58: Heading to the sea

After dinner, Xiao Xing logged online as usual.

He had returned to the city; the streets were bustling with people, making it exceptionally lively.

However, this was only the beginning; as more people arrived, the city would become increasingly crowded.

According to his past life, a year later, the cumulative number of players in the Dragon Country would be around 1.2 billion.

Although they wouldn't all be online at once, there would be at least 500 million players online at any given moment.

The Zihua Divine Kingdom had 1 divine city and 10 main cities. Calculating it this way, each city had nearly 50 million players online simultaneously.

This made every city incredibly congested; if not for many people leveling up outside, they wouldn't have been able to accommodate so many players at all.

But at that time, players would be around Rank 50-60 and would have already started planning to build their own cities.

Once players began building cities, the congestion in the Zihua Divine Kingdom started to ease, followed by the onset of great wars between various countries.

Xiao Xing remembered one instance most vividly: a city built by the Heavenly God Temple on the coastline was attacked by the USA, Japan, Cold Country, and many other nations.

At that time, other guilds in the Dragon Country also went to support the Heavenly God Temple, but even so, they couldn't withstand the onslaught of so many countries.

The Heavenly God Temple's city was nearly destroyed; it was only when the Dragon Country sent official military reinforcements that they barely managed to repel the attack.

Because those countries came from across the ocean, they only brought a portion of their forces rather than launching a full-scale national invasion, so the Dragon Country players eventually held them off... Xiao Xing traveled tirelessly on his deer across the city, intending to spend over ten thousand gold coins to purchase a large amount of supplies.

These supplies sold in the System shops were of no use to players other than looking good; they were specifically meant for NPCs.

For example, beautiful fabrics, belts, necklaces, head ornaments, and clothes, as well as plenty of roast ducks, roast chickens, longevity noodles, and so on.

These items were decorative; usually, players bought them for aesthetics, and NPCs bought them for use.

Although there weren't 50 million NPCs in the entire city, there were over 500.

The game was very intelligent; NPCs had autonomous consciousness. They also needed to buy daily necessities, purchase player equipment, and go to player guilds to post quests.

Xiao Xing was buying these things to trade with NPCs for money. He certainly couldn't trade them with NPCs in the city, but it might be different once he was far away from the city.

These items weren't expensive; because he held the Rank of Viscount, he even received a 10% discount.

He spent ten thousand gold coins to buy 12,000 items and then arrived in front of the teleportation array.

Because he was riding the Divine Deer, he was watched by countless people throughout the process, but Xiao Xing ignored them all.

Arriving at the teleportation array, he spent 100 gold coins to teleport to Star Sea City, which was the city closest to the coastline.

Although it was relatively close to the sea, it was still over 1,000 li away. There was no helping it; going to the seaside in the early stages was just that troublesome. Only in the later stages, after players built cities on the coastline, would there be teleportation arrays.

Star Sea City corresponded to the Magic City of the Dragon Country, so there were a great many people here, including many experts on the Rank leaderboard.

After quickly leaving the city, Xiao Xing rode the Divine Deer and sped off in a certain direction.

Although the distance was over a thousand li, after the Divine Deer reached Rank 30, its speed was more than ten times that of a Thousand-Mile Horse. In just over an hour, Xiao Xing would be able to reach Fuyan Town by the sea.

He was familiar with this town; in his past life, the Sky-Blowing Gang guild had used this town as their Foundation to build a city.

The Sky-Blowing Gang had also made significant contributions to the Dragon Country, repelling invasions from many Southeast Asian countries such as the Cold Country, Vietnam, and Tai Country.

After over an hour of traveling, Xiao Xing arrived at Fuyan Town. This town was large, and the NPCs were all Rank 50 soldiers, but there weren't many players yet.

His Divine Deer could fly, but he found that when flying, the mana consumption doubled while the speed remained the same, so he had never used it to fly.

Now that he was going out to sea, he needed to rent a boat; otherwise, the Divine Deer's mana wouldn't be able to support such a long flight.

Arriving at the pier, Xiao Xing bought a few Water-Repelling Pills and paid 5,000 gold coins to rent a small boat. There was one NPC on board to steer the boat for a duration of 12 hours.

If he wanted more time, he would have to pay more gold coins, but Xiao Xing didn't have much gold left, so he could only rent a small boat to go out to sea.

After heading out to sea, Xiao Xing glanced at the water. This direction led toward the Flame God Divine Kingdom, which in reality was the divine kingdom of the Cold Country players.

However, he wasn't going to fight the Cold Country players; he was heading to a specific coordinate at sea.

That coordinate was on the maritime trade route for various Southeast Asian countries, so naturally, many ships passed through there.

But over the years, because some ships were attacked by monsters and sank to the bottom of the ocean, the supplies and gold coins on board all fell to the seabed.

And beneath these coordinates lay the territory of the Rank 60 Sea Demon Clan.

The Sea Demon Clan wasn't like those wild monsters; they were a race similar to the Human Race and Demon Race, a branch of the Yao Race under the sea.

As a different species, they naturally didn't have the supplies of our Human Race, as there was no trade between the various races.

So Xiao Xing bought those supplies specifically to trade with the Sea Demon Clan.

Under normal circumstances, they wouldn't trade, but if it was just for gold coins, they would.

Because gold coins were money to the Human Race, but to them, they were just trash. Trading their trash for supplies—anyone who wasn't an idiot would agree to that.

Over the years, too many ships had sunk to the bottom of the ocean. They would collect the supplies for use, but as for the gold coins and gold bars that fell down...

They either used them to build city walls and floors or just shoveled them aside as trash.

Because they didn't need that much gold for floors, and merchant ships sank every now and then, the Sea Demon Clan was annoyed beyond measure. If they hadn't also obtained some supplies, they would have lost their temper long ago.

However, the Sea Demon Clan didn't have infinite gold coins either. Once the ones allocated by the System were traded away, they were gone. They had to wait for more ships to sink to get more gold, so it wasn't an infinite trade.

But Xiao Xing didn't need much; exchanging for 100,000 or 200,000 gold coins would be enough. Under his Million Times Amplification, all players would tremble.

When this place was discovered in his past life, players were already Rank 60, so even after trading for those gold coins, it didn't seem like much.

The boat traveled for over two hours before reaching the coordinates Xiao Xing specified. Once he confirmed they were in the vicinity, he swallowed a Water-Repelling Pill and jumped directly into the ocean.

In the Continent of Gods and Demons, players would also be subjected to water pressure after entering the water; the pressure varied depending on the depth.