The Monster is Coming

Chapter 383 Life Throat Class Begins, You Do It If You Can.
Bo Yan's "Golden Power Travelogue" sparked a wave of exploration on the forum.

Historical experience has shown that while players who explore may be poor in ordinary times, they can become rich overnight if they find the right opportunity.

As the saying goes on the forum: "If you don't make a sale in March, you can live off it for three years once you do."

Bo Yan's experience undoubtedly proves the value of this statement.

Just the day before, he was a down-on-his-luck explorer surviving on cheap pet food. But after returning to the Golden Power Space, he was able to buy high-performance flying swords outright, acquire evolution pills in bulk, and eat spirit food as he pleased... achieving a leap in wealth.

Similar experiences are frequently shared by players exploring the game on forums, but Bo Yan's experience this time is more typical.

In a short period of time, I earned 338 million sacrificial power.

The entire process was incredibly smooth and overwhelming, making it arguably the most exhilarating "monster-hunting" experience ever recorded on the forum.

This has also attracted more players to join the exploration gameplay.

For other players, the increase in the number of exploration players can also indirectly bring them wealth.

For example, early places like the Serpent God Temple, the Darkin Space, and the Game Space... including building deep, mutually beneficial friendships with the Lord of Elysium, were all opportunities discovered by players who were exploring.

The Golden Power Space discovered during this exploration was also seen as an opportunity by Alan.

When the time is right, we will take it down.

Just as Alan was clarifying her new goals for the future, Minghou, who was preparing the plan for a casino on Dream Island, also had a new plan.

At that moment, he was browsing the heated discussions about "Golden Power Travelogue" on the player forum, and then he keenly realized a key point.

In addition to information exchange and discussion, player forums are also the heart of public opinion within the player community.

The exploration discussions, combat analyses, and even gossip and complaints that top the trending topics list are all subtly shaping the public opinion of the player community.

The legendary overnight fortune of Bo Yan, and other major events that ignited the forum, were all accompanied by the rapid rise in the influence of the posters.

He also noted that player IDs that frequently post high-quality strategy guides have an influence comparable to that of some top guild leaders.

The most well-known one is "Night is Coming," an early strategy guide expert who was very active on the forum.

After becoming a player, he has learned from Alan's teachings and changed his mindset.

I also began to think about the meaning behind many of Alan's plans.

During this time, he discovered that Alan would frequently post on the forum, providing various forms of assistance to players in his faction.

They even created a gold coin plugin to help players understand prices and launched various welfare programs.

These actions may seem like sacrifices, but in essence, they are enhancing the influence of the Gold Coin Merchant Guild within the player community.

Multiple trading centers that imitated the Gold Coin Merchant Guild model failed to make a splash.

This is related to the influence of the Gold Coin Merchants Association.

For players who frequently engage in dungeon runs, and even for other groups, the first partner they consider is the Gold Merchant Guild.

Even if other guilds are willing to offer higher prices, players are only willing to cooperate with the Gold Coin Merchant Guild.

This has made it extremely difficult for many imitators to catch up with the influence of the Gold Coin Merchants Association.

This is not only due to the strong sales channels of the Gold Coin Merchants Association, but also because of the association's reputation and influence.

Therefore, influence is very important within the player community.

Because influence is the power of discourse, and the power of discourse means the ability to mobilize more resources within the player's faction, including combat power.

Just like when Alan recruited top guilds to help a player protect the Dragonwing Clan.

This is one way to monetize influence.

Browsing through the forum information, Minghou suddenly realized that he also needed to start building his influence on the forum.

If you want to lead the Fate Clan to become a top force among players, relying solely on the "Fate Casino" as a resource acquisition channel is not enough.

They also need to sow seeds in the battlefield of public opinion on player forums and cultivate their own base.

The forum offers many examples and case studies on how to do this.

The easiest way is to become a giver of knowledge.

This is also how many strategy-oriented players gain fans.

After clarifying his idea, Minghou immediately decided to post his first strategy guide on the forum.

The content has been planned in advance.

He intends to use this post to teach players combat skills.

This includes techniques for using mental energy conversion.

The most popular topic on the forum is the use of telekinesis, but this technique is too basic and far inferior to the mental energy he uses to transform evil winds.

Besides the malevolent winds, spiritual power can also generate various elemental energies by communicating with the elements of heaven and earth.

