Chapter 224: Chapter 224
Watching the Buddha-like, bald uncle laugh heartily...
Jiang Ye suddenly remembered that phrase—
"People who love to laugh usually have good luck."
Somehow, he felt that this saying was even more fitting for this bald uncle.
Because that slightly chubby face of his looked like it was born to smile.
It gave off an incredibly kind and friendly vibe.
To be honest, one of the main reasons Jiang Ye had thought this shopkeeper valued fun more than profit was because of his identity—
So a "Mask Master" could just as easily be considered a Toy Master.
And someone like a Toy Master was super cool in a child’s eyes.
At the same time, they were very likely someone with a strong sense of childlike wonder.
Of course, just because someone had a permission-based title didn’t necessarily mean they matched the traits of that title.
But it could serve as a reference point.
Seeing this Mask Master, Jiang Ye couldn’t help but relax a bit.
At least, emotionally.
He was still vigilant when it came to the shop rules.
He put away the eight masks, holding the disguise mask separately in his right hand, and smiled at the shopkeeper:
“So, this counts as a successful identification? What about the reward for the Today’s Special Offer...?”
The cheerful, smiling bald man clearly wasn’t the type to go back on his word. He casually placed a hand on the [Shop Rules Mask] that had been reattached to the wall and waved Jiang Ye over:
“Come on, follow me to my workbench.”
Jiang Ye cautiously asked, “This counts as getting the shopkeeper’s permission, right?”
The shopkeeper rolled his eyes at him. “Look at you, so paranoid.”
As he spoke, he suddenly flicked out a small, dark-golden metal tag. “Take this first—official permission granted. Stop acting so scared.”
The moment Jiang Ye took the small metal tag, a notification rang in his mind:
【You are about to receive a temporary status. Do you accept?】
Jiang Ye was a bit surprised. He hadn’t expected the VIP Customer of this shop to actually be a temporary status?
The bald man caught his expression and raised an eyebrow. “From that look on your face, have you encountered other temporary statuses before?”
Jiang Ye thought for a moment, then asked back, “Does Subcontracted Administrator count as a temporary status?”
“Oh? Subcontracted Administrator?” The bald man looked genuinely surprised. “From what I know, it’s pretty rare for an administrator to grant someone subcontracting rights.”
Jiang Ye’s mind turned quickly, and he explained, “I’ve only seen another player become a subcontracted administrator—I haven’t experienced it myself.”
That was the truth. He had seen Zhang Jintian become a subcontracted administrator.
As for himself, he really hadn’t taken on that role.
Whether the bald guy believed it or not was unclear. In any case, he sized Jiang Ye up while walking into the secret passage that had opened at the [Shop Rules] board.
As they walked, he lazily explained:
“Generally, any somewhat decent permission-based identity can grant temporary statuses.”
“Like the Subcontracted Administrator you mentioned, and the VIP Customer status I just gave you—they’re both temporary.”
“A player can only have one permission-based identity, but there’s no limit on temporary statuses.”
“However, the permissions of temporary statuses are quite weak, and they can be revoked at any time by the one who granted them.”
“For example, the Subcontracted Administrator title can be canceled at any moment by the issuing administrator.”
“And your VIP Customer status can also be revoked by me at any time.”
“But since this came as the third reward from the Today’s Special Offer, as long as you don’t do anything outrageous, I generally won’t cancel your VIP status.”
“As for what this temporary status lets you do, you can check it yourself.”
“To put it simply, there are three benefits—”
“First, with this status, you can contact me anytime.”
“Second, you can ignore the shop rules while in this store.” ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ꜰʀᴏᴍ NoveI★Fire.net
“Third, you get a 20% discount on purchases, and all purchases earn points.”
“And those points can be used to redeem exclusive, non-sellable items that can’t even be bought with Survival Points.”
“You know about the luxury goods bundling system, right?”
“It’s the same idea—some VIP customers spend a ton just to rack up enough points to get their hands on ultra-rare non-sellable items.”
Jiang Ye had heard of the bundling system before.
Basically, when you try to buy a super in-demand luxury bag, the store clerk will tell you they’re out of stock.
But once you flash the cash and hit a certain spending threshold, suddenly even the rarest items become magically available.
They claim it’s because not just anyone can get those popular products.
But let’s be real—it’s just artificial scarcity.
Creating a sense that rarity equals value, and that hard-to-get things show off your status.
Are they really selling bags?
No, they’re selling items that ordinary people can’t get—symbols of money and status.
In summary: they scam the rich, not the poor.
Jiang Ye, being a poor man, couldn’t really relate to luxury goods.
But he could imagine that the non-sellable items in the Mask Master’s shop were truly valuable—not artificially hyped-up crap like luxury stores peddled.
Still, if it took spending Survival Points to earn those rewards...
Then even the most precious non-sellable items felt pretty far out of reach.
He still had the rest of the Today’s Special Offer rewards.
As he followed the bald man into the secret workshop, Jiang Ye checked the details of the VIP Customer temporary status.
