The Divine Realm had been open for quite some time.
During this period, even ordinary players had developed a much keener sensitivity to danger — to say nothing of the experts among them.
More often than not, when Divine Realm experts assessed another person's strength, they didn't just evaluate their weapons and equipment. Instead, they gauged it primarily by the degree of danger the other person radiated.
Outsiders see the spectacle; insiders see the craft.
An expert's full combat power wasn't reflected solely in weapons and equipment. It also encompassed combat technique and a whole arsenal of formidable skills — none of which could be gleaned from equipment alone. So one had to rely on intuition.
Bai Qingxue placed great trust in her own intuition, because up to now, it had never been wrong.
Just like when she had first encountered Shi Feng. Although his equipment was terrible, his level low, and he even seemed entirely unremarkable, her intuition had told her that Shi Feng was no ordinary person. Bai Qingxue herself had even doubted her gut feeling, but the truth had proven that Shi Feng was indeed extraordinary — he had simply hidden himself too deep for even intuition to easily detect.
Now, Bai Qingxue's intuition was sending her an unmistakable signal.
This group of people was terrifying — far more than they appeared on the surface. It was as though each of them harbored a fierce beast within, one that had simply not yet revealed its true nature.
"Zero Wing Guild really is becoming harder and harder to read," Bai Qingxue thought with a bitter inward smile as she looked at the Zero Wing members.
What had once been a weak guild had, at some point she couldn't pin down, grown into a towering tree — one that even their Snake of the Body had to take very seriously.
Fortunately, they had formed an alliance early on. Otherwise, Zero Wing would have been a truly terrifying enemy.
"Let's go inside to talk," Bai Qingxue said, pointing to a large tent not far away.
Shi Feng nodded and led Shui Se Qiang Wei and Huo Wu inside.
In the early stages of the Divine Realm, grinding monsters in the wild meant locations were close by. But as levels increased, travel time grew longer. Heading out into the wild to level up for days without returning to town was perfectly normal. When players wanted to rest, they relied on field tents like these.
HP and mana could be quickly restored through eating and drinking, but mental energy and stamina couldn't be recovered that way. Normally, one had to return to town to rest and recuperate. With a field tent, however, there was no need to go back — although the recovery speed couldn't compare to resting in town, it was still a rare and valuable option.
The problem was that ordinary players couldn't afford them. A basic six-person field tent cost 10 gold at the NPC shop, to say nothing of the twenty-person team tent and the higher-tier fifty-person and hundred-person tents.
A hundred-person tent couldn't be bought with money alone — one needed to reach a certain reputation threshold.
And the large tent before them was a hundred-person tent, priced at 200 gold. With high enough reputation, one could get a discount, but it would still run over 150 gold.
Stepping inside, the interior was spacious — as if entering a conference hall within a guild base.
Over a dozen people sat inside the tent, each one a high-ranking member of Snake of the Body. They were all uniformly level 30, clad in the finest equipment currently available. Among them, Zhao Yueru stood out in a magnificent robe of interwoven white and red, stunningly beautiful. In her hand she held a crimson jade staff carved with numerous divine runes that emitted a faint red glow — clearly not an ordinary item. Faint flames flickered around Zhao Yueru's body, making her look like a goddess of fire.
"A Flame Spirit Master?" Shi Feng glanced at the drastically changed Zhao Yueru, surprised inwardly.
The Flame Spirit Master was a hidden class. Its heritage level was on par with the Astrologer — an advanced heritage class. As its name suggested, it was a class devoted entirely to controlling flames. Unlike the Elementalist, which balanced offense and defense, the Flame Spirit Master focused purely on attack — annihilating everything in its path. In terms of raw damage output, it absolutely surpassed the Astrologer. It was a class of pure, devastating power.
In his previous life, it was only after Zhao Yueru had transitioned into a Flame Spirit Master that she had risen to prominence, earning her the title Scarlet Flame Witch.
Shi Feng simply hadn't expected her to have become a Flame Spirit Master this quickly.
A Flame Spirit Master could take down even a tank in top-tier equipment in just two or three hits. As for ordinary tanks, they could be dispatched in a single blow — the damage was terrifying. But precisely because of this overwhelming offensive power, the Flame Spirit Master possessed virtually no survivability or self-preservation abilities. In Dungeons and team battles, however, they were extraordinarily fearsome — essentially a Tomahawk cruise missile.
After glancing over everyone, Shi Feng had a rough picture of Snake of the Body's current peak combat strength.
Although Snake of the Body had lost many of its top fighters, what remained was still far stronger than those second-rate guilds.
"Here's the intelligence we've gathered on Stone Forest Town." Bai Qingxue produced a document and handed it to Shi Feng. "Currently, Stone Forest Town is a place every guild wants to seize. But given its defenses, even if we pooled the full strength of both our guilds, capturing it would be a tall order — to say nothing of the other guilds watching from the sidelines."
"My suggestion is to start from the Stone Claw Mountains. We rapidly amass Mana Crystals and build up our strength. With the experts from both our guilds, we should be able to quickly secure the high-resource zones in the Stone Claw Mountains, widening the gap between us and the other guilds."
Right now, no one could do anything about Stone Forest Town. The best approach was to accumulate strength — and that was precisely why Bai Qingxue had sought to ally with Zero Wing.
"That won't be necessary. We can seize Stone Forest Town quickly. Once we control it, gaining dominance over the Stone Claw Mountains will become much easier." Shi Feng shook his head, disagreeing with Bai Qingxue's plan.
In his previous life, it was exactly because of a similar stalemate that the major guilds had been locked in deadlock, drawing more and more factions into the Stone Claw Mountains until there was no chance of anyone claiming control.
Now, every major guild found itself helpless against Stone Forest Town. They would inevitably shift their focus to the Stone Claw Mountains. This was the perfect opportunity to seize Stone Forest Town.
If they waited any longer, more guilds would arrive and more experts would show up — and the window of opportunity would close for good.
Hearing Shi Feng's so decisive statement, Bai Qingxue was momentarily stunned. This was practically suicide. She immediately explained, "You've seen the intelligence on the three great leaders. They're all high-intelligence NPCs, equivalent to expert players who've cleared the fourth floor of the Trial Tower. On top of that, they command large-scale destructive magic. If we attack Stone Forest Town, the other guilds won't just stand by — they'll certainly kick us while we're down and try to wipe us out."
"What if we didn't give them the chance?" The corner of Shi Feng's mouth curved into a confident arc.
Regarding Stone Forest Town, Shi Feng had been turning things over in his mind the entire way here.
Dealing with the three NPC leaders would be incredibly difficult, let alone outmaneuvering the other guilds. But there was a simpler method to capture Stone Forest Town.