Chapter 210: Extra- Hell’s Red Envelope Team (Part 1)
Translated by Karai of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: Addis
In the blink of an eye, seasons passed.
On the Celestial Horizon forum’s gossip section, various gossip and couple threads stood tall, with one long-standing thread remaining unshaken, becoming the emblematic high-rise of the gossip board. By checking the daily posts, one could see all the replies since the server’s launch, with Celestial Horizon players chatting and flooding the thread at all times.
“Good morning, friends! Any happy news to share today?”
“Come check out my new couple thread [link][link].”
“You guys are so great, the couple I shipped broke up yesterday…”
“What couple?”
“I guess it’s the XiāoYáo group?”
“Yes… Sister Haitang officially announced she’s single again on social media yesterday, sob sob.”
“BrokenOracle wasn’t single for a while now. I think his girlfriend doesn’t play games.”
“It’s nothing, the XiāoYáo group lasted a decent amount of time. In the past couple of years, the couples I shipped broke up one by one, I’ve gotten used to it.”
“Don’t take the game too seriously. What’s the point of shipping couples? Who knows if they’re single or married in real life.”
“There are still ships worth supporting, like the Big Brother duo.”
“Why not ship the Double Big Brother duo?! They’re an absolutely unbreakable combination! Their current gear engravings still match each other, and two years of Qixi Festival event S-class rating players, need I say more?”
“Don’t deceive the newcomers into shipping the Big Brother duo! It’s a bottomless pit, finding supplies is harder than climbing to the heavens!”
“Huh? What’s the Double Big Brother duo?”
“The Double Big Brother refers to the gossip section’s fanfiction area. The first post in the Valor Peak Destiny thread talks about the current pairing of Array Master UnchainedWanderer and SummonerMomo. They’re a couple in real life and in the game, partners in both.”
“Isn’t that a great ship?”
“It’s a great ship, the sugar route points to ClearWindIsHere’s livestream, Sunset City’s forge area, or the main city streets.”
“Sounds pretty good, won’t they break up?”
“What’s so great about it? The XiāoYáo group even has weekly faction wars to ship them, while the Big Brother duo gets supplies once every two weeks, if that.”
“Let me explain the Double Big Brother duo to the newcomers. This pair is also known as the ‘Surface Brothers’ Big Brother duo. They’re in a relationship both online and offline…”
I heard someone was promoting in the gossip group. Some old fans who had been digging for sugar at the bottom of the pit stood up and gave the newcomers a heartfelt introduction to this ‘surface brothers’ duo. There are indeed sugar sources available. After all, their close friend, ClearWindIsHere, is a popular livestreamer on StarNet, streaming at least three times a week, so you can see the Double Big Brother duo in his streams… Once a week? That’s definitely not bad.
But if you think you can watch the Double Big Brother duo share sugar moments casually in the livestream, then you’re dreaming. Momo did indeed call UnchainedWanderer ‘bro’ in private, but when they actually played the game, their interaction was extremely cold. Especially during quest challenges, they were both ruthless, no-nonsense output machines. While others would call their partner “husband” or “wife” happily during dungeons, these two would just call each other by their IDs like they were breaking up.
One was called Momo, the other was Xingzhi.
Isn’t that outrageous? At least use terms like “baby” or “husband”!
But that wasn’t even the worst part.
The two of them had their main cities bound to Sunset City, and their most frequent AFK spot was the Sunset City forge area. Other couples would log on to other maps to enjoy the scenery, take videos, or have date screenshots, but these two would log on to the forge area to farm gear, PK in the main city streets, double queue for the battlefield, or team up in the wild…
In the battlefield, they even split up to take different routes on the map. In the wild, one would block the front while the other blocked the back, and in the main city PK, they fought without mercy, as if it was life or death…
Always focused on their careers, pushing forward in the game. Their time management was impeccable. When they logged on, it was like they were clocking in for work. Once they finished playing, they would log off immediately.
No sweet talk, no teasing, no “dungeon battlefield, only my husband” moments.
[I still remember playing boyfriend back in the day.]
[Later, they toned it down, and eventually became just surface brothers.]
[Stop it. The last time they shared sugar was a month ago.]
[A month ago? What sugar?]
[The two of them rode a two-person mount to do a quest, but they only rode for 2 minutes.]
[At least they had some intimate contact while getting on the mount!]
[You guys are too desperate, getting excited over such little sugar… Why not just look at the leaderboard? Has Momo’s score fallen behind again?]
