The number of applications to Nirvana Guild broke through 5000 in the blink of an eye, but the lowest level guild could only have 50 members. Chi Qing was a bit worried. “Brother Chen, with this many people, should I choose randomly?”
Chen Xiao thought for a moment and said, “Accept old players at full level who have been playing for more than half a year first. We’re going to play the guild dungeon, and full level players usually have seven star cards in their decks so it’ll be easier to clear. Pick the players who qualify according to when they applied.”
The guild dungeon can only be played once a week. Playing it will increase the development of the guild, participating members will earn points, and the precious upgrade cards that will be used in large quantities later on are sure to drop. It can be said that most guilds will always do the weekly.
However, because the difficulty of the guild dungeon is far beyond that of the daily dungeons and team dungeons, low level cards are completely unable to pass the dungeon. It is only natural to recruit old players who have cultivated good cards on their own.
According to Chen Xiao’s proposed filtering rules, from within the densely packed application list Chi Qiao picked 45 level 70 players who had been playing for more than half a year. One after another, guild members who joined excitedly sent greetings in the guild chat.
“Hello everyone! I saw there were several thousand names on the application list, I really can’t believe I was unexpectedly able to squeeze in!”
“Uncle Chubby, I am your fan, begging for Sun Ce, begging for Zhou Yu!”
“Uncle Chubby look at me, I want to buy Lin Daiyu but I never get one!”
The newly added guild members all clearly came for Uncle Chubby. This was the current selling point of Nirvana Guild – our guild has Uncle Chubby’s character cards, the cards that smashed the world record!
Xie Mingzhe cordially greeted everyone. “Hello everyone, Qingqing Grass is our guild manager, in the future everyone will listen to sister Qing’s instructions!”
One by one everyone said hello to sister Qing, fearing that if the head of the guild was not happy they would be kicked out. There were still many people lined up outside who wanted to join the guild so they had to cherish having gotten in.
Chi Qing’s calm voice sounded in everyone’s ears. “The ones I added just now are all old full level players, approved in order of application time. Let’s all first look at the guild rules. In a moment we’ll divide into five groups to do the weekly.”
Hearing this, everyone opened the guild panel to look at the announcements.
Nirvana Guild rules: 1, You must complete the guild dungeon every week. Contribution will be checked on Sundays and players with less than 2000 points will be asked to leave. 2, Guild members should be harmonious and friendly. Picking fights, quarreling, and stirring up trouble will receive a warning for the first offense, and players will be immediately kicked after the second offense. 3, As guild benefits, the three cards Sun Ce, Zhou Yu, and Huang Gai can be exchanged by members for 10,000 points at the guild store. Other benefits will be added in the future, so please look forward to it.
Doing guild missions, running the guild dungeon, and donating materials can all get you guild points. Active members can save 10,000 points in a month. A godly dungeon card like Sun Ce, if you want to buy it yourself, if you haven’t got tens of thousands of gold coins you can’t be certain of getting it, but now, as long as you do tasks for one month, you can immediately exchange it for free. Which guild is able to have such good benefits?
Seeing this exchange rule, everyone was so excited they could run laps. Among the several thousand people who applied, the first batch of people added to Nirvana Guild really won the lottery!
That day happened to be Thursday. The cooldown on the guild dungeon reset every Thursday. Chen Xiao chose this time to recruit so that the new members could immediately play the guild dungeon and help the guild to develop.
Chen Xiao’s old account had already been deleted, so the guild only had Chi Qing, Chi Yingying, Pang Zi, Jin Yue, and Xie Mingzhe as management. Chen Xiao said, “There are exactly five of you, one for each group.”
Xie Mingzhe was somewhat at a loss. “I haven’t played the guild dungeon, can I lead a group?”
Chen Xiao said, “Let a’Qing record a video for you, you’ll learn quickly after watching.”
Xie Mingzhe thought it wasn’t difficult, so he agreed at once.
Chi Qing began to divide everyone into groups, handling the matter easily. She soon figured which card sets the 45 members were good at, and divided them into 5 small groups based on their strengths. Each of the 5 managers served as the head of a group.
After separating the groups properly, she first challenged the guild dungeon once, recorded a detailed video, and sent it to Xie Mingzhe.
