Chapter 248 – Primordial City’s Qualitative Transformation

The upgrade conditions have been fulfilled, just like that?

Shi Feng was momentarily stunned.

The conditions to upgrade a primordial city were vastly greater than that of ordinary Guild Cities. Not only did a primordial city have to meet a vastly greater population requirement, but it also needed to fulfill a much greater building requirement.

Originally, Shi Feng thought that Abyssal Star City would need a few more Advanced Constructions built before it could get promoted from an Advanced Town to a Basic City. He didn’t think that the primordial city would meet its building requirement after having only a medium teleportation array constructed.[1]

“Did something happen, Guild Leader?” Su Qianliu asked curiously when she saw Shi Feng suddenly falling into a daze.

“It’s nothing. We simply struck gold,” Shi Feng said, chuckling.

It was a qualitative transformation for a primordial city to become a Basic City. The changes that would take place would be even greater than an ordinary Intermediate Guild City becoming an Advanced Guild City.

“Struck gold?” Su Qianliu tilted her head, her confusion growing even deeper.

The teleportation array connecting Abyssal Star City with Hundred Flow City would indeed generate a significant amount of wealth for Zero Wing. The cost of teleporting players between Abyssal Star City and Hundred Flow City was 30 Silver per person. If the city charged each player one Gold, that would be a profit of 70 Silver.

However, the medium teleportation array could only teleport up to 50 people at a time, and each teleportation took around one minute. Taking into account that there were 48 hours a day in God’s Domain, Abyssal Star City could, at most, earn around 100,000 Gold of profit through the teleportation array each day. That might be a significant sum of money, but it was nothing compared to the money earned from Abyssal Star City’s entrance fees.

Currently, Abyssal Star City was making 1.2 million Gold per day through entrance fees alone. Even after deducting the maintenance cost of the city’s constructions and NPCs, the city would still be left with 600,000 Gold, which was still multiple times more than what the city could make through the teleportation array.

Hence, Su Qianliu couldn’t understand how Zero Wing had “struck gold.”

In fact, let alone striking gold, the teleportation array couldn’t even allow Abyssal Star City to match the income players could make from managing a small NPC City. Even a small NPC City had upwards of ten million in population. Moreover, aside from entrance fees, players that held management rights over an NPC City would also receive a portion of the profits generated by the city’s Auction House.

Overall, Abyssal Star City’s total net income couldn’t even match one-third of what players could earn from managing a small NPC City, let alone medium and large NPC Cities.

Moreover, considering that Zero Wing’s member count was now over 500,000, an additional income of 100,000 Gold was nowhere near enough for Zero Wing to consider it “striking gold.”

At the end of the day, the addition of the teleportation array only allowed Zero Wing to have stronger bargaining power against the foreign God’s Domains’ powers.

“How much are Advanced Lineage Crystals selling for in Auction Houses now, Blackie?” Shi Feng asked as he turned to Blackie.

“Advanced Lineage Crystals?” After pondering for a moment, Blackie answered, “They’re going for 200,000 Gold each on average. Many superpowers are buying the Advanced Lineage Crystals that the foreign powers have brought in, so prices aren’t going any lower for the time being.”

“That’s very cheap already,” Shi Feng said, a smile appearing on his face.

Previously, he had sold ordinary Lineage Crystals for several hundred thousand Contribution Points through the Asura Mercenary Alliance. Meanwhile, each Contribution Point was worth 40 Silver. Yet, now, Advanced Lineage Crystals, which were much better and rarer than ordinary Lineage Crystals, were being sold at only 200,000 Gold. This was definitely a very low price.

“Do you plan on buying some, Guild Leader?” Su Qianliu asked worriedly.

Advanced Lineage Crystals might be excellent items, but Zero Wing’s expansion had drastically increased its expenditure. The change in the Miniature Ancient World’s environment had only worsened things. Nowadays, it had become normal for players to die at least once when grinding out in the fields. If players were unlucky, their entire team might get wiped out. In that case, resurrection would become impossible, and they’d lose an entire level plus a piece of equipment.

Because of this, Zero Wing needed to spend large amounts of Gold Coins each day purchasing weapons and equipment from the Auction House to restock its Guild Warehouse. Although the Guild could also obtain weapons and equipment through Dungeons and grinding out in the fields, the amount obtained was nowhere near enough to meet demands.

So, Zero Wing was in no situation to be purchasing Advanced Lineage Crystals that cost 200,000 Gold each. Even purchasing only one Advanced Lineage Crystal a day would immediately put Zero Wing into the red. At that time, Zero Wing’s many members would have to stop grinding for levels and focus entirely on raiding Team Dungeons just to prevent the Guild from running out of weapons and equipment.

“Of course. Moreover, we’re going to buy in bulk,” Shi Feng said, chuckling. Then, he shared the system notification he had just received with Su Qianliu.