[The summoner really is way ahead, Momo is riding solo out there! I’m still trying to milk FireworksAndLanterns for a position change!]
…
[Has the assassin Sect been fighting lately? Their scores are really neck and neck!]
[What’s that compared to ChatMasterWu, who still sits comfortably in first place? But recently, it looks like Watermelon has caught up, his score jumped to second place—he’s doing well.]
[Watermelon? I heard he’s been working on lucky gear lately. The lucky build has risen fast this year. I even saw lucky swords in the physical swordsman section… and it was ScarletFruit who took the lead, the gear benefits for lucky builds are seriously lucky.]
[He’s already in seventh place on the wealth leaderboard. I’ve gotten annoyed when I run into lucky builds in the battlefield—lucky evasion is just absurd.]
[Is lucky build really more annoying than tank builds? I now avoid walking near the leaderboard when I see Bitter Melon—seeing his gear stats gives me a heart attack for two days straight.]
[What’s the deal with assassin scores fighting? Didn’t you see the magical swordsman section? Apple and FirstUnderHeaven have been going at it non-stop, how many times have those two swapped places this year?]
[I don’t know, I still saw FirstUnderHeaven two weeks ago, but when I looked at the leaderboard today, it was FirstUnderHeaven again.]
[That’s because Apple overtook him last night!]
[So why does their fight for first place have to do with name-changing cards??]
[Wasn’t Apple off to do the 20-player limited event? How does he still have time to overtake? Did they clear it??]
[Their guild? Never mind.]
Celestial Horizon entered a new expansion with its version update, and the level cap expanded from level 80 to 90. The quest challenges were also updated, with a new high score of 10 stars introduced. This update coincided with the holiday event, bringing a quest challenge system that lasted for half a month. The system consisted of 10 stages, with each stage corresponding to a specific quest level. The higher the stage cleared, the better the rewards.
The challenge format was a 20-player raid.
The difficulty in the earlier stages was manageable, but by the later stages, especially in levels above 6 stars, the difficulty skyrocketed.
The quest not only had star-level restrictions, but also adjusted the difficulty based on the players’ completion scores. Originally, 6 stars was already challenging enough, but if a team with 8 S-class rated players was formed, the difficulty would be locked at S-class. This meant that the more high-level players in a team, the higher the difficulty of clearing the stage. As a result, many top players, in order to secure their rewards, opted for second-tier team compositions to lower the difficulty, splitting into multiple teams to tackle the challenge.
However, there were also some particularly unusual high-level teams.
These were teams composed of the old exploration group’s top players, creating a hellish difficulty level for the challenge.
The exploration group, as any veteran Celestial Horizon player knew, was a small friend group originally formed by CloudTraveller when the game first launched. It consisted of highly skilled players. Later, the faction division split this group in two, but many of Celestial Horizon’s well-known players came from this group. When the high-level quest challenge came out, there were no faction or lineup restrictions, and somehow, these top players managed to reunite. They directly created Celestial Horizon’s epic SSS difficulty, which could be described as purgatory within hell, the hardest of the hard.
And then the top players got stuck.
While other elite teams soared through and cleared the 7th stage, the SSS hell team struggled through the 5th stage. The high difficulty brought richer rewards, but with the difficulty capped, no matter how rich the rewards were, they couldn’t access the higher-star chests.
But this group refused to give up. They were determined to face off with the main brain head-on, and after 10 days of fighting, while other top teams had already received rewards for clearing the 10th stage, they had barely made it to the 8th stage.
The forum had a lot of players following the event, and naturally, some people noticed this team, especially since the livestreamer ClearWindIsHere was streaming the SSS-class difficulty challenge in real-time. As viewers watched the top players fail repeatedly, they were also eagerly anticipating whether this epic difficulty would manage to reach the top and claim the reward for clearing the tenth level. Given the current difficulty, clearing all ten levels would allow a team to earn three treasure chests, while other teams could only get one, but that was only if they could actually clear the levels.
However, following the livestream wasn’t an easy task.
In terms of players, the team included big names like Momo, UnchainedWanderer, CloudTraveller, BrokenOracle, and BitterMelonMixedWithMilk. As for the leadership, it brought together most of Celestial Horizon’s well-known commanders… You might think that clearing the levels involved these top players battling desperately through sleepless nights, but in reality, the progress was more leisurely, with players casually chatting while fighting, and even taking breaks to sit, place items, and drink tea in the game.
