❀                                                                  ❀                                                                   ❀

This Kind of Successful Refinement is the Best!

   Ning Xin grasped the mouse, moving it until it reached «Myth»’s login interface. Clicking OK, she ran to the freezer that was conveniently placed to the side and grabbed some ice cream.

   Even if the loading time of the login interface was long enough to shatter the will of the people to pieces endlessly, everything about the game, «Myth», was excellent. After Ning Xin grabbed a large bowl full of chocolate ice cream, she carried it close to her chest and bounced back to her seat, while the game interface was paused temporarily at the halfway point.

   -_-lll How were the game developers able to maintain this wretched loading time without ever optimizing it? It doesn’t make any sense.

   Ning Xin stared speechlessly as the interface slowly loaded. No longer able to bear the lonely and intolerably long wait, she opened the web page, attempting to understand the game characters and skills once again. Despite that, in the mind of this Miss Ning Xin, professions and skills were considered the same thing: a pain. Her sorrow even reached as deep as her soul!

«Myth» had a total of 15 professions. Up until a year ago, Ning Xin, a delicate and pure little girl, had been playing games. After she had passed the entrance exams of the highly acclaimed T college, her father and mother finally decided to return her laptop.

   Ridding themselves of the pressure of entering college, the class’ QQ¹ chat centered around the most popular game, the newest game King Corporation had developed—«Myth». From then on, Ning Xin was influenced by her classmates and unexpectedly grew interested in the game. At the time, «Myth» had yet to delete the activation code, and only 1500 copies were released on the official website. Each and every person verified their registration via phone with their registered account number. They would then be given the opportunity to extract the activation code. Furthermore, each cell phone could only perform one extraction. The odds of a successful extraction were like those of winning the lottery, and so Ning Xin truly did not dare to preserve her morals in this sudden chaos. She borrowed relatives and friends’ cell phones to exploit the single-time extraction, using as much as 57 cell phone authentications to obtain a single activation code.

   Ning Xin was unable to obtain a code for the longest time, however. In sequential order, the 1500 activation codes would then select a profession. Each profession was restricted to 100 people, and when it was our Miss Ning Xin’s turn to register, only the female roles of the Healer of Spiritual Pivot and its opposite, the Legendary Poison Witch of Miao², were available.

   As a matter of fact, a Miao character was a very fascinating existence. An enchanting waist thinly veiled by tribal grace, it seemed as if the character’s charming apparel was made by the heavens, the ideal mature woman³. Unfortunately, our Miss Ning Xin had long ago broken away from the nine year compulsory education system, yet she was still a good little girl and thus shackled by Marxism and Maoism. She didn’t understand the appreciation of mature beauty.

   Therefore, she didn’t look at the controls; she didn’t look at the attributes. She didn’t even spare a glance at the main sect’s introduction. She was determined to abandon the formidable Legendary Poison Witch profession in order to seek asylum among the ranks of the pitiful Healers, becoming a younger sister of the Spiritual Pivot and using her abilities to help the dying and heal the injured.

   «Myth»’s Healer profession had three specializations: the Basic Questions, the Spiritual Pivot, and The Classic of Herbal Medicine4. Among them, the Spiritual Pivot and The Classic of Herbal Medicine were both restricted by gender: the Spiritual Pivot was restricted to only female characters, while The Classic of Herbal Medicine was restricted to only male characters. Naturally, we can circumvent this limitation by becoming yaoren and renyao5.

   Basic Questions was not limited to either men or women. In other words, it was very universal, not discriminating against gender. As a nondiscriminatory specialization, however, it was looked down upon by the system. As a result, it was essentially choosing between the special sect skills of the gender-restricted Spiritual Pivot and The Classic of Herbal Medicine.╭(╯^╰)╮╭(╯^╰)╮

   Of course, regarding our Miss Ning Xin’s explanation, she was not interested in either of the so-called special sect skill sets. She had only selected Spiritual Pivot because she had no choice but to pick one of the two. Plus, the younger sisters of the Spiritual Pivot had exquisitely cute appearances!!!!

   Our Miss Ning Xin felt lazy.  Precisely because of this, she decided to pick a good profession and style. When it was time for her to pick a name, she put in “Ning Xin” without the slightest bit of hesitation and hit enter. The convoluted matter of choosing a name didn’t belong in her range of consideration!

   Of course, this wasn’t enough to cause Ning Xin to become a character that made others stupefied to the point where the heavens rage and outraged fury of man roar. Take note, the true point of outrage was not her equipment, her attributes, or her use of the various types of money that she accumulated. It was simply her unnatural ability to make a nuisance of herself. This novice’s natural stupidity remained at the pinnacle of its growth.

