After everyone had left, Little Four asked listlessly, "Boss, what should we do now?" Little Four, who had already been to the real virtual world, just couldn't muster up any enthusiasm for this enclosed little world.
"Let us just explore this newbie village a little ..." In contrast, Ling Lan was very interested, for this was the very first time she was encountering the virtual world. She never expected that it would be so realistic — when she had first seen Qi Long and the others, she had almost thought that they were still in the real world.
Newbie village? What does that mean? Little Four was troubled; why couldn't he understand what his boss was saying?
However, for the sake of not cracking his image of 'smartest intelligence-entity', he didn't dare ask Ling Lan what it was, but instead secretly went to trawl through his own databases. Very quickly, in some random web novel, Little Four found the term, and when he took a look at the context of the term, he finally understood.
Little Four looked around at this closeted little world, compared it with the meaning of 'newbie village' in net-gaming, and found that his boss's description was just perfect. Once more, Little Four was awed by Ling Lan's deep knowledge — Boss sure is Boss, alright — able to use such concise and simple terms or sentences to describe a complicated thing in its entirety. Just look here ... to ensure that those children who have yet to properly establish their values and world views were not led astray, the academy chose to protect them within an enclosure. Wasn't this exactly like the newbie villages which had been established in net-gaming 10000 years ago to protect the rights of new players?Setting aside Little Four's current adulation towards Ling Lan which was surging like the waters of the Huang He 1 and threatening to overflow ... Ling Lan spent a whole day satisfying her curiosity, roughly exploring the entire area of this small enclosed world and getting a rough idea of the conditions within this enclosed city.
The city was very large, over a hundred times larger than the scout academy in reality. By Ling Lan's estimations, it was impossible to learn all the nooks and crannies of this city without spending several years' time. This vastness was probably also for the sake of keeping the scout academy students at bay. After all, they had to stay put here in this patch of virtual reality for over 10 years while they remained in the academy — if they conquered this city within a few days, the students would definitely riot.
Time in the virtual world wasn't extended like Ling Lan imagined it to be, but moved at the same pace as real-world time. In other words, a day in the virtual world was equal to one real day.
Ling Lan wandered the city shops for a while and found that there weren't any strange or incomprehensible products — everything in the shops were items that also existed in reality. Then, when she asked, she found out that the things one bought in this virtual world were actually things being bought in reality. The moment you made an order and paid, the seller would send out the goods in the real world. Oh, right. A gentle reminder — things bought in the virtual world were non-refundable.
Of course, all sorts of learning halls were still the most common in the city. Within them were countless recordings of lessons for various courses — as long as you could complete certain preset missions, you would be able to receive one of the course videos for free. Of course, you could also choose to buy the lessons outright, but the cost in gold was enough to blind you ... Hells, it was just too expensive.
If it were possible to transfer some credits in from the real world to exchange for currency, perhaps the students would not be so resentful, but unfortunately, to push the students to become independent quicker, the academy banned this trading function. Even more unreasonable was that every student who first entered wouldn't be given any money at all by the miserly academy, not even a single cent.
Want to buy something in the virtual world? That's fine, students. Please accept a mission and use your own two hands to build your fortune. All the NPCs will smilingly parrot this sentence, completely unmoved by the children's tantrums or wailing complaints.Of course, the academy wasn't truly that heartless — they set up countless easy small missions within the virtual world. Naturally, the money one could earn from these missions wasn't much, but as long as one completed the mission, one could obtain the associated gold or redeem particular course instructions for free.
Rumour had it that there were also some legacy missions and ultimate combat moves available which caused the students eyes to burn with want, for these missions could let an average child rise meteorically overnight.
Of course, it wasn't easy to get this type of high-level mission, which was dependent on luck and circumstance. Moreover, even if you received this kind of mission, whether you could complete it was still uncertain — ultimate moves and legacies weren't that easy to obtain. These hidden details were still completely unknown to Ling Lan and the other new students who had just gained access to the virtual world. They could only begin from the small missions, and learn more about this 'second world' of humanity as they earned some pocket money.
As Ling Lan had the ultimate cheating device in the form of Little Four, she truly took to the virtual world like a fish to water. Facing the tens of thousands of content produced daily, Little Four carefully helped Ling Lan to pick out those missions which had the best cost-benefit ratio, allowing Ling Lan to accumulate gold at the fastest possible speed.
If necessary, Little Four could also directly bypass the lock on the virtual space and exchange credits for virtual currency to bring to Ling Lan. But this suggestion was immediately refused by Ling Lan. Ling Lan felt that she already had too much of an advantage presently because of Little Four. If she pushed it even more, she would really draw the wrath of the heavens and the grudge of the people ... Ling Lan decided it would be better to keep a lower profile.
Of course, Ling Lan also refused Little Four because she still had one great advantage — the battle points she had gained in the ranking tournament were actually valid for changing into virtual currency. Ling Lan guessed that this was a reward mechanism put in place by the academy for the top talents, a covert form of encouragement. It could be expected that these exceptional children would be able to rely on this additional wealth from reality to pick up useful skills a step earlier, which was in line with the educational compass of the scout academy.
