My lord, spare his life!

"Why are there only four attributes: loyalty, morality, intelligence, and ambition? Shouldn't there also be something like combat strength?" With only twenty-three points in intelligence, Zhang Yang naturally wouldn't pay attention to such trivial details, and his attention was quickly drawn to other things.

Her fingers kept poking and pointing at the panel.

I searched through everything but couldn't find what I wanted to see.

Finally, our attention turned to recruitment.

Next to both Shen Zhi's and the mysterious woman's avatars was a "Recruitment" tag, a term Zhang Yang was very familiar with. In the game world, apart from a few solo quests, most activities required forming a team, which in turn required recruiting teammates.

Players can post team information on the recruitment panel. Depending on the game event, the maximum number of team members can range from five, ten, or twenty-five to hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands.

Zhang Yang rested his chin on his hand, deep in thought.

Based on her experience over the years, the developers won't design impossible tasks for players. No matter how difficult the task, players can recruit teammates to complete it together. However, the fact that the Homestead side quests block players while still providing recruitment prompts means that Homestead quests also require a team, but the teammates aren't players, but rather NPCs on the Homestead map?

A flash of inspiration pierced through the top of Zhang Yang's head. He punched his right palm with his left fist and suddenly realized: "The game designers wanted to force players to develop feelings for NPCs through this method." How could the feelings not be deep when you personally build a team and conquer the world?

Deeper emotional attachments lead to better sales of game merchandise. To paraphrase an observation: "If my favorite character hadn't become a cybernetic hostage in this lousy game, who would have played it for sixteen years?"

Zhang Yang didn't think much of it at the time.

Now I think the game designers were indeed insidious.

"This is clearly a conspiracy to use cybernetic hostages to control the players!" Zhang Yang stared at the recruitment tags next to the two avatars, silently reminding himself, "I must not fall for their tricks!"

but--

The immediate problem is to recruit staff as soon as possible.

Reclaim lost territory and restore her homeland!

Zhang Yang opened the recruitment page.

Unlike the simple recruitment page she was familiar with, the new recruitment page had a row of profile pictures on the left. The top two profile pictures were of Shen Zhi and the mysterious woman, and the profile pictures below them were all grayed out, with all their names and other information marked with question marks.

On the right was a platform, upon which floated a three-dimensional star chart, with countless stars of different colors and brightness drifting quietly. When Zhang Yang placed his finger on Shen Zhi's portrait, the star chart on the platform transformed into a miniature version of Shen Zhi.

A series of data quietly appeared next to the phantom figure.

Do you wish to recruit Wei Su Shen Zhi?

[Recruitment], [Cancel]

Zhang Yang tentatively clicked on the word "Recruitment".

A message quickly popped up in the system log.

[Shen Zhi, from the Tail Constellation, belongs to the Azure Dragon, one of the Four Symbols, and is a military officer. He doesn't have much affection for you, so the recruitment success rate is low. It's recommended that you gain enough of his trust before inviting him.]

The data next to the phantom image also changed.

【Stars: Azure Dragon - Tail Constellation】

[Talent: Tailfire Tiger]

Zhang Yang then tapped the mysterious woman's portrait with his finger.

Are you recruiting female bed partners? (Thank you)

[Recruitment], [Cancel]

"So her name is Xie Shu? That's a rather strange name."

What's even stranger is that when Zhang Yang shifted his gaze to the platform on the right, he found that the illusory figure on the platform was not the mysterious woman, but instead an eleven or twelve-year-old girl with a blank expression and ashen skin.

The boy was dressed in tattered clothes, the fabric of which bore the marks of fire.

Blood was dripping from his face, neck, and fingers.

【Stars: Purple Palace Enclosure - Female Bed】

[Talent: Unknown (To be revealed)]

Zhang Yang stared at the illusory human figure for a long while: "The female bed of the Purple Palace? Shen Shude also mentioned before that the princess was also a female bed, and that the star official female bed lost in the struggle, and since then, anyone who obtains the female bed star has been born with a deficiency?"

Xie Shu's Starry Night is actually a female bed?

The talent section says "unknown" instead of "none".

This meant that the other party did indeed possess the talent of the stars, but further exploration and discovery were needed to see it. She calmed herself down to look for clues, but after thinking for a long time, she couldn't figure it out, so she could only take out her notebook and write it down first.

The next day, it was broad daylight.

The mysterious woman, Xie Shutian, went to work before dawn.

Zhang Yang was awakened by the rhythmic sounds of drills. When she woke up, she saw Shen Zhi shirtless, gesturing and gesturing wildly. She found a spot on the veranda and sat cross-legged, admiring the male bodhisattva's offerings, her gaze making Shen Zhi uncomfortable.

"Don't you know shame?"

Shen Zhi was rarely surrounded by men like this.

Zhang Yang: "Isn't the point of showing yourself to others?"

In the game, there are plenty of shirtless male players running around, with their pants legs almost ripped open to their waists. Zhang Yang has gotten used to it after seeing it so many times.

On the contrary, when she entered the homestead side quest, she found that all the humanoid NPCs she had seen in the past few days were covered up completely, which she was not used to.

Shen Zhi was so angry that she grabbed her clothes and wrapped them around her upper body.

"frivolous."

Zhang Yang remained unmoved by this assessment, only reacting to those that interested her, and went straight to the point about the female bed: "Xie Shu is also a female bed user, so why does she possess the Star Talent?"

"Forgive? Who?"

"Xie Ruxin, that mysterious woman from yesterday."

"To do one's best is loyalty; to extend that to others is forgiveness. Xie Ruxin, a good name." Shen Zhi met Zhang Yang's bewildered peach blossom eyes and knew she didn't understand. Skipping over the commentary, he sat down and wiped his sweat. "How did you know her name? And that she was a female bedmate?"

"That's not important."

The important question is why Xie Shu, despite being a female bed partner, possesses such talent.

Shen Zhi didn't press the matter further.

The answer is undoubtedly her special personal ability.

"As I told you before, it's not impossible for stars that have lost their respective star officials to defy fate and change their destiny, but the price is extremely high. Everyone is born with a predetermined affiliation, and the star lord is their respective leader. If the star lord falls, the stars are leaderless, which is equivalent to losing their source of power. If they want to continue, they can simply change their allegiance."

"Is the cost too high?"

Shen Zhi: "Who doesn't despise a person who is two-faced?"

Such people have to endure some kind of pain at all times.

Zhang Yang: "Pain?"

Shen Zhi casually said, "There are too many possibilities. Drowning, burning, lightning strikes, slow slicing, deafness, blindness, loss of senses, amputation... There's nothing that doesn't exist, only things you can't imagine. If the Star Lord is still doing well after changing allegiance, that's fine, but if he's gone too... tsk tsk tsk, that would truly be worse than death."

Many people have been driven mad by this.

"Star Talent is something only a very small percentage of people possess, and changing allegiances doesn't guarantee it, but there will always be a price to pay. No one would take this risk unless they were desperate." As he spoke, Shen Zhi thought of Xie Shu, who was also a womanizer, but from their brief conversation last night, Xie Shu seemed quite normal. "With your strength, you don't need to worry about this."

Zhang Yang: "Why did the Star Lord lose?"