Chapter 54 - 54 Victory and Defeat are Common for Soldiers
When Nan Hua’s voice and text emerged, Li Muyang’s view suddenly elevated, overlooking the entire Luoyang City.
Inside the bustling streets of Luoyang City, there now scattered numerous game characters, each with an ID above their head.
[Cao Cao][Yuan Shao][Great General He Jin][Liu Bei]...
These figures, with their glaring IDs in the crowd, were shrouded in dark red mist, exuding the aura of bosses.
In the heart of Luoyang City, within the central palace, stood a figure clad in imperial robes—the symbol of supreme authority—Emperor Ling of Han, Liu Hong.
He was seated at the banquet with a hearty smile, enjoying the performances below.
However, the dark red mist around him was the thickest, seeming incredibly oppressive.
This sudden shift to a godlike perspective immediately made things clear to Li Muyang.
"…So the final boss is Emperor Ling of Han, Liu Hong, right?"
Defeat Liu Hong to clear the game?
But when Li Muyang tried to enter the perspective of a game character, he found he couldn’t.
He remained in a godlike, overhead view, without entering the body of any game character.
Despite the immersive experiences during the tutorial and with Little Wild Grass, this time it was third-person… Li Muyang tried to control the movements of a young boy in the alley with his thoughts.
The young boy in the alley began to walk outside, and character voice and text emerged in the view.
[Nan Hua: "I have taken refuge from the imperial dragon aura, borrowing a body to resurrect here. There isn’t much time; I must quickly pacify the souls in the city."]
As soon as Nan Hua finished speaking, several figures suddenly appeared outside the alley.
They wore the simple clothes of commoners, but they looked more like thugs.
Seeing the figure of the young boy, three thugs came up, surrounding him with sneers.
[Thug: "Hey kid, got any money on ya? Lend us brothers some to spend?"]
As the voice fell, a system prompt popped up.
[Fight/Escape]
This either/or system option immediately let Li Muyang guess the game’s control mode.
As soon as he chose to fight, the scene in his view suddenly changed.
Nan Hua stood in the lower-left corner of the view, while the three thugs were in the upper-right corner. In the center of the view was an action bar, next to Skills…
"Damn! A turn-based game, huh?"
The game mode of this "Sweeping the Demonic Skies" was also a classic style. Discover exclusive tales on NovelBin.Côm
Big-name games like "Legend of the Sword and Fairy" and "Dream of the Journey to the West" all started with this mode.
Li Muyang was naturally unsurprised by this game mode.
He effortlessly got the hang of the Skills, and with just a couple of them, he easily defeated the three thugs on the opposite side.
Following the system’s settlement interface popping up, Nan Hua gained 300 experience points and leveled up from LV1 to LV2… Good, all classic elements, definitely a turn-based single-player game.
But how did those three thugs disappear after being defeated?
In such games, shouldn’t the beginner NPCs at least spout some tough words before running off after defeat?
But these three suddenly appearing thugs just vanished upon defeat, jarringly devoid of any lead into a subsequent plotline.
Just as Li Muyang was curious, Nan Hua had already walked out of the alley.
[Nan Hua: "The city is heavy with killing intent and grievances, with the most grievance surrounding the generals who suppressed the Yellow Turban Rebellion."]
[Nan Hua: "I need to defeat each of these generals one by one, dispelling the grievances attached to them, and then dispel the grievances binding the Emperor, to finally appease the souls of the Yellow Turbans."]
Nan Hua laid out his action goals and the main storyline of the game.
As a veteran gamer, Li Muyang also understood the structure of the game.
The old formula for a single-player turn-based game: first kill the lesser enemies to level up, eliminating the dungeon’s monsters one by one to gain experience and reach the top level, and then go after the final boss.
But after sharing this, Nan Hua stood still on the street, not moving an inch.
Li Muyang habitually saved the game first, then controlled Nan Hua to walk towards one end of the street.
Just after entering the game, when the perspective rose to survey the entire city, Li Muyang remembered there was a red-name close by this alley.
Indeed, he controlled Nan Hua to walk past two corners, and he saw three brothers sitting at a roadside tea stall.
[Liu Bei][Guan Yu][Zhang Fei].
The three red-name NPCs were sitting at the tea stall, looking very much like Li Muyang’s imagination of the Three Kingdoms characters.
The stocky, bearded Zhang Fei, who looked fierce and menacing, was gulping down tea and complaining to his elder brother.
"...I really don’t understand why we three brothers work ourselves to death, only to gain nothing."
At this moment, Li Muyang didn’t care why Liu Bei’s three brothers were in Luoyang City; he didn’t understand history and wasn’t sure if the three brothers were in Luoyang City around 186 A.D.
Since the game arranged it this way, then just chop them.
Without saying a word, Li Muyang directly controlled Nan Hua to walk over.
Fight!
After entering the battle interface, there was the familiar turn-based interface again.
However, after Nan Hua, controlled by Li Muyang, released a skill, he immediately sensed something was amiss.
He unleashed three Sword Qi strikes on the three brothers across from him, which was a group skill that Nan Hua started with, but after the Sword Qi struck down, three [-18] popped up above the brothers’ heads.
And the bearded Zhang Fei, wielding a snake spear, charged over and plunged Li Muyang’s health down by a third with one thrust.
[-366]
This...the difference in combat power is too huge!
Watching the brothers take turns beating Nan Hua to death in front of the tea stall.
In Li Muyang’s sight, the classic interface from turn-based games popped up.
[Battle Lost]
[Victory and defeat are common in military operations, Immortal, please start over]
"...These three brothers are kind of fierce," Li Muyang reloaded and found himself back at the moment he just left the alleys.
But this time he didn’t go looking for the Liu-Guan-Zhang trio.
These three brothers seemed like commoners with no imposing equipment, but unexpectedly their combat power was fierce; worthy of being Liu-Guan-Zhang indeed.
However, after this failure, he also realized the game NPC’s strength division.
Among the Liu-Guan-Zhang trio, Emperor Zhaolie had the least resentful mist around him, and the damage he dealt was also the lowest.
Clearly, the strength of NPCs in this game is directly proportional to the amount of resentful mist they carry.
The more resentful mist, the stronger they are.
Li Muyang controlled Nan Hua to walk to the other side of the street, avoiding the Liu-Guan-Zhang trio and also avoiding [Cao Cao] who rode by on a tall horse.
Finally, at the roadside, he encountered a general with very little resentful mist.
Not bothering to look at the name, with so little resentful mist, it was obvious the opponent was not a famous tough character.
Li Muyang directly controlled Nan Hua to strike, and sure enough, after entering the battle interface, he defeated the opponent and his two servants rather easily.
[Nan Hua Levels Up: LV2→LV3]
[Skill Comprehended: Sword Control Technique]
Looking at the system settlement interface’s leveling system, Li Muyang breathed a sigh of relief.
Very good, the lesser the resentful mist on an NPC, the lower their combat power indeed.
He had found his leveling route.
The only thing was, after defeating these three NPCs, they too disappeared without a trace, as if they had never appeared.
This made Li Muyang somewhat murmur to himself.
—Isn’t the censorship level of this game a bit high? Not even a corpse can appear?