A heretical cultivator in Bureau 749, I'm the fiercest at pulling out tendons and skinning peop

Ji Zuodao stared at the so-called resurrection coin, blinked, and wondered if he had been misled by the dazzling starlight he had just heard.

"What coin?"

Ji Zuodao thought he had misheard.

"Resurrection Coin"

Li Tiezhu repeated the instruction expressionlessly, flicked his finger, and the matte coin flipped in the air before landing steadily back in his palm.

"Of course, we just made up this name ourselves. As for the effect, well, it's pretty self-explanatory... in this godforsaken place, if you're unlucky enough to get killed by something, it can pull you back from the brink of death."

"But this thing is a consumable; once it's used, it's gone. Besides, outside of this godforsaken place, it's just a weird piece of metal, completely useless."

He put away the resurrection coin, put the unlit cigarette back in his mouth, and looked at the figure in the black and white trench coat on the distant rooftop, as well as the shadowy silent film crew behind him.

"Those inner demons... they've amassed quite a few of these."

"They fight and fight, dying and coming back to life, coming back to life and dying again. It's the same on our side. The brothers who are killed or wounded can immediately get back up as soon as they have a resurrection coin."

"That's how it is, you can't kill me, I can't take you down, we've been going back and forth like this for years..."

"They managed to turn it into a fucking lousy battle with zero casualties."

As Ji Zuodao listened, his brows furrowed into a knot; the more he listened, the more something seemed amiss.

"Wait, wait..."

He raised his hand to interrupt Li Tiezhu, his face saying, "Are you kidding me?"

"According to your logic, since both sides have resurrection coins, fighting to the death won't kill the other, it's a complete waste of effort..."

"Then why bother fighting? We're just killing time anyway, wouldn't it be better to sit together, eat sunflower seeds, and chat?"

"If we're short one player for a card game, we can just get a whole mahjong table together! Why make it look like a world war every day?"

Upon hearing this, Li Tiezhu's numb, bitter smile deepened. He shook his head, not answering directly, but instead pointing towards the center of the battlefield.

"Look at Director Zhang."

Ji Zuodao looked in the direction he was pointing.

The golden star image, radiant with clear light, did not immediately dissipate after completely crushing the inner demons and gradually fading its starlight.

Instead, he took a few steps in mid-air and arrived at the edge of a huge crater created by the aftershocks of the fiercest battle.

The Dharma Image leaned slightly forward, its enormous hand, formed from pure light and starlight, reaching into the slowly dissipating ashes and rubble at the bottom of the pit, as if searching for something.

A moment later, he raised his arm.

There was something new in his palm.

Ji Zuodao looked closely and realized that it seemed to be... an old lady?

His body was hunched over, and he wore an old-fashioned jacket whose original color was indistinguishable. His hair was gray and sparse, fluttering slightly in the remaining gale.

But just as the "old lady" seemed startled and slowly raised her face—

"Um?"

Ji Zuodao raised an eyebrow.

That face had absolutely no human features!

Instead, there was a genuine, sparsely furred, wrinkled...cat face!

A human-shaped body topped with a lifelike old cat face!

It gives people a strong and extremely uncomfortable sense of visual dislocation.

His first thought was a cat demon?

Yet, they could not sense even the slightest trace of demonic energy surging within them.

On the contrary, it was the old woman with the cat face who smelled bad...

It looks a lot like the pig-headed monster you encountered when you first accepted the quest.

"That's the strange thing about the wandering creatures in this area, the one we just found."

Li Tiezhu's voice rang out from the side.

"See that? This is what we've been fighting to the death for."

Ji Zuodao was a little slow to process what was going on: "Why fight over this ugly thing? To take it back and ward off evil spirits? Isn't that a bit too much of a taste?"

"Who wants that grotesque thing to ward off evil spirits?" Li Tiezhu glared at him.

He took a puff of a cigarette that wasn't even there and continued explaining:

"We've been studying the rules here for years, so we know them inside and out."

"These kinds of wandering monsters, if you kill them, they will respawn at the spot where they were killed after midnight. They will be completely unharmed and continue to roam around as if nothing happened."

"So, we came up with a plan."

"Catch all the strange creatures roaming the area, lock them up together, and then dispose of them before midnight."

