Dark Sand: My Players Are All Actors

Returning to the assassin trial "Kingslayer" once again, Hai Ping inexplicably felt as though he had been transported to another world.

Although it had only been three or four days since he first entered this instance, Hai Ping felt he was no longer his former self.

I am now a warrior who has fought through a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood!

The Red-armored Guards by Emperor Yanling's side, although they looked like fearsome demons, no longer exerted the same psychological pressure on Hai Ping compared to the vicious Beidi barbarians.

When Hai Ping had first entered this instance, the somber atmosphere had been suffocating, making his legs feel weak, but now he felt nothing.

This indicated that he had gradually adapted to the intensity of this game.

When his innate skill appeared again, instead of choosing mastery in swordsmanship, Hai Ping casually chose "Gift of the Gab."

There was no particular reason, just that he felt a bit overconfident and wanted to test how much his basic combat strength had improved compared to when he started.

After selecting his innate skill, the Illusion Realm began to change, and the small eunuch had already begun walking towards the grand hall.

At this point, Hai Ping should have immediately bowed his head and followed, but he did not do so.

Instead, he directly opened the box and pulled out the treasure sword from on top of the Obsidian Kirin!

He also familiarized himself with its position on the Obsidian Kirin, to avoid fumbling for it later in a panic.

The Red-armored Guards on both sides were stunned and did not react immediately.

Not until Hai Ping lunged at one guard and swiftly cut his throat while he was unguarded did the small eunuch scream out, shouting, "Assassin, protect the emperor!"

The Red-armored Guards immediately surged forward, but Hai Ping did not surrender. With a fluid series of movements, he snatched a long sword from the throat-cut guard and engaged in combat with the other guards!

However, he lasted less than half a minute before being killed by a flurry of slashes.

"Okay, I am much weaker than I imagined."

After failing in his attempt to dominate alone, Hai Ping pondered and chose "Sword Mastery" before starting another round.

With the added benefit of the combat skill, his movements became sharper and quicker. He approached a Red-armored Guard and swiftly pulled out his treasure sword from the box.

The Red-armored Guards were taken aback, one tried to draw his sword, yet Hai Ping had already stepped forward and slashed his throat!

Another Red-armored Guard hurried to draw his sword to assist, but though he aimed a slash at Hai Ping's back, he hit nothing.

Hai Ping, as if he had anticipated the attack, dodged aside in advance and then spun into the guard's embrace, thrusting his sword through the gaps in the armor.

The guard was in excruciating pain and couldn't react before another sword slash sealed his fate.

"There is..."

Before the eunuch could finish his shout, Hai Ping had already dispatched him as well.

But soon, the Red-armored Guards surrounded him again.

Hai Ping put up a symbolic resistance, then was killed by a barrage of indiscriminate slashing.

After several iterative trials with different innate abilities, Hai Ping did not start a new trial but began to make preliminary assessments of his situation.

Especially a hypothesis he had formed earlier in the soldier instance, which was now fully confirmed.

"Okay, even after clearing the soldier instance, one cannot go berserk in the assassin instance.

"The effect of the combat skill is immediately evident, but… it's still not enough.

"Comparing the two instances, however, clarified the game's hidden mechanics.

"The strength of a player in an instance depends both on their own combat power and on the character they control. As the player fights repeatedly with this character, the corresponding combat memories are gradually activated.

"In the soldier instance, I controlled the body of a regular soldier. The physical attributes were weaker, but as I fought in the army formation, the soldier's combat experience could be quickly activated, and together with the soldier-related innate abilities, I was able to master the art of army combat very quickly.

"In the assassin instance, controlling the body of the top swordsman Nie Rang, who had stronger physical attributes but specialized in swordsmanship, meant that after choosing Sword Mastery and fighting a few more rounds, the muscle memory associated with swordsmanship in this body could also be quickly activated.

"Even with Sword Mastery, it's still nearly impossible to go on a rampage from start to finish. There are too many guards, and they all wear armor. Even if I snatch weapons from the guards, it's impossible to cut through them all.

"In the age of cold weapons, armor is indeed a bug.

"It seems that for the assassin trial, I have to follow the script strictly; brute force won't cut it."

After trying a few more times and activating more of Nie Rang's combat memories, thereby improving his swordsmanship significantly, time unknowingly passed by, and Hai Ping woke up covered in mist back in reality.

