The Formation System and the Military Manual System could only be considered auxiliary systems in the game. The most crucial aspect of this strategy combat game was “Character Cultivation.”

Which characters to choose, what skills to design for each, and how the main plot would link their stories together? This was the next major focus.

During the Spring Festival holiday, Xie Yunfan had been constantly pondering this problem.

Suppose the player transmigrates to a parallel universe in another world, where many famous historical figures could transcend time and space to appear together.

How could players learn about these historical figures’ stories without it feeling abrupt?

After much deliberation, Xie Yunfan decided to use the “Dream Reading” cheat.

If players possessed the ability to read characters’ dreams upon arriving in this different world, they could enter many people’s dreams and understand their past stories and experiences.

For instance, a player could enter the dream of King Goujian of Yue, return to the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period, and witness with their own eyes the destruction of the Yue State, Goujian becoming a slave to the King of Wu, enduring three years of “sleeping on brushwood and tasting gall,” never forgetting his hatred, and ultimately succeeding in his revenge and reclaiming his country.

Players could enter Liu Bang’s dream and spectate the thrilling Feast at Hong Gate; or enter the dreams of characters from the Three Kingdoms period to understand that magnificent era where heroes emerged in droves.

After experiencing these exciting histories and becoming familiar with historical figures from different eras, players would eventually recruit and cultivate the characters they liked in this alternate parallel space.

If a character only had stats, they were just a soulless paper cutout.

But with rich background stories to support them, these characters could truly “come alive” in the holographic game, and players would have more motivation to cultivate their favorite characters.

Some players wouldn’t even care about a character’s combat power; instead, they would be drawn in by a character’s story, grow to love them, and willingly spend resources to raise them to max level. Even if their performance in the PVP arena wasn’t outstanding, they would still be the player’s beloved character.

Of course, while some players cultivated cards based on preference, others did so based on combat power. These players often skipped the story, deciding who to cultivate purely based on a card’s meta strength to fight in the arena.

The two types of players did not conflict; both of their preferences could be satisfied.

It was impossible for this game to explain the entirety of China’s 5,000-year history clearly, and Xie Yunfan couldn’t remember that many historical events either. He could only cherry-pick classic storylines and famous figures.

For the main plot, he planned to divide the chapters according to historical eras.

The first chapter would focus on stories from the “Spring and Autumn and Warring States” periods, and the characters featured would all be from that era. For example, Bian Que, the famous physician of the Spring and Autumn period and the founder of traditional Chinese medicine’s “pulse diagnosis,” excelled at observation and pulse-taking; this character could be designed as a healer.

Bai Qi, the head of the four great generals, marched into battle and predicted events with divine accuracy. During his tenure as the Qin State’s commander, he conquered over seventy cities and killed over a million enemies, making him the most outstanding military commander of the Warring States period—this character could naturally be designed as a powerful DPS.

Fan Li, who “distributed his immense wealth three times,” was a businessman in the Spring and Autumn period, also known by later generations as the “Business Saint.” He had accumulated massive fortunes multiple times and was a classic ancient example of “striking it rich.” Many later merchants would even worship his portrait, hoping for success in their own entrepreneurial ventures.

Guan Zhong, who argued in his work The Four Pillars that propriety, righteousness, integrity, and shame were the spiritual pillars sustaining a nation, was also the first strategist in history to propose the theory of these four virtues.

There were also military talents like Sun Bin and Lian Po, as well as famous women like Xi Shi and Xia Ji, all of whom could be made into game characters.

The Spring and Autumn Chapter, serving as the first part of the game’s main plot, could set the tone for the entire game. These characters’ stories would be linked together through dreams, with each dream segment acting as a story node, interspersing combat stages in between for players to fight through.

For example, Volume 1: Spring and Autumn, Chapter 1: Sleeping on Brushwood and Tasting Gall, would focus entirely on the stories of Goujian, Xi Shi, and Fan Li. One chapter could be divided into 8 to 10 subsections—some containing only story, while others included battles. While watching the story, players could simultaneously learn about the game’s combat mechanics.

Of course, the meta-slaves who preferred “skipping the story” could jump straight into the combat stages.

Volume 2: The Great Qin Dynasty, would recount Qin Shi Huang sweeping across the six states and unifying the world.

Volume 3 would cover the Chu-Han Contention, the power struggle between Liu Bang and Xiang Yu, and some classic tales from the Han Dynasty. Volume 4 would cover the Three Kingdoms period and the three-way conflict between Wei, Shu, and Wu.

Volume 5 would be Sui and Tang, followed by Song, Ming, and so on.