"Once midnight passes, they'll all come back to life in the pit. Okay, that's it. Now we can deal with them. It's a never-ending cycle, like cutting leeks, one crop after another."

Ji Zuodao's mouth gaped slightly and his eyes widened in disbelief.

This process...this operation...

Why does this sound so familiar?

Isn't this just the same strategy used in online games where you camp at monster spawn points, pull and gather waves of monsters, then unleash a powerful attack to clear them out, efficiently farming experience and items?!

"Wait a minute..."

He shook his head, banishing those unreliable game images from his mind, and focused on the important points.

"You're doing this... what about those inner demons? Are they just going to stand by and watch?"

"they?"

Li Tiezhu twitched the corner of his mouth.

"They're the same. After discovering this rule, it wasn't even half a month before both sides tacitly agreed to it—"

"Each dictates their own territory, each lures their own monsters, and each farms their own coins. Sometimes, they even fight over a weird 'respawn point' or snatch a lone monster."

"Since we can't kill them anyway, we might as well treat it as a daily workout."

Ji Zuodao was completely speechless.

He gazed into the distance, where the Venus statue was packing up and taking away the struggling cat-faced woman.

Looking further away, the black and white figures on the rooftops seemed indifferent to the scene of the harvest, and each disappeared.

This scene...

How does this resemble a battle for survival where good and evil are irreconcilable and it's a fight to the death?

This is clearly two major studios frantically farming resources and resurrection coins in the same game map!

"Oh my god..."

Ji Zuodao murmured, feeling that his worldview had been subjected to some strange shock.

"Is this...right? Is this really the proper way to clear the game?"

Why did he feel that these trapped monsters didn't even intend to clear the game, but instead, after discovering the bug, directly activated a private server mode with "unlimited resurrection coins"?

What's even more amazing is that the opposing "Heart Demon Studio" immediately followed suit, both of them using cheats to farm like crazy.

Li Tiezhu scratched his hair, which he hadn't taken care of properly in who knows how long, and his face showed a mixture of helplessness, amusement, and a hint of "we didn't want this either."

"If you ask me, the problem might not be with our customs clearance process."

He paused, organizing his thoughts.

"The problem lies with the person who cleared customs."

"You see, although nobody really knows what kind of brain circuitry the thing that concocted this weird thing has, there's one thing I'm sure of—"

Li Tiezhu pointed to the eternal gray sky, then to the cat-faced woman being dragged along by Director Zhang in the distance.

"When that thing was designing the rules..."

"It definitely didn't include us Qi cultivators in its calculations."

He counted on his fingers as he analyzed with Ji Zuodao:

"Think about it, aren't these strange creatures like vengeful ghosts that come to claim lives for ordinary people?"

"Does it mean I have to fight tooth and nail just to barely kill one and earn a precious resurrection coin, so I can save it for another chance when I challenge the final boss?"

"That makes sense in terms of 'leveling up' and 'trials,' right?"

"But what was the result?"

Li Tiezhu spread his hands.

"We, the unconventional Qi cultivators, have barged in."

"Looking at it, wow, this monster can resurrect? And it even drops resurrection coins when you kill it?"

"Then what are we waiting for?"

He slapped his thigh.

"Just fence them off! Raise them! Slaughter them when the time comes! Professional, efficient, and painless cryptocurrency farming!"

"I bet even the designer didn't expect it could be played like this."

"It's like designing a terrifying escape room for someone, only to have a demolition team with excavators and heavy firepower break in."

"Solve the puzzle? That's out of the question."

"They blew up the wall and the puzzle together, and sold the building materials for money while they were at it."

"Right now, we're like a demolition team, trapped in a building we've only half-demolished, with nothing to do but grind monsters all day."

"By the way, let's steal some business from that 'Inner Demon Demolition Team' across the street."

Ji Zuo said: "..."

He opened his mouth, as if to say something, but found himself speechless.

All I could do was silently give a thumbs up to Li Tiezhu, and to all the other Qi cultivators in this perilous place, a big, heartfelt thumbs up.

absolutely.

That's absolutely amazing.

They turned a horror game into a casual farm and a gold coin dungeon.

The eerie atmosphere would bring tears to one's eyes, and the designer's heart would be broken upon seeing it.

Only the Qi cultivators were having a great time farming coins, and some even complained that they weren't farming them fast enough.