   Picking the younger sister of the Spiritual Pivot, Ning Xin came in contact with an online game for the first time as a female character. With poor operational skills and insufficient awareness, she immediately picked a character with the Healer profession. I did not pursue powerful Attack, impenetrable Defense,  Accuracy to critically strike, or Agility to evade. As long as I can survive, I will travel smoothly. Does this say that I can even heal myself as part of the Spiritual Pivot?! Could this younger sister of the Spiritual Pivot even heal herself if she tried?

   Well, in the end, did the idiotic newbie ever learn to achieve temporary safety by healing herself? Did she die without solving the problem? Could she even explore the world?

   Impossible! That was truly out of the question! Why? Because Ning Xin had good moral standing! She chose to excavate gems to exchange for money, the drops in her income frequent and numerous as she mined an abundance of high quality Cleansing Heartstones6, of which one of the uses was to alter the original property of weapons.

   Cleansing Heartstones were divided into three ranks in «Myth»: Primary, which changed one base point; Intermediate, which changed three base points; and Advanced, which changed all base points. Each level up slightly increased your attribute points, so if you made a mistake while assigning them, a Cleansing Heartstone could be used to alter your attribute points after. Clearly, regardless of its ranking being Primary, Intermediate, or Advanced; Cleansing Heartstones would change your base points.

   This base point system was a valued character attribute system. Even if you were a wisdom-based Healer, you had 50 points to distribute to your initial Defense, Strength, Dexterity, Luck, or Vitality on top of your main stats.

   But Ning Xin’s high quality Cleansing Heartstones were different. They were only able to change the original value, meaning that the default base values would also be erased. Having the ability to produce 50 attribute points without a good reason was undoubtedly a skill that would have families essentially killing each other to obtain such an effective implement. No matter what, everybody would be guaranteed exploit it; even the novice, Ning Xin, had a high understanding of this.

   As a result, she consulted the official website and was able to reach a conclusion.

   A Healer’s duty to regenerate health was determined by their own Wisdom. What constituted a good doctor? The amount of health restored?

   Therefore, Ning Xin, without the slightest bit of hesitation, without even pausing to think, finally used all of her base attribute points to build up her Wisdom to the extent that a single look at her stats would make people’s blood boil in anger.

   Character Level 15 — 0 Defense, 0 Strength, 0 Dexterity, 0 Luck, 0 Vitality, 65 Wisdom.

   Furthermore, this state of affairs would persist until she maxed out her level.

   Character Level 200 — 0 Defense, 0 Strength, 0 Dexterity, 0 Luck, 0 Vitality, 250 Wisdom.

   In this way, Miss Ning Xin would quickly become a legend in the game «Myth». To this day, nobody had surpassed her or even dared to try. . . .

   Fortunately, Miss Ning Xin had already developed her points 15 ranks at the time. In accordance with her stats, her HP should have been progressively increasing, except she removed the default 10 points in her Defense stat. Despite this, Ning Xin’s health bar still contained 150 HP. Otherwise, she would have immediately become a ghost!!

   150 HP, this number could make people’s hair bristle in anger!

   1 DEF was normally equivalent to 100 HP. At approximately level 15 and with 10 Defense attribute points, 1150 HP would already be guaranteed.

   150 vs. 1150. . . . Well, it wasn’t others’ faults that they reacted in anger. It was quite abnormal, a bug! An ordinary person would calculate it and then hurriedly exchange!

   But Ning Xin only stared at the sudden drop in HP. Then, with a flickering movement, her mouse headed straight for the group of monsters, her Spiritual Pivot brandishing her weapon: a colored ribbon. Soon after, she was met by a level 5 Wild Boar, and with a single bump of the pig’s snout, she was sent back to the respawn point.

   She lowered her objective repeatedly from a level five to a level four, and finally, to a level one monster of the Beginner’s Village: the village head’s old hen. This time, Ning Xin had no choice but to face the facts: she could not attack, defend, evade, or even have the luck to hit things without being hit herself. The current her, if pecked once by the hen, would probably also obediently die and be sent back to the respawn point.

   What could be done without attack or defense? Unable to kill monsters or to even do quests related to killing them, it was to the point that just by seeing a monster, you had to accept your death, as well as the extremely severe consequences that could prevent you from leveling up.

   If you couldn’t level up in the game, what else could you do?

   If an ordinary person thought you were useless, then no one would want such trash even if they were powerful. Our Ning Xin was not an ordinary person, though. This game was her first game, the first thing she picked herself, and this was her first game character.

   People always cherish old friendships, even if they had only been recently established, even for less than one day. In the middle of the screen, however, the charming, delicate, and cute Spiritual Pivot with the two words ‘Ning Xin’ above its head stood in a corner of the Beginner’s Village. Regarding Ning Xin’s recent contact with online games, the Spiritual Pivot in the center of the screen was the center of the game to her. One-of-a-kind—nothing could replace it.