The main plot didn’t need to be fully released during the open beta phase.

Given the speed of game updates, if the open beta only went up to the Three Kingdoms period, there would already be plenty of characters. Afterward, they could update the main story every month, releasing subsequent plots and characters.

With main story updates, more characters would appear in the future, alongside New Year limited and holiday limited characters. If the game was to operate long-term, the pace of character releases and numerical balance had to be handled perfectly.

As the saying goes, “Each patch crowns a new god.” If an overly dominant character appeared in an update, completely invalidating the characters players had previously cultivated, it would easily cause a massive wave of players to abandon the game.

When making this kind of combat game, one absolutely could not rush; they had to proceed steadily.

Xie Yunfan first assigned the tasks for the Formation System and Military Manual System. He planned to finish writing the settings for several characters in the Spring and Autumn Chapter before handing them over to the Art and Writing teams to begin work together.

The next morning, Luo Hang came to Yangfan Studio to find Xie Yunfan.

Arriving at the 21st-floor office, Luo Hang looked through the window and happened to see Xie Yunfan sitting at his desk, typing. His hands were beautiful; his ten fingers tapped rapidly, his fingertips dancing across the keyboard.

Xie Yunfan was very charming when he worked.

From Luo Hang’s position, he could clearly see his profile. His expression was serious, though occasionally, when a fun idea struck him, the corners of his mouth would curl into a smile.

Seeing him smile made Luo Hang’s mood lift involuntarily.

Xie Yunfan’s head was always popping with whimsical ideas; he was the most brilliant game producer Luo Hang had ever met. Luo Hang wasn’t willing to converse with him simply because they were business partners, but because he genuinely admired him from the bottom of his heart and loved listening to his thoughts and concepts.

Luo Hang stood outside the window, quietly watching Xie Yunfan work, not wanting to interrupt for a moment.

A moment later, Xie Yunfan noticed someone looking at him. He turned around in confusion, his eyes suddenly meeting Luo Hang’s gentle, smiling gaze.

Xie Yunfan paused for a second, then waved to Luo Hang, signaling him to come inside and chat.

Luo Hang turned and pushed open the office door.

Xie Yunfan looked up and asked, “Why were you standing outside instead of coming in?”

Luo Hang replied, “I saw you were working seriously and didn’t want to interrupt your train of thought.”

Xie Yunfan stood up, brewed a cup of tea, and handed it to him, saying with a smile, “It’s fine. There are too many characters to design for this game. I just thought of a few and decided to jot them down first.”

He paused, then asked, “Did you come looking for me for a specific reason?”

Luo Hang said, “Just coming to let you know that regarding the technical hurdle of Dual-End Real-Time Synchronization, I’ve transferred a team from headquarters to assist in a breakthrough. We’re investing quite a lot of capital and manpower this time. There should be progress within three months at the latest, so you can focus on making the game without any worries. Once you’re done, we’ll be ready to follow up with testing immediately.”

Xie Yunfan smiled, “That’s wonderful!”

As expected, Luo Hang never held him back; instead, he always provided the strongest support.

Xie Yunfan said, “A phone call would have sufficed. Why make the trip in person?”

“I wanted to chat with you.” Luo Hang asked casually, “How is the progress on your end?”

Xie Yunfan said, “The project team was just established. I’m still writing the game settings. Do you want to take a look?”

Luo Hang nodded and followed Xie Yunfan to his desk. “Did you just write this? I was outside the window just now and saw how fast you were typing.”

“When I have inspiration, I write very quickly. Without it, I can’t squeeze out a single word.” Xie Yunfan turned his laptop screen around. “Take a look and give me some feedback?”

Luo Hang lowered his head and carefully looked at the screen.

It was a document titled “Turbulent Spring and Autumn Settings Collection.”

The first page contained a sweeping thousand-word worldview setting: the player transmigrates to a different world populated by many famous figures, whom the player can recruit and cultivate for battle.

The player’s cheat is “Dream Reading,” allowing them to traverse different “dreams” and use a god’s-eye view to learn about these characters’ past stories. This way, each character’s dream could be structured like an “episodic drama,” strung together by the main plot.

Luo Hang praised, “Not bad. This kind of beaded-necklace style main plot allows you to fit in many characters without it feeling disjointed. It also makes updating the main story later on much easier; adding characters will be highly flexible.”

Receiving validation put Xie Yunfan in a great mood. He nodded, “I thought so too. This game has quite a few characters. Selecting one or two classic stories to represent each character will be enough.”

Luo Hang carefully looked at the character designs he had written.