After all, Xie Mingzhe had a foundation in games. He understood the boss mechanics after reading it twice, so at four o’clock he led his group members to start the dungeon.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Everyone that entered the dungeon was very excited. “I am in a group with Uncle Chubby, so excited!” “Uncle Chubby, I want to take a picture with you, I saw Uncle Chubby in person today!” “Uncle Chubby, I super love your beauty cards, quickly come take a group picture!”
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Cough, his in-game persona was really very nice and friendly, just like a mascot!
Xie Mingzhe was forced to accept his fate and cooperate to take a group picture with everyone.
Five minutes later, Xie Mingzhe persuaded everyone to start moving.
Xie Mingzhe said seriously: “This dungeon requires six damage cards, two support cards, one healing card, and one taunt card. First summon your commonly used top-level cards for me to see.”
Everyone cooperatively summoned their cards.
The guild dungeon is very difficult so the deck must be carefully matched. Xie Mingzhe chose two group attack cards to use for the large number of mobs that spawned during the boss stage, and the four strongest single attack cards to hit the boss. Of the remaining cards, his Sun Ce pulled hatred, a healing card healed Sun Ce, and two support cards added various kinds of group buffs.
Seeing that his arrangements were well done, the players who jokingly took group pictures all calmed down to listen to his orders. The very amiable seeming Uncle Chubby gave commands very decisively and assigned a good group of cards to start challenging the dungeon.
As the five groups completed the dungeon one after another, the members all actively went to complete guild missions. At 5 pm, a notice popped up on the guild channel. “Congratulations to Nirvana Guild for upgrading to a level 2 guild, the member limit has increased to 100 members!”
The members were especially moved. “The guild upgraded to level 2 in an afternoon, I have never seen a guild that upgraded so quickly!” “Our guild is a guild that wants to do big things, proud and outstanding!” “Just went to the guild territory to stroll around, the building design is so beautiful!”
The guild channel was especially lively, with new text and voice messages appearing constantly.
Chi Qing arranged everything neatly. Xie Mingzhe deeply believed that Brother Chen’s decision to hand over guild management to Sister Qing was an excellent choice.
At this moment, Chen Xiao suddenly sent a private message. “Xiao Xie, come over, let’s go quickly level up.”
The past few days, Xie Mingzhe had done nothing but make cards, and was currently only level 40. Characters are not like cards, that can directly level up by using experience stones. Characters generally challenged wild monsters and did missions in order to gain experience. Character rank and mental power were linked together, and mental power determined how many cards could be used simultaneously.
When everyone teamed up to challenge a dungeon, character level didn’t matter, as long as they met the level 35 minimum necessary to enter the dungeon. However the arena was different. If your level 40 character went to fight a level 70 character, the other person could summon 7 cards at a time but you could only summon four, it’d be a wonder if you could compete.
Arena admittance was limited to full level characters for that reason.
Therefore, the level 40 Xie Mingzhe took Chen Xiao, whose smurf account had just reached level 10, to grind experience in the wilderness areas of Egret Star
The strange wild monsters Chen Xiao chose to grind experience were quite concentrated, and his attack power was not high. Xie Mingzhe simultaneously controlled Sun Ce and Zhou Yu together with ease and their experience rose steadily. By 7pm Uncle Chubby had already reached level 45, and by grinding high level monsters Chen Xiao also reached level 30.
******
In the following days while Chi Qing was leading the group members to complete missions, Xie Mingzhe and Chen Xiao teamed up to grind experience.
The sales at Half Moon Card Store were limited to 50 cards each day.
The official rules limited card masters to making 100 cards per day. This is to protect card masters, to prevent some players from using excessive mental power and damaging their brains.
Xie Mingzhe got up every morning to make 5 sets of instant death cards, totaling 50 cards to hang up in the shop and sell. Then in the afternoon, he made a few Sun Ce, Zhou Yu, and Huang Gai. These cards are for guild benefits. After a month, the guild members would definitely save up enough points to exchange, so he had to make preparations in advance.
Fortunately, it doesn’t take much mental power to directly copy cards. After Chen Xiao ranked up, he took the initiative to control the cards while grinding wild monsters on Egret Star, letting Xie Mingzhe soak up experience while resting his mind. The two worked and rested every day, and their character levels rose swiftly.
