared in front of the media. His real name was not known to many and even more so his appearance was not known by many, he was extremely mysterious.

Unfortunately, this person had already left the league for half a year and at the moment, whose whereabouts were unknown.