Goujian

Skill 1: Three Years of Dormancy (King Goujian of Yue is highly enduring. After the battle begins, he can enter a dormant state at any time, enduring the enemy’s insults without fighting back or retorting. In this dormant state, Goujian can draw attacks meant for two designated teammates, transferring the damage they take to himself.)

Skill 2: Sleeping on Brushwood and Tasting Gall (Awakening Skill. Goujian awakens after three turns of dormancy, entering a “Revenge” state. His attack power increases by 200%, and he reflects all enemy attacks received during those three turns back to a designated target.)

Luo Hang: “…”

Ignoring the bizarre descriptions, the essence of Goujian’s character was to protect adjacent teammates by absorbing the attacks they suffered, then returning it all to the enemy at once upon awakening.

Having him on the field would tie the opponent’s hands. If they couldn’t kill Goujian within three turns… after three turns, his Sleeping on Brushwood and Tasting Gall would erupt, and the one dying would be you.

Under his protection, the teammates beside him could output damage with peace of mind.

Luo Hang praised, “This character’s design is very interesting. When cultivating him, players can focus on stacking Defense or HP and use him as a taunting meat shield. He’s tanky and can output damage; the opponent will have a massive headache dealing with him.”

Xie Yunfan felt gratified. Luo Hang could understand his character designs at a glance; communicating with him was truly effortless.

Luo Hang continued to look at the next character.

Fan Li

Skill 1: Distributing Wealth Three Times (Fan Li is an excellent businessman, having accumulated massive wealth multiple times. At the start of the battle, Fan Li automatically gains one stack of ‘Immense Wealth’. Afterward, for every turn he acts, he gains an additional stack of the ‘Immense Wealth’ status, up to a maximum of three stacks.)

Skill 2: Dispersing Fortune (After striking it rich, Fan Li frequently dispersed his wealth to aid the poor. Using this skill consumes the stacks of Immense Wealth to heal all teammates for 30%, 60%, or 90% of his own max HP, respectively.)

Luo Hang turned his head in confusion and asked, “An AoE healer that relies on stacking buffs? At one stack it heals the team for 30%, and at three stacks it heals for 90%. Could that fully heal the entire team in one go?”

Xie Yunfan nodded: “Yes, that’s the design concept. The more stacks of Immense Wealth, the greater the healing output. The specific values might require the Data Team to run further calculations; I just wrote down an approximate ratio.”

Luo Hang smiled: “This design feels more interesting than a simple AoE heal. During battle, players can monitor the number of Immense Wealth stacks on him to seize the perfect moment to cast his ultimate, potentially turning the tide in one fell swoop.”

Xie Yunfan said: “Exactly. Fan Li is suited for high-pressure combat dungeons that take a long time, like boss fights or various events. One ultimate every three turns can fully heal the team.”

The next character was a female character named Xi Shi.

Xi Shi

Skill 1: Washing Silk in the Stream (Xi Shi often washed silk by the river; the silk she washed would become as clean as new. When Xi Shi washes silk, she cleanses all negative status effects from a designated target and grants them immunity to crowd control for 2 turns.)

Skill 2: Beauty that Sinks Fish (Xi Shi is incredibly beautiful. While washing silk by the stream, passing fish marveled at her charm and sank to the bottom of the lake. Using this skill Silences a designated target for one turn.)

This character was a combination of cleanse and single-target crowd control. In PVP, such a character would be extremely useful.

The subsequent character designs were much more complex, with skill descriptions taking up long paragraphs.

Guan Zhong

Skill: Propriety, Righteousness, Integrity, Shame (Guan Zhong believes that propriety, righteousness, integrity, and shame are the spiritual pillars of a nation. This skill offers four states to choose from; after using any state, it incurs a 2-turn cooldown before it can be used again.)

• Propriety: Being well-educated and reasonable is a traditional virtue. In the “Propriety” state, if the opponent targets Guan Zhong, they will automatically bow to him, rendering Guan Zhong immune to any skill attacks or crowd control.
• Righteousness: The spirit of acting courageously for a just cause is worth promoting. In the “Righteousness” state, when an allied target acts, Guan Zhong can perform an assist attack.
• Integrity: The ethos of incorruptibility should be advocated; bribes cannot be accepted in battle. In the “Integrity” state, Guan Zhong dispels all positive buffs from a designated enemy target.
• Shame: Those who know no shame must be punished. Guan Zhong automatically locks onto the enemy character with the highest attack power, Silencing them for one turn.

Luo Hang: “…”

This character was an incredibly strong support. It was just that the skill descriptions were a bit bizarre.

