Liu Chuanye had become obsessed with buying blind boxes from Kaixuan. As an archer, he craved the cool-looking elven divine bows, which were larger than the character models themselves. He vowed to obtain one.
The problem was that in the Jiangnan Mall's consignment hall, an elven divine bow now cost 8,000.
So, the only way forward was to try his luck opening them. If he could get a deluxe version, he could then trade with other players who had obtained an elven divine bow.
Thus, Liu Chuanye poured in two months' worth of living expenses. While he got quite a few rare items, he just couldn't get a deluxe one. He had to put them on the Jiangnan Mall to recoup his losses.
Fortunately, Liu Chuanye's father had remitted the living expenses for the new month the previous day, and Liu Chuanye intended to press on.
However, at this moment, Liu Chuanye couldn't help but mutter with some regret, "If only the Gouhuasuan Mall sold Jiangnan blind boxes, it would be two yuan cheaper per box!"
As a seasoned internet user, Liu Chuanye naturally knew about the Gouhuasuan platform. Even though his father worked for a company under the Jiangnan Group and earned his living from them, Liu Chuanye was quite practical about spending money – he bought from whoever was cheaper.
So, even though Liu Chuanye had always been a loyal user of the Jiangnan Mall, when the Gouhuasuan platform launched numerous promotional activities, Liu Chuanye decisively switched his spending to Gouhuasuan, buying many things at a lower price and saving a lot of money.
The only regret was that it seemed impossible to buy Jiangnan blind boxes on the Gouhuasuan platform. After all, this was clearly aiding the enemy, and only a fool would do such a thing.
However, perhaps driven by hope, Liu Chuanye tentatively typed "blind box" into the search bar of the Gouhuasuan Mall and then sighed as he looked at the search results. He had actually done the same thing yesterday, and of course, he had found nothing.
But today, Liu Chuanye's pupils suddenly lit up. He actually saw Jiangnan blind boxes in the results, and Kaixuan blind boxes too. The familiar blind box cover image was displayed on the webpage, startling Liu Chuanye.
"This can't be a misleading advertisement, can it!" Liu Chuanye muttered, still not holding out much hope, as his online shopping experience over the past few months had shown him that many sellers used misleading advertisements.
Misleading advertisements, also known as "photo deception," were when pictures were taken very beautifully, but the actual product was terrible.
Or it could be that the cover image showed one thing, but when you clicked into the shop and looked at the product description, it was something else entirely, with only some loose connection between the two items. Sometimes, there wasn't even any connection; they would just use a picture of a beautiful girl to attract clicks.
Therefore, Liu Chuanye had reason to suspect that this blind box might be a misleading advertisement.
But the nature of misleading advertisements was that even knowing it was a scam, you still couldn't resist clicking on it. So Liu Chuanye clicked, and then he was shocked.
Because both the actual product images and the product descriptions below were exactly Jiangnan blind boxes, and all the descriptive text was identical to the product descriptions on the official Jiangnan Mall store. All the pictures were the same, not a single word different, essentially a direct copy-paste.
Even if you clicked on the purchase details, you could see the text stating that these were genuine, unopened Jiangnan blind boxes, confirming that they were indeed authentic Jiangnan blind boxes.
"Could this be a scalper's shop? Getting boxes from the official source and then selling them on the Gouhuasuan platform to make a bit of subsidy money?" Liu Chuanye mumbled, then looked at the shop's information and was completely dumbfounded.
Because the name of the shop was "Jiangnan Mall Official Flagship Store," and even the shop's avatar was identical to the Jiangnan Mall platform's, a complete replication.
"Jiangnan Mall actually opened a store on Gouhuasuan? This is too fake!" Liu Chuanye felt it was fake, but the price of 8 yuan per box after using a coupon was very tempting. Although Liu Chuanye had already used his two-yuan coupons and even the 100-minus-20 coupons, he still had a 200-minus-40 coupon.
For a professional blind box player, buying 20 boxes at once was not a big deal, just a small play. So if he bought 20 boxes at once, he would save 40 yuan, which meant he could buy another 4 boxes. This was too enticing.
Therefore, even though he knew there was a high probability that this shop was a scam, Liu Chuanye couldn't help but take the plunge.
Of course, before buying, he kept a safeguard in mind: he noted his redemption code and went directly to a nearby Jiangnan Mall offline store to redeem the blind boxes.
This was a feature only available in the official flagship stores of the Jiangnan Mall. Because Jiangnan Mall stores were spread all over the country, if players couldn't wait for the courier to deliver, they could directly generate a redemption code and take it to a nearby Jiangnan Mall store to redeem the blind boxes they purchased.
