Under steady healing and violent DPS, the BOSS crashed to the ground. Baicao Zhe ran over to the BOSS’s body and looted it, and a good number of materials dropped.
Xia Zichen had run into this open-world BOSS a few times while out gathering herbs with nothing else to do, but he’d never known what the point of killing it was. Since it was a yellow-name BOSS, it wouldn’t actively attack players as long as they didn’t hit it first, so it had always been something Xia Zichen simply ignored.
[Party] [Jianlang]: Thanks for the help. Didn’t realize this BOSS had such high attack.
[Party] [Chenxi]: No problem, it was nothing.
[Party] [Jianlang]: Did the material drop?
[Party] [Baicao Zhe]: It dropped, it dropped! Your boy’s got real good luck — got it on the first run. Chenxi, thanks!
Xia Zichen had just been about to type “don’t mention it” when a trade window popped up on his screen — Canmo Wuhen was trading him two thousand gold. Xia Zichen frowned slightly and decisively clicked reject. It wasn’t a matter of how much the money was worth; he just felt it was completely unnecessary.
[Party] [Chenxi]: No need for gold. I was just passing through gathering herbs anyway.
[Party] [Canmo Wuhen]: Then give me all the herbs you’ve gathered so far. I’ll buy them.
[Party] [Chenxi]: …
[Party] [Baicao Zhe]: Just take Canmo’s money. Guy’s already so rich he’s got nothing left but cash — free money, don’t waste it.
[Party] [Canmo Wuhen]: Materials are all collected. Head back and craft.
[Party] [Baicao Zhe]: Return-to-city CD isn’t up yet. Sit and chat for a bit.
As he typed that, Baicao Zhe sat right down on the ground, looking every bit like he was ready to start a conversation. Jianlang sat down beside Baicao Zhe as well, apparently also waiting on his cooldown.
[Party] [Baicao Zhe]: Once my whip’s finished, I can pull you to me anytime in the faction battlegrounds, haha.
[Party] [Jianlang]: Right, and all for that whip of yours — Canmo and I spent a whole afternoon grinding BOSSes with you. How do you plan to repay us?
[Party] [Baicao Zhe]: Offer myself to you, hero? How’s that?
[Party] [Jianlang]: You sure you don’t need me to pay you instead?
[Party] [Baicao Zhe]: See, you really do get me.
Watching their exchange, Xia Zichen suddenly thought back to the moment when Canmo Wuhen had used that long whip to yank him right over to his side.
That long whip was a special-effect cosmetic item in the game — no stats to speak of, just the ability to pull anyone within thirty feet to your side. When that cosmetic item first came out, the materials required to craft it were such a pain to farm that Xia Zichen had only glanced at it on the official website and moved on without much thought. He vaguely remembered that crafting the whip required killing seven specific BOSSes across seven different maps, collecting seven types of rare materials, and then bringing them to the sect’s cosmetic merchant to synthesize.
The truly brutal part was that even if you went and killed the BOSSes, the required materials weren’t guaranteed to drop. Sometimes if your luck was terrible, you could grind the same BOSS all day without a single material dropping — and on top of that, these open-world BOSSes all hit pretty hard, so repeatedly coming up empty was genuinely a waste of time. The rare materials that did drop were also soulbound, meaning you couldn’t buy them off the auction house — if you wanted them, you had to farm them yourself. So the number of players who actually crafted this cosmetic item was extremely small.
Today was also the first time Xia Zichen had ever seen someone use it in person. He hadn’t expected that this yellow-name BOSS was actually one of the ones that dropped whip materials.
[Party] [Baicao Zhe]: Your reaction when you over-aggroed just now was super fast. Do you go to the battlegrounds a lot?
[Party] [Chenxi]: I haven’t joined a faction, so I’ve never been to the battlegrounds. I used to play in the arena for a while. Running away is one of the essential skills for a healer.
[Party] [Baicao Zhe]: If the vast majority of girls playing healer had your kind of reaction speed, dungeons and PvP would both be a whole lot easier.
With Baicao Zhe saying that, it occurred to Xia Zichen — Chenxi was a girl.
When he was always playing alongside An Jing and the others, he’d sometimes forget about that.
[Party] [Baicao Zhe]: Do you have a regular team for the arena? If not, come run it with us — we could put together a 4v4 squad.
[Party] [Jianlang]: I seem to recall Chenxi always running the arena with Wuqing Xue from Zhanming Hall.
[Party] [Chenxi]: Yeah.
