Chapter 664: Chapter 631: “First Blood”
That night, the Cloud Dream staff in Chang’an were extremely excited.
Many of them were furiously writing down inspiration after inspiration.
Some were drawing architectural designs, some were working on storylines, some were looking up historical figures from that era, and some were drawing western beauties and fox demons.
As for Lincoln, he was drawing the Mechanical Art girl.
The ringleader of the haters, named Thomas, kept his silence principledly – of course, he could also be afraid of Lincoln’s skill in handling enemies. In any case, no news leaked out that night.
The players in Chang’an still thought it had been a fruitless day.
Little did they know there was a traitor among them, indulging his sexual quirk and secretly making a deal with Lincoln.
*
The next day, unbeknownst to them, the players’ attitudes started to change –
On Monday, when they found out that Cloud Dream was assembling a big team to make a Chang’an-themed game, they were simply ecstatic.
They were all on the verge of going mad with joy.
By Tuesday, the players’ anticipation continued to be sky high.
Many were so preoccupied that they couldn’t focus on work, studying, or even playing games, constantly checking for updates from the Chang’an players, hoping for fresh news.
On the third day, the players’ expectations began to change slightly.
–“Aren’t you guys satisfied yet?”
By the fourth day, when the players woke up to find that the Cloud Dream employees were still hanging around Chang’an and showed no intention of leaving, the impatient friends finally couldn’t stand it:
“When the hell are you guys going to start making the game?”
“You’re never going to finish, are you?!”
…
The Cloud Dream employees were also helpless.
They wanted to go back, but their boss went incognito, so even if they wanted to, they couldn’t return. They had to keep sightseeing…
Fortunately, Chang’an was big, and there were many places worth visiting, so they didn’t have to worry about running out of things to see.
However, Lincoln didn’t go out today and slept in instead.
It wasn’t because he had been cornered by the leader of the haters yesterday and wanted to lay low today, but rather because he was occupied with some matters and couldn’t spare the time.
Firstly, the “Freedom and Democracy Rights Foundation” finally completed all the procedures and processes in America and officially passed the audit today – actually, it had already passed yesterday, but Lincoln only received the news today due to the time zone difference.
In short, from today onwards, the “Freedom and Democracy Rights Foundation” can legally and legitimately contribute to the cause of freedom and democracy for the American people.
In America, the cause of freedom and democracy is not a cheap affair.
Of course, if you are just an ordinary citizen, freedom and democracy are not expensive, and you can take to the streets at any time to join the ongoing protest actions.
Not only is it free, but there might even be something to gain.
How much you can gain depends on your courage.
However, for an organization, promoting freedom and democracy is quite expensive.
Organizing manpower for activities, processing various materials, logistics support, legal aid, guiding public opinion, sometimes even bribing officials, and even funding the election campaigns of supportive politicians!
Expenses, all of them.
It is possible for those without money to launch large-scale protest activities that affect the whole country, but such events are filled with randomness and often require a long period of suppression before being ignited by a special incident.
Though not impossible to achieve, it is hard to artificially create without support from local authorities.
What Lincoln needs is continuous support, to keep “public opinion” and “activities” going for a long time.
This means: constant financial input is required.
Not everyone can handle that cost.
But the good news is: Lincoln is not short of money.
He didn’t even plan to count this money towards Cloud Dream’s “market expansion” account but decided to keep a separate account for it, counting it as part of his “hobbies and interests” expenses.
After all, this investment did bring him quite a bit of joy…
Step one, precision money-sprinkling, invested in—
Extremist environmental organizations.
Yes, Lincoln’s first move was not to support virtual reality game-related protests but environmental organizations.
He planned to first support all sorts of bizarre activities of extremist environmentalists, extreme animal rights activists, Flat Earth theorists, LGBTQIAPKDXR+, and the like – all in the name of the Foundation’s innocence.
In Lincoln’s view, this was merely going with the local customs.
And since Christmas was just around the corner, gathering all these organizations together for some festive street activity would also count as a new American folk custom.
After that, he would invest more money in protest activities against the government’s ban on the Mirage Console and start getting down to business.
Anyway, the ban in America seemed very strict, and it didn’t seem like something that could be resolved quickly or something he could handle. Delaying for a few more days wouldn’t hurt.
American players would have to suffer for a few more days.
After dealing with the New York Foundation manager, Lincoln hung up the phone and waited for the fun to begin.
However, it was already evening in New York, and it would take some time to organize activities from sponsorship to fruition, so he would have to wait a few more days for the excitement.
—Luckily, excitement was never in short supply.
Today was Thursday, the last day of “Hunter: Call of the Wilderness” hunting contest, and the day before the end of Terraria’s Survival Challenge.
As for the former, Lance had already given up on the competition and returned to school for classes.
Thanks to his strong PVP skills, he still hadn’t been eliminated.
However, his loot points gap had been widened significantly by the veteran hunters. For the remaining competition, no matter how hard he tried, it would still be garbage time, so he had to give up early.
Now, the remaining players in the competition were either those who didn’t care about winning and losing and simply enjoyed this type of gameplay, or they were the real powerhouses!
By this point, players who could still win had their single-game points drop below 1000.
They were now hunting in between shooting at each other, looking for a chance to strike.
Moreover, as long as one opponent was still alive, they had to move immediately after firing a shot; otherwise, they would risk being in big trouble.
Ivan Ivanov went from loathing the competition at the beginning to enjoying the gameplay now.
When Lincoln opened his live broadcast room, he saw this guy with his eyes wide open, lying motionless under the water, biting onto a reed for air, looking like a corpse.
—In the virtual world, most uncomfortable physical sensations are blocked out, and it is very easy to open your eyes underwater without any discomfort.
Ivan was very calm, not shooting even when a deer was drinking water only eight meters away from him.
He patiently waited until a gunshot rang out, and the drinking deer was accurately shot through the lung and collapsed by the shoreline.
The lake’s surface rippled slightly, and Ivan remained motionless underwater.
It wasn’t until his opponent hurriedly came to collect the loot and passed by him that Ivan silently extended the gun barrel to just three meters away—
“Bang!”
The opponent instantly fell to the ground, rolling three times, completely paralyzed in the mud.
His eyes darted around in confusion, not knowing where the attack came from.
It wasn’t until a muscular man seemed to grow out of the water that the opponent was dumbfounded.
The burly Ivan Ivanov stood up in the water, swaying like a brown bear, furiously shaking the water off his hair and clothes, and casually gave the paralyzed opponent another shot before stealing the loot with ease.
Watching Ivan move to a different location, Lincoln stared in astonishment.
For a moment, he couldn’t even figure out if he was watching a “hunting contest” or “First Blood.”
*
On the other hand, the situation in “Terraria” was also very amusing.
Because players suddenly realized that the Survival Challenge was about to end, but it seemed that…
No one could clear the game?!