Once Upon A Time, There Was A Spirit Sword Mountain
chapter-16

Chapter 16: The Perfect Chain of Quests Completion Strategy

Translator: AL_Squad Editor: Chrissy

“Uh oh, Wang Lu is starting to take action!”

“Is that true!? Come on then, let’s call the other people to watch him!”

The same morning that the trio, the errand boy and his companions, left the village with astonishingly high completion rate, Wang Lu had finally ended his seclusion. When he walked out of the door, many people started to gather around to watch his every action.

“Oh, so that’s what Wang Lu looks like. He doesn’t seem remarkable at all. Hearing all the words about him, I thought he’s some sort of three meter tall demon.”

“Tsk, who the fxck has that kind of body? Don’t just look by his appearance, this guy was the first one to walk out of the Cloud Wave Map.”

“It may just be his good luck; but he hasn’t done anything in the Peach Blossom Village.”

“Hasn’t done anything? The first person to walk out of the village, Hai Yunfan, was only able to complete the quest because of his instructions.”

“Tch, so what if he got out of here fast? Do you know how high his degree of completion is? The guy wasted the Village Head’s A level quest in vain. And now, all of the quests in the village have been monopolized. Even if he’s been planning all this time, what can he do about it?”

“Who knows… we all came here to see what he’s going to do now.”

What Wang Lu did next really did not disappoint everyone.

He first went to the eastern side of the village to carry water for Auntie Huang.

“Hey, is he playing with us!? Auntie Huang’s quest has already been completed. How could she possibly recognize another one as her adoptive son? What’s the use in carrying the water for her!?”

The one who had completed Auntie Huang’s quest was also wondering. This Aunty Huang’s quest was probably just a D level quest, and its value may be ranked at the bottom three in the village; in other words, completely worthless. Who would have thought that the illustrious Wang Lu actually took this quest as his first action.

Wang Lu ignored all the onlookers and just focused on carrying the water. Although his stature was average, his strength was fairly good, so before long, he already filled up Auntie Huang’s water tank.

“Oh, young man, thank you…”

But before Auntie Huang even finished her sentence, Wang Lu interrupted, “I want to go to your son’s school.”

Auntie Huang was stunned for a moment, and then nodded her head.

Afterwards, without many pleasantries, Wang Lu immediately walked next door.

Living next door was Auntie Huang’s son, Scholar Huang. His quest was worth much more than Auntie Huang’s. Initially, it was just a D level quest, but later on, after the quest progressed to a certain point, one would have the chance to get acquainted with the reclusive old pedant in the village, which was an A level quest. This was one of the quest that the little errand boy, Wang Zhong, had famously completed.

Right now, this Scholar Huang’s quest has been completed. After the little errand boy left the village, Scholar Huang had never showed any interest in other people. The rest of the participants did not even bother talking to this worthless poor scholar anymore. When they saw Wang Lu strode into the school, they all speculated on what he was going to do.

“Could it be that this scholar has a hidden quest?”

“I think not, otherwise, wouldn’t it mean that every other villagers also have a hidden quest? Do you think Wang Lu stayed in seclusion for so long just to complete hidden quests?”

Then they saw Wang Lu went straight to the school, and before Scholar Huang even had the chance to open his mouth, Wang Lu put a dozen of papers in front of him. “Teacher, this is today’s homework.”

At this time, the crowd outside was completely confused. Wang Lu had not been accepted as a student, nor had he paid his tuition fees. It stood to reason that he should be kicked out! But now, not only he had swaggered into the school, he even claimed to have finished his homework?! When did he write the homework? However, Scholar Huang was teaching poems today, so the homework should be about poems.

Scholar Huang actually took those papers and began to read through them. After a closer look, he suddenly gasped, “Did you really write this poem?!”

“Other than me, who else?” Wang Lu said with a smile, “You have seen the Yellow River waters descended from the sky and pour into the sea, but have you ever seen it return to the sky… have you ever heard a similar verse?” [1]

“This poem has sincere emotion imbued within it, it is very impassioned. But you’re an eleven or twelve-year-old child, how can you create such a deeply moving poem?”

“I am that gifted, a literary star who had descended to the world.”

Wang Lu cheerfully said. He looked at Scholar Huang as if he was a village dog. His bullshxt reason couldn’t even fool an eight years old kid, but after thinking for a moment, Scholar Huang unexpectedly shook his head and gave a sigh.

“Unfortunately, I’ve already received my final disciple, otherwise, I would definitely want to accept you as my disciple.”

Wang Lu let out a chuckle, completely ignoring the scholar’s regret, “Can I ask something from you?”

Scholar Huang very seriously said, “Do not hesitate, just say it.”

