Building a sect from scratch.

"Hmm! Come to think of it, you guys were the ones who told us to call it that!"

As Qing Ning walked, she said, "A nation can be classified into many categories based on common characteristics in culture, language, history, and customs. Aren't you Taiyin Sect disciples from the Blue Star Realm just like that?"

Night Owl scratched his head: "Hmm... that's not wrong, but we still have quite a few different countries and regions, cultures, and even languages..."

"In the end, they are very different from us Liuzhou people... ah, we Nabahai people!"

As Qingning spoke, she stopped and pointed to a very simple tent in front of her: "Look, this is it!"

Night Owl only then realized that in the short time it took to exchange a few words, the two of them had already walked quite a distance and arrived at a gathering place full of tents.

The tents are mostly made of materials such as felt and leather, carrying a primitive feel—truly a primitive "feel," with a strong smell of fish and the stench of livestock, making the night owl feel as if he were seeing his great-grandmother.

Some of the tents looked familiar; they resembled those posted by gaming experts on the forum. They were clearly waterproof fabrics developed and sold by the experts in Chang'an City, shimmering and dazzling.

Although the tents varied in appearance and the people gathered there were a motley crew, each tent had a wooden pole in front of it with a small triangular flag hanging on it, bearing the words "Nabahai" in various languages. However, most of the characters were crooked, probably because the cultural background of each person who wrote the flag was different.

Among these tents, the most eye-catching thing is the baskets and boxes of ore placed on the open ground outside the tents, which are colorful and emit various kinds of light.

“We are really short-handed, but it seems like a lot of people from your Taiyin Sect came today, which has eased the situation somewhat, but it's still not enough,” Qing Ning muttered. “Your Chang'an City has placed too many orders. If this continues, just sorting the ore will probably take until next month! Not to mention refining, purifying, and then smelting it into ingots, which will take a lot of work! We only set up the furnace a couple of days ago!”

Night Owl asked doubtfully, "You can post quests, right? It sounds like you're offering pretty good prices, so a lot of players should come, right?"

Qingning said with a worried look, "We've paid them, but most of them can't stand it for more than fifteen minutes. We can only pay them according to their income. The most they can do is half an hour. The number of people who can stay and work longer is very small! In all these days, only two people have stayed and come to work every day!"

Hearing this, Night Owl became a little worried about the task: "Then, how long will it take to sort one box?"

"I don't know, everyone's speed is different! But if you're skilled, it shouldn't take more than half an hour!"

As Qingning spoke, she lifted the lid of one of the rather large felt tents and called out to the people inside: "Sea Turtle Qi Pure! Soup Dumpling! I've found another ore sorter! You two come and teach him! I still need to check on the shop!"

"no problem!"

As two voices, one male and one female, rang out in unison, Night Owl craned his neck to look and saw that the two inside were indeed players, and they were obviously veteran players—their equipment was flashy and glowing, almost blinding him!
"Oh dear! It's a newbie!" Guantangbao was the first to notice that Night Owl was wearing a plain blue cloth robe given to new players. It was simple and not very attractive. Perhaps the veteran players' aesthetic sense had been distorted by all sorts of flashy lighting effects and colorful fabrics. In any case, these newbie outfits were consistently discriminated against by the player community.

Of course, the discrimination is directed at the clothing, not at new players.

Thanks to the game atmosphere initially driven by veteran players like Wang Ergou and Zhao Qing, the game "Ten Continents Chronicles" is particularly friendly to newbies. Since the introduction of the mentor-apprentice system, even the frequency of the game planners being questioned about their family tree for poorly designed new player guides has decreased significantly.

Night Owl is a man nearing thirty in real life, old enough to be called "uncle" at a kindergarten gate. Being a newbie in the game, he's a bit out of sorts and stammers as he politely asks, "Um, hello to you two, how do I do this quest?"

"It's very simple! Look, see these boxes over there? If anything looks similar to what's in these boxes, just put it in. If you can't tell the difference and don't recognize it, and you don't get a debuff in your status bar while holding it, just put it over there. If you get a debuff, put it in this basket. This basket has a talisman that isolates the aura, so it can prevent the aura of these evil mines from affecting normal people!"

Guantangbao enthusiastically explained, pointing to a row of wooden boxes in front of her and Haigui Qichun, a pile of colorful ore as high as a small mountain behind them, and a woven basket next to the ore pile.

Several strange-looking talismans were pasted on the woven basket, their surfaces faintly glowing with a pale golden light, making it look very high-end...

Night Owl's eyes lit up as he stared at the talismans that looked like they belonged to a cultivation sect, and asked, "Wow, were these talismans drawn by a player too?"

Sea Turtle Qi Pure chimed in, "Of course! They cost a dollar a sheet on the market! They're incredibly difficult to paint! And the materials are hard to come by! Tsk tsk tsk! These few are really ugly! What a waste of all this good spiritual material!"

The soup dumpling asked enthusiastically, "By the way, what's your ID? Want to add me as a friend?"

"【A Night Owl】, let me add you. Don't you guys hide your IDs?"

While opening the system's friend panel, Night Owl looked at the clearly identifiable IDs above the heads of the two veteran players and was somewhat puzzled. Hiding IDs was a feature that had only been updated recently, and he had hidden his ID as soon as he entered the game, assuming that everyone would do the same. However, none of the three veteran players he encountered had hidden their IDs.

Guantangbao waved his hand and said, "Hey, whether we hide it or not, it doesn't matter! We'll just call you Night Owl then. Go and carry a box of ore over there, or a basket, it's the same thing. But a friendly reminder, a box of ore will have less quantity, it's more cost-effective!"

Night Owl glanced at the nearly empty wooden box in front of the Sea Turtle Qi Pure, then at the woven basket in front of the Soup Dumpling, which was still more than half full, and couldn't help but ask curiously, "Then why did you choose a basket, Boss?"

"Because I told the NPC I didn't want wages, I wanted to pick the ore myself. She thought it was a good deal and let me take it. It's much more cost-effective than me earning money and buying it myself! Hehe!"

The soup dumpling started off happily, then began to complain about itself: "Poor artifact cultivators have no choice! The initial investment in this profession is too high! Alchemists and talisman cultivators have much lower investment, and although their return rate isn't as high as artifact cultivators, they can buy spiritual materials cheaply! They can easily recoup their costs! We artifact cultivators are helpless! Once we ruin it, all those expensive spiritual materials are gone for nothing!" (End of Chapter)