It was a beautiful March outside Eternal Song Forest. The air of spring pleasantly tickled the nose, and butterflies danced across the air.

I led He Yi, Murong Mingyue, Beiming Xue and Moonlight Stone to the encampment of the Violet Empire’s Blood Dance Legion. A column of undead cavalry was racing across the open ground before us and shattering the quiet afternoon with their hooves.

He Yi watched the squadron of skeletal knights and skeletal horses nervously as she asked, “Have you been here before, Mingyue?”

Murong Mingyue shook her head. “This is my first time.”

“Those undead won’t attack us, will they?”

“How would I know? Lu Chen’s the only one who can answer that!”

I turned around and gave them a reassuring smile. “Relax, this is a neutral encampment, so they won’t attack you unless you attack them first. Also, you’re with me right now, and they wouldn’t dare attack a uh… junior officer of the Blood Dance Legion…?”

“OMG!”

After a round of chatter, we had already entered the encampment. As expected, no one had tried to stop us.

We found the small tent where I had last seen Shadow Dancer Xue Wei. I was immediately greeted by the sight of the worried Princess Sophia.

“Ah? You’ve returned, young warrior?” Sophia immediately rose to her feet with a look of pleasant surprise.

I nodded and took out the Heavenly Poison Snow Lotus. “Your Majesty, my companions and I have brought you what we promised. We have found the Heavenly Poison Snow Lotus for Xue Wei!”

“Mn!”

Sophia accepted the little flower and crushed it carefully into powder. Then, she covered Xue Wei’s wounds with it.

It was incredible, but the poison tormenting Xue Wei immediately started dissipating the moment it came into contact with the Heavenly Poison Snow Lotus. The black blood immediately started to turn red, and Xue Wei’s face regained their color once more. Although she was still weak and tired, Xue Wei opened her eyes and smiled at me. “Thank you!”

I nodded back. “You’re welcome!”

Princess Sophia turned toward me and said joyfully, “Young warrior, you have fulfilled your promise and proven your courage by killing the terrible Poison Ghost King. Xue Wei has also experienced rebirth due to your efforts. You are undoubtedly the hope of the Blood Dance Legion, or rather, the Violet Empire itself! Come and receive the reward you deserve!”

Ding~!

System Notice: Congratulations, your party has completed the quest [Myriad Poison Cave]. You have gained 95000 EXP, 7000 Reputation, 1250 gold and the quest reward, “Guard”!

……

Swoosh!

I was overjoyed when golden light surrounded me. Not only did the quest reward me enough experience to reach Level 70, it even gave me a defensive skill book! Right now, every professional player dreamed of getting a defensive skill. As long as the opponent didn’t have Crushing Blow, these skills were a huge advantage in a fight!

I opened my bag and took out a blue-colored skill book. It was the defensive skill book the quest had given me!

Guard: By assuming an airtight defensive stance, you reduce all incoming damage by 50% to 90%. Cooldown: 3 seconds. Class Requirement: Any. Level Requirement: 10

……

I learned it immediately and watched my skill list grow by one. From now on, when I was facing the right kind of boss, I could block any attack that I couldn’t evade in time and reduce the damage I took by at least 50%. What a great and practical skill this is!

Besides that, I also took out the two awesome items I had gotten from Myriad Poison Cave—the Purgatory War Armor and the Purgatory War Helmet. I could equip them now that I was at Level 70!

Swhoosh swhoosh!

I equipped both the armor and helmet. The Purgatory War Helmet had a rugged design, but it was clearly of fine quality. The barbs on my shoulder were shaped like vertical blades, and the jagged edges gleaming in front of my chest looked both cool and deadly. Coupled together with my Bloody Purgatory Cloak, I looked like the incarnation of the Grim Reaper!

At this point, anyone could judge from my appearance alone that I was clad from head to toe in top-tier equipment, but they still wouldn’t be able to guess just how deadly I was. The stat boosts the two Dark Gold metal armor gave me was positively insane!

I brought up my character screen and was stunned to speechlessness by my own stats.

ID: Broken Halberd Sinks Into Sand

Class: Undead Swordsman (Silver Swordsman)

Level: 70

HP: 3300

Attack: 473~755

Defense: 780

Magic Resist: 562

Reputation: 36850

Luck: 3

……

Tsk tsk, my HP was greater than a first-rate magic knight’s, and my Attack was out of this world as usual. Besides that, I had a godly 780 Defense and, what’s even better, 562 Magic Resist. From here on, Ice Dragon Howl would no longer be haunting me in my sleep!

After I was done admiring myself, I put away the Beast-faced Turmoil Helmet and the Soul Turmoil Armor. These items were worth some gold on the auction market. The Dark Steel–grade Soul Turmoil Armor especially could probably be sold for a couple hundred gold at least!

The girls also got a reward from the quest. Murong Mingyue was having fun with her new staff. It was a Gold-grade staff that gave her a lot of extra magic attack and a healing boost of 120. It was a pretty amazing priest weapon all in all.

Beiming Xue also leveled up to 70. She was holding her new Purgatory Bow and notching an arrow with ice energy circulating around the arrowtip. It was her new skill, Freezing Arrow.

He Yi smiled at me and said, “I’m Level 64! Just a bit more, and I’ll enter the Top 100 Heavenly Ranking of Floating Ice City!”

“Mn. Keep it up!”