“I want your sweat towel,” Wang Lu said as he pointed at the towel that Scholar Huang used to wipe his sweat on the table.

Scholar Huang immediately gawked. “You want this??”

“Uh huh.” Without wasting any time, Wang Lu reached out and took the towel, and then he left. However, Scholar Huang was also a wonderful person. After stupidly gawking at Wang Lu’s actions, Scholar Huang threw all of their exchange to the back of his head and turned his head to the classroom to start teaching again; it was as if nothing had just happened.

The crowd of onlookers outside was actually unalarmed by this strange sight. They had already recognized such patterns in all of the villagers. They only showed emotion and intelligence when it was related to a quest. In most other situations, they were as stupid as cows.

But the strange one was Wang Lu who strode out of the school holding the sweat towel. What would he do with it? Scholar Huang wasn’t a maiden; his sweat towel was both sour and stinky. Was there anything fun that could be done with that?

Finally, they saw Wang Lu walk to another “eminent” person’s house. Before he could even reach the door, several onlookers exclaimed aloud, “Little Fang! That is Little Fang’s house!”

The people in the crowd looked at each other in dismay. The village girl, Little Fang, was like a legendary character. She had a beard on her square face, was about 2.6 meters tall, and had 2.6 meters waistline. She could eat twenty steamed buns and ten plates of beef for a meal. Outside her house, there were two rocks weighing hundreds of kilos each that she would throw around for fun while waiting for meal time.

This character could be a valiant hero in anywhere else, instead she was the village girl, Little Fang, who lived in the Peach Blossom Village and was nicknamed the-passionate-for-true-love Little Fang. All the quest related to her was about love. The only way to advance her quest was to be completely faithful to her. Many of the participants had described this quest as the legendary quest beyond the A level quest. A prince had sacrifice everything to do this quest, but all of that was for naught after just one careless move. Who would have thought that Wang Lu would boldly come to her door…

Unfortunately, if that prince hadn’t activated this quest, with Wang Lu’s skill, perhaps he might really be able to complete it… although just thinking about it made people want to vomit everything in their stomach. But in any event, Wang Lu had no chance to complete this quest now.

At this time, Wang Lu knocked on the door and called out, “Little Fang, I have the sweat towel of Scholar Huang.”

As soon as he finished speaking, the door opened. The village girl, Little Fang, holding a greasy pig’s leg, spoke in a low muffled voice, “What did you just say?”

Wang Lu smiled. “I have the unwashed sweat towel of Scholar Huang. I’ll trade it for your unique homemade steamed pork slices with rice.”

“You want my steamed pork slices with rice? … Okay, give me the towel.”

Little Fang reached out her hand to grab the towel. The onlookers could see that her fat hand was trembling. No one knew if she was just too anxious, or just simply because of the amount of fat that was on her arm.

Wang Lu did not try to stop her; he just let her take the sweat towel. Then, under the frightened eyes of countless people, Little Fang lifted the towel to her nose as if she had found a treasure and took a deep breath.

At this point, from the crowd of onlookers, someone whose look resembled a beggar, reeking off an aura of defeated dog, suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, that’s right, Little Fang is secretly in love with Scholar Huang!”

Everyone turned their head and saw that the speaker was the prince who, not long ago, had been beaten half to death by Little Fang for cheating on her. Because of this, they believed of what he had just said. Besides, everyone could hear that those words came from the bottom of his heart.

Little Fang seemed impatient to do something to this towel; her two eyes flickered with a strange glow as she hurriedly walked back into her house, bringing the sweat towel with her. She even threw the pig’s leg to the ground.

However, this village girl was actually a person of her word. After a few minutes, Little Fang, with a face full of smile, carried out a large jar and handed it to Wang Lu. “What you gave me is genuine, many thanks!”

Wang Lu received the jar. Although he had calculated its weight, it was still almost too heavy for him. And although the jar was sealed, the aroma still wafted out through the cover, causing everyone to unconsciously swallow their saliva.

If there was anything good to say about Little Fang, it would be her superb cooking skill.

“Thanks.”

Little Fang patted her chest. “No need to be so polite. Next time you have something this good, I want you to bring it to me. I’ve also got my special homemade ham; for you, I am willing to trade it!”

Wang Lu said with a smile, “Okay, since you have given your words, I will get the scholar’s underwear just for you.”

Little Fang’s nostrils flared. “Oh, oh! If you really can fetch the scholar Huang’s underwear for me, I’ll even give you my body!”

“No thanks,” Wang Lu declined her offer and walked towards his next destination, struggling to carry that jar of meat.

This time, he did not walk too far, Wang Lu knocked on yet another family’s door.