Due to the influx of Advanced Lineage Crystals in the Miniature Ancient World, it had become normal to see 100-man teams led by higher lifeform players in the Boundary Mountain Range. It wouldn’t even be strange to see an entire team made up of players with Tier 4 Mana.

However, it was a different story for an entire team made up of higher lifeform players with Tier 4 Mana. The cost of establishing such a team was too much for any individual power to afford. Even if a power had the money to do so, it wouldn’t be wise to invest so much money into a single team.

Having said that, in the event that such a team came into being, it’d be unstoppable in the current Miniature Ancient World!

Originally, Su Qianliu was still very opposed to Shi Feng’s decision to purchase Advanced Lineage Crystals in bulk. However, she was immediately stunned after seeing the system notification Shi Feng had shared with her. Then, she asked, “Guild Leader, is this real?”

If Abyssal Star City could get promoted into a Basic City, they’d indeed be striking gold. It should be known that a settlement’s size would increase several times when upgrading from the Advanced Town status to the Basic City status. Not to mention, Abyssal Star City was a special settlement that was vastly superior to the average settlement. Even at the Advanced Town status, Abyssal Star City was much larger than the average Advanced Town and was only slightly smaller than a Basic City. Hence, it was safe to assume that Abyssal Star City would be significantly bigger than the average Basic City once it got upgraded to the Basic City status.

If they factored in the teleportation array they just built, Abyssal Star City’s income could probably rival medium NPC Cities.

“You’ll find out in a moment,” Shi Feng said, not bothering to explain himself. Instead, he promptly chose to upgrade Abyssal Star City.

Immediately, all players within Abyssal Star City received a system announcement.

…

Regional System Announcement: Abyssal Star City will be upgraded into a Basic City. The upgrade will take six hours. All players within Abyssal Star City will be teleported out of the city in ten minutes. Please prepare to get teleported.

…

The system announcement appeared three times. Before the players within the city could react to the Teleportation Hall that had suddenly appeared in Abyssal Star City, they were abruptly struck with the mind-blowing news of Abyssal Star City becoming a Basic City.

“What’s going on? First, a Teleportation Hall suddenly appeared in Abyssal Star City. Now, Abyssal Star City is getting upgraded into a Basic City?”

“Abyssal Star City has become a Basic City on top of getting a Teleportation Hall. Is Abyssal Star City on its way to becoming the number one city in the Miniature Ancient World?”

Everyone in the city promptly started a discussion about the abrupt changes that had taken place. The Asura Mercenary Alliance’s members, in particular, grew ecstatic after learning about these two pieces of good news.

Normally, be it Abyssal Star City gaining a teleport function or Abyssal star City becoming a Basic City, neither development could spark an uproar if they had appeared on their own. However, it was an entirely different story when both developments appeared together.

After all, this essentially meant that Abyssal Star City had just become the closest NPC City to the Boundary Mountain Range. Not only could players purchase the daily necessities sold in NPC Cities from Abyssal Star City, but they could also access the Auction House from Abyssal Star City.

In fact, Abyssal Star City’s Auction House would be even better than the Auction Houses of NPC Cities. This was because a Guild City’s Auction House had the option of setting the handling fee it charged to be much lower than the handling fee charged in the various NPC Cities’ Auction Houses. Combined with the convenience of teleportation, it wasn’t hard to imagine that Abyssal Star City would become the Miniature Ancient World’s trade center in the future.

Meanwhile, as members of the Asura Mercenary Alliance, they had priority to enter Abyssal Star City. So, they would no longer have to worry about not being able to purchase their daily necessities. They also wouldn’t have to worry about not being able to sell their harvests for a good price.

Subsequently, after everyone was forcibly teleported out of Abyssal Star City, news of Abyssal Star City’s promotion and acquisition of a Teleportation Hall quickly spread across the entire Miniature Ancient World.

…

TL Notes:

[1]

Uh… So, apparently, Abyssal Star City was an Advanced Town all this time… I have an excuse as to why I made such a mistranslation.

-> primordial city (古城 – gǔ chéng)

-> city (城市 – chéng shì)

-> town (小鎮 – xiǎo zhèn)

Up until this chapter, the author hasn’t ever clearly stated whether his 古城 was referring to a primordial city or a primordial town. When people use the term “古城,” they are usually talking about an ancient city (or a primordial city in this case). It is also the case for 城. When someone mentions X城, it’s assumed that they are talking about X City, not X town. In the case of towns, people will usually use Z鎮 or Z小鎮 when referring to Z Town.

To prove my point, here are two examples of how the author names his towns and cities:

) Silverwing Town – 銀翼小鎮 (Chapter 1728 of main story)

) Hundred Flow City – 百流城