BZZZT—!
THWACK THWACK THWACK THWACK...
Amidst a series of dull thuds as the blade sliced through flesh, the dozen or so grunts standing in front of the pirate leader were all simultaneously severed at the waist. Their upper bodies slid to the ground, spilling guts and blood everywhere.
After clearing out all the minions, the spear’s light continued unabated, precisely striking the pirate leader at his waist.
The savage expression on the pirate leader’s face instantly froze.
He looked down, watching in disbelief as his body slowly separated at the middle.
"I..."
He only had time to utter a single word before the surging, violent force tore him completely in two.
And with that, the battle was over.
Qin Feng moved slowly through the ship, his Mental Power scanning every corner, searching for any wealth the pirates might have hidden.
The results, however, were a great disappointment.
Other than a few women with numb expressions locked in the bottom of the hold, treated as playthings, there wasn’t even a single high-purity Spiritual Crystal Stone on the entire ship.
’A pity. These guys were on a cruising ship for their mobile operations. All the good stuff is probably hidden back at their main base.’
Qin Feng sighed to himself.
He wasted no time. He opened the ship’s emergency escape pods, set a course for the nearest Life Planet’s space base, and sent all the rescued women inside.
After doing all this, he submitted the mission completion request on the task panel.
[Mission confirmed complete. Calculating rewards...]
The next second, his figure vanished from the pirate ship once again.
When Qin Feng opened his eyes again, he was back in his quiet dormitory room.
At the same time, Hammer’s notification sounded.
"Master, the mission rewards have been credited."
[Contribution Points: +1000]
[Warband Reputation: +3000]
[Competition Score: +1]
The cold metal walls, the quiet Cultivation Room.
Qin Feng stood in the center of the room. His body, having just returned from teleportation, still carried a faint, imperceptible ripple of spatial energy.
But he didn’t immediately start his next action. Instead, he stood still, quickly organizing all the information from the mission in his mind.
’The entire process, from accepting the mission to returning to my dorm, took less than half an hour.’
’The mission rewards are extremely generous.’
He pulled up the mission summary panel and stared at the clear numbers, calculating rapidly in his mind.
’1000 Contribution Points, and 3000 Warband Reputation with the three-times multiplier.’
’And 1 Competition Score point.’
’By this standard, to get the lowest-tier C-rank custom resource pack, which requires 100 points, I’d need to complete a hundred of these simple missions.’
The number seemed large, but what caught Qin Feng’s attention was another, more enticing possibility.
’The mission difficulty, this so-called "simple," has an upper limit of a freshly-minted Fifth-level Martial Artist. And according to the intel, it’s the kind of Fifth-level Martial Artist who practices an Upper-grade Acupoint Opening Technique, with a life force index hovering around 570.’
An opponent of this level was no different from an ant to him.
’If... I could just keep grinding points like this—’
In that instant, Qin Feng’s eyes lit up.
With his current strength, completing a mission like this didn’t even count as a warm-up.
The half-hour duration even included the round-trip travel time for interstellar teleportation.
If he pushed his limits, twenty minutes per mission wasn’t out of the question.
Even calculating at half an hour per mission, if he worked around the clock, he could theoretically complete nearly fifty missions in a day.
In a single day, he could earn a staggering 150,000 Warband Reputation points alone!
This was a number that would drive any student insane.
’If I keep doing simple missions nonstop...’
Qin Feng was about to ask Hammer, but just as he started to speak, Hammer’s voice sounded at the perfect moment.
"Master, there is a logical fallacy in your calculations."
"According to the basic rules of the Empire’s mission system, to ensure fair development for Martial Artists of all levels and to prevent High-level Martial Artists from maliciously monopolizing resources, the system does not allow members to accept an excessive number of missions far below their own power rating."
Hammer pulled up a detailed breakdown of the rules, displaying it clearly before Qin Feng.
"The system has assessed your comprehensive strength and rated your mission ’aptitude zone’ as [Warrior Level]. You may freely accept an unlimited number of Warrior, Hell, and Nightmare-level missions. However, for missions below your aptitude zone—namely the Hard, Adventure, and Simple difficulties—the total number you can accept is capped at 10."
"I see."
Hearing this, Qin Feng immediately understood the logic behind it.
He was well aware that these missions, with their lavishly generous rewards, were essentially a form of indirect investment and training for all Martial Artists by the Empire and the Cannan Star Martial Arts University.
Each mission was a whetstone, carefully prepared for Martial Artists within a specific power bracket.
If High-level Martial Artists were allowed to use their superior strength to crush lower-level content and madly reap the resources prepared for weaker Martial Artists, it would completely violate the original intent of training. It would create a vicious cycle where the strong get stronger and the weak have no path forward.
Therefore, this ironclad rule of "not allowing excessive acceptance of missions below one’s own power level" was an absolute necessity.
Of course, Qin Feng also understood that this rule only applied to the "non-strategic mission zone" that he currently had access to.
In the Empire’s higher-level "strategic mission zone," to ensure the absolute success rate of certain key missions, the Empire would even pay any price, dispatching experts whose realms far surpassed the target. They would use overwhelming force to carry out a Suppression on a rebellion or to annihilate a top prodigy from an Alien Race.