Chapter 3

The remaining two beasts paused, baring their teeth and snarling at the bushy-bearded Halfling.

Sitting in the tree, Xia Xifeng covered his mouth, almost vomiting from the bloody scene and the scent of blood carried by the wind.

After observing for a while, Xia Xifeng understood why Qin Lang had risked himself to save the man.

The short-statured human races in Fantasy Realms had three major categories: Dwarves, Gnomes, and Halflings.

In Western fantasy works, each race had “stereotypes,” but also unique aspects.

In Fantasy Realms, Dwarves leaned neutral, Gnomes leaned evil, and Halflings were a purely good-natured and optimistic race.

Halflings looked just like ordinary humans, only half the height. The tallest Halfling in the game’s setting was just over one meter.

They loved life, valued family, were skilled at farming, had a certain talent for painting and music, were extremely loyal to friendship and love, and were passionate about finding all sorts of excuses for the whole village to throw a party together.

In the disaster-plagued game background of Fantasy Realms, which had entered the Doomsday Era, every time the game developers held a low-age fairy-tale-style event, it was organized by Halfling NPCs.

Even with the apocalypse looming and desolation everywhere, Halflings remained optimistic and cheerful. Unless they went mad, they would never lose hope.

Qin Lang must have realized the one calling for help was a Halfling and thus took the risk to intervene.

For two transmigrators who were essentially “unregistered persons,” getting on good terms with Halflings was the safest path to integrating into this world.

Here was a Halfling in distress—how could a player not save him?

Although Halflings were naturally very perceptive of malice, players treated all NPCs equally and inherently didn’t harbor subjective malice. As long as a player didn’t harm a Halfling, the Halfling would be the player’s lifelong friend.

Xia Xifeng lowered his hand from his mouth and suppressed the churning in his stomach.

The bushy-bearded Halfling had gained the absolute upper hand. The danger was over.

Xia Xifeng watched Qin Lang weave through the beasts, his bloodstained face as indifferent as ever.

As childhood friends, Xia Xifeng was certain that Qin Lang, like him since childhood, had never even killed a chicken, duck, or fish.

Even though they went to different universities, both had been preparing for postgraduate and doctoral entrance exams since their first year, keeping their studies extremely busy. Furthermore, public security in both locations was excellent. There was no way Qin Lang could have been exposed to anything so bloody.

Qin Lang’s ability to be ruthless without hesitation, his indifference to the scent of blood, and his calmness under siege from beasts were truly beyond Xia Xifeng’s expectations.

He searched his memories for a long time and scratched his head.

Qin Lang had been excessively cold and composed since childhood. It wasn’t too surprising for him to have such adaptability to a bloody scene?

Xia Xifeng took a deep breath and forced himself to get used to this strange world as quickly as possible—a world so completely different from his previous living environment.

Qin Lang and the Halfling had already regrouped. One fired arrows, the other reaped with great axes, their coordination seamless.

It looked like they intended to kill all the beasts.

Xia Xifeng’s experience points skyrocketed, rapidly approaching the level ten boundary that separated “cloud players” from “newbie players.” This showed that these beasts were definitely not the kind of monsters they should be “grinding” right now.

He rubbed his face and revealed an excited grin.

System, allocate points!

Since he had no combat class, Xia Xifeng didn’t think about attack power at all. Besides the points automatically distributed by the system, he evenly distributed his free points into Spirit, Endurance, and Agility.

Spirit affected magic defense and abnormal status resistance, as well as the healing spells of classes like Cleric.

Endurance affected physical defense, equipment weight capacity, and the success rate of “grapple” skills like defensive counters.

Agility affected evasion and accuracy, and provided a bonus to critical hit chance on vital point strikes.

For Xia Xifeng, this meant stacking defense—stacking it to death—supplemented by evasion and escape.

With skill points available, Xia Xifeng didn’t immediately unlock new skills or blueprints either. Instead, he went into the Gathering skill tree page and first allocated points to “Support” abilities.

The system’s skills were more numerous than the life skills in Fantasy Realms. Using Fantasy Realms‘ life skill template as a base, it added skills from many farming and survival games on the market.

Farming and survival games could also encounter danger and required many life-saving and escape skills. Xia Xifeng’s system also had related support skills.

Xia Xifeng unlocked the three support skills: “Walking,” “Climbing,” and “Swimming,” reducing the Stamina required for walking, climbing, and swimming and increasing movement speed.

After unlocking the basic support skills, Xia Xifeng first focused on practicing Climbing, since he was currently in a large tree.

Once the Climbing skill was maxed, one could climb regardless of terrain conditions and reduce fall damage by a percentage—incredibly practical in the real world.

Qin Lang had run out of arrows.

After multi-tasking and finishing his point allocation, he and the Halfling finished reaping the life of the last beast. When he turned back, he saw Xia Xifeng climbing up and down the tree. The corner of his mouth—which hadn’t even twitched when he was injured—couldn’t help but spasm.