He did the same thing again and again. Wang Lu gave his steamed pork slices with rice in exchange for some fine silk, then traded the fine silk for a box of cosmetics. He then used the cosmetics to get some desserts… In these transactions, sometimes, he made a profit, and sometimes, he made a loss. But Wang Lu did not care about that at all. He was just like a puppet who repeated the same set of actions over and over again: knocking on the door, offering what he had in his hands, and asking for something else. Then, under the grateful gaze of the opposite party, he walked to his next destination.

In one day, Wang Lu had been very busy, continuously walking throughout the entire village, knocking on one hundred and twenty doors, and gaining the favorability of one hundred and twenty people. Eventually, he leisurely came back to where he was staying at with a box of food from the Peach Blossom Village restaurant.

During that day, there were a dozen people who had stopped progressing their own quests, intently following Wang Lu around. In the morning, there were a few confused people who did not quite understand what Wang Lu was doing. But by noon, even the most retarded of them had a face overwhelmed with shock.

After living in the Peach Blossom Village for a month, all of them knew that the concept of “favorability” had originated from Wang Lu, and it was spread around the village by Hai Yunfan et al. Each of the villager had a favorability meter, and this favorability directly determined the completion rate of the quest! From a businessman’s perspective, Wang Lu’s transactions would be seen as ridiculous, but from the trial’s point of view, it could only be interpreted with a single word by the participants.

Brilliant.

In the Peach Blossom Village, the only task for the participants was to increase the favorability of the villagers towards them. Wang Lu had gained an extreme amount of favorability in just one day. Apart from the necessary words needed for completing the transactions, he did not waste any words, and a lot of times, his conversations with the villagers were even contrary to logic, and yet he was able to proceed smoothly and successfully; every villagers was happy with the result.

There was only one explanation for this. Wang Lu had caught the logic behind this trial and knew every strategy to increase the favorability on each quest. He then used the simplest and most efficient way to increase the favorability. But more impressively was that he had completed the one hundred and twenty chain of quests in a single round.

One day, one hundred and twenty people, and every single one of them was grateful to Wang Lu. If none of the quests had been triggered, there was no doubt in everyone’s mind that Wang Lu could trigger all one hundred and twenty of them. Although from a single villager’s point of view, he did not fare better in gaining favorability than the other participants who exclusively worked for that specific quest, but the combined favorability of one hundred and twenty villagers was quite frightening.

Currently, the most determined participants had held more than ten quests at the same time, but because they needed to socialize with numerous villagers, most were thrown into disarray because they couldn’t attend to one thing without losing track of another.

But what about Wang Lu? In just one round, he had made connections with all one hundred and twenty people. The crowd of onlookers discovered that he had never taken a single unnecessary trip in all the routes that he had taken! What was even more terrifying was that this method of gaining favorability could be infinitely repeated.

However, most people couldn’t even stand washing their hands one hundred and twenty times a day, not to mention completing one hundred and twenty quests. Only Wang Lu could complete such an amazing chain of quests.

“… However, what’s the point in doing all of that?”

A participant said with a mocking smile to cover the jealousy in his heart.

“If he started making his move a month ago, then everyone would be squeezed out of the Immortal Path by him, and would be trapped here forever. But now, he’s the one who’s trapped here! What’s the use in gaining favorability from one hundred and twenty people? Right now, no one can provide him a quest!”

Although these words were impolite, it gave the voice to what many people were thinking.

“Wang Lu, what you’re doing is indeed amazing, but don’t you think that this is pretty stupid?”

Wang Lu naturally did not think so at all.

Early the next morning, when Wang Lu had just left his residence, there were many unsatisfied youths who came to provoke him.

“Oh, Wang Lu, you’ve tried to increase favorability so hard, unfortunately…”

Wang Lu immediately interrupted him even before he could finish his words.

“I know what you want to say… but to be honest, I didn’t expect you to be so stupid. Did you really think that those one hundred and twenty people were all the people in the village?”

These unsatisfied youths were immediately shocked; they immediately began to count the number of the villagers.

“I… I don’t think there’s anyone left.”

One of them hesitantly said, “Unless you count the baby in the pregnant Ms. Zhang’s belly, otherwise, there should only be one hundred and twenty people in the village.”

Someone thought aloud, “Or is it that all the dogs and pigs in the village had quests too?”

Once again, they were interrupted by Wang Lu. “Are all of you retards the product of inbreeding?”

Although they were not familiar with the term, these young masters recognized that this was an extremely vicious insult. A few of them turned red with anger. “What did you say?”

While scolding, they rushed to fight him to the bitter end.

Wang Lu lifted up his face, looking down on them as if they were village dogs copulating.

Just as the fists of the young masters were about to reach him, a black shadow descended from the sky.

“Papapapapapa!!”

…

[1] [Wang Lu used a poet from Li Bai of the Tang Dynasty era as his own, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Bai]