In this way, Chen Xiao and Xie Mingzhe’s characters at last rose to level 70 on Sunday.
Level 70 is the highest level for characters in the game, and reaching full level is the true beginning of the game.
In the card game, all full level characters have the same stats, and there is no need to go create equipment. The only reference for comparing strength between players is the quality of their decks. Casual players might only raise a few cute pet cards and be satisfied admiring the beautiful scenery of the game, but for players that want to challenge the arena, a good deck of cards is the most important thing.
After Uncle Chubby reached full level, his inbox once again piled up with system notifications. Xie Mingzhe took a cursory look at his emails, and received the full level rewards with one click. The reward was a small number of card strengthening materials, given as an official benefit to players for reaching full level.
He deleted all the irrelevant emails, leaving only the most important email marked in red.
Invitation from Phoenix star!
He opened the mail, and saw what was written inside: “Hello dear player, Congratulations on having reached level 70, you have unlocked the full gameplay of the Star Card world. The competition star Phoenix star sends you a cordial invitation, as long as you have seven full level 70 black backed cards, you can enter Phoenix star and officially participate in the Star Card Qualifying Tournament.”
“The Star Card Qualifying tournament is divided into seven stages. The order from low to high is: first level, [Star Card Apprentice], second level, [Trainee Star Card Master], third level, [Intern Star Card Master], fourth level, [Junior Star Card Expert], fifth level, [Intermediate Star Card Expert], sixth level, [Senior Star Card Expert], and seventh level, [Star Card Grandmaster].”
“If you are talented and can become the highest rank [Star Card Grandmaster], then you get an admission ticket for the nationwide [Star Card Grandmaster Invitational Tournament]. The Grandmaster Invitational Tournament, which starts in January of each year, is the only way to join the professional league. Contestants who show remarkable performance in the Grandmaster Tournament can get a league registration qualification, and can sign up with major clubs to become real professional players!”
“The new journey is about to begin, and we look forward to your good results in the qualifying matches!”
Xie Mingzhe entered the game to see countless official emails, but this is the one that made him the most excited.
An invitation to the competition star!
He once followed Tang Muzhou to a competition star. At that time, Tang Muzhou set up his own competition room in order to demonstrate the efficiency of the Lin Daiyu instant death card. However, in order to really join the regular Phoenix star Qualifying Tournament, the character has to reach level 70 and have access to at least seven full level black-backed cards.
Phoenix star and other stars are relatively independent. Only various competitions are held here, including the one with the most participants, the Star Card Grandmaster Invitational Tournament, and the highest level Star Card League Professional Tournament.
Unlike the other peaceful and comfortable stars, the smoke of the battlefield filled the air everywhere on Phoenix Star, where only strength speaks. For players who can go beyond the sky on Phoenix Star, aside from outstanding awareness, card decks are also an important factor.
Seven full level cards are no more than merely the threshold of access.
How can a real grandmaster who truly hits the level of expert only have seven cards?
And currently, Xie Mingzhe…doesn’t even have seven cards!
The instant death card can’t be counted, because for each match one can take at most one instant death card, so they are strictly limited. Currently, the only cards he can take to the qualifiers are Sun Ce, Zhou Yu, and Huang Gai, not even enough to form a basic card set. He must hurry up and make some cards suitable for challenging the arena.
Why not try asking his master for advice on building a deck?
Thinking of this, Xie Mingzhe opened his friend list, wanting to send a message to his master. Before he could, as if they were sharing the same thought, Chen Qianlin sent him a voice message using his smurf account. “Xiao Xie, I saw you reached full level, are you going to challenge the arena ranking?”
Xie Mingzhe replied, “Of course I want to! But my deck still isn’t enough, Master, I was just looking for you.”
Chen Qianlin said, “Pull me into your private space.”
A moment later, Chen Qianlin’s smurf account “Withered Tree Returns to Life” appeared in Xie Mingzhe’s private space.
Master’s smurf account used the generic face provided by the system. Compared to his original appearance, it was far worse, but the sound was his original voice, sounding clear and sweet. He straightforwardly said. “Let me see your current card group.”