Luo Hang looked at Xie Yunfan, not knowing whether to laugh or cry: “Are you sure you want to use this style for your skill descriptions?”

Xie Yunfan asked innocently: “Why, is it hard to understand?”

Luo Hang said helplessly: “It’s very easy to understand, and highly memorable. It’s just a bit infuriating, that’s all.”

Xie Yunfan said: “That’s okay, there’s even more infuriating ones.”

Luo Hang asked with interest: “For example?”

Xie Yunfan said with a serious expression: “For example, ‘Lead Away a Goat in Passing’ in the Military Manual System. No matter how strong the opponent’s skill is, I can just swipe it and use it for myself.”

Luo Hang: “…………”

So, the style of the game this time was to let players, during the course of battle—infuriate others to death, or infuriate themselves to death?

When the time came, players would likely become obsessed again, just to pull a character they liked.

Those “meta-slave” big spenders might even collect all the characters and raise them to max level just to fight in the PVP arena and experience the joy of swapping team lineups.

Luo Hang had only looked at a few character settings today, yet he already found it extremely fascinating. If all the characters were designed with such unique traits, it would be hard for this game not to become a hit!

When Luo Hang left Yangfan Studio, a smile still lingered on his face; he had great confidence in this game planned by Yunfan. Xie Yunfan himself was also fully motivated, writing up a few more characters after Luo Hang left.

For example, the story of “Returning the Jade Intact to Zhao” could be designed as a reflect skill.

“Shang Yang’s Reforms” could shift the opponent’s buffs onto allied teammates.

Since Fan Li was an AoE healer, Bian Que would be designed as a single-target healer.

Bai Qi, as the top general of the Warring States period, would naturally have the highest damage output among the characters in the Spring and Autumn Chapter.

…

Once Xie Yunfan found his inspiration, writing the characters became increasingly smooth.

That afternoon, he convened a meeting with the Writing and Art teams to confirm the game’s style.

Yangfan Studio excelled the most at ancient styles. Since this game utilized a vast number of historical figures, it would naturally feature an ancient aesthetic as well, though it needed to be distinct from their previous games.

If it were too realistic, the drawn characters might look awkward during battle. To attract more players, the game’s art style was extremely important.

The design of clothing and character appearances would remain ancient, but the art style could be brighter, similar to those ancient-style domestic animations from his previous life.

Xie Yunfan announced: “The lead artist for Turbulent Spring and Autumn this time will be Shi Xiaoyu.”

Hearing this, Shi Xiaoyu looked overwhelmed by the unexpected favor.

When she graduated from college, she was nagged daily by her parents for failing to find a job. Later, by a stroke of luck, she joined Yangfan Studio. The first project she participated in was Journey to the West.

The original concept art for characters like Sun Wukong and the Bull Demon King were all drawn by her and received widespread acclaim. But she didn’t grow arrogant because of it; after all, she hadn’t been out of college for long and still had a lot of knowledge to learn.

She had been steadily improving over the past three years at Yangfan Studio, but she never imagined she could take on the role of lead artist.

Shi Xiaoyu said nervously: “Boss, I don’t have enough seniority…”

Xie Yunfan said: “No need to be modest, you are very talented. This game involves a massive amount of combat, and the colors need to be brighter. I thought it over, and you’re the most suitable fit.”

Chu Yue from the Art Team had been reassigned as the art director for Detective Di Renjie and Holographic Script Killing; his art style leaned dark, and he excelled at painting various suspenseful scenes. Ning Sha was currently overseeing the Millennium Love project, ensuring the four male leads wouldn’t suffer any dips in quality on their cards.

Among the remaining people, after much thought, Xie Yunfan concluded that Shi Xiaoyu was indeed the best choice.

The boss was willing to give young people opportunities, and she had to seize them! Being lead artist wouldn’t just elevate her salary and status by a tier, it also represented her boss’s recognition of her.

Thinking of this, Shi Xiaoyu immediately nodded: “Okay, I will work hard!”

Xie Yunfan looked at Zhou Shiyue and said: “Shiyue will be the lead writer; there are a ton of stories to write for this game. Do you remember when we worked on Music Soul together during our senior year of college, and you wrote the story of Xiang Yu and Consort Yu for the pipa tune ‘Ambush from Ten Sides’?”

Zhou Shiyue said: “Of course I remember!”

Xie Yunfan smiled faintly: “Maintain that style and standard, and write even more wonderful stories.”

He had a lot of confidence in Zhou Shiyue.