The Halfling casually struck up a conversation with Qin Lang: “Brother, what’s he doing?”

Qin Lang said: “Bored, practicing tree climbing.”

The Halfling laughed heartily: “How amusing! I’m Leo Sunflower. Good brother, what’s your name? I absolutely must invite you to my home as a guest. Please don’t refuse the friendship of a Halfling!”

Seeing that Qin Lang’s battle had ended, Xia Xifeng hurried over to gather materials.

Hearing the Halfling’s introduction, Xia Xifeng once again felt the pain caused by Fantasy Realms‘ unique mix of partial transliteration and partial meaning translation.

Although Fantasy Realms was a Western fantasy game, both the developer and publisher were Hua people. Hua people understood their own: while transliterations might sound more impressive, when there were too many names, Hua players would get confused. Thus, the game heavily utilized meaning translations.

For example, the world Fantasy Realms was set in was transliterated as “Sangmien World,” but the game’s official name used for domestic promotion was “Dream World.” “Sangmien” was Latin for “dream.”

Similarly, important NPC names that were short and easy to remember would be transliterated, like “Leo.” But if Leo’s surname were transliterated, it would be too long, so it was meaning-translated, i.e., “Sunflower.”

The surnames of several major Halfling families were all “flowers” with agricultural uses. “Sunflower” meant the sunflower.

Xia Xifeng paused and poked Qin Lang through the system party chat page.

Qin Lang gave Xia Xifeng a knowing look.

Clearly, even if Qin Lang didn’t care much about game lore, even he was familiar with the “Sunflower” family among Halflings. They were the most combat-skilled family among the Halflings.

“I’m Xia Xifeng, he’s Qin Lang. We’re fellow townsmen and neighbors, and traveling merchants journeying the world together.” Xia Xifeng took over from Qin Lang to converse with Leo.

He mentally ran through all the important NPCs of the Sunflower family but couldn’t recall the name “Leo.”

But it was fine even if he wasn’t a major NPC. Xia Xifeng had ten thousand ways to cater to an NPC’s preferences, let alone with Halflings, the easiest to handle.

Qin Lang had a life-saving grace and comrade-in-arms bond with Leo; this friendship was already more than halfway secure. Xia Xifeng just needed to casually fabricate a few “background stories” that Halflings liked, and he could smoothly integrate into the Halfling community.

Moreover, his original living environment was peaceful and warm, his family harmonious and loving, and he himself was passionate and cheerful—all traits Halflings liked.

Watching Xia Xifeng smoothly chat with Leo, soon squatting down and throwing an arm around Leo’s shoulders and calling each other brothers, Leo even forgoing the spoils of war and gifting them all to Xia Xifeng—Qin Lang wasn’t surprised at all.

In Qin Lang’s contact list, the avatar he had specially set for Xia Xifeng was a silly-looking Halfling.

The first people they encountered upon arriving in this strange world were Halflings. Perhaps Xia Xifeng’s kindred spirit, recognizing he was a Halfling born in the wrong body, had come to pick him up.

Once Xia Xifeng became familiar with Leo, he showed off his exquisite life skills to him.

With a flash of light, the beasts’ corpses were collected by Xia Xifeng, decomposed into useful materials like lean meat, innards, bones, hide, and blood, entering his backpack.

Xia Xifeng took out the decomposed materials and intended to split them evenly with Leo.

Leo was willing to share the spoils with him. He would take the spoils first, process them, and then share with Leo—reciprocity.

“Are you looking down on a Halfling’s promise!”

“I’ve already taken the spoils of war. Now I’m gifting you presents. Are you looking down on my gifts!”

The spiritually Halfling Xia Xifeng rapidly gained the favor of the real Halfling Leo. Coupled with the life-saving grace, Leo gifted the Sunflower Pendant to Xia Xifeng.

Members of the Sunflower family who passed their coming-of-age ceremony were all bestowed a Sunflower Pendant.

This Sunflower Pendant represented the “friendship” recognized by the Sunflower family. An adult clansman could only gift one Sunflower Pendant in their lifetime. A foreigner possessing a Sunflower Pendant held the status of an honorary family member of the Sunflower family, and the Halfling who gifted the pendant vouched for them for life.

In other words, if he had misjudged the person, this Halfling would spend the rest of his life hunting down the enemy, retrieving the pendant, and atoning for the sin of poor judgment.

It was clearly a heavy responsibility, yet Leo unhesitatingly gifted it to people he had just met.

At most, he hesitated for a moment on whether to give the pendant to Qin Lang or Xia Xifeng.

When Xia Xifeng thumped his chest and declared that he and Qin Lang were one entity and would never part in this world, Leo, with a blessed smile, gifted the pendant to Xia Xifeng, emphatically stating that the pendant didn’t need to be worn, so Qin Lang needn’t worry.