However, this feature had never been widely used because it was too impractical. Most users who bought blind boxes online were either not near a Jiangnan store or lived far away, making it inconvenient to travel. They would rather wait for Jiangnan logistics to deliver.
If they were willing to go to a nearby Jiangnan blind box store to buy blind boxes, there would be no need to pay online. Why not just consume offline and save the trouble of topping up?
Liu Chuanye had only used this function once before, when the Jiangnan Mall had a promotion: buy 10 boxes, get 1 free. This was an online-only promotion, so Liu Chuanye bought them online, exchanged them for redemption codes, and went directly to a physical store to pick them up. He couldn't wait a moment longer.
So this time, Liu Chuanye also wanted to test it. If this Gouhuasuan Mall official flagship store could also generate redemption codes and redeem them successfully at a nearby official store, then this store would undoubtedly be a real official store.
Therefore, Liu Chuanye, suppressing his heartache, bought one box of blind boxes at the original price of 10 yuan without a two-yuan redemption coupon. After the payment was completed, he directly clicked to generate the redemption code and rushed to the nearby Jiangnan blind box store with the redemption code.
There was a food street next to Liu Chuanye's university, and on that street, there was a small store that had joined the Jiangnan Mall and sold Jiangnan blind boxes. It only took Liu Chuanye 5 minutes to get there from his dormitory.
So, soon!
Very soon, Liu Chuanye found the store owner with the redemption code.
"Can this redemption code be used?" Liu Chuanye asked nervously. If it couldn't be used, then he had been scammed, and he would immediately leave a nasty review.
"You didn't steal this code, did you? Log in to your Jiangnan ID with my computer!" Liu Chuanye was surprised that his question had made the owner suspect his redemption code. Helplessly, he could only log in to his Jiangnan ID to confirm that he was the account owner before he finally received a box of Jiangnan blind boxes from the owner!
Seeing the genuine Jiangnan blind boxes in his hand, Liu Chuanye was extremely excited. He immediately rushed into a nearby internet cafe, quickly logged into the Gouhuasuan platform, and bought 20 boxes at once. Then he chose to use the 200-minus-40 full discount coupon, only spending 160 yuan to get the redemption codes.
Then, without logging out, he ran back to the adjacent Jiangnan store and handed the new redemption code to the somewhat surprised store owner again, and exchanged it for 20 boxes of blind boxes.
Yes, he could indeed exchange them, and he had indeed only spent 160 yuan to buy 20 boxes of Jiangnan blind boxes from the Kaixuan game series, making Liu Chuanye tremble with excitement.
Unfortunately, of the 20 boxes opened on the spot, not a single one yielded a deluxe version. Instead, he got two rare versions, which was definitely bursting with luck. However, for Liu Chuanye, he already had both of these rare versions, so he had to put them on the Jiangnan Mall platform for trading.
However, the price of one rare version was around 200 yuan, so two would be 400 yuan. Liu Chuanye could still make 240 yuan.
The rest is unnecessary to say. Liu Chuanye poured almost all of his 2,000 yuan living expenses into it, but still didn't get a deluxe version.
However, fortunately, he managed to save 400 yuan from the 2,000 yuan, so Liu Chuanye poured all of this 400 yuan in as well.
Moreover, because he ran out of coupons, he borrowed his classmate's account and used his full discount coupons to pay, thus spending this 400 yuan.
But fortunately, Lady Luck finally smiled upon Liu Chuanye. At the last moment, he managed to open a deluxe version, which happened to be the elven divine bow he needed, making Liu Chuanye almost collapse to his knees in excitement.
However, as a price, Liu Chuanye would have to eat instant noodles again this month. Although Liu Chuanye still had 1,000 yuan, his daily living expenses were high, and he also had to pay for internet access, game fees, and many other expenses. 1,000 yuan was really not enough.
It was foreseeable that in the future, when Tengda launched armor blind boxes, jewelry blind boxes, Liu Chuanye would have to repeat eating instant noodles for the rest of the year.
But it didn't matter. The most important thing was that Liu Chuanye could show off with this elven divine bow. And in Liu Chuanye's class, many male classmates played Kaixuan. After all, the addictive nature of online games was indeed greater than that of standalone games. Many World of Warcraft players were attracted to Kaixuan, including many of Liu Chuanye's classmates. Then they watched Liu Chuanye strutting around in the game with the elven divine bow, one shot killing a monster, their eyes green with envy.
Of course, they soon learned that Liu Chuanye had bought blind boxes on the Gouhuasuan platform. After thinking about it, they realized that if Liu Chuanye could do it, they could too. Thus, a large wave of players looking to exploit loopholes surged into the Gouhuasuan platform.