Xia Zichen was in the habit of hiding his player title and guild name, leaving only his character name visible, and he also habitually hid other players’ info — that way, in large group dungeons, he wouldn’t get a headache staring at three layers of stacked ID tags. Only by clicking directly on a character could you display that player’s hidden information in the bottom right corner.
[Party] [Baicao Zhe]: Chenxi is from Zhanming Hall? I have info hidden, I can only see names…
[Party] [Chenxi]: Yeah…
Not knowing what else to say, Xia Zichen couldn’t help thinking that if he ever joined a faction, once the BOSS was cleared, they’d probably come after him next.
[Party] [Baicao Zhe]: Wait, hold on, something’s off. Jianlang, that arena match the day before yesterday when we went up against Wuqing Xue — he wasn’t running with Chenxi.
[Party] [Jianlang]: Hm? I honestly didn’t notice that.
[Party] [Baicao Zhe]: Chenxi, did you and Wuqing Xue split up?
[Party] [Chenxi]: He’s been busy carrying new guild members lately.
[Party] [Baicao Zhe]: That explains it. I was wondering why he hasn’t cracked the arena top twenty this week.
Chenxi sent a dry laugh emote and said nothing. Though he had never run a dungeon with Lian Feier himself, every time An Jing grouped with her, the only word out of his mouth was complaints — so she had to be pretty bad. Still, for a new player, you couldn’t really set the bar too high.
Just as he was thinking about it, a private message came in — and to his surprise, it was from Canmo Wuhen, who hadn’t said a word this whole time.
[PM] [Canmo Wuhen]: Come run the arena with me next week.
Sword Soul‘s arena was divided into 2v2, 4v4, and 6v6. Faction players could team up with neutral players, neutral players could team up with each other, and in theory even players from opposing factions could be on the same team — though that last scenario was pretty rare.
Participation was open during fixed hours Monday through Friday. Each session required completing ten full matches, with opponent teams assigned at random. Winning matches earned Sword Commendation Points, and once enough points were accumulated, faction players could exchange them for faction gear while neutral players could go for dungeon gear. Of course, players could also choose to exchange for quality arena equipment to boost their own stats.
Losing a match didn’t deduct any points — you’d still earn a few as consolation, so it was better than nothing. If both sides fought for thirty minutes without a winner, the result would be decided based on each side’s hit accuracy.
With five days of arena per week, if your win rate was decent, winning around thirty matches was generally enough to hit the weekly Sword Commendation Point cap — not too much of a time sink, and a solid option for gearing up.
[Party] [Baicao Zhe]: Canmo, isn’t a healer exactly what you’ve been looking for in your 2v2? Chenxi’s perfect.
[Party] [Jianlang]: Chenxi, running arena with Canmo is pretty easy. If you don’t have a team, it might be worth considering.
Both sides were pushing him toward running the arena together, so Xia Zichen couldn’t very well stay silent. And honestly, when it came to the idea of teaming up with Canmo Wuhen, he did feel a little bit of anticipation stirring inside him.
[Party] [Chenxi]: Sure, let me think about it…
[Party] [Jianlang]: Stop thinking, I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.
[Party] [Baicao Zhe]: Alright, Jianlang, let those two work it out themselves — can’t you see Canmo’s been quiet this whole time? Bet he already sent a PM.
Xia Zichen stared at Baicao Zhe, this relentless revealer of truth, and was completely speechless.
[PM] [Chenxi]: I’ve been running with friends up until now. I’m not sure yet whether they have plans for next week’s arena.
Xia Zichen didn’t want to agree right now and then have something come up that would make him back out — even in a game, you had to keep your word.
[PM] [Canmo Wuhen]: Got it. No need to give me an answer right now. If you’re free next week, just hit me up anytime.
[PM] [Chenxi]: Okay.
Xia Zichen genuinely appreciated that quality about Canmo Wuhen — no unnecessary rambling.
After that, the two of them added each other as friends. Xia Zichen checked and saw his return-to-city cooldown had finished, said a quick goodbye to the other two in the party, and flew back to the main city.
Before he knew it, Monday had rolled around. All four of them had class in the morning, and they’d agreed to meet up for lunch at the cafeteria. The food at University A’s cafeteria was actually pretty good — plenty of variety and very reasonably priced — so the students there basically all ate at the cafeteria.
By the time Xia Zichen arrived, An Jing had already staked out a four-person table. Spotting him coming over, An Jing waved. “Over here.”
“Did Tang Hui and them get held after class?” Xia Zichen had originally assumed he’d be the last one to show up.
“Not sure, shouldn’t be long now.” An Jing casually pulled out the chair next to him and gestured for him to sit.