Qin Lang: “?”

Xia Xifeng: 【Probably means the pendant is a quest item. It can take effect without occupying an accessory slot in the equipment panel.】

Leo said excitedly: “Feng, Lang, you’re both so impressive! My little sister is definitely going to be so jealous that I found someone worthy of entrusting my pendant to on my very first journey!”

Xia Xifeng said with a smile: “You’re quite impressive too. I didn’t expect you to be only twenty years old. I’ve never met a Halfling so young yet so formidable.”

Xia Xifeng: 【Going out for the first time and immediately giving away the Sunflower Pendant? Is he too naive and sweet? I’ve always wanted to complain about this game setting—how on earth do Halflings survive the Doomsday Era, and even thrive?】

Qin Lang shot a glance at Xia Xifeng. Wasn’t Xia Xifeng himself a very tall Halfling?

Leo stroked his own beard and said slyly: “I just came back from the Dwarves. Dwarves like people with beards. Thanks to this beard, I only paid the price of one axe for this pair!”

Xia Xifeng gave Leo a thumbs-up: “Impressive, you’re quite suited to be a merchant too. Tell me more about the Dwarves, okay? I also want to do business in the Dwarf kingdom.”

Leo said: “Green Sand City invited the largest Dwarf Merchant Caravan for this year’s Harvest Festival. Did you guys hear this news and come to Green Sand City?”

“Ah, yes!” Xia Xifeng nodded.

Green Sand City? The multi-racial main city that still stood firm in the Doomsday Era? Green Sand City’s City Lord was a Half-elf who was nominally a Legend but whose strength probably exceeded a Demigod.

According to Green Sand City’s background setting, since its establishment, the City Lord had never changed. Xia Xifeng had finally heard a familiar NPC name.

Learning that Xia Xifeng’s backpack was an expensive merchant caravan spatial backpack with a large capacity, Leo handed the gifts Xia Xifeng had given him back to Xia Xifeng.

After finding his lost luggage along the way, Leo also let Xia Xifeng store it for him, including all the money he had earned during his travels.

He had given Xia Xifeng the Sunflower Pendant, which meant he had entrusted Xia Xifeng with his trust, completely not considering the possibility that Xia Xifeng might run off with his things.

Learning that Qin Lang didn’t like to talk, Leo tactfully only chatted with Xia Xifeng.

Using Green Sand City’s Harvest Festival as a starting point, Xia Xifeng probed Leo for information about this world, occasionally chatting with Qin Lang through the system chat.

Qin Lang had zero interest in game lore and barely responded. Only Xia Xifeng spammed the chat.

The three walked for over an hour. During a break, Xia Xifeng showed off a grilled meat that could restore Energy. Leo became so proud he was almost swelling with it.

He firmly believed Xia Xifeng was a God’s Favored Cleric, surely devoted to gods of agriculture, cuisine, or the like.

Such wondrous methods could only be explained by divine favor.

In Dream World, anything and everything could give birth to a deity. A Cleric was one who had obtained divine favor and could use divine arts while adhering to their vows.

In the game, player Clerics were just blood-bag characters who healed and buffed.

In the game’s lore, anyone who obtained divine favor could be called an “Oracle,” while those who could use ordinary divine arts through cultivation were ordinary “Professional Clerics.”

An Oracle’s divine arts were varied and highly correlated to the deity they worshipped, without commonality, and not all could heal or buff.

These “Oracles” had another, more prestigious title among players: “Saint Sons / Saint Daughters.”

However, in the eyes of NPCs, God’s Favored ones were merely a somewhat special profession, and there were quite a few of them. They were just somewhat impressive ordinary people, without special religious treatment.

Xia Xifeng’s ability to easily decompose materials and create food with medicinal effects—this was a characteristic of divine favor.

Delightedly, Leo danced a little jig for Xia Xifeng and Qin Lang.

Halflings’ tendency to break into song and dance at any moment made Xia Xifeng watch happily.

Qin Lang only focused on eating the grilled meat.

When Xia Xifeng and Leo started dancing hand in hand, Qin Lang moved a bit farther away to eat his meat.

He’d said it: Xia Xifeng was indeed a Halfling born in the wrong body.

After walking a while longer, the group finally saw a road wide enough for horse-drawn carriages to run.

Leo led them onto a narrow footpath beside the main road, and soon they arrived at a valley.

Passing through the valley gate, expansive farmland, tall windmills, winding rivers, tranquil lakes, neat rows of houses, the laughing, short-statured people weaving through them—and sunflowers everywhere: lining the roads, atop the windmills, on the windowsills of houses—unfurled before Xia Xifeng and Qin Lang’s eyes like a CG cinematic upon entering a new map.

Leo turned around. Placing one hand flat over his chest, he bowed to Xia Xifeng and Qin Lang.

“My friends, welcome to Sunflower Valley.”