SPO – Chapter 81

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Chapter 81: Taking Advantage

Before Yue Qiang left, he did not forget Luqiu Ning’s body.

From the very beginning, the bamboo scroll had hinted at him that the ‘body is the tinal gift’. At the end of the bamboo scroll, the hint was repeated once more. He remember this very well.

Although he wasn’t sure what this body was used for at the moment, there was no way he’s leaving it behind.

But… was he going to take it away along with the coffin? And what about the jewelries and treasures inside the coffin?

If this was a normal game, then this problem was easily solvable. He only needed to toss it into his backpack. However, his backpack in this game was quite literally a backpack made of cloth, and its capacity was extremely limited. Other than some key items that he had saved, the items that took up the most space in his backpack was in fact his books.

In the past, Yue Qiang had attempted to store very heavy or very large items into his backpack. His attempts had all failed without an exception.

Should he just carry it out like this? Yue Qiang walked before the coffin and touched Luqiu Ning once. He did not have too much hope in him.

Then, a miracle happened.

Luqiu Ning’s body was gone.

When he hurriedly clicked into his item window and checked the items inside his backpack, he found that there was an extra item as he expected it to be: Luqiu Ning’s body.

The items in his backpack were accurately reflected on the main interface of the game. The more bamboo scrolls and books there were inside the backpack, the more stuffed it became. However, despite the fact that it could accurately reflect the image of several added books, the backpack did not change at all when Luqiu Ning’s body had appeared in it.

This could only be explained as Luqiu Ning performing some ‘setups’ on her body while she was still alive.

Regardless, he must take her body away despite not knowing what use it might have at the moment.

As Luqiu Ning’s body was put inside the backpack, the Soul Confounding Gas that was spread inside the small room all this time slowly disappeared.

Yue Qiang was starting to feel that his head had become a little heavy, but the fainted Ai Qian by the door had quickly awakened.

He saw the coffin.

By now, Yue Qiang had already stuffed the two beast skins and the bamboo scroll into his cloth made backpack. Luqiu Ning’s body had also been stored into his item window through a strange way. But there were still many items that he did not manage to put away in time.

For example, the jewelries and treasures inside that coffin!

There were all kinds of gold and silver made products, bracelets and earrings, wine goblets and jewels, currency of various vassal states, exquisite looking shells, and pearls of various colors. Almost all of the ancient wealth that one could imagine were there.

Ai Qian’s eyes immediately lit up.

In the first place, his original objective was this coffin of treasure.

He said quickly, “This treasure is all mine! Don’t you touch it!”

Yue Qiang was dumbfounded. His eyes had become fixated on the treasure, and he had forgotten all about the injuries on his body, the various strange atmosphere and the environment. In reality, Yue Qiang did not think that the currency items in this game otherworld was all that important.

After all, the point of playing games was either to raise one’s PK or PVE levels. If this was WoW or some other classic online games, then these gold coins could be used to exchange some point cards. The top gear and important leveling items in smaller online games or browser games were almost all calculated through RMB. As for game unique currency… considering how widespread auto scripts were used these days, in game gold coins and the sort simply did not have too much value. Those truly valuable items could not be purchased by in game currency, and they either dropped in high difficulty quests or were exchanged through RMB.

Therefore, he did not think much of the coffin of priceless treasures.

But Ai Qian didn’t seem to think that way.

Yue Qiang recalled his Greed Clouded Heart LVL 2 once more… Was this a Heart skill, or was it something that purely described one’s character?

“I’m telling you.” Ai Qian’s eyes shone, and his pale face swiftly reddened because he had used his Charm skill. The mingling colors of sickly pale white and excited red gave him the appearance of a dying flash. Yue Qiang wondered a little if this fellow would die just like that.

“I’m telling you that these treasures are all mind because of… eleven reasons!”

“Number one: I am the one who found the treasure map, so the treasures should all be given to me!”

“Number two: I have equipped my ten soldiers with the best equipment, so I am very poor right now. So the treasures should all be given to me!”

“Number three: I am handsome, so the treasures should all be given to me!”

…

Ai Qianqian blurted out non-stop a bunch of pretty ridiculous reasons, and the short version of the story was that all of the treasures should be given to him. Originally Yue Qiang did not plan to take the treasures anyway, but when he saw Ai Qian being so desperate, a thought suddenly crossed his mind.

This trader still has quite a lot of value left to be squeezed out of him!

For starters, the spiders just now were probably counted as his kills, so he should have quite a lot of Progress Points on him. Since killing a spider earned the killer 0.2 points, then a hundred spiders or so should be worth 20 points minimum. 20 Progress Points was a sizable amount, so he must rip it off the trader’s possession no matter what!