********
Just like that, Ling Lan busily passed a year between the scout academy and the virtual world. Within this period, she went through two more ranking tournaments, and for both times, she maintained her ranking at 4th place. The first time, she met Luo Lang in the semi-finals and chose to give up; while the second time, she met Qi Long in the semi-finals and also chose to give up.
Don't blame Ling Lan for not having any fighting spirit — the difference between their strengths was just too wide. Asking Ling Lan to fight with them was really just like asking her to bully children, and there was really no benefit for either side. If not to guarantee that she would be able to get the best education and the best cultivation resources, Ling Lan would have no desire to fight at all.
This move also caused Ling Lan's reputation to only circulate within her grade; the upper grade seniors had still had some interest in Ling Lan at the beginning, but in the end, seeing Ling Lan consecutively get held back in the top 4, they gradually lost interest.
Ling Lan didn't care about any of this — the scout academy was just a place for her to learn, not a place for her to show off. Besides, she was very busy every day. She had lessons of the scout academy to learn, missions of the learning space to do, and she still had to make some time to research the Dao she wanted to walk. Of course, she also didn't forget to go complete several small missions in the virtual world with the highest returns as selected by Little Four every day.
On this day, Ling Lan logged in to the virtual world as usual to do her missions, but the moment she entered the virtual world, she was immediately bombarded by the countless alerts of her companions trying to contact her. She opened her flashing communicator, and found that Qi Long and the others were desperately trying to get hold of her.
"What's up?" Ling Lan was extremely curious — although the others would contact her every once in a while, they had never tried to contact her all at once like this before. Something big must have happened.
"Boss, where are you?" Qi Long's loud voice almost shattered Ling Lan's eardrums.
Ling Lan took a look at the familiar buildings around her and replied, "100 metres in front of the Electrodynamics building."
This time, Ling Lan was preparing to complete a particular Physics instructor's mission, and obtain instruction from said instructor in Physics topics. This wasn't in the form of a video, but was a personal one-on-one instruction. Furthermore, the instruction time awarded depended on how well the mission was completed. In other words, the better Ling Lan did in the mission, the longer the instruction time she would get ... This was also why she was willing to take on this mission.
"Hehehe ... Boss really likes to joke ... you can even measure out 100 metres just like that," said Qi Long amidst silly laughter. He had of course picked up on Ling Lan's dissatisfaction in her tone — it must be because of his overly loud volume earlier, but he was really just too excited and just couldn't control it.
"Don't accept that mission right now!" Qi Long suddenly thought of why Boss would be there, and hurried to stop him. Although the reward of that mission was tantalising, the mission contents were truly rage-inducing.
It was an examination mission, involving two solid hours of examination time. Of course, this wasn't the reason why the children would be driven wild — were there any dumb children who could enter the Central Scout Academy? They weren't at all afraid of tests. But, as a mission from a Physics instructor, why were the contents being tested from all subjects?! Even the smartest child would have one or two weaker subjects; thus, a majority of the children had all failed, with only a few all-rounded abnormals who managed to scrape by.
Among Qi Long and the others in the group, only Han Jijyun had managed to pass the test and receive a month of face-to-face instruction. This caused Han Jijyun's knowledge in Electrodynamics to improve in leaps and bounds — according to Han Jijyun, he didn't have to worry about anyone chasing up to him in this subject for the next 5 years now — it was truly fantastic.
"Reason?" asked Ling Lan calmly. She wasn't someone who would easily give up on her objective. Qi Long would have to give her a convincing reason, otherwise she would still choose to proceed with the mission.
"Come quickly to Mecha Street, a legacy mission has appeared here." Qi Long tried to lower his voice, but he couldn't hold back his excitement. He was so moved that he was on the verge of frenzy.
"Legacy mission? Really?" Ling Lan was startled by this news. Within this year, she had gradually come to understand some of the secrets of the virtual world, finding out that it was possible that there were some legacy missions here just waiting for the right person to come along and find it. Still, that was just a rumour after all — she had yet to hear of any student who actually obtained a legacy mission, but of course this didn't include any students who may have obtained a legacy and then kept it a secret.
"Of course really! This mission has already been verified by the academy. Now everyone is preparing to go give it a try, but I hear from the students who've tried that the test of this mission is really weird. They all lost without knowing why, and was sent directly back out. But no one really believes what they say, and are all waiting to go try it once for themselves. Boss, that's a legacy mission. Legacy, " Qi Long spilled all that he knew in a flood, shouting in his enthusiasm.
Qi Long just couldn't contain his excitement. The term 'legacy' could not be used lightly in this world — only those strong enough to reach the level of a imperial operator and beyond had the right to bequeath their life's learnings through a legacy method to a disciple. And a legacy mission was a type of test set by an imperial-level and above fighter to choose a disciple.
