The World Online

Based on the setting by Gaia, a Grade 1 Prefecture could have five sect dojos, a Grade 2 Prefecture 10 sect dojos, and a Grade 3 Prefecture 15.

At for Capital City grade, one could have 25 sect dojos.

What needed to be mentioned was that a sect dojo was different from a sect. Although a sect dojo could appear in imperial cities or player territories, the various sects or factions needed to appear in the wilderness first based on the dynasty.

A sect dojo was only the warmup version of a sect and only taught basic stuff.

Shanhai City was now a Grade 3 Prefecture so Ouyang Shuo could choose 15 sect dojos. He would choose the five clans for sure. As for the remaining 10 slots, he would need to ponder about it.

Long Spear Sect, Baji Sect, and Five Tiger Sect had relationships with Shanhai City, so he naturally needed to choose them. Next would be Xingyi Sect, Five Phoenix Blade Sect, Medicine King Sect, Zihui Sword Sect, and Sichuan Tang Sect; these five huge sects.

As for the remaining two slots, Ouyang Shuo chose Xiaoyao Sect and Haiwai Sect.

Ouyang Shuo did not choose randomly. All these sects were ones that could possibly cooperate with Shanhai City. If he had chosen incompatible ones, it would be a waste.

Other territories were probably choosing sects in the same manner.

...

Apart from the four huge update points, there were five more relatively smaller updates.

5: Raise of troop movement speed.

Due to the player territories expanding, too much time was spent on moving troops. Gaia had decided to increase the basic movement speed of troops by five times.

This meant that be it infantry, cavalry, navy, or even grain transport troops, all their movement speeds were raised by five times. A month long trip would only require a few days now.

Not only that, if one had territory buffs and general buffs, it would work off this base that had been increased by five times.

Hence, this could result in a six to seven times increase in traveling speed. Hence, the ten times increase in game map area had been solved.

At a future suitable time, Gaia would probably increase this once more, totally nerfing the teleportation tactic of players.

As for how this new update would affect the Battle of Yunnan, Ouyang Shuo was not too sure about it.

At the very least, it could quicken the pace at which Baiqi’s left troops took down Mengding Prefecture, and it would not be anything good for Yunnan City-State. After all, Yunnan City-State relied heavily on the teleportation tactic.

6: Removal of territory land area stat.

The stat in the territory stat bar did not match the true size of a territory. This situation was not limited to Shanhai City and most territories were like that.

Hence, Gaia decided to remove this stat.

7: Slow down the construction speed of buildings.

The construction speed in game had special speed buffs, making it faster than in real life. A house in real life that needed half a year to build could be completed in just a few days in the game.

This update slowed down this building speed; this would increase the construction time of each building by at least three times and even five times for some.

What it slowed down was not only construction of buildings but also the construction speed of ships, cannons, and the like. Previously, the turreted ships built by Shanhai City shipyards needed at most half a month to reach completion.

Now it probably needed more than that, even close to two months.

This would definitely be a huge blow to the shipbuilding industry and cause a huge impact, largely reducing production.

This move was also to make the game closer to reality. Moreover, it increased the costs of production of territories. It would be a huge challenge, especially to the basic infrastructure of the territory.

Lords needed to continuously climb up the technology tree and raise the construction efficiency.

This act by Gaia was truly thought out well.

8: Modifying the alliance settings.

Territories that have already joined alliances or formed City-States could not form alliances with anyone outside. For example, the cooperation between Yanhuang Alliance and Yunnan City-State would not be allowed.

Similarly, Shanhai City would not be able to ally with members outside of Shanhai Alliance unless the member in question joined the Shanhai Alliance. Otherwise, they would be breaking the rules.

For example, the Mediterranean Alliance that Shanhai City had built as well as the Shanhai City-Phoenix Alliance all broke the rules.

As for the alliances that were already formed, Gaia did not take any action as these were formed prior to the time it pushed out the new rules.

9: Unlocking more building and crafting technology.

In the wilderness, each technical manual was extremely precious and were treasures to their Lords. Due to the rarity of technical manuals, the differences in technology standards between territories were too huge.