Xia Zichen sat down and let his eyes wander aimlessly across the cafeteria windows, mentally debating what to get. Truthfully, Xia Zichen was always pretty consistent in what he ate — he didn’t switch things up often, wasn’t picky, so ordering was never really a big deal.
“Oh right, you didn’t go to the arena at all last week, did you?” An Jing asked.
“Yeah.” Besides helping a few lower-level guild members through their quests last week, there really hadn’t been much else to do. He’d felt thoroughly idle the whole time.
“Shen Yicheng that guy is completely abandoning his bros the moment a pretty face shows up. If you want to run the arena this week, let’s find one more person — with Tang Hui, that’s a full 4v4.” When the topic turned to Shen Yicheng and Lian Feier, An Jing’s tone wasn’t exactly happy either.
“I don’t really mind either way. I don’t have much need for gear upgrades right now. You and Kang Hui keep running your 2v2.” Though Xia Zichen wasn’t thrilled about how Shen Yicheng was acting either, it was just a game at the end of the day — no point making things ugly over a bunch of numbers.
An Jing pursed his lips and said, “You probably don’t know yet, do you? Shen Yicheng spent money and bought Lian Feier a costume set. Last night that girl spent two hours showing it off at the main city gate.”
Xia Zichen’s brow furrowed slightly. In Sword Soul, all the actual gear could be obtained through dungeons, battlegrounds, and other activities — players generally didn’t need to spend real money. But costumes were different. Those were absolutely the domain where the big spenders burned their cash. Costumes had zero stats — they were purely cosmetic. Once worn, they could overlay your existing gear visually while you still retained your actual equipment’s stats, which meant they had essentially no practical value whatsoever.
On top of that, costumes could only be purchased with real money through top-ups, so regular players wouldn’t bother even thinking about buying one. Only young men with money to burn who were trying to impress girls would blow cash on something like that. But then again, who were others to say anything when someone else had that kind of money to spend?
From the time the four of them started playing until now, aside from a fixed monthly membership card top-up, they had barely spent any money — all their gear had been earned piece by piece. So it came as a surprise that Shen Yicheng had actually spent real money to buy Lian Feier a costume. Even though Shen Yicheng had never been short on cash, this move felt wasteful to Xia Zichen in a way that sat a little wrong.
Seeing him go quiet, An Jing patted his shoulder. “If you want one, your bro will buy you a set too.”
Xia Zichen shot him a sideways glance. “Save it.” Even though his character was a girl, as a guy himself, he could absolutely not stand the thought of his “Chenxi” dressed up like a gaudy butterfly fluttering all over the world — that was not his aesthetic at all.
Right as they were talking, Tang Hui and Shen Yicheng walked in together. An Jing raised a hand to flag them over.
Shen Yicheng set his books down on the table and asked Xia Zichen, sitting across from him, “What do you want to eat?”
“I’ll take a look myself.” As he said it, Xia Zichen stood up and headed toward the cafeteria windows. In the past, Shen Yicheng had always bought his food for him, and Xia Zichen had gotten used to it — but now with Lian Feier in the picture, even though he kept a composed face, there was still a faint discomfort somewhere inside him.
Looking at the meal display samples behind the window, Xia Zichen looked up at the cafeteria auntie and said, “Can I get one black pepper beef rice set meal.”
“Sure thing!” the auntie replied cheerfully.
He was just about to pay when a meal card slid over from beside him. Without even looking, Xia Zichen knew it was Shen Yicheng. “Curry omurice. Pay for both together.”
Xia Zichen didn’t say anything, just shifted over a little to the side.
While waiting for their food together, Shen Yicheng smiled slightly and asked quietly, “What’s going on? Did I do something to upset you?”
“No.” At the end of the day, Xia Zichen had no standing to be upset — he and Shen Yicheng weren’t in that kind of relationship, and the feelings he had were probably entirely one-sided.
“Good, as long as you’re not in a bad mood.” Shen Yicheng sounded like he exhaled in relief. After a moment, he added, “This week for the arena, pair up with someone else — I still need to carry Feier. If you really can’t find anyone, check if anyone in the guild wants to do 2v2.”
Sometimes not many words were needed — just a few simple sentences like these, and Xia Zichen already understood exactly what Shen Yicheng meant.
“It’s fine. I already have a team.” Xia Zichen said it lightly and casually.
Shen Yicheng paused for a moment, then said, “…Good.”
Xia Zichen didn’t say anything more. He picked up his finished set meal and walked back to his seat.