This girl truly excelled at writing majestic, ancient-style epics. Back then, the various instrument-related stories in Music Soul had garnered praise from quite a few players.

With Zhou Shiyue overseeing the massive amount of plot involving historical figures this time, he could feel much more at ease.

Xie Yunfan sent the character settings and story outlines to the Art and Writing teams.

Zhou Shiyue carefully read through the outline, her heart swelling with excitement—the stories this time were even richer, more intricate, and more spectacular than the instrument-related ones from back then!

The character background stories and skill designs echoed each other. Through the plot, players would not only deepen their memory of the characters but also find it easier to understand their combat skills.

Work hard! This was a major project that Yunfan valued immensely.

After arranging tasks for the Art and Writing teams, Xie Yunfan called the Animation and VFX teams for a meeting.

Animation would have to wait for the scripts to be finished before creating CG showcases for story highlights. For now, they only needed to finalize the style and prepare early conceptual promotional materials.

As for skill visual effects, Xie Yunfan’s request was: “Don’t make the skill VFX too flashy; if it’s dazzlingly chaotic, players won’t be able to see clearly. Our designs should be simple and distinctive. For example, Fan Li’s ‘Dispersing Fortune’ skill could have him tossing a pile of gold coins to heal his teammates.”

“For Guan Zhong’s skill, the four characters for Propriety, Righteousness, Integrity, and Shame could be designed as floating blocks of text in different colors orbiting around him. Whichever skill the player uses, that specific character turns gray to indicate its cooldown state, making it convenient for players to observe. Otherwise, if you just pile a bunch of buffs on top of his head, players will have to click in to check.”

“Bian Que’s ‘Pulse Diagnosis’ is a very strong single-target healing skill. When taking a pulse, a silk thread could connect him to the teammate he wants to heal, like the ancient medical practice of diagnosing via a suspended thread.”

“Follow this line of thinking. The skill VFX and the skill itself should complement each other. Don’t make it overly flashy, where casting an ultimate triggers several seconds of animation that completely overshadows the gameplay.”

Hearing their boss’s instructions, the employees nodded one after another in understanding.

In some combat games, when players cast ultimates, it was practically light pollution—so multicolored and gaudy that the targets couldn’t even be seen clearly. That just looked “flashy but lacking substance,” losing the essence of combat.

No matter how gorgeous an ultimate move was, you’d eventually get sick of looking at it.

Ultimate visual effects needed to align with the skill descriptions; designing them more simply would give them better lasting appeal.

…

In the time that followed, the various groups at Yangfan Studio grew busy once again.

As a first-time lead artist, Shi Xiaoyu would humbly consult Ning Sha whenever she encountered tricky problems, and Ning Sha would earnestly explain things to her.

Yangfan Studio didn’t have an internal bonus-snatching system, nor were the various project teams in competition with each other; the employees all got along harmoniously.

Between different project teams, if someone was overwhelmed with work, it was very common to borrow personnel temporarily.

A week later, the original concept art that the Art Team had polished multiple times was finally finalized.

Xie Yunfan was very satisfied with the Xi Shi that Shi Xiaoyu drew, telling her to maintain this standard while leading the Art Team to draw the other characters.

With Zhou Shiyue manning the helm for Writing, the several stories were all written brilliantly.

On the level design side, Ji Yan submitted the first draft proposal. They decided to make the Military Manual System into an “Abyssal Challenge” mode, designing a high-difficulty stage every three floors. They would place the characters from the main plot into these stages—firstly, to familiarize players with these characters’ skills, and secondly, to force players to use their brains more when building their lineups.

The Data Team began following Xie Yunfan to finalize the characters one by one.

All character skills—AoE, single-target, execute/harvest, assist attacks, etc.—along with their specific scaling multipliers, HP, Defense, Attack, and how much those stats increased upon leveling up, all needed to be repeatedly calculated and tested.

Xie Yunfan categorized the characters into three tiers based on acquisition difficulty: Sun, Moon, and Star.

Sun-tier characters, which were essentially SSRs, had the lowest drop rates, highest power levels, and consumed the most materials during cultivation. Moon-tier characters had a drop rate of around 10% and possessed moderate strength. Star-tier cards were easy to obtain and slightly weaker, but some cards featured special mechanics that made them equally worth cultivating.

As Xie Yunfan designed more and more characters, the game’s development progress grew increasingly complete.

By the end of April, the Spring and Autumn Chapter was finally finished.

Since Dual-End Real-Time Synchronization on Qihang’s side wasn’t complete yet, Xie Yunfan decided to use the mobile version for the first round of internal testing to hunt for bugs in the combat and storyline.