Conquering OtherWorld Starts With a Game

November 8, Earth time, Friday. The day of the auction for the coveted items that players had been eagerly anticipating.

After resting on the Earth plane for over 10 hours, Yang Qiu returned to the OtherWorld plane at four in the morning. As he stepped out of the spatial rift, he wasn't just greeted by brilliant sunlight filtering through the leaves of the forest but also by a foul-smelling and decaying monster.

This corrupted creature lay in the spot where Yang Qiu had previously made his breakthrough. It seemed completely startled by the sudden appearance of the spatial rift and was now staring blankly at Yang Qiu.

"Another fallen one." Yang Qiu observed, examining this monster that had already lost its human semblance. From its blood-red pupils where spirituality and madness intertwined, he deduced the true identity of this creature. With a shake of his head, he raised a hand and made a slight gesture.

The corrupted creature, the size of a small elephant, rapidly disintegrated into black dust, settling on the ground.

The agreed time frame with Inspector Lowell had been three days (OtherWorld time). However, it was now the fifth day since, and Yang Qiu wondered if Lowell had been driven insane by the relentless players.

After a moment's hesitation, Yang Qiu temporarily abandoned the idea of recruiting a few more usable characters from the Sorensen Mountains. Instead, he summoned an undead lizard and returned to Weisshem.

———

Upon seeing Lowell, Yang Qiu wasn't particularly surprised to see a face filled with numb bitterness.

"You're late," Lowell stated expressionlessly.

"Sorry, the recovery took longer than I expected," Yang Qiu apologized. "Have things been going smoothly these past few days?"

"Depends on how you define 'smooth,'" Lowell replied, his face still wooden. "Like Rex being questioned by a representative of the Bartalis family, or a mercenary group preparing to invade and plunder—"

"What did you say?" Yang Qiu's eyes lit up.

Lowell frowned. "The Bartalis family sent an arrogant steward to question Rex for disrespecting the Indahl city defense force…"

Yang Qiu waved his hand dismissively. "Let's ignore the trivial matters. What I meant was, there's a mercenary group planning mischief in Weisshem?"

"Trivial matters… Fine." Lowell's mouth twitched. "Three individuals claiming to be from a mercenary group scouting for a client infiltrated the town and were… apprehended by your undead and me. Currently, they are being detained by the militia."

"I'll take a look right away." Yang Qiu stood up with a spring in his step.

Lowell: "…"

For some reason, the Black-robed Inspector suddenly felt that being robbed by the undead wasn't the worst experience yet for those mercenaries.

"Oh, right." Yang Qiu retraced his steps and turned back, retrieving a small box from his spatial ring. "I promised to give you an interesting gift from the other plane as a token of appreciation. Please have this."

Lowell: "??"

Lowell watched Yang Qiu take out a rectangular object with one side made of glass and the other of metal from the small box, along with a white rubber-wrapped wire. Lowell saw Yang Qiu plug one end into the peculiar tablet and the other into a socket already prepared by the undead mayor for electricity.

Yang Qiu calmly turned on the tablet and provided Lowell with a brief tutorial on how to operate it. This mainly included instructions on how to open the app, a media player, how to select shows, pause and resume playback, shutdown, and reboot, as well as some of the other simple auxiliary functions.

After gifting Lowell the cheap tablet he had purchased from Pinshaoshao at a low price, Yang Qiu eagerly went to pick up some more tool characters…

Puzzled, Lowell watched Yang Qiu leave before his eyes returned to the small and exquisite mechanical device before him.

The images on the glass surface seemed similar to the new machine that the Kenyan Empire had promoted last year—a machine that could replace traditional light shadow stones that stored images and sounds. However, unlike the promotional pictures from the Kenyan Empire, the images here were in color.

The music was exceptionally beautiful. Even though Lowell couldn't understand the lyrics, he found himself captivated by the melody and the female voice singing along with the visual scenes of mountains and forests accompanied by lines of blocky characters.

Lowell would be lying if he said he wasn't curious about the "unprecedented alternate plane" that Yang Qiu had mentioned previously. Even though he still didn't get why Yang Qiu wanted him to watch this, Lowell quickly pressed the pause button and returned to his room to retrieve his cuckoo flower lapel badge.

With the badge in hand, Lowell returned to his seat in the hall. With a mixture of excitement, solemness, and curiosity, he clicked on the resume button.

