How to Cultivate a Game

Ascension.

Heavenly Palace.

Clouds and Immortals.

The Sky above and beyond.

The Heaven's Game and the stakes.

I woke up with a heavy headache. For the past few weeks, I have been delving into old Fu Shi's memories. It was so that I could arrange them according to their relevance, and learn more about this world. Being organized was a trait I liked to maintain even in this life.

As an 'add-on' in my System, I now possessed a Search Engine where I could refer to if there was something I wished to know.

"What was that?" I was groggy, so I refreshed my mind by calmly breathing on a certain pattern.

It looked like I fell asleep while I was meditating on old Fu Shi's memories. As a result, I had a rather bizarre dream about the past. The dream was strangely familiar despite me having no clue of the images that flitted in my head. It was something related to Heaven's Game, but I could not understand shit. Never mind, the Heaven's Game was not at the top of my priorities right now.

I wanted to expand my player base. I have six more slots, but I wanted to think for the long run when my players reach the 3 digits. It would be difficult if I found a promising player, but I could not include them in my roster. I must only take in those who are promising.

By promising, I didn't mean those who were geniuses or possessed special talents, but someone with a strong mentality.

Where should I pick my potential candidates from? I thought long and hard about this, and I decided that supporting a whole Kingdom seemed feasible. I could make it work if I used my tools correctly. And having a whole kingdom as a foundation was not so bad either.

That was where the Biron Kingdom came in. It was necessary I pull important and talented figures on my side, and what better source was there than a kingdom itself? The mountain ranges where my Cave Abode was located were on the border of the Biron Kingdom, so location-wise, it would be just perfect.

For now, I was biding my time, and earning a steady amount of quintessence. After weeks of hard work, the villagers had long ceased being weak individuals who as much would flinch at the slightest movement from the bushes. Nee Chen had been especially exceptional with his natural talent with the sword, and his overflowing bravery. Xiang Ya and Lu Gao could now hunt for themselves as they were almost at the 1st stage. Lastly, there was Bi Yuan who was steadily accumulating levels... and weirdly stalking a certain croc despite my admonishments.

I had Nee Chen and Bi Yuan hunt somewhere else so that they would not hinder Xiang Ya and Lu Gao's growth with all of the limited prey in the forest. This decision was also made in mind to promote cooperation between Nee Chen and Bi Yuan.

Ping! Player Died.

That sounded just right… sheesh… Who was it this time? Lu Gao, huh?

Ping! -1 quintessence.

I resurrected Lu Gao with a thought. This dying and returning to life were becoming more often, despite my warnings. My honest take on abusing the respawning system was initially indifferent, but after Nee Chen's strange stunt, and the increasing bloodthirstiness of Bi Yuan, I had to change my stance.

It was as expected given they were players to begin with. With this respawning ability, the days that the fourth calamity would roam this world were infinitely inevitable. I guess, I didn't simply want a gamified world, but a paradise instead.

I sighed.

"Please be careful."

"Game Master, thank you!"

Lu Gao immediately scurried after thanking me. He rushed, eager to continue his leveling. Since learning that they could resurrect, the three humans have become more daring lately.

Unlike the little bunny who abandoned most of her survival instinct but still hated dying, the humans became unhinged and on the brink of even forgetting that death was a terrible thing. Bi Yuan was very violent and desired to kill stuff, but hated dying. Meanwhile, the humans were very reckless in their defense as they were in pursuit of information by experiencing difficult situations and forcibly improving their conscious awareness as a result, every time they respawn, they would show a visible improvement in how to deal with various things.

There was even one instance where the three humans joined forces to fight a beast of a higher realm by suppressing its weakness. Nee Chen literally used his companions as bait to achieve the kill. These three were becoming more player-like as the days went by.

It was good, except I have to address this as a problem in the future.

And honestly, as shown through their behavior, weren't they looking more like evil unorthodox cultivators instead?

I entered a meditative state in an attempt to further my mental consciousness. Though I was focussing at incredible levels, I could still spare some effort for retrospection. In parallel to my meditation, I fell into idle thinking for the little Bunny.

Bi Yuan was doing her own stuff at her own pace without any prevalent suicidal thoughts whatsoever, except her fantasies of hunting a fairly innocent croc that was minding its own business. She still possessed a sense of self-preservation as a bunny which was reflected in her not just blindly charging in at the aforementioned super croc. That was good.

A sudden idea struck me. I wanted so badly to get out of this cave and find players for myself, but I could not as I have responsibilities as a Game Master! I would not be able to go to a city or any populated area and leave my players to themselves. I could bring them, but their leveling had to be postponed as a result.

Moreover, I could not really afford to resurrect my players in the middle of the city, right? One of the requirements of my resurrection technique was that the resurrected players would be summoned in front of me. People would be immensely confused if they saw someone die and the next second resurrect in front of them.

Additionally, I would not want to scare the mortals. Anything that was mysterious, unknown, and unexplainable would scare any ordinary person! the people I especially wanted to recruit were mortals!

I could also just resurrect them at a later time to avoid confusion and chaos from mortals, but that would have a downside too. Maybe I could use a container to contain their souls, and then I would resurrect them in an isolated place later. I was not keen on this method. Not resurrecting them in time might be damaging to their soul.

After resurrecting Nee Chen in a certain debacle, I interviewed him about what he experienced.

Being stuck in a dark cold place, and the prickling sensation of being pieced like jigsaw puzzles sounded a lot like 'decay' to me.

According to old Fu Shi's memories, decay was a phenomenon that happened after death. It was generally observed as the decomposition of the flesh and the dissipation of the soul.

Since then, I raised 'making an automatic respawn point' higher in my list of priorities. Ugh... I really have so many things to do... Besides rediscovering and relearning old Fu Shi's memories, I also dedicated some time to contemplating the powers of the system.

Increasing my understanding of this world, and improving my strength as fast as possible was what I was doing most of the time. Just under them were priorities from all sorts of research topics like the respawn point and more relevant stuff!

The system had godly potential but it was not invincible. It clearly worked on certain rules. For example, if I wanted to do something, I needed to understand the principles that work behind it.

Like when I amplified my telekinetic powers with quintessence. If I didn't understand what kinetic force, weight, and psychic abilities were, the amplification wouldn't even happen.

Speaking of rules, the system also worked on the assumption of equivalent exchange.

The reason I could not create an automatic respawn point right now was that I lacked the cost that would allow the 'exchange'. With this line of thought, it was safe to assume that the reason why 'costs' were intuitive was also because of this equivalent exchange.

If I didn't know the cost of the exchange, I was left with no choice but to guess. Still, with the system's corrective functions, I was not doing so badly as when I started.

The system was something I created from old Fu Shi's Dao Insights and my hotpot of Game Designer Knowledge mixed with modern sciences I scarcely remembered.

Quintessence, however, was something I didn't attribute to the system's creation. Even old Fu Shi knew too little of it because it was still theoretical--- specifically, it was a theoretical energy not yet proven in the cultivation world.

It was like the theory in nuclear power when nukes weren't even invented yet!