The poor players didn’t dare slack off and could only idle away their time here. Complain to the game company? Useless. “Jianghu Online” claimed to be fully virtual and fully intelligent, with the game’s grand setting established from the very beginning. Every named NPC was a high-level AI, each with their own personality and way of speaking and acting. They interacted with players and also helped each other. Both NPCs and players were part of this jianghu, and the constant interactions were always influencing the world’s operation. A single word or thought from a big shot could bring earth-shattering changes to the jianghu. Even a small character’s action might trigger a butterfly effect. Endless changes, endless opportunities. In traditional online games, such changes were called updates—only when an update happened would new things appear in the game. But in “Jianghu Online,” it was as if the game was updating every second. So just because nothing was happening at the Sword-Shedding Pool now didn’t mean nothing would ever happen, or that nothing would ever happen in the future.

Helpless, the players could only entertain themselves. Fortunately, making a scene by the Sword-Shedding Pool had never been punished by the sect rules. After all, it was a game meant for people to play—if it was too harsh, who would want to suffer through it?

By the Sword-Shedding Pool, everyone did their own thing. The other Wudang players walking up and down the mountain path nearby were clearly used to this scene. But a newbie who had just joined Wudang, having received the task of guarding the Sword-Shedding Pool, arrived in high spirits, only to be confused by what he saw. Looking around, he couldn’t find a place for himself, but then his gaze landed on a figure dozing while squatting on a strange rock beside the pool.

NPC? Player?

The newbie wondered to himself. Because “Jianghu Online” was so realistic, players sometimes couldn’t tell NPCs from other players, leading to all sorts of jokes—rumor had it that a collection of these stories was about to be published.

“Senior brother, what are you doing here?” The newbie walked up and asked the person who wasn’t goofing off with the other players, nor standing guard at the pool like the fourteen NPCs.

“Task…” The person lazily lifted his eyelids and replied.

“The task of guarding the Sword-Shedding Pool?” The newbie’s tone already implied, “What a coincidence, me too.”

The person just smiled and looked up at the newbie. “You’re new, aren’t you?”

“How did you know?”

“People like us…” The person gestured at the Wudang players messing around. “When we get this task, all we want to do is curse. And you’re actually excited?”

“Why?” the newbie asked, bewildered.

“Because this task is the trash of all trash. Of the seven major trash tasks in Wudang, this one ranks number one.”

“Seven major trash tasks?” the newbie asked, still confused.

“Helping Caleb Wright count incense money, delivering a message to William Foster, finding the missing plank from the suspension bridge in the back mountain, wiping off the words Ethan Brooks carved on a rock, refilling the eternal lamp in the Purple Cloud Hall, cleaning the mountain gate, and guarding the Sword-Shedding Pool—these seven tasks are all pure garbage. If you’ve got too much time on your hands, go ahead and do them!”

Although he was talking to the newbie, plenty of others overheard, and soon the chess and mahjong tables were abuzz with discussion.

“Hey! I actually did that message delivery task for William Foster. It was a total scam. I thought it was just running around the sect, but the guy wasn’t even in the sect! You have to run back and forth, and it takes at least two hours!”

“I did the one wiping off Ethan Brooks’s writing. That jerk didn’t write it, he carved it with a sword! How are you supposed to wipe that off? It nearly drove me crazy.”

“I did the incense money counting one—my eyes went blurry from it.”

“I did the lamp oil one! Damn, you have to keep adding oil for a whole hour, do you know what that’s like?”

The players all chimed in, indignant. Each of these tasks was simple and low in difficulty, but they were huge time sinks—just like guarding the Sword-Shedding Pool, not worth the effort. And guarding the Sword-Shedding Pool was the worst of the bunch—the only routine task that players couldn’t avoid.

After some discussion, everyone realized that, aside from the unavoidable Sword-Shedding Pool task, each person had only ever encountered two or three of the seven trash tasks. But the guy squatting by the rock seemed to know all seven inside out—had he done them all? If so, what kind of terrible luck did he have? The players all looked at him like he was a plague god.

The newbie had learned a lesson and was about to ask for more advice, but saw that the person’s gaze had shifted to the mountain path.

At the bend in the path, a figure had just appeared, briskly climbing the stone steps. Passing players stopped in their tracks, and some even immediately followed behind.

When this person reached halfway up the mountain, he headed straight for the Sword-Shedding Pool. The players who had been messing around instantly fell silent.

“It’s the Hero of Xiangzhong!”

“The Hero of Xiangzhong, Henry Clark?”

“That’s right, I recognize him—it’s him!!”