   Because of this, Ning Xin was unwilling to part with, which would mean deleting, such a useless character. It was so much so that it became her only character, no others.

   Being unable to kill monsters, she did not kill them. At worst, she wouldn’t take any monster hunting quests and only take a quests where she only had to run errands. As a result, she spent half an hour in the Beginner’s Village not completing the monster hunting quests that were everywhere, but instead searching the NPCs of the Beginner’s Village again and again for a mission she could take.

   Ning Xin looked at her experience bar, which was still only 3% full, as she stood alone, facing the wind and laden with grief. At this time, a new message appeared on the channel.

      [Just Now] Xiao Yudi: Does any big brother, big sister have iron ore? I need some.

   Iron ore? What item is that?

   Ning Xin did not feel ashamed to be asking; in any case, she was currently very idle. And being idle was very boring.

      [PM] Ning Xin: What is iron ore?

      [PM] Xiao Yudi: Did you learn the crafting skill? The Ore Excavation skill will allow you to mine.

      [PM] Ning Xin: What is iron ore used for?

      [PM] Xiao Yudi: Iron ore can be used to forge equipment. My older brother lacks one piece of iron ore. Both of us didn’t learn the skill, and the recent internal survey showed that everyone is just focused on leveling up. Even when we set up a sale on consignment and a vendor’s stall, we still couldn’t find any iron ore. [Wails] Big Sis, help me find some iron ore, ok?

   Ning Xin pondered for a moment. Since she couldn’t kill monsters, she couldn’t level up. But if she could learned to mine, not only could she help others, but she would also be unlikely to get bored. As a result, she quickly replied to Xiao Yudi.

      [PM] Ning Xin: How can I learn to mine? Once I learn how to mine, I can help you gather some.

      [PM] Xiao Yudi: [❤❤❤] Big Sis, you’re a good person. Follow me to that NPC; it just so happens that you can learn about ranks there.

   Learning that a crafting skill rank required her to be level 15, Ning Xin couldn’t help but thank the heavens. Luckily, she had been able to reach level 15. If she had been level 14, all of her attribute points would have been wiped clean. Had that happened, wouldn’t she have seriously considered yielding to the urge to commit suicide with this character by jumping off a cliff?

   Crafting skills were divided into eight categories: four harvesting types and four manufacturing types. Each harvesting skill and manufacturing skill had a corresponding skill from the other type: Ore Excavation corresponded to Blacksmithing, Herb Gathering to Alchemy, Jewel Excavation to Stone Refinement, and Woodcutting to Construction. On top of that, each character could only pick two crafting skills.

   If you wanted to gain more skills, there were two methods. One way was to max out the rank of both skills and afterwards, to exchange the accumulated prestige for the opportunity to learn another skill. Another way was to excavate gems and discover a gem case that, when opened, contained the rare Imperial Edict Divine Scroll, a single Divine Scroll was equivalent to the opportunity to learn one skill. If you wanted to possess all the skills in their maxed out form, you would need to obtain five Imperial Edict Divine Scrolls at the very least. Nevertheless, the odds of obtaining an Imperial Edict Divine Scroll and those of obtaining a Cleansing Heartstone were the same: one in ten million. If you wanted to collect all five Imperial Edict Divine Scrolls, you wouldn’t be able accomplish it without being very wealthy.

   Ning Xin stayed with NPC Aunt Zhao a long time in order to learn crafting skills. Having already selected Ore Excavation, what else should she pick? In any case, she had no hope about levelling up. The four manufacturing types were immediately ruled out since it was useless to learn them. That meant she could only pick one of the remaining harvesting skills.

   Herb Gathering; did her 150 HP need medicine? Eliminated!

   Woodcutting; generally speaking, this was a strength-based craft. The figure of her Spiritual Pivot brandishing an axe to chop down every tree within sight floated into her mind and immediately, PIA!7 Ning Xin rudely sent it flying.

   Looking at the screen, there was only one choice left. And so, Ning Xin resigned herself to her fate of excavating ores and gems, and clicked to confirm. From then on, she began her endless journey of hard digging.

   She did not know that these decisions of hers today would bring about a miracle. A miracle that even legendary hackers were unable to achieve in «Myth».

   And this strangely designed character was called —— Ning Xin.

1: QQ is a chat system frequently used in China. For more information, here’s a link!

2: The Legendary Poison Witch is a figure specializing in poisons from the folklore of the Miao.

3: This description is from a famous painting of a Miao woman.

4: The Basic Questions (素问), the Spiritual Pivot (灵枢), and The Classic of Herbal Medicine (神农) are all ancient medical texts. Basic Questions and Spiritual Pivot are both part of the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Cannon, while The Classic of Herbal Medicine is a text of its own.

5: renyao and yaoren are males playing as female characters and females playing as male characters (in that order)

6: 浣心石 = Cleansing Heartstones

7: PIA! = sfx

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