…

Meng Yuan and Hai Ping had witnessed the entire process of Hai Ping clearing the soldier trial.

"Is this what a pro gamer looks like? Fearsome indeed."

Meng Yuan couldn't help but remark, acknowledging that there really are such exceptional players!

He had gone in personally to experience it and clearly knew the difficulty level of these trial instances.

As for which was the hardest?

It was hard to define which was the hardest since they each focused on different aspects, and Meng Yuan hadn't cleared any of them himself, thus he didn't have much say.

However, generally speaking, the soldier trial was probably the one that tested true strength and willpower the most.

Meng Yuan had originally thought that the soldier instance would be the last to be cleared, as in other instances, there seemed to be ways to cut corners, but the soldier instance, with its three interconnected phases, was hard to cheat through.

But unexpectedly, there were such hardcore tough players among the players.

Like in many high-difficulty action games, players who like to power through and those who like to find shortcuts to defeat a boss together, the ones looking for shortcuts hadn't succeeded yet, but the power-through experts had already cleared it.

Strictly speaking, in the "Dark Sand" game, or in the mission of the Restorers, there actually wasn't anything like "cheating" per se.

As long as one could pass the trial, as long as one could let the historical fragments follow their original course of development, any method was fair game.

Up until now, other players had also been focusing on overcoming the other three trial instances, and their progress was quite fast, mostly just a step away from success.

But in the blink of an eye, three to four days passed, and Meng Yuan could already feel that most players' patience with "Dark Sand" was reaching its limit.

Having been tormented for three or four days in a row, the players truly needed a strong boost.

Thinking of this, Meng Yuan said to his colleague, "Edit the entire process of Zhao Haiping's success, make a perfect clearance video."

...

Zhao Haiping woke up in the real world, still feeling his heart surge with excitement from his performance in the soldier instance the night before.

He eagerly opened the forum to see the discussions of the day.

As expected, no one had cleared it yet.

Many players' patience was clearly nearing its breaking point, and the forum was filled with complaints.

Why did they make this game so hard? Isn't this just purely annoying?

A novice instance taking three to four days, every block lasting tens of hours, most players couldn't handle it.

"Could it be that I'm actually the first globally to clear this?

"Should I maybe write a guide for everyone to see?"

Zhao Haiping found himself rediscovering the joy he felt when he first began speedrunning!

Initially, he had become somewhat numb to speedrunning, after all, once the game content had been mostly explored, speedrunning was just about reducing errors, shortening times, it didn't necessarily generate much buzz.

But no one had cleared "Dark Sand" yet!

Such a guide post would definitely go viral!

But... it seemed the game didn't have any achievement pop-ups or similar settings, so just writing a guide out of the blue, would others believe it?

Just then, he noticed a message pop up on his virtual reality gaming platform's mobile app, surprisingly it was a video link from an unknown site.

Zhao Haiping clicked on it curiously.

After watching for a few minutes, he suddenly realized: Wasn't this my clearance video??

The whole video was somewhat like a movie, edited from various perspectives, with aerial views of Beidi tribes attacking and close-up shots of Zhao Haiping alone riding through heavy snow to get reinforcements, and the editing was very smooth.

Although the video wasn't long, just about half an hour, and many less important parts were cut out, the essence of Zhao Haiping's complete clearance of the instance was nearly all captured, and the effect was excellent!

Even Zhao Haiping had only one thought after watching it.

Was this really the gameplay I produced??

I'm too awesome!

After all, he had been in a first-person perspective throughout the fight, and with the battle so intense, he couldn't possibly have spared a thought for how cool he looked.

But looking at it from a cinematic perspective, he could hardly believe the impact he had made.

"This game's features are quite powerful, it has a built-in recording system?

"After clearing it, it can generate a playback record?

"And this is mostly automatically generated, right? Manual editing couldn't be this fast; I just cleared it last night, and the video is out this morning.

"But the quality of this automatic editing is way too high, right? It's completely on par with some movie effects!"

Zhao Haiping felt amazed again at this gaming company's strong technical capability.

Then he noticed that along with the video, there was another message.

[Congratulations! As an outstanding player who has cleared a trial instance, you will automatically receive a verified account and a "Pro Player" tag on the official website. Would you like to agree to publish your clearance video on the official website, to share and learn with other players?]

Below were the options [Agree] and [Reject].