Xie Mingzhe took him into the study and presented his cards. “I’ve made 10 instant death cards, as well as Sun Ce, Zhou Yu, and Huang Gai.”
Chen Qianlin asked, “Do you know you can only bring one instant death card into a match?”
Xie Mingzhe nodded. “Yeah, God Tang told me.”
Chen Qianlin said, “Actually, in the low-end arena, the majority of player’s card decks are quite messy, they simply don’t use instant death cards at all. Once you’ve reached the fourth level, star card experts and above are able to have comparatively more organized decks. At that point, you can carefully select instant death cards. For the moment, you have to start from the lowest rank, so you need to make a set of universal cards.”
He used his slim fingers to pick up Sun Ce, Zhou Yu, and Huang Gai, and said, “You can use these three cards, but you still need to make four more competition cards. Zhou Yu’s attack power alone is not enough. If you use a group attack skill and the opponent heals, it’s equivalent to a wasted attack. Make another group attack card. It’s best to use the fire system, matching with your Zhou Yu to make a fire deck.”
You can use three Zhou Yu at once to set the dungeon on fire, but you can’t have duplicate cards in the arena. Zhou Yu as a sole damage dealer absolutely won’t do. Master’s suggestion made a lot of sense. If there are two fire system group attack cards, if a set of skills is dropped, the opponent can’t help but die or be disabled.
Chen Qianlin pointed out, “In addition, you still lack field control support. It can be a single control or group control, that can cause dizziness, silence, freezing, petrification, or stunning effects and so on, that can cripple the opponent’s card’s fighting power.”
Xie Mingzhe rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Master, you said I can take Huang Gai to the arena, will it be enough for healing?” When challenging the dungeon, Huang Gai only needed to keep Sun Ce’s health up, but in the arena, with a set of seven cards, losing 20% of his health can only give a healing shield to one character. If he came across a situation where a group all lost health at once, he would be powerless.
Chen Qianlin said, “Huang Gai needs to take the initiative to lose health himself in order to add a shield. The opponent will likely take advantage and directly knock his health down, so you can make a healing card to stabilize the situation.”
Xie Mingzhe nodded. “In that case, I’ll make a group healing card. When the opponent releases a powerful group attack, I can initiate a group heal. Having a group healing card will stabilize health and raise my fault tolerance rate.”
Che Qianlin praised him. “It’s true. In the arena, on the whole, everyone’s hand has a group healing card. Because of this, the official requirements for group healing cards are not very strict. It’s very easy to pass the review, as long as the card description doesn’t just copy another card completely.”
His deck still lacks group attack, field control, and healing cards…
First, think about how he ought to make the fire system group attack card.
Xie Mingzhe scratched his head and thought carefully for a moment, then his eyes suddenly shone.
Since he’s made an Eastern Wu dungeon team, then why not make an Eastern Wu tournament team!
Wu State had too many famous generals to count, more than enough to make seven cards.
Zhou Yu’s “Setting Fire at Chibi” is a fire system group attack, and Wu State still has a person inseparable from fire.
Lu Xun, courtesy name Bo Yan, was the late Wu State’s most important military strategist.
If Zhou Yu’s Battle of Chibi established the situation in China between the three states of Wei, Shu, and Wu, then Lu Xun’s setting fire to the military encampment at the Battle of Yiling made a great contribution to Eastern Wu, which Sun Quan was in charge of.
If you have Zhou Yu’s “Setting Fire at Chibi”, how can you lack Lu Xun’s “Burning Down the Military Encampment”?
Translator’s notes:
Thank you everyone for coming to read my translation! This is my first time translating and I am not fluent in Chinese, so if you catch any mistakes or something doesn’t make sense, let me know! I hope my translation can do justice to this excellent novel that has long since been abandoned by the previous translator. Right now, updates will post on Tuesdays, but I may schedule additional updates for special occasions in the future.
Thank you! Thank you very much for picking up this novel! 🌸 🌺🌼
Ahhh finally someone picked this up!!! Thank you so much! Can’t wait to read more ^^
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Pfft! Operator error… Thanks for picking up this story to translate ❤️🤣
Thank you so much for picking up this novel.
It finally got picked up!! Yay! MTL was understandable but a pain to read when it came to some of the moves.
Thanks for picking this up.