The first few days went smoothly, with everyone full of energy for the game. One time, they even stayed up playing until 6 a.m.
But one evening at 10 p.m., the general commander Momo suddenly received a message, and from then on, their raid schedule changed repeatedly. On weekdays, they would play for half a day, from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m., and on weekends, they would play an entire day, from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m.
“Did they manage to reach the tenth level last night?”
“Almost, they got through the ninth level boss.”
“The event only has two days left. Maybe they’ll really clear the levels!”
“Ugh, don’t say that. I’m watching someone log off and go to sleep right before the final boss.”
“Wait, looking at the time, it seems like it’s almost their work hours…”
“Work hours, hahaha, why is that so funny!”
“Forget work! ClearWind is streaming!”
“Wow, so early today!”
When players on the forum heard that ClearWindIsHere had started streaming, they all quickly shifted their attention from the forum to ClearWindIsHere’s livestream. Upon entering, they saw 20 people climbing up and down an elevator. Since some players had already cleared the levels, the strategy guide for the tenth level had long been posted. The tenth level took place in a bizarre secret room, where among 40 rooms, there was a boss hidden. The 20 players would be scattered throughout the rooms, and they needed to find the correct boss room and gather together to defeat the boss.
The difficulty of killing the boss wasn’t as high as the eighth or ninth levels, but it was extremely agile, frequently moving between various rooms and killing players who got separated.
If a player was killed after getting separated, the boss’s enraged state would change. In short, the more players that died, the harder the boss would become to defeat.
Ultimately, the tenth level was slightly easier than the previous two, but it required a much higher level of individual player skill.
The strategy guide on the forum suggested that players should quickly gather with the healer based on room hints, prioritizing staying alive by grouping up in twos or threes. The key was to minimize casualties and kill the boss with minimal deaths. After testing and calculations by other players, it was found that if the death count exceeded 10 early on, the boss’s enraged state would become very difficult to handle. Therefore, if the number of deaths crossed that threshold, the best option was to retreat to the ninth level and wait for the boss’s rage to reset before attempting the fight again.
Once a room was cleared, it would disappear, and since the rooms were completely random, there were no fixed strategies.
This made it very difficult for the 20 players to gather together, which was one of the main reasons why the initial difficulty of the tenth-level boss wasn’t as high, but still stopped most players from progressing.
If all players died, they would be expelled from the level. When the number of deaths exceeded 15, an escape route would be activated, giving players 10 seconds to flee to the ninth level. Escaping to the ninth level could prevent a team wipe, and many players on the forum had been stuck on the ninth level for a long time. The tenth-level rooms were just too difficult, so when they heard that the high-difficulty hell team had reached the tenth level, many players rushed over to see if they could find a way to copy their strategy.
No one knew that once they entered the livestream, the hell-level team leaders, who were standing by the stone slab mechanism elevator, had reached the stone door of the tenth level.
CloudTraveller said, “Everyone relies on their own skills, don’t die.”
BrokenOracle added, “Remember to prepare your red and blue potions, check your quest skill cooldowns.”
[Me? Am I late? Have you discussed the strategies yet?]
“What strategies? Do we need strategies with our team composition?!” ClearWind said, “It’s just the tenth level room, do you really think we can’t clear it with our team?”
apple replied, “ClearWind, you’re so confident, but you’ll be the first to die.”
HealsFor25000, “Can you all say something more positive before we start??”
“Positive words? Well, life and death are destined, wealth and honor are in the hands of fate,” ClearWind responded.
ScarletFruit said, “Once we cross this door, take care of yourselves.”
ChatMasterWu added, “Let’s make it clear, anyone who’s bad will be called out, don’t hold us back.”
Watermelon couldn’t help but say, “There’s no invisibility in this room, can you all talk a little less?”
Bitter Melon laughed twice, “I hope everyone can stay as cheerful as this during the challenge. Have some confidence in yourselves.”
ClearWind said, “Exactly! We’ve cleared the first nine levels, what’s so scary about a room? Have some faith in yourselves. Just charge ahead.”
“You all are this confident?” Momo asked, standing in front of the stone door. After a moment of thought, he said, “How about we make it more exciting?”
FireworksAndLanterns replied, “Exciting sounds good!”
Momo casually said, “How about we raise the team’s efficiency?”
“How about a 5000 gold red envelope for every death? Anyone interested?”