Moreover, his Memory Unlock Rate was higher than norm. He should obtain more information on the Memory Unlock Rate from him as well.

Yue Qiang waited for Ai Qian to finish his voluminous speech of eleven reasons before typing unhurriedly,

“Nope.”

Ai Qian was stunned. His lying, scummy, profiteering mouth had never failed in every endeavor, but in front of Yue Qiang it was… completely useless!

“We’ve saved your life several times since we entered the cave. Naturally, you can’t spend if you don’t have a life. Therefore, although you are our employer, although you are the one who found the treasure map and the one who hired those armored soldiers, we should at least split these money between us evenly.” Yue Qiang typed.

It was at this moment Yin’s Whisper suddenly appeared on the screen, “You can hold onto my portion. Also, we need to ask him a bit about…”

Yue Qiang replied, “I know, don’t worry.”

Ai Qian said, “T-this is unfair, this…”

“Do you want the remaining two portions of treasures?”

“I do!”

“If you do,” Yue Qiang lay down a trap, “then exchange it with Progress Points.”

When Ai Qian heard this, he immediately let out a sigh of relief and said, “Alright, sure. I’ve killed more than a hundred spiders just now, and every spider is worth 0.1 points. That is a total of 10.7 Progress Points.”

“Bullshit. A spider is worth 0.2 points. Did you forget that I killed one earlier?”

Black lines cut across Ai Qian’s face. Lying and being caught redhanded on the spot was a pretty embarrassing thing, “Alright, it’s a total of 21.4 Progress Points. It should be enough to exchange for two portions of treasures, right?”

“No, it is not enough.” Yue Qiang said, “It can only exchange for one portion of treasures. You will have to tell us everything relating to your lost memories to trade for the last portion.”

Ai Qian gritted his teeth. He was on the losing side this time.

Previously, he had traded with Yue Qiang at Yue Village once, and he had earned 50 Progress Points at the time. His impulse got the better of him and he used them to unlock his memories. Not only did he not unlock anything important information at all back then, he had to lose even more Progress Points now. However, since Yue Qiang had told him that he could trade the remaining one third of the treasure for those information, then it was still worth it.

“There aren’t actually any content that is worth recalling.” He bit his teeth and said, “The two of you haven’t unlocked much of your memories, I’m sure. I can give you this information for free. The first few percentages of the memory unlocks are all feelings! I can only recall that my past experiences were extremely painful, but I cannot recall anything at all about the content. I only remember some extremely fragmented scenes and scattered terms with zero actual effect at all such as ‘duty’ and ‘responsibility’. Unless you can accumulate enough progress points to unlock a large amount of memories at once, unlocking memories is a pure waste of points otherwise!”

Pure waste, huh? This information was pretty important. Yue Qiang looked at the girl with her eyes closed beside him. At first, he was planning to split a portion of Progress Points to Yin to unlock some of her memories if he turned out a little rich later. But now it would seem that he should save the thought temporarily until he could become a super upstart with several hundred points under his belt.

“Your information is not valuable enough. Therefore, you need to exchange it with something else.” Yue Qiang lay down another trap before saying, “For example, do you have any information related to the Zhao general Zhao Yan?”

His wording was very casual, but his hard was lifted up to his throat.

This was the question he wanted to know the most, because it was directly related to his life ten days later!

Yue Qiang knew that human decisions often followed inertial thinking. He had exchanged blows with An Qian for several rounds and slowly relented on the second portion of treasures and half of the third portion of treasures. Therefore, going by inertial thinking, Ai Qian most definitely would want to obtain this last half of the third portion of the treasure.

This was just like a browser game seducing its players to spend money step by step. First, the game would gift countless equipment, ingots and all kinds of stat rewards for free so the players would gradually get used to the feeling of spending money. When the free stuff were all used up, the players would experience a large sense of discomfort, hence leading up towards the final objective – allowing players to recharge with cash.

The players actually understood that browser games were extremely boring. However, they would still spend the money due to inertial thinking. This was an inertia in terms of decision making.

Yue Qiang’s method was more or less the same. First, I give you the second portion of treasures. Then, I give you half the third portion of treasures. So, would you want to have the final half portion of treasures?

Of course you want it, don’t you?

In reality, what he cared the most weren’t the questions he asked at the beginning. It was the final few questions that he cared about the most.

He remembered well: When Ai Qian first appeared, he was already an officer in the Zhao Army! How did he manage to get to such a rank? And why did he leave the Zhao Army later on and work solo?

A person at his level must know something related to Zhao Yan. Moreover, these information might very well play a huge role in the duel between Yue Qiang and Zhao Yan!

This final question was the question he had kept in store until now!

“Just talk about anything.” Yue Qiang typed, “For example, let’s talk about Zhao Yan’s combat strength, maybe?”

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