Chapter 44

Chapter 044: On Why the Chief Is a God

When three walk together, there must be one who is the idea king?

Seeing this summary written with blood and tears, Yan Cang couldn't help but chuckle.

He agreed inwardly: Hunting really isn't that easy.

It's not like you can just grab a sharpened wooden stick and a sharpened stone and instantly transform into a master of wilderness survival.

Let alone rival the ancient ancestors who honed their survival wisdom over countless generations in the harshness of nature.

Few modern city dwellers possess any experience or skill in hunting.

Otherwise, a kilogram of processed raw meat on the Trading House wouldn't have consistently sold for a high price of twenty to thirty Fate Points, often with demand outstripping supply.

This price itself is enough to illustrate the difficulty and risk of obtaining meat.

At least at this stage, for the vast majority who lack relevant experience and suitable tools...

Setting traps and waiting for prey is far more reliable than taking the initiative to venture deep into dangerous territory to find and kill wild beasts.

However, traps require enough patience to wait, along with a bit of indispensable luck.

And the persistently high, even rising, meat prices on the Trading House indirectly confirm a fact:

The extra hundred million or so Faction Points increase for the Huaxia Faction yesterday could not have primarily come from large-scale hunting bonuses.

After all, if that many people had succeeded in hunting, the meat prices would have dropped somewhat.

As the top food buyer on the Trading House, Yan Cang was well aware of the consistently high meat prices.

So earlier, when he saw the abnormal increase in Faction Points, the first possibility that came to his mind wasn't this.

It was "elimination points."

The people discussing this on the Fate Net weren't slow to react either.

Soon, someone jumped in and hit the nail on the head:

"Stop guessing about hunting bonuses! Look at the other factions on the leaderboard. Their points have plummeted today, and some have even gone negative."

"So, what's so hard to understand? On the third day, there was clearly a large-scale elimination."

"Some of those eliminated must have given us that 'Parting Gift' before they left."

"Ha, Parting Gift? That's... quite a way to put it."

"Crude but not wrong. Excluding the unrealistic large-scale hunting bonuses, this is the only possibility. The data doesn't lie."

It was an obvious fact, so there wasn't much controversy.

But this only made everyone even more interested in the discussion:

"What exactly happened to the other factions? How could so many people collectively give up on the third day?"

"Yeah, looking at the leaderboard yesterday, even though they didn't grow much, they were still increasing. I thought today would be about the same, maybe a slight drop."

"Didn't expect a complete collapse. This is too surprising!"

"What's so strange about that? Haven't there been Analysis Emperors posting all over the Fate Net these past two days, predicting that the third and fourth days would be the peak elimination period?"

"This is just happening as scheduled."

"But even those predicting gods didn't say it would be this intense!"

"Maybe... we have the Fate Net, the Trading House, and guides we can copy, which has greatly reduced the difficulty of survival."

"This has led us to generally underestimate the true difficulty of 'a modern ordinary person surviving alone in a completely unfamiliar wilderness environment.'"

"Think about it more carefully. The trial participants aren't just strong adults; there are children as young as eight, and a significant number of elderly people."

"For them, even with the Appraisal ability and the daily Supply Box, the threshold for survival is still terrifyingly high."

"Actually, I found it strange yesterday. The elimination rates for other factions in the first two days, when back-calculated from the Points increase, seemed abnormally low."

"I originally thought I had overestimated the difficulty of surviving alone in the wild, or underestimated the resilience of trial participants from other factions."

"Now I understand: I estimate a considerable number of people gritted their teeth and held on through the second day, purely on the thought of at least lasting until the next day's crate opening."

"Their goal was very clear: just wait for the Supply Box refresh at noon on the third day, to gamble on a chance to turn things around."

"The result... the crate opened, their hopes were shattered, and they couldn't hold on anymore."

"This is why the elimination data for the third day shows a kind of delayed explosive collapse."

"Makes sense! You could say it's 'crate opens, life or death decides'!"

"Also, I bet there are still people like that right now, in some corner, having their final psychological struggle over the junk they just opened."

"Following this logic... when the Leaderboard refreshes tomorrow, won't the Points of other factions continue to plummet?"

"Most likely. The third and fourth days are inherently the toughest period, a dual extreme of psychology and physiology."

"Those who survive this stage will gradually adapt in body and mindset, and the elimination rate will slowly stabilize."

"Damn... lucky we have the Fate Net!"

"+1, that's exactly it! If it weren't for the Fate Net, those life-saving guides on the Forum, and the Trading House where I could trade for a bite to eat, I'd probably be at the point of collapse and giving up right now."

"Same here. My cabin started in the Gobi Desert, nothing around me, and I opened four crates in a row, all useless junk. Just thinking about it is despair."

"Listening to you all, I suddenly realize the Chief's greatness too. No wonder the Fate Net is full of praise and flattery now. I thought it was just people afraid of getting their accounts banned..."

"What? Bro, you're only realizing this now?!"

"How dare you! What do you mean, 'afraid of getting banned'?"

"You're disrespecting the Chief! Your punishment is to repost that Epic Post on the Forum, 'On the Greatness of God, and Why the Chief is God,' ten thousand times."

"...Wait, that Epic Post you're talking about, I think I've actually read it."

"(Tactical silence)"

"Unbearable. That post was indeed popular in the Casual Chat Zone yesterday, so it's not surprising you've seen it. I've unfortunately read it too... but the content? Hard to describe. It's full of stale memes and cringeworthy, unoriginal praise that makes you want to dig a hole."

"I saw it too. My verdict: a poem among poems. It's practically returning kindness with enmity towards the Chief! If I were the Chief, the first thing I'd do is ban that author's Fate Net account."

"Wait, stop right there! Let me interrupt—actually, I'm the author of that post."

"???"

"Awesome!"

"Ahem... let's just let yesterday slide. Let's talk about something with more depth, like 'Why Would Eliminated Players Choose to Add Points to Our Faction.'"

"Let me start by giving you a comprehensive analysis of the reasons, motivations, and human nature dynamics behind this..."

Yan Cang paused slightly as he read this.

He instinctively glanced at the screen name of the speaker who claimed to be the author of the "Epic Post" and silently noted it in his mental little notebook.

"So it was you! Yesterday, you had me cringing so hard I could've dug a three-room apartment out of the floor with my toes."

"Alright, if you can't come up with something insightful in your analysis later..."

"Then you'd better strike it lucky!"