Chapter 353 - 325: Alliance Chamber of Commerce
At a glance, these two abilities didn’t seem to have changed much, aside from their increased Level.
But after the guild was upgraded to Level 3, Qin Ziwen noticed a new feature had appeared: the Alliance Chamber of Commerce.
He clicked on it for a closer look and discovered that this Alliance Chamber of Commerce was quite unique, somewhat resembling an in-game auction house.
However, it was restricted to guild members only, functioning as an internal "local trading network."
It only allowed members of the same guild to list and trade resources among themselves.
Its only real benefit seemed to be saving time on transporting said resources.
But all the Homes in the Gated Community were in the same complex. It was just a matter of going downstairs, crossing the courtyard, and climbing a few flights of stairs.
"It feels kind of useless..."
Qin Ziwen paced back and forth, lost in thought, before his steps suddenly came to a halt.
A certain possibility occurred to him.
’What if the guild’s members weren’t limited to just this Gated Community?’
’Could it work across different Gated Communities, or even different maps?’
’If so, he would only need to recruit one member from another Gated Community to enable cross-area trading.’
’Could this be the real purpose of the guild system?’
A gleam flickered in Qin Ziwen’s eyes.
It wouldn’t be difficult to verify. All he had to do was recruit a member from another Gated Community.
Suppressing his eagerness, Qin Ziwen took out the Function Card: Node that the Mosasaurus had dropped upon completion of the Hunting Celestial List quest.
He used the Card.
[Function Activated: Level 5 Node]
[Authority increased. Current Authority: Level 4 Authority (8/16)]
[Level 5 Node: You can establish five spatial Nodes outside your Home. Nodes are two-way portals, usable only on the current map. Their locations cannot be changed for seven days after being set. New Feature—’Node Exclusion Zone’: A second Node cannot exist within a ten-kilometer radius of an established Node. If multiple Nodes already exist in an area, the one with the highest authority Level takes priority. If authority Levels are equal, the one with the highest Node Level will remain.]
His progress toward Level 4 Authority was finally past the halfway mark.
Qin Ziwen privately calculated that if his luck held, he might actually have a shot at reaching Level 5 Authority before the current map’s cycle ended.
Then there was the increase in his Node Level. Adding one more Node wasn’t particularly noteworthy.
The Node’s cooldown hadn’t changed, but it now had the "Node Exclusion Zone" function.
A ten-kilometer radius was a considerable area, especially out in the wilderness.
Moreover, it could suppress other people’s Nodes. By placing one, he could temporarily prevent enemies from using their own Nodes nearby—though, of course, it all came down to a contest of authority.
The importance of authority was becoming increasingly apparent.
...
「Downstream from the forest, in a city on the plains.」
The city was overgrown with trees. Inside a partitioned room on the top floor of a three-story building in the city center, a faint blue anchor-shaped mark on the wall pulsed with light, brightening and dimming in a rhythm like breathing.
The mark slowly expanded, and a swirling blue portal materialized out of thin air.
Two figures stepped out, one after the other.
The one in the lead wore a greatcoat of fox fur, his hands tucked into his sleeves. He had unbound hair, thick eyebrows, an aquiline nose, and a pair of upturned eyes that glinted with a cold, cunning light.
Following him was a woman who appeared to be in her early thirties. Her skin had a sallow tint, and a string of ornaments dangled on her forehead, swaying gently.
The thick-browed man turned his head, his tone familiar. "Sister Ya, your Bone-Eating Trees are growing quite well here. I bet this year’s harvest is going to double, isn’t it? How about you spare some Wooden Bone Hearts for me?"
Xie Ya looked up. "What do you need Wooden Bone Hearts for? You people have no use for them where you’re from, do you?"
After a moment of silence, the corner of the thick-browed man’s mouth tightened. "You might laugh, but my Giant Rock Dragon—the one I left in the desert—was killed. Its body was picked clean. And not only that, but all the Spirit-Eating Fungus was wiped out too!"
A flicker of surprise crossed Xie Ya’s eyes. "That’s some rotten luck. So you want to buy Wooden Bone Hearts to cover this year’s tribute?"
"Yeah." The man sighed. "I’m out of stock, and it’s going to be hard to gather the ’Marvels’ for this tribute. Of all the people I know, you’re the only one who can help me with this."
Xie Ya nodded slowly. "I do have extra Wooden Bone Hearts I can sell you. But I recall you were raising that Giant Rock Dragon in a desert on a low-intensity map, weren’t you? Most people who can get into a place like that are newbies, still considered a ’Tuiyuan.’ A single newbie took down a Giant Rock Dragon? Are you sure it wasn’t some veteran who went back to their old stomping grounds and cleaned you out?"
The thick-browed man’s mouth twitched. "I’m absolutely certain it was a newbie. I’d been keeping an eye on that map, trying to go back every day, but it kept telling me I couldn’t return because the map was occupied by a Tuiyuan. The day after I was finally able to get back in, the Giant Rock Dragon was already gone. I checked the signs of battle in the area—it definitely happened while they were still in their Gated Community phase."
A muscle in the thick-browed man’s cheek twitched. "I even used up a Card to track the culprit. And guess what happened?"
Xie Ya was curious. "What happened?"
"Right when I was about to succeed, I suddenly got a notification: ’Insufficient Authority’!"
Hearing this, Xie Ya froze for a second, then burst out laughing. "You had ’Insufficient Authority’? You have Level 4 Authority! How could a newbie on a starter map reach Level 4 Authority?"
The thick-browed man let out a long breath, his tone unreadably complex. "Exactly. That person must have broken through to Level 4 Authority at the critical moment."
At this, a peculiar glint appeared in Xie Ya’s eyes, and her interest was piqued. "A Tuiyuan that has been through five maps or less is still considered a novice Tuiyuan. Even if the desert map was their fifth, breaking through to Level 4 Authority after only five maps? This Tuiyuan is pretty impressive. They must have maxed out all the Function Cards from every single one of the early maps."
"Yeah." The thick-browed man nodded, looking glum.
Xie Ya chuckled. "No wonder you didn’t press the issue, given your personality. It seems this Tuiyuan has a lot of potential."
At her words, the thick-browed man looked at Xie Ya. The overall quality of a Tuiyuan’s founding members largely determined its growth curve.
The woman before him, for example, was no simple case. She was one of the last to join their guild, yet she had surpassed many of the others, climbing the ranks to the point where she was about to break into the upper echelons.
She had been able to grow so quickly because the members of her Tuiyuan were of such high quality. As far as he knew, she came from an ancient feudal background; her Tuiyuan had been a bandit stronghold in a time of chaos. Before they were brought into this new reality, the stronghold had been planning an uprising, stockpiling grain and reinforcing their walls.
With a background like that, being thrown into a starter map meant they would just dominate.
They scored extremely high in every category, from their overall evaluation to all other aspects.
From there, they just kept snowballing, eventually reaching Level 4 Authority after only six maps.
It wasn’t as if experiencing more maps made it easier to obtain Function Cards.
The further one progressed, the higher the difficulty of the quests on the Hunting Celestial List became.
The map environments also grew more dangerous, and many Tuiyuans could only scrape by just to survive in the later stages.
But regardless, when faced with an opponent of such limitless potential, he felt it was better to just let the matter drop. Unless he was absolutely certain he could crush them completely, it was best to quit while he was ahead, before the situation escalated into a life-or-death feud.
He’d just have to chalk it up to bad luck and swallow the loss.
...
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