I grinded at Ice Soul Cave until it was past 8 pm before checking my experience bar. When I first entered the cave I was sitting at Level 107, 22%. Now, after half a day of grinding, my experience had only grown to 45%. At this rate, it would take me around two days to gain a level. I could’ve grinded faster by aggroing the Ice Soul Giants en-masse and killing them all at a choke point, but that would cost me too much equipment durability and force me to return to the city.

I also obtained 18 pieces of Ice Soul Steel for my hard work. The item drop rate was so low that it would take me at least another two or three days of hard grinding to gather 100, but I should still be on track, all things considered. Things were easy once all the materials were ready. I would head to Violet Empire, seek out a Master Blacksmith and pay them some gold to turn my blueprint into reality.

……

Beep!

It was at this moment I received a message from Murong Mingyue: "Log out, boy!"

"What for? I’m busy…"

"It’s dinner time."

"Eh, next time. Bring me two sesame seed cakes when you girls are done, please…"

"Fuck! Eve’s plane will touch down at Wuxi 8 am tomorrow, and you are coming with me! Unless you’re planning to show her the dark circles under your eyes, you’d better eat early and sleep early so you can meet her tomorrow in tip-top shape!"

That jolted me right out of the zone. "Oh, okay. I’m logging out right now!"

I looked around and put down a tent at a secluded spot where the mobs wouldn’t spawn. After that, I slipped into the tent and logged out of the game.

……

As I took off my helmet, the realization that He Yi was coming back tomorrow—tomorrow!—finally started sinking. I felt a rush of hope. For the past couple weeks, I had been feeling a bit empty on the inside, and now I realized that it was because my beautiful and generous boss wasn’t by my side.

When I exited the room, Beiming Xue and Murong Mingyue were already waiting for me. The two girls were dressed lightly as usual. "Come on, time to clear out the Chuyunge map at least three times before we leave!"

I smiled. Chuyunge was a good buffet restaurant that cost 150 RMB per person, and I had been wanting to visit it for a long time now. However, I hadn’t found an opportunity to do so until Murong Mingyue forced me to log out today.

……

Murong Mingyue was too lazy to drive her own car, so we traveled to Chuyunge in my X12 instead.

Inside the rear-view mirror, Beiming Xue chirped excitedly, "Yay yay! I’m so excited for Who Will Rise the day after tomorrow! We’ll definitely place well in the tournament, right?"

Murong Mingyue smiled. "Of course. Eve is coming, so it’s entirely possible for a certain someone to turn beastial and become the champion and MVP of the tournament!"

I shuddered and nearly crashed into a car. Regaining control, I rolled my eyes at her. "What are you talking about? I wouldn’t do that! At the very least, my relationship with Eve is perfectly pure even to this day…"

Murong Mingyue teased me. "Maybe, but dare you say you don’t want to turn beastial when you see her?"

Caught off-guard again, I changed the subject embarrassedly. "Fuck, can we please talk about something else?"

Beiming Xue asked, "Big bro, what were you doing this whole day? You seem busy…"

"Oh, I’m grinding for Ice Soul Steel inside an ice cave."

"Ice Soul Steel? What’s that for?"

"You’ll know in two days."

"Okay!"

I looked at Murong Mingyue through the rear-view mirror again. "Sis, there’s something I absolutely need your help with."

"Oh? What is it?"

"I want you to buy 5 Rank 2 Cyanfire Gems in Sky City. I’ll pay for everything!"

"Cyanfire Gems?" Murong Mingyue sounded astonished. "Isn’t that the gemstone that adds Attack? It’s… pretty expensive though. I heard that a single Cyanfire Gem can sell for tens of thousands of RMB these days. It’s enough money to exempt a white collar from working for half a year…"

"That’s right. Remember, I want 5 Rank 2 Cyanfire Gems! Don’t mix it up!"

"It’ll cost you around 700k RMB or so. You sure you want to do this?"

"Hmph hmph, it’s fine!"

I knew full well that there were only so many Spirit Rank bosses in Sky City right now. It was to prevent Spirit-grade equipment from proliferating the market too soon. When I exploited a bug and spent half a day whittling the boss Ziyu’s health to nothing, all I got for my efforts was one Spirit-grade sword. When Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls battled Warsky Alliance and zerged the Desert Giant King, we were also rewarded with one Spirit-grade Titan Barrier only. Spirit-grade equipment might be the best possible equipment a player could get their hands on right now, but it absolutely wasn’t something one could buy with just wealth and power alone. No, one must possess luck and good karma as well. Right now I had landed on a golden opportunity to forge He Yi a high-level Spirit-grade shield, and I would be a fool not to give it my all and make it a reality. 700k was but a small price to pay for this!

"Mn. I’ll transfer 700K to your account later. Don’t forget to check."

"Sure." Murong Mingyue curled her lips. "Although I wouldn’t know even if you didn’t send me the money. You’ll need a bigger cash flow than that to affect the 8 digits sitting inside my bank account…"

"WTF!"

I felt gloomy. The pressure of living together with rich women was too real. If even an assistant like Murong Mingyue had over ten million in her bank account, I couldn’t even begin to imagine how rich He Yi was. According to Murong Mingyue, He Yi’s asset value went up and down by the hundreds of thousands per second, literally. In this case, the two of us lived in completely different worlds.