He couldn’t help but joke:
“So being a VIP means I can ignore the shop rules... does that mean I can walk out freely? Touch any masks I want? Do whatever I feel like?”
“Do whatever you feel like?” The bald man, now seated at his exclusive workbench, gave him a cold sideways glance. “Go ahead, try it.”
Jiang Ye chuckled awkwardly.
Of course he knew—it wasn’t really "do whatever you want."
After all, this VIP status could be revoked at any time by the shopkeeper.
If he did anything that crossed the line and pissed off the shopkeeper, once that VIP tag was gone, he’d be back to strictly following the shop rules.
So this so-called “ignore shop rules”...
Was really just turning “without shopkeeper permission” into “shopkeeper tacitly permits.”
That meant he no longer had to be so overly cautious, worrying about accidentally touching some kind of mask-type item.
Jiang Ye sat down across from the workbench quite relaxed and laid out the eight masks he brought in a neat row on the table.
The bald man across from him raised an eyebrow and said directly:
“From the looks of this, you plan on using all three of your free modification chances and your one chance to pick a mask from the warehouse, huh?”
Jiang Ye nodded, then pointed straight at the Special-Class [Maniac Mask], explaining:
“This mask—I snatched it from someone else. They said it might’ve taken synthesizing ten Maniac Masks in the [Chaos Furnace] to get this one.”
“Its effect is: it can be used ten times, one hour per use.”
“Of course, I’ve already used it once, so there are nine uses left—nine hours, which is 540 minutes.”
“Personally, I feel that one-hour intervals are too long. A lot of time gets wasted in between.”
“So I was thinking—could you modify it so it’s like a video, with a [Pause] and [Play] function?”
“When I want to use it, I hit [Play]; when I don’t, I hit [Pause], so I can fully utilize those 540 minutes without wasting a single second.”
After that simple explanation…
The bald man’s cheerful, friendly face instantly stiffened.
He rolled his eyes and said with no expression, “Play and pause…”
“Why don’t I just give you a time stopwatch—whenever you’re doing something, you press it and time starts flowing, and when you’re not, you pause time and it waits for you?”
“You’ve got some f**king nerve!”
Jiang Ye thought about it carefully and had to admit—yeah, wanting the mask’s 540 minutes to pause and resume like that was a bit greedy.
So he changed his request: “How about splitting the 540 minutes into 540 one-minute uses instead? That should be doable, right?”
That made the bald guy let out a frustrated laugh.
“You ever seen a time-limited item with over five hundred uses??”
“This is a time-limited item. The modifications can only stay within the bounds of what’s allowed for time-limited items.”
“And for time-limited items, the usage limit absolutely does not exceed 100 times!”
That meant each use would be 5.4 minutes.
Jiang Ye figured—killing an administrator probably didn’t take 5.4 minutes.
But maybe... he could wear the [Maniac Mask] to kill the administrator, then put the [Maniac Mask] on someone else while he wore the [Enforcer Mask] to farm survival points at a hundredfold rate?
After a moment’s thought, he settled on it:
“Alright, 100 times it is.”
“Then help me modify this mask so it can be used 100 times, 5.4 minutes each.”
“And add one more thing—”
“During each use, I want to be able to freely change who wears the mask.”
“Like, I wear it for one minute, then give it to Zhang San for 3 seconds, and then Li Si for 3 seconds…”
“Can that effect be done?”
The Buddha-faced Mask Master, who had been in such a good mood moments ago from the earlier fun, immediately felt a migraine coming on after hearing that.
That headache probably felt like what a corporate grunt experiences when the client suddenly throws out a bunch of wildly unreasonable demands—while acting like it’s all perfectly normal.
The way he looked at Jiang Ye now was exactly the way a tired worker would stare at a brain-dead client.
He just wanted to crack open Jiang Ye’s head and scream—
This isn’t reasonable! This isn’t reasonable! Can’t you think about the poor guy who has to implement this crap when you make demands!?
Jiang Ye’s request, while annoying, wasn’t technically impossible.
And the three free mask modification chances—that was something the shopkeeper himself had promised as part of the special offer.
The bald man took a deep breath.
He swore to himself that he would never again offer “mask modification” as a free gift in any special event.
He absolutely hated modifying masks.
When he did it by his own design, fine—it was enjoyable.
But having to follow the customer’s ideas? Absolute torment.
He took another deep breath, closed his eyes for a second, and finally agreed:
“Fine. Your first modification chance will be used for this [Maniac Mask].”
“You still have two chances left.”
With two chances remaining, Jiang Ye naturally glanced at the [Enforcer Mask] that paired with the [Maniac Mask].
That thing was a beast for farming survival points.
He got right to the point: “Can you modify this [Enforcer Mask] so that instead of giving 100x survival points when killing a ‘maniac,’ it gives 1000x, 10,000x, or even higher?”
The Mask Master’s face was completely blank: “How about I just make it give you a few hundred million times survival points instead?”
“Or better yet, 1 billion survival points per second—wouldn’t that be easier and faster?”