With Shanhai City as an example, their equipment was a massive level above the other territories, and they had sole possession of many things like shipbuilding and cannons.

In Gaia’s eyes, such a situation had to be stopped.

Hence, in the following period of time, Gaia would throw a lot of technical manuals into the wilderness. As long as the Lords tried, they could obtain any normal technical manual.

The meaning behind this was to break the technology barrier and raise the overall technology level of the wilderness. The time of Shanhai City using their technology advantage to reap huge profits had passed.

Gaia’s act could not be said to be unfair.

After all, compared to the low price that Shanhai City had obtained the manuals for, the profits they got were already rather sizeable, and they should not be so greedy to hog it any longer.

Gaia wanted to stimulate creativity to make the territories make innovations regarding the old technology to improve and form new technological advantages.

This entire process was pushing forward the technology of an entire territory.

In the future planet hope, Lords would face many unknown challenges and sticking to the past and following the rules was a method that held no future. Along with the environment in the new planet, performing a second research and development was the right way to go.

The reason why Ouyang Shuo established the Equipment Development Hub and the Industrialization Department was because of this. With weapons and equipment as an example, when the Tang Blade technology was released to the wilderness, Shanhai City would have already created an upgraded version.

Hence, he could still keep his technological advantage; this was not something that could not be taken back and levelled out.

This was his advantage from the last life. Without his ability to see ahead, how could Shanhai City keep their lead?

Of course, to the other Lords, this update was undoubtedly a good one. If one did well, they could close their gap from giants like Shanhai City in a short time.

Shanhai City could also make use of this chance to make up for their shortfalls like glass making technology and rubber making technology.

This was a miracle for the industrialization of the territory.

...

Looking at the system update, Ouyang Shuo was filled with thoughts. The ones who had profited the most were still the adventure gamemode players. As for Lord gamemode players, it was still uncertain.

Different from other games, Gaia’s update was not to hot fix bugs but to push out new content.

Similarly, there was a bigger principle at play, which was to develop and train stronger Lords. If one did not understand this higher principle, one would not understand the updates.

As the main tool of the federation, Gaia had been perfecting Earth Online. The basis of perfection would be the quests and activities going on in the game.

Hence, apart from the yearly update, many small details had been refreshed and updated unknowingly. Such adjustments included changes to the forums, the weather, and even the ecosystem.

Just as Ouyang Shuo closed the forums, a System Notification sounded out in his ear

”System Notification: Imperial City Chengdu/Dali has set Shanhai City as their enemy.”

”....”

It seems like the Dali Imperial Court did not approve of Shanhai City attacking Yunnan City-State. Thinking about how Shanhai City needed to obtain the recognition of Dali when it upgrades to Capital City, he realized he had a huge problem at hand.

”System Notification: Imperial City Jingdu/Jianye/Xiangyang/Chang An has set their relationship with Shanhai City to neutral.”

These four imperial cities were ones without emperors in charge, so such a matter was expected.

”System Notification: Imperial City Quanzhou/Xianyang/Luoyang have set relationship with Shanhai City to friendly.”

Quanzhou had many trading deals with Shanhai City and along with Mazu linking the two, it was normal that they were friendly. However, Ouyang Shuo did not expect that Qin Shihuang and Hanwu Emperor would both be friendly toward Shanhai City. It seems like this matter had something to do with Baiqi, Xiao He, Huo Qubing, and the others.

Just as Ouyang Shuo was ready to proceed toward the Silver Prayer House, another System Notification sounded out.

”System Notification: As this is the 3rd year since Earth Online has started, we will be releasing the 3rd information piece: Wulin Arrives. Please log onto the forums for specific details.”

...

The moment the notification sounded, many adventure gamemode players, especially the chivalrous experts, knew that the underworld had arrived.

Some players even linked the new system update to the information piece. Wasn’t the opening of the sect dojos related to this information piece?

Gaia also had a reason for releasing this information piece now.

The Battle Map had already passed the Three Kingdoms Era so the Wei and Jin Dynasties were up next, followed by the Sui Tang and Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. At this time, the roots of the various Wulin sects were being slowly spread around.

As the Battle Maps were pushed out, many sects would appear in the wilderness and enter the spotlight.