These techniques can significantly enhance the combat power of your own players.

Once the idea was clear, the instructor immediately began recording the teaching content.

One hour later, the first combat technique tutorial post for Lifethirst was published on the forum.

The game ID of Minghou, “Nimingzhihou”, was already somewhat famous on the forum.

The first time this ID sparked heated discussion on the forum was during the previous round of newbie recruitment, where it took first place on the newbie leveling-up leaderboard with an absolute advantage.

The second time was to take over the game space rules and create a special soul: Destiny City.

But before this, no matter how many forum players tagged him or asked for details, Minghou never responded.

So when they suddenly saw the post by "Throat of Rebellion", many players immediately clicked to view it.

The post quickly gained popularity and sparked heated discussions on the forum as the number of views and replies increased.

The tutorial videos in the post showcased content from areas that players had never explored in detail before.

The video is titled: "[Dragon Sparrow Casino: Absolutely Authoritative Tutorial on the Use of Mental Power, Lesson 1: Basic Methods of Using Mental Power.]"

At the beginning of the instructional video, Lifethroat stands on a deserted beach on the west coast of Dream Island, extending one finger.

The next second, the immense spiritual power condensed into a tangible black whirlwind, roaring and sweeping across like an angry dragon, instantly eroding the distant reefs into dust.

Having finished the demonstration, Minghou looked at the camera and said calmly:
"What we need to understand is that mental power is not brute force, but an extension of our own will, and also a bridge for us to communicate with the elements of heaven and earth. When you learn to use your consciousness to guide the elements of heaven and earth, it can be transformed into any elemental form you want."

After speaking, he raised his palm upwards, and a wisp of invisible and intangible spiritual energy flowed out from between his eyebrows, spreading in the air like a thin mist.

"Before we begin the formal instruction, I need you to forget all the posts you've seen on the forum about elemental affinity. This knowledge is meaningless, and many of the posts are misleading, making you think that resonating with the elements is the best way to transform spiritual power."

"From this moment on, your judgments on the techniques of using mental power shall be based on mine, and my teaching content shall be the authority."

Without any beating around the bush or affected modesty, the person in the video gets straight to the point after expressing their thoughts:

"Now let's get down to business. First, we need to understand a concept: what is mental power?"

"So-called mental power is essentially a kind of currency. The more currency you pay, the more elemental energy you can obtain. The higher the mental power, the stronger the purchasing power of the same amount of currency. The more mental power you have, the more currency you have in reserve."

"Once we monetize mental energy, we can easily understand that converting mental energy into elements is essentially an interactive process of spending money to buy elements. You can obtain any element you want by paying mental energy."

"As for elemental affinity, you can think of it as the degree of intimacy with a single element. The higher the intimacy, the more you can buy that type of elemental energy at a discounted price."

"The reason I say that elemental affinity is useless is because we players buy elements at the lowest discount price, so improving mental strength is the core, and improving affinity is not important. What you need to do is issue the command to buy which element, and then exchange money and elements with the world."

"Once you understand this concept, you'll know that the essence of elemental aggregation is equivalent exchange. You can use your mental power to buy almost all the elemental energy in the monster world, and the price you have to pay for each type of elemental energy is different."

As soon as he finished speaking, Minghou began to demonstrate the process of converting mental energy into elements.

The black, malevolent wind swirling at his fingertips suddenly turned a fiery red.

The surrounding fire elements gathered like moths to a flame, condensing into a leaping lotus-shaped flame at Minghou's fingertips. Each petal was clearly visible, yet it did not burn the skin at all.

He flicked his finger, and the fire lotus spun into the air, suddenly exploding into countless streams of fire, which then gently extinguished before hitting the ground.

"This is a transformation of the fire element."

The rhythm of the release of spiritual power from the throat changed, and the sparks emanating from the fingertips instantly turned into a blue halo.

Moist water vapor is drawn from the sea surface and condenses into ice crystal prisms at the fingertips of the throat, refracting a seven-colored halo.

"This is the water element. Unlike the explosive properties of the fire element, the water element has greater plasticity, and you can give it more forms when using the water element."

After speaking, the ice crystals suddenly melted into liquid, then instantly froze into a dense array of ice needles:

"This is a process of changing its structure."

The ice crystals shattered, turning into mist that floated in his palm.

He raised his hand and drew an arc, the water mist in his palm suddenly contracted, condensing into a transparent water ribbon in mid-air.