I yawned. While I was checking my system notices, I noticed that I had also gotten a huge boost in rank in the Blood Dance Legion. I was now a Rank 4 Ash Knight. I wonder, what’s the military equivalent of this rank in real life, company commander or battalion commander? Well, whatever. At any rate, it is way better than being a Skeleton Soldier!

The girls were so excited that they wanted nothing more but to find another Myriad Poison Cave and ransack it from top to bottom. Unfortunately, a special zone like this would only become active when some player got a quest related to it, and since we’ve already activated Myriad Poison Cave once, it would be at least half a month before we could challenge the Poison Ghost King again. As for finding another awesome zone like that, where would we even begin? These special spots didn’t just grow on trees.

In the end, they listened to my suggestion and logged out of the game. We had been at it for 24 hours straight. Any longer than that and someone might actually die from this. I was what Lin Yixin called a “overnight cafe male”, so this wasn’t my first rodeo. The girls though most likely hadn’t developed the endurance necessary for this kind of hustle.

After we logged off, we went to a restaurant downstairs and ate some random food. Then, we staggered back to our rooms and slept like a log.

……

Maybe it was because I was too tired, but I had an inane dream.

I was sitting on a golden throne above the clouds while holding an unknown divine weapon and wearing a shiny battle armor. A beautiful woman with white wings—clearly an angel—was sitting on my thigh, and she said to me sweetly, “Godking, your servant missed you so much for the past few days!”

I wrapped my hands around her amazing waist and felt a surge of courage in my lungs. Looking down at the mortal realm from above, I sneered. “These grandmafucking devils must be tired of living to go against me, the Floating Cloud War God! Hmph! Just wait till I smite them with my divine punishment! Tremble in fear, mortals!”

I was having a lot of fun when a beautiful figure suddenly cut through the clouds and flew toward me. It was a female warrior wearing the same type of armor as I was. She kicked me to the floor and stepped on my fourth lumbar spine vertebra before commenting, “Hmm? I wasn’t expecting to see you here...”

I screamed like a pig in a slaughterhouse. “Yiyi, why are you here?”

Lin Yixin increased her strength. “Hmm? I wasn’t expecting to see you here…”

“Aahh! Yiyi, a gentleman uses his mouth and not his fist!”

All Lin Yixin did was look down on me expressionlessly and crushed my poor vertebra even harder. “Hmm? I wasn’t expecting to see you here…”

I lost control and screamed. “Aahh, I’m sorry, I should’ve given you a call sooner!”

Finally, the corner of Lin Yixin’s lips turned upward. “Hmph!”

……

“Hah!”

I abruptly rose up from bed. Thank god it was just a dream, no, a nightmare!

I grabbed my phone and checked the time. Fuck, it’s 6:30 already? My dinner with Lin Yixin was in half an hour at most! If I was late, my nightmare might actually come true!

I flew off the bed and sprinted into the bathroom. I washed my face, brushed my teeth and took a shower, all under 10 minutes.

I put on a T-shirt and finally rushed out of the door!

I was in the hallway when someone called out to me, “Hey, Lu Chen! Where are you going?”

I turned around and found a smiling Murong Mingyue. She clearly just had a bath since her hair was wet.

“Er, I have a dinner to catch and I’m about to be late, so talk to you later!”

I was about to leave in a hurry when Murong Mingyue grabbed my arm and stopped me. “Look at you, you look like you lost your soul or something. Hmm, wait…”

A mysterious smile crossed her lips as she raised her eyebrows. “Do you have a dinner date with Lin Yixin?”

My heart skipped a beat. “Fuck, how did you know?”

“Hmph hmph!” Murong Mingyue curled her lips proudly. “Do you know how many top-class beauties there are in Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls? If Eve is number one, then I’m number two. Even Beiming Xue, Moonlight Stone and Chaos Moon are young and beautiful in their own right. How dare you eat out when you’re surrounded by so many girls!”

“Eat out? Is that how you use that term?”

I nearly threw up blood hearing that. “Anyway, cut the chitchat and come with me!”

I grabbed Murong Mingyue’s hand and dragged her downstairs. In the elevator, Murong Mingyue was struggling and complaining, “Why are you dragging me with you?”

I said, “I’m out of time, I need you to drive me to the university right now…”

Murong Mingyue’s mouth fell open. “Wow, that’s low, man. You’re eating out and you want me to drive you there? OMG, someone give me a block of tofu so I can kill myself…”

I stared into her eyes and said sincerely, “Or you can give me your car keys and I’ll drive there myself. Not that I’d mind...”

Having ran out of rants to say, Murong Mingyue tossed her car keys to me. “Don’t you dare crash my car, you hear? It took me half a year’s income to buy this A8, and unlike Eve, I don’t have the wealth to trash a Lamborghini every week or two. If I crashed a Lamborghini I’d have to work as someone else’s mistress for the rest of my life…”

I rolled my eyes at her. “Fuck, like there’s anyone in the world who can make the mighty Murong Mingyue his mistress!”

Murong Mingyue giggled. “There’s you…”

“I can’t afford you, dammit!”

“It’s okay, I can afford you…”

“...”

……

I drove straight toward the university after the verbal thrashing from Murong Mingyue. However, I got stuck in a freaking traffic jam! I checked the time and swore. Fuck rush hour!

I drove up a highway and detoured back down to the main street. I then made a mad dash for Happy House.

Doo doo…

It was at this moment my phone rang. The name of the caller was Lin Yixin. Shit! I’m already 5 minutes late...