……

Now that I had assigned the duty of gathering the Cyanfire Gems to Murong Mingyue, I could focus fully on grinding the Ice Soul Steel. With my level of connections in Violet Empire and a bit of money, it shouldn’t be a problem to forge the Spirit-grade shield at all. Moreover, I was almost certain that it was as good as Gui Guzi’s Titan Barrier!

Speaking of which, Gui Guzi was almost Level 105 already. He was hoping to hit Level 105 so that he could equip the 4-star Outstanding Spirit-grade shield before Who Will Rise began. I could only imagine how amazing Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls’ second party would be once Gui Guzi completed his transformation into a super unkillable meatshield.

Of course, He Yi shouldn’t be too far behind after she equipped the Ice Soul Shield. Both her Attack and Defense were pretty good to begin with, and He Yi had been studying to become better in the game really hard as of late. The super noob I used to know was long gone.

Some time later, I paid the entry fee and entered Chuyunge with my beautiful older sister and beautiful younger sister in tow. I hadn’t eaten anything the entire day, so I stuffed myself to the brink of explosion. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that I had to cling to the wall for support when I made my way in and out of Chuyunge, albeit for different reasons.

After we returned to the workshop, I grinded the Ice Soul Giants for a bit and took care of some internal guild business. Ancient Sword Dreaming Soul now had a max member capacity of 5000, so I couldn’t just ignore everything and focus on myself. Otherwise, it was only a matter of time before fractures started happening in our guild. A guild leader’s job definitely wasn’t an easy one!

I kept myself busy until midnight before logging off to sleep.

……

I slept soundly until Murong Mingyue knocked on my door in the early morning. "Time to get up, you lazy pig! Eve is on the plane already!"

"Ohh!"

I looked at the time and was shocked to see that it as only 6 am. If it wasn’t for Eve, I would rather die than be awake at this time.

I washed myself and went out. At first, I thought we were going to have breakfast before we leave, but Murong Mingyue shot me down immediately. "It’ll be 7.30 am by the time we reach Wuxi, so we need to leave now. We can eat KFC after we reach the airport."

What else could I say? We hopped into my X12 and got onto Shanghai–Nanjing Expressway.

We reached Sunan Shuofang International Airport 10 minutes earlier than expected—7.20 am to be exact—because I had been driving at the speed of 150 mph. Both Beiming Xue and Murong Mingyue couldn’t help but shoot me strange looks on the way.

After we reached the arrival hall, I bought three sets of breakfast and munched away with everyone.

It was at this moment the sky suddenly darkened. Then, it started raining cats and dogs and thundering like crazy.

I looked at the thunderstorm outside the window and muttered worriedly, "Eve is going to reach Wuxi in half an hour. This weather…"

Murong Mingyue shot me a look. "Cut that out and have some faith in science, will you? The weather is bad, but they can still land if the airport’s conditions are fine."

"Yes, my wise sister!"

……

I chewed my bread and hid all my worries at the bottom of my heart.

The three of us talked about nothing in particular as the clock hit 8 am. It was at this moment an announcement blared from the speaker stating that the flight from New Delhi to Wuxi is slightly delayed and will arrive at 8:20 am instead.

"See, I told you it’ll be fine. Hehe…" Murong Mingyue gave me a smile. "So don’t worry. Anyway, what’s the first thing you’re going to say when you see Eve again?"

I couldn’t help but smile back. "Boss, I missed you so much I could die…"

"Fuck!"

Murong Mingyue chided me a little. "Wanna bet that Eve will punch you if you say that to her?"

"I don’t know…"

Beiming Xue said, "Maybe she’ll give him a hug…"

I shot down her prediction immediately. "No way, Eve is way less uninhibited than sis…"

Murong Mingyue: "..."

……

However, He Yi’s flight didn’t arrive even though the delay extended to 40 minutes or more. Finally, the announcer reported that the flight from New Delhi to Wuxi was experiencing a malfunction, and that they were unable to land on the airfield. Because the situation didn’t improve after the airplane circled in the clouds for 20 minutes or so, the pilot made the critical decision to land at the edge of Lake Tai instead!

Needless to say, all of us were flabbergasted by the shocking announcement.

I was so worried that it was a wonder I hadn’t gone berserk yet. I abruptly rose to my feet and declared, "Let’s head to Lake Tai right now!"

"Okay."

We all ran into the X12 and left Sunan Shuofang International Airport at top speed. Staring at the thunder clouds outside, I gritted my teeth and prayed to every god in the world for He Yi’s safety. I never thought that something like this could happen to her. Were our fates really as tumultuous as she said that day?

The sky was frighteningly dark and the raindrops splattering against the windshield were far too loud, but that didn’t stop me from driving toward the location the airport said the plane would land at top speed!

In the rear-view mirror, both Beiming Xue and Murong Mingyue looked a little pale. The disaster had struck out of nowhere, and everyone knows that it was far more dangerous for an airplane to land on water than to land on ground!

We finally arrived at Lake Tai almost an hour later. The trees were so thick that we almost couldn’t see anything, but it was still impossible to miss the giant object floating above the surface of the lake. Was that He Yi’s flight?

……

Thunk!

I opened the car door and ran straight toward Lake Tai without a care for the downpour or the mud surrounding the entire lake. As my feet entered the lake water—so cold that it was freezing—I heard Beiming Xue shouting from behind me, "Be careful, big bro…"