After that, Yu Xian took Little Nora to an inn and checked them in.
That night, Yu Xian lay on his bed. In the bed beside his, Little Nora was playing a game with Mengmeng Fortune Cat, giggles drifting over from time to time and putting him in high spirits.
He pulled up the Class Information Exchange forum.
This feature wasn't actually anything novel—just something akin to an online forum.
Yu Xian navigated to the livestream section and casually clicked into a stream. Immediately, he saw a man holding a submachine gun, spraying bullets into a horde of zombies.
Wherever the bullets tore through, countless zombies had their heads blown off on the spot.
This was the state of affairs on Sen Continent.
Word was that the monsters on Sen Continent consisted of all sorts of bizarre zombies. Any class holder assigned to Sen Continent had pulled the short straw; they even had to fight over food, and starving to death was hardly unheard of.
The Zhen Realm possessed numerous continents: Baihe Continent, Guyue Continent, Rain Continent, Sen Continent, Xiao Continent, Wuming Continent, Suo Continent, Zhen Continent...
The monsters varied from landmass to landmass, and owing to the different environments, the behavioral patterns of class holders diverged drastically as well.
On Sen Continent, class holders frequently traded blows over a scrap of food, and the situation wouldn't improve until one reached the level required to unlock the auction house.
Of course, Sen Continent had its perks too: leveling was relatively fast, monsters were abundant, and drop rates seemed slightly higher than on other continents.
As for Baihe Continent, its defining trait was a laid-back, go-with-the-flow vibe: not too many monsters, not too few; resources neither scarce nor abundant; everything was thoroughly middle-of-the-road.
Supposedly, the more easygoing and carefree a person was, the more likely they were to be assigned to Baihe Continent. Of course, this was merely hearsay, with zero proof to back it up.
Around this time, the streamer Yu Xian was watching finally gunned down every last zombie.
Yu Xian checked the loot; sure enough, the drop rate was quite high, only a bit lower than his own with Mengmeng Fortune Cat. However, as Yu Xian looked closer, most of what the streamer looted was ammunition, with only two crafting materials among them.
Excluding ammo, the drop rate wasn't actually all that impressive.
Yu Xian exited the channel and browsed other streams. The Zhen Realm truly had every bizarre class under the sun.
In the second livestream, the host was a Postman. His leveling method was delivering mail. Whenever he ran into monsters on the road and killed them, there was also a chance they would drop letters, and delivering those to designated NPCs yielded rewards as well.
Yet after watching for over ten minutes, Yu Xian realized this class was a massive pitfall too.
Quite a few viewers chimed in with cheerful anticipation, saying they couldn't wait for the postman to receive a mandatory delivery quest—especially a cross-continental one, where he would have to cross oceans with nine chances of dying to one of living.
Yu Xian thought the postman would be gripped by fear or despair upon hearing that. Instead, the streamer replied with deadpan calm: "Doesn't matter. That postman who died at sea you guys are talking about? That was me. And I fought my way right back."
"Holy crap!"
"I just went back and checked the recordings—it really is him."
"Bro, weren't you dead? How did you win the resurrection bracket?"
"I'm an honest guy—don't you guys know dying in this world isn't real death?"
"???"
"?????"
"???????"
Well, clearly plenty of viewers had no idea and were stunned by the revelation.
Yu Xian smiled and typed in a comment: "Even if you don't die, you get expelled from this world. I'm curious how you fought your way back, Host?"
"This little brother knows quite a bit. Got a big shot in the family?" the streamer asked pointedly upon reading Yu Xian's message.
Yu Xian smiled and typed: "Is it possible that I'm the big shot myself?"
"Keep your secrets then! Hit me up to play sometime if you're free!" the streamer laughed.
Yu Xian was certain this streamer was the scion of someone powerful—likely the son of some Mighty One.
After replying with an "Okay," he left the stream and checked out others.
In the third livestream, the host was a Professional Beggar. Yu Xian didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the sight of that class; there really was every weird profession imaginable.
In the fourth livestream, the host was an Extraordinary Angler; for him, fishing was leveling.
Yet the monsters in the sea were no pushovers either. After Yu Xian watched for a little while, a fish took the bait, and the host reeled in a massive, three-meter-long blue fish.
Who could have guessed that the moment the fish landed ashore, it let out a furious roar and grew hands and feet? The streamer froze in disbelief.
From that point, the fishing show turned into a live brawl—or rather, a one-sided beatdown of the streamer by the fish with limbs. In the end, the host was beaten to death on the spot, and the broadcast cut to black.
"Brutal."
Yu Xian stared at the black screen, amused and sympathetic all at once, before muttering with a wry chuckle.
Then he exited the darkened stream and moved on to the next.
All that night, Yu Xian kept watching livestreams, picking up a wealth of information about this world in the process. For instance, the classes were utterly unconstrained by convention: beggars, anglers, and postmen aside, there were even Professional Wage Slaves, Professional Lackeys, and Professional Monster Traitors.
What was a Monster Traitor?
Simply put, a class holder who sided with the monsters to fight other class holders.
One of the streamers was stabbed in the back by a Monster Traitor mid-broadcast, causing the stream interface to instantly go dark.
The night passed without further event.
Early the next morning, Yu Xian and Little Nora ate breakfast and set out from the city.
Their goal for the day was to grind monsters on the left side of Fukang City, striving to reach Level 15 as soon as possible before heading over to the right side to keep farming.
"Stop kill-stealing, damn it! Back off!"
"Get lost, get lost, get lost! Spot's taken, the monsters here are all mine!"
"You itching for a fight? Ever heard of first come, first served?"
"Monster over there! Get it!"
When Yu Xian and Little Nora reached the plains on the left side, their eyes were met with class holders everywhere.
A monster resembling a wild boar had barely spawned when, in the next second, focused fire obliterated it instantly, its body dissolving into white light.
Immediately, the class holders who had struck began squabbling, each accusing the others of stealing the kill. As the shouting escalated, they shoved back and forth, always teetering right on the verge of an outright brawl without quite tipping over.
"Big Brother, there are so many people," Little Nora remarked, hugging Mengmeng Fortune Cat while looking at the dense sea of class holders before them.
Yu Xian nodded. Even he hadn't anticipated so many people. Clearly, as the Zhen Realm drifted through the myriad worlds, it was exceptionally diligent about pulling people in.
Then again, it had to be diligent.
Yu Xian and Little Nora stood there for only a short while and already saw over a dozen class holders perish in skirmishes. With a casualty rate like that, if newcomers weren't recruited at a rapid clip, the Zhen Realm would have turned into a ghost town long ago.
"Let's go. We'll find somewhere else," Yu Xian said with a sigh after observing the chaos for a while.
Fighting over monsters here simply wasn't worth the trouble; they'd be better off going back to hunt in the Fukang Mountains, where there was at least no one around.
However, he had no intention of turning back just yet. Instead, he decided to head over to the right side to check the situation. Although the monsters there were all Level 20, the Giant Ghoul wouldn't necessarily be unable to put up a fight.
Fortunately, the plains to the right of Fukang City were indeed far less crowded.
Yet the monsters here were all the more bizarre. They were all Cross Snakes. Two-headed snakes were common enough, but a four-headed snake whose bodies intersected in a cross was exceedingly rare and downright surreal.
And this snake's method of attack was actually high-speed spinning.
Chapter 443