Countless points of light can be faintly seen in the water.

According to Minghou's explanation, his mental energy was currently undergoing a rapid exchange with the water element, with each flash representing a portion of mental energy being converted into an equal amount of water element energy. "Now switch to the earth element."

The blue halo around Minghou's fingertips suddenly turned brown, and the sand beneath his feet suddenly bulged up, with three sharp stone spikes emerging from the ground and hovering precisely on either side of his shoulders.

Between the rough textures of the stone spikes, there were specks of light similar to those of water, only flowing much slower:

"This is the earth element, which naturally has a heavy texture and is 20% less efficient in transactions than the water element."

He suddenly clenched his fist, and the stone spikes floating beside him instantly disintegrated into sand and fell back to the ground.

Then, a wisp of bluish-green energy rose from the open palm.

The moment the airflow came into contact with the air, it generated green energy particles that meandered and coiled around his arm, with a semi-transparent energy flower blooming at the tip:
"This is the wood element. It has a high conversion efficiency and is full of vitality. It can be used for healing. To fight enemies, it needs to work in conjunction with plants in the environment... Of course, you can also generate energy-based wood elements directly like me."

Finally, Minghou raised his hand and grabbed at the void. Black evil wind, blazing red fire lotus, ice crystal prism, earth-yellow stone spikes, and green vines appeared around him at the same time. The five elemental energies rotated in a ring, colliding with each other but not interfering with each other.

At the center of the ring, countless bright silver specks of spiritual energy shuttled at high speed.

It clearly shows the process of "currency" flowing to different elements and making interactive purchases.

After the presentation, Minghou looked at the camera and continued:

“I don’t know exactly how many elements there are in the Monster World. The types of elements are constantly increasing as the forces that descend upon it grow. When the resource territories they bring enter the Monster World, they will bring new elements. So it’s unrealistic to be proficient in all elements… What you need to remember is that if you want to master the power of elements, you need to understand three core concepts.”

"First, the interaction instructions must be precise. The specific way is to use mental energy to outline the symbols of the corresponding elements. Vague instructions will only lead to transaction failure or waste a lot of mental energy."

"Second, control your payment pace. Buy only what you need. Spending a lot of mental energy at once could be wasteful. Buy only the amount of elemental energy you need to exert as much effort as you can. This will enhance your combat endurance."

"Third, when your mental strength is strong enough, it's like entering the trading market with a bag full of gold coins. Merchants will have to accept your orders. You don't need to rack your brains to increase elemental affinity. Personal growth is the key to improving your strength."

After that, Life Throat began to demonstrate the process of multiple elements interacting simultaneously.

His spiritual power surged forth, black evil winds swirled around him, a fire lotus landed on his right palm, an ice crystal prism floated on his left palm, and sand piled up at his feet, forming a constantly rising sand wall... The spiritual power light released from his brow suddenly intensified.

The elements began to combine, with fire lotus, sand shards, ice needles, wind blades, and electric arcs successively merging into the malevolent wind... Multiple elements intertwined and shuttled around the throat of life.

"I need to remind everyone that natural elements are mostly used for support. Our strongest attribute is the Soul trait. Only by combining natural elements with the Soul trait can we unleash its full power..."

……

The tutorial video on life throat quickly topped the forum's popularity chart.

Unlike the tutorials provided by previous strategy guide players.

The previous tutorial post about converting mental energy into elements was a summary of limited experience gained by the player based on library materials and their own exploration.

The teaching content is full of uncertain words such as: I feel, maybe, probably...

The content provided is like a fragmented, explored map, showing players who browse the posts many scenes on the map, but there are still large areas shrouded in mist.

There will inevitably be trial and error costs in the learning process.

These guide posts are more like experience sharing, telling you that doing this is generally feasible, and that I have already succeeded.

The teaching content of Life Throat reconstructs the player's cognitive logic of how to use mental power from a basic level.

What it offers players is not a fragmented map that requires them to figure out on their own, but a clear and rigorous instruction manual.

As long as you try it according to the instructions, you will surely succeed after you get the hang of it.

The entire instructional video is packed with useful information, with no guesswork or ambiguity whatsoever.

The theory of monetizing mental energy further transforms mental energy into elements, deconstructing it into a quantifiable and calculable trading system.

Then, with irrefutable demonstrations, explain why this is done and how to do it best.

