Hu Die Lan
Chapter 55 Surpassing the Strategy
“She doesn’t need to. This isn’t much help to her. Her APM is probably around 200 right now, but she isn’t familiar with the game. Her lack of experience results in insufficient judgment, which limits her reaction speed. She still has room for improvement, but she has to slowly hone it in the game,” Ye Xiu said.
“What about you? What’s your APM?” Chen Guo said.
“Me? I’ve already passed the stage of chasing APM. I only need an APM of 60 to deal with you,” Ye Xiu said.
Chen Guo immediately recalled how clumsy Ye Xiu's movements had looked when she first watched him operate. Yet with that kind of APM, he had soloed the Dark Night Cat. Back then, Chen Guo had thought it was quite miraculous. Hearing Ye Xiu say that an APM of 60 was enough to crush her, Chen Guo wasn’t angry at all. She increasingly felt that Ye Xiu was no simple character. The ability to freely control one's APM was the biggest difference between a pro player and an ordinary player.
“How long will it take you to finish this?” Chen Guo asked about the guide that Ye Xiu was compiling.
“It’ll take a while. Ye Qiu’s guide isn’t completely comprehensive, and there are some others that are very good, so I’ll organize them for you as well. But actually, it’s not good to read the guide before you’ve even experienced it. It’s best to experience the game for yourself first, and then read the guide after you have a certain foundation,” Ye Xiu said.
“Why? Won’t following a guide allow me to avoid many detours?” Chen Guo said.
“Guides are just the experiences that predecessors have summarized. What’s written inside only represents the present. A guide, after a year or two, or even within a few months, will have someone discover a better solution than the one in the guide. This isn’t just because the game is updated, but more importantly, it’s because the players' skill levels are constantly improving. Records exist to be broken. The peak always exists in the future and never in the past. Guides are just for reference. You shouldn’t blindly follow them, or you won’t be able to make further breakthroughs.”
Chen Guo listened in a daze, somewhat unable to believe that these grand principles were coming from the mouth of this slovenly deadbeat. These principles clearly didn’t even place the Great God Ye Qiu, whom Chen Guo worshipped, in his eyes. If it were normal, Chen Guo would definitely have jumped up and argued with him, but at this moment, she felt like she couldn’t muster up the momentum.
“Then I’ll play the game first!” In the end, it was Tang Rou who picked up the conversation. Ye Xiu sat next to her and swiped her account card.
Ye Xiu nodded and turned back to look at Chen Guo.
“I… go whack some moles?” At this moment, Chen Guo couldn’t help but suspect that she was being played.
“Whacking moles just improves your reaction speed. The real operations still have to be practiced in the game,” Ye Xiu said.
“Oh.” Chen Guo nodded.
“Alright, go get busy!” Ye Xiu said.
“Yes,” Chen Guo replied, turning around and leaving. After a few steps, she reacted. What was with this guy’s attitude? Who was the boss here?
Thinking this, she turned back to look, only to find that Ye Xiu, sitting in front of the computer working on the guide, had such a serious expression that he didn’t look like his usual half-dead self. Chen Guo was stunned, and felt too embarrassed to bother him again. Looking at Tang Rou on the other side, she was also very focused on entering the game. Chen Guo looked at the whack-a-mole game in her hand and finally silently walked away.
Little Tang had talent, and Ye Xiu already had very strong skills. What about herself? Chen Guo sat at the front desk, thinking blankly. She also really liked this game and hoped to play it very, very well, but… Chen Guo knew that she would definitely not be able to reach the level that Ye Xiu had mentioned, of challenging predecessors and breaking through the past. At 27 years old, this was already an age for reminiscing about the past more than looking forward to the future for esports.
Tang Rou entered the game ambitiously, but before long, she was already severely frustrated. She had the APM of 200, but she couldn’t cope with this problem. This problem Ye Xiu had encountered, and Chen Guo had also encountered it last night when she played a small account: the problem of too many people in the new server.
It was hard enough to accept a quest, and even harder to kill a monster. There were so many people outside the newbie village. No matter how fast your reactions were, no matter how agile your APM was, you just couldn’t hit a monster. Tang Rou was exhausted and frustrated, but she persevered. After half an hour, she finally leveled up from level 1 to level 2.
Tang Rou breathed a sigh of relief and looked at Ye Xiu next to her. The guide compilation work was still continuing. Ye Xiu was still so serious. The level of concentration even made Tang Rou somewhat astonished.
As she was watching, she saw the focused Ye Xiu reach into his pocket with his left hand, take out a pack of cigarettes, and with a few shakes, a cigarette jumped into his mouth. Throughout the entire process, his gaze never left the screen, and his right hand never stopped moving the mouse.
Just as he was about to light it, he was suddenly poked. He turned his head and saw that it was Tang Rou.
“You’re not allowed to smoke here. Guo Guo will get angry,” Tang Rou reminded Ye Xiu.
“Oh…” Smoking was an unconscious action for Ye Xiu, something he didn’t even have to think about. He only realized that he had unconsciously put a cigarette in his mouth after he reacted. However, this location was in a relatively cornered area, quite far from the front desk. Apart from him and Tang Rou, the area around them was empty.
“She can’t see it, right? I’ll just smoke one. Don’t tell her.” Ye Xiu still secretly lit the cigarette, and at the end, he turned his head and politely asked, “Do you want one?”
“No, thank you.”
“Have you smoked before?”
“I’ve tried it. I don’t really like it,” Tang Rou said.
“Oh.” Ye Xiu nodded, leaned over, and glanced at Tang Rou’s screen. “What level are you?”
“Level 2,” Tang Rou said.
“Keep going.”
“Is the Lord Grim on this, you?” Tang Rou suddenly asked.
Ye Xiu looked at the tenth server dungeon record that Tang Rou had opened on her screen. The name Lord Grim was displayed high on four leaderboards.
“You’re already planning to break my record?” Ye Xiu laughed.
“First kills like this, there’s no way, right?” Tang Rou said.
“Yeah.” Ye Xiu nodded.
Then Tang Rou’s gaze fell on the Frost Forest dungeon record.
“This record can’t be broken by one person’s strength alone,” Ye Xiu said.
“I see. So you need four partners?” Tang Rou said.
“Further back, there are ones with ten people, twenty people, even more,” Ye Xiu said.
Tang Rou was silent, wondering what she was thinking about.
“The guide is done. Where should I put it?” Ye Xiu finished compiling the guide in the time it took him to smoke a cigarette.
“The desktop is fine, but you have to do it like this…” Tang Rou came over to demonstrate. The computers in the internet cafe all had automatic restoration, but their staff could bypass the restoration and operate through the administrator channel.
Just these simple manipulations were enough to show how nimble Tang Rou’s hands were.
“How did you train your APM?” Ye Xiu suddenly asked.
Tang Rou’s movements paused very slightly upon hearing these words, but Ye Xiu, who was skilled in micro-control, clearly saw it.
“I didn’t train it. It’s just like this,” Tang Rou said.
“Is that so?” Ye Xiu smiled, not saying much. He supported himself on the chair, stood up, and gave the seat to Tang Rou. “You can continue here. If you don’t understand anything about the guide or the game, just ask me.” Ye Xiu said.
“Thank you. What about you?” Tang Rou saw that Ye Xiu was preparing to leave.
“I’m going to the smoking area. It’s safer over there,” Ye Xiu said.