This time, he understood the line of peculiar block characters that appeared near the bottom of the screen—"Dream of the Red Chamber."

The mournful male voice with an exotic tone began to sing, "Ink stains the entire scroll, with a touch of bitterness…"

Then, Lowell sat unmoving in the living room for a very long time. Even when Wagner returned from the branch canteen with lunch, Lowell wouldn't budge.

Yang Qiu didn't concern himself with how Lowell, an otherworldly elder with a penchant for highbrow literature, would react to his ultimate literary weapon, "Dream of the Red Chamber." While he kept Lowell occupied, Yang Qiu gleefully went to meet the captured mercenary scouts.

The militia headquarters, which housed over a thousand people now, had not seen any trouble so far, and Yang Qiu never paid much attention to this place until now. As he personally visited the militia headquarters, he realized how adept Hal and his former bandit brothers were at being prison wardens.

It was lunchtime, and the prisoners were divided into three groups, queuing up separately at different meal stations.

The inmates, with their clothes covered with dirt and their faces sweaty, had been working and were eating the standard work meals provided by the young orc maiden, Lyka.

Those who hadn't done labor and were being held in custody obediently consumed the instant noodle stew that players, who were diligently building their reputation with the Undead Merchant Association, had prepared punctually.

The less ruly prisoners were stuck with having boiled potatoes…

Upon entering the compound, Yang Qiu happened to witness a prisoner in the boiled potato line try sneaking into the model inmate group receiving work meals. This fella's clothes were smelly and dirty, and his head was full of sweat and could easily pass off as having been laboring away. However, he was spotted by the keen-eyed Hal and promptly booted (literally) out of the queue.

"So violent," Yang Qiu commented, with apparent sympathy upon hearing the unfortunate guy's wails. He then gave a thumbs-up to Hal.

Hal, who was still kicking the guy, was momentarily taken aback but begrudgingly allowed that to pass.

Hal was arrogant, Tuttle Joe cared about his image, Finley was a sly fox, and among the four former bandits, only the knight Jerome, who was the most obsequious, ran over to greet Yang Qiu enthusiastically, "Good day, Yang. Anything I can help you with?"

On learning that Yang Qiu was looking for the newly captured mercenaries, Jerome promptly called out three unlucky fellows in the boiled potato line.

Yang Qiu examined these three dispirited individuals and was somewhat surprised.

Mercenary groups didn't have a much better reputation than bandit gangs. Individuals who could register as legal mercenaries in an official city and accept jobs across the continent were not known for their honesty when far from home. Occasionally, they even moonlighted as bandit gangs themselves if they found a place with lax security. Rumors circulated of certain remote towns being taken over by mercenary groups, who wiped out local nobles and turned themselves into local lords.

To put it simply, people working as mercenaries usually deal with either monstrous creatures or ruthless bandits and highwaymen. Those who enlisted the services of these mercenaries were typically nobles, affluent elites, or wealthy merchants; these three categories were essentially related to banditry. Innocent and harmless people would hardly survive long in such lucrative but morally gray industries.

So, why had these haughty mercenaries become so docile after such a short time in captivity?

Jerome, seeing Yang Qiu's confusion, explained with an innocent smile, "These three did misbehave quite a bit when they first arrived, making a ruckus that disturbed the peace. We dug a hole in the backyard, buried them with only their heads above ground, and made them miss two meals. After that, they became much better behaved."The source of thɪs content is ɴo(v)elꜰɪre.ɴet

Yang Qiu gave another thumbs-up. Even villains needed to be molded, and compared to the former bandits, these mercenaries fell a little short.

The three scouts, who hadn't eaten or even received their boiled potatoes, weren't paying much attention to Yang Qiu. Instead, they stared eagerly at the crowd receiving their meals.

Yang Qiu stroked his chin and instructed Jerome to bring over a bowl of fragrant instant noodle stew, which he placed in front of the eldest of the three men.

"Tell me your origins. Whoever is willing to speak can have this," said Yang Qiu, pointing to the bowl of piping hot noodle stew.

The oldest one among the three remained silent, his face dark. However, his two companions couldn't help but swallow nervously.

Yang Qiu grinned and turned to the two wavering scouts. "Don't worry; you won't be betraying your comrades. You're just choosing to switch sides early. I assume none of you think you will be able to leave Weisshem, do you?"

The faces of the three men turned pale.