Therefore, once this post appeared, it rendered all the earlier knowledge about element conversion useless.

Many players then realized that it wasn't that they hadn't learned well enough.

Rather, the previous cognitive dimensions simply did not touch upon the core techniques of using mental power.

This post also caused Minghou's "followers" on the forum to increase rapidly.

French players generally left comments in the post, hoping that Lifethirster would release the second course as soon as possible, as they urgently need this professional knowledge to improve their combat power.

……

At this moment, on the coast.

Minghou's gaze was fixed on his personal forum page, which had already surpassed one million followers, and he couldn't hide his smile.

As Alan said, the development of player forums has long since moved beyond the "primitive era" where simply posting strategy guides could attract attention.

As the number of players grows rapidly, the number of strategy-oriented players is also surging.

Every day, a huge number of strategy guides are posted on the forum.

Many of these contents are repetitive, low-quality, or even misleading.

To stand out in this sea of ​​information, the quality of your post is the decisive factor.

The facts proved Ah Lan's statement true.

His authoritative teaching post, like a boulder thrown into water, stirred up a huge wave in the forum, and unsurprisingly, it soared to the top of the forum's popularity list.

His choice of "spiritual power transformation" as the first lesson in gaining followers was also a well-thought-out one.

Currently, magic-based classes have an absolute population advantage among players.

Tower builds, domain builds, multi-element builds, guided builds... all magic-based players use mental energy, but they generally drive it with rule-based characteristics and do not utilize mental energy conversion characteristics.

The only reliable one is the tutorial post on converting mental energy into telekinesis published by "Reborn and Still Can't Beat".

Before posting, Minghou also paid attention to this.

Many players on the forum are asking him why he is able to control the Bane element in combat.

Based on the needs of these players, he finalized the specific content of the first lesson.

It directly addresses the core needs of players who prefer magic-based games.

As he hoped, he gained a lot of attention from magic-based players.

The comment section was flooded with exclamations of "I admire the master!", "So that's how it is!", and "It all makes sense now!"

However, as the number of comments surged, Minghou also saw a lot of doubts amidst the countless praises in the comments section.

“Teaching demonstrations cannot represent the intensity of actual combat. Real battles are ever-changing, and there is no time to give you instructions. The strongest skill is the one that can be released without cooldown according to its own rules. Other fancy skills are meaningless. This casting process is too complicated. I don’t think it’s useful in actual combat.”

"I suggest that Brother Hou go to the test tower to simulate the specific effects, and then release the simulation data. The demonstration at the beach is not rigorous enough without supporting data."

"After reading the post, I feel there's some substance to it, but if you really have the skill, you still need to try your luck in the Ancient God Arena. There are no scripts there, and you'll see immediately whether it's effective in actual combat."

"I think you should go to the Ancient God Arena. Real combat is the only standard for testing the truth. If you can't achieve results in the arena, no matter how much you talk, it's useless. As long as you can achieve results, whatever you say is right."

……

Minghou's gaze swept over these questioning replies, and the smile in his eyes faded.

Instead, it has become sharp and edgy.

He did not feel offended.

On the contrary, he fully acknowledged these criticisms.

They were not questioning the correctness of the theory in the post, but rather its feasibility in practice.

No matter how perfect a theory is, if it cannot be transformed into an improvement in one's own combat power in actual combat, it is ultimately just empty talk and meaningless.

The needs of fellow forum members have always been simple and direct: practical application.

As he reviewed these replies, Minghou's mind raced, and he subsequently overturned his original plan.

Originally, he planned to make the next lesson a "Detailed Explanation of Spiritual Element Command Symbols".

The forum players were given a detailed explanation of how to quickly sketch different element symbols and interact with them.

Then it recommends which elemental energies are suitable for different types of players.

But now, an even more impactful option is presented to us.

Live gameplay tutorials for the Ancient Gods Arena.

The Arena of the Ancient Gods is seen by players as a hall of fame for honing their combat skills. Any false theories will be exposed there, and true power will be revealed.

Challenge the Ancient God Arena and prove the feasibility of the theory with your strength.

This is clearly more impactful than simply explaining theoretical knowledge.

This is absolutely perfect material for gaining followers.

　Here's 5500 words! I've been a bit busy these past few days, but I'll get back to my usual high-volume writing mode once I'm done!
　　
　
(End of this chapter)