Before,
Seeing that Jiang Chen fell silent after hearing this,
Jiang Chen wasn't actually worried; he was calculating the safest way to earn these points.
"Tang Hong, generally speaking, among the advance scoring missions, which method earns points the fastest?"
"If you're powerful and have shocking combat strength, then you challenge other warriors. Every win earns you twenty points. A loss deducts twenty points. Those top-ranked fighters in combat challenge others every day. That's why they farm points so quickly."
Tang Hong had clearly suffered at their hands before. He cursed indignantly, "Damn it. Those animals just rely on having more resources, more treasures, and being slightly ahead in cultivation. They use that to crush others and farm points like crazy. Shameless!"
Since they had such an advantage, it was natural they would use it. Jiang Chen wasn't particularly surprised by this.
Instead, he asked, "Then what about applying for regular missions? How difficult are they?"
Tang Hong thought for a moment and said, "A rank one mission is about as hard as the highest difficulty of our basic assessment. But it's not guaranteed; it depends on your luck."
"Rank two difficulty doubles. Go any higher, and it increases exponentially."
"That difficult?" Jiang Chen was surprised. A continuously doubling difficulty was no small matter.
Tang Hong nodded. "It is hard. If it weren't, those perverted monsters would probably have farmed three or four thousand points already, or even more."
"Does applying for regular missions have different categories? Like the basic assessment?" Jiang Chen asked.
"Of course. The assessment is designed to uncover genius. As long as you're exceptionally strong in a certain field, you can keep challenging missions in that field. Naturally, to prevent malicious point farming, there are some restrictions." Tang Hong had participated in two assessment rounds and was intimately familiar with every detail of the rules.
"What restrictions?" Jiang Chen felt a stir of excitement at the news that there were categories.
"For example, if you're strong in the alchemy field, you can apply for alchemy missions. However, the mission rank can only increase by one level per day. If you apply for a rank one today, tomorrow you can only apply for rank two, the day after rank three. After reaching the peak of rank five, you must return to rank one; you cannot continuously apply for rank five missions. Moreover, if you keep applying for missions in the same field and fail once, you face a ten-day penalty where you cannot apply for any missions."
"Ten days? Isn't it that if you don't complete a mission, you can't apply for five days?"
"Five days is under normal circumstances. If you've been continuously applying for missions in the same field, the penalty becomes ten days. And it applies to all fields. During that period, if you want to earn points, the only way is to challenge other warriors."
"I see." Jiang Chen smiled wryly, now understanding the fine print.
Tang Hong chuckled. "However, if you fail a challenge against another warrior, you also lose the qualification to challenge for five days."
Jiang Chen actually knew this rule.
To prevent malicious point farming, this rule seemed reasonable.
Without such restrictions, those point-farming maniacs would probably leave everyone else far behind in the dust.
Jiang Chen did a quick mental calculation. If these guys completed one rank two mission every day, plus their base score, their total would be at least nearly four thousand points.
These ten-day and five-day bans actually made the competition fairer for all participants to a certain degree.
"Boss, don't tell me you're planning to farm points like crazy in the pill refinement field?" Tang Hong suddenly thought of something.
"What do you think?" Jiang Chen smiled leisurely.
Tang Hong broke into a wide grin. "Great, I'm all in!"
Jiang Chen indeed had this thought. He'd just arrived here and was already far behind everyone else. If he followed the normal progression, heaven only knew when he'd catch up.
So he had to farm points at the most frantic pace possible. Even if he couldn't catch up, gradually closing the gap would be good enough.
For these first three months, he had to at least ensure he wasn't eliminated. If his final score landed him in the bottom ten, he'd be sent back to the Earth Spirit Zone — and that was something Jiang Chen absolutely refused to let happen.
"But Boss, you need to be careful. I had the same ambition in the pill refinement field. I tried it too — completed tier one and jumped to tier two, then tier two to tier three. And that's where I crashed and burned on the tier three mission. Depressing. Luckily, the penalty was only a five-day ban on accepting missions."
Tang Hong recalled his miserable experience and couldn't help but warn Jiang Chen.
"Isn't the penalty ten days?"
Tang Hong chuckled sheepishly. "The ten-day penalty only kicks in if you fail five missions in a row in the same field. I only hit three, so I didn't meet the threshold for the ten-day ban. Otherwise it would've been even worse."
The two chatted for a while longer. It had to be said, Tang Hong and Jiang Chen really hit it off. The more they talked, the more it felt like they'd known each other for years.
Tang Hong had a rebellious personality and had never been one to bow to anyone. Back in his sect, he was a lone wolf through and through. It wasn't that he couldn't get along with people — he simply couldn't stand the way things were run inside the Treasure Tree Sect. Two great families propping up the sect while spending all day scheming against each other — that wasn't the sect life Tang Hong wanted at all.
"Boss, tomorrow let's head to the general field together."
At parting, Tang Hong waved his enormous palm-sized hand and headed back to his quarters.