"Mn, give me five minutes."

"Okay!"

After dispatching He Yi temporarily, I ordered the Dark Knights and Umbra Sharpshooters to carry the resources. Their value couldn’t be understated because this might be the last time resource mobs spawned around the territory. After that, I traveled back to Dark Moon City. It cost 30k of each resource type for the city to upgrade to Rank 3, and thankfully, we had met the requirement after a couple of days of development. Dark Moon City’s productivity was pretty good, especially since I spent all available resources recruiting Dark Insects. It was pointless to recruit any troop that was Rank 6 or below because they were only going to die in a territory war or something.

Upon arriving at Dark Moon City, I checked its latest stats and noted that everything was going quite smoothly. After nearly 24 hours of non-stop production, the Nest of Corruption had spawned a ton of Dark Insects. It had been many days since the day Dark Moon City came to be, and its productivity had reached a terrifying point—

Dark Moon City (Lord: Broken Halberd Sinks Into Sand)

Rank: Rank 2 Undead Castle

Gold Production: 3000 per hour (+50%)

Wood Production: 3000 per hour (+0%)

Stone Production: 3000 per hour (+0%)

Crystal Production: 1840 per hour (+0%)

Dark Insects: 1084

Buildings: 14

Troops: 321

Wall Durability: 200

Teleportation Formations: 2

……

I clicked the option to upgrade the undead castle to rank 3. Now that all the construction quests for the day were complete, I could leave the minor tasks such as grinding resource mobs to Xu Yang, Murong Mingyue, Chaos Moon, and the rest. They had the power to hunt surrounding monsters because they had been granted a small amount of control over the territory.

I crushed a return scroll after everything was complete.

Swhoosh!

After appearing at the eastern plaza of Sky City, I ran to where the class trainers were and found a beautiful female knight sheathing her sword at the distance. She smiled at me and said, "Finally!"

"Mn. I was finishing up some tasks at the guild territory!"

I walked up to her and asked, "It’s about Barrier Break, isn’t it?"

"Ah? You know it already?" He Yi looked astonished.

I chuckled. "Of course I would know something like this. How much Strength do you have right now, Eve? And how much more do you need?"

He Yi checked her stats before replying, "I’m a 4-Strength 1-Stamina magic knight, so I don’t have too much Strength. My current Strength is 1276. Which one of your items adds a lot of Strength, Lu Chen?"

"Hmm, let’s see. You still lack 124 Strength, so… the Soul Suppressing Cloak adds 145 Strength, the Silver Dragon Ring adds 125 Strength, and the Battle Soul Poleyn adds 125 Strength. Is that enough?"

"Give me a second!"

He Yi closed her eyes and performed a mental calculation inside her head. In less than two seconds, she opened them again and replied with a smile, "Yes, it’s enough. Please let me borrow your equipment for a moment!"

"Okay!"

I took off my equipment and passed it to her. He Yi was Level 125 right now, so she could equip all of them without problems. A flash of light later, He Yi officially picked up the skill Barrier Break. It was an amazing skill that greatly increased a player’s attack power and dealt an incredible amount of damage. Its cooldown was also the same as my Universe Break’s, 6 seconds. This meant that the skill could be used very frequently. It was absolutely a war god–tier of skill.

"Oh right, is there anyone else in the guild who hasn’t learned it yet?" I asked.

He Yi shook her head. "I don’t know. Why don’t you ask them yourself? I need to go to Dark Moon City and sort out the rewards for the Coldblade War…"

"Okay, see you later!"

……

I checked my equipment for a bit. In total, my equipment added a total of 1057 Strength to its wearer; 343 Strength short of the requirement to learn Barrier Break, 1400. This meant that I could help any fighter learn Barrier Break as long as they were Level 120, and they dropped at least 3 points into Strength per level up!

My mind made up, I checked the levels of all fighter players in the guild before sending Gui Guzi, Li Chengfeng, High Fighting Spirits, Eighteen Steeds of You and Yun, Xu Yang, and Chaos Moon a message: "If you want to learn Barrier Break then come to the class skill training center right now! I’ll be waiting!"

These six players were the core of Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls, so I saw a need to bolster their strength. Barrier Break was the trump card of all Level 120 fighters. They couldn’t afford to skip it. My job here was to lend them my equipment so that they could meet the Strength Requirement to learn Barrier Break.

Also, I was lending my equipment to these six players exclusively because my full equipment was worth at least 50 million RMB. It would be insanity to lend them to someone I didn’t really know and risk them logging off after they got my equipment.

It wasn’t long before all six players appeared at the class skill training center. Chaos Moon asked me with a smile, "Are you sure you want to lend us your equipment, Lu Chen?"

I smiled back. "Why not?"

High Fighting Spirits looked moved. "Vice leader, you know that your equipment is worth a lot of money, right?"

I chuckled. "So what? I trust all of you. Anyway, I’m going to unequip my equipment now. Get in a line so we can do this one by one."

"Okay!"

My equipment made a sound every time I unequipped one of them. Soon, I was wearing only a newbie’s shirt and pants. As I passed my equipment Gui Guzi, Chaos Moon looked me up and down with a dubious smile on her face, "Looking good, Lu Chen. Mind if I cop a feel or two?"

"Touch yourself, girl!" That was the only response I could muster. Female gangsters like her could drive people up a wall if she really wanted to.

While Chaos Moon was giggling, Gui Guzi had already put on my equipment and learned Barrier Break. Then, he passed my equipment to Xu Yang. Xu Yang just barely crawled into Level 120 a short while ago, so he was overjoyed to be able to learn Barrier Break. After Li Chengfeng, High Fighting Spirits, Eighteen Steeds of You and Yun, and Chaos Moon learned Barrier Break as well, my equipment finally returned to my hands, and thank god for that. Chaos Moon’s gaze was really starting to make me feel uncomfortable.

Xu Yang waved his sword at the air in front of him and let out a shout. A bloody, cone-shaped light immediately appeared at the tip of his sword and penetrated the air. It was none other than Barrier Break of course. The skill was as gorgeous as it was useful. A low-level skill wouldn’t have this level of visual effects attached to them.

"Hahaha…"

Xu Yang laughed like a madman. "This is awesome! If I had to rely on myself, I might not be able to learn this skill even if I was Level 150! Lu Chen, your equipment is seriously awesome, hahaha…"

High Fighting Spirits also copied Xu Yang’s movement and stabbed the air in front of him. Again, a bloody, cone-shaped light appeared at the tip of his battle axe. The visual effect did look incredibly cool.

At this point, Gui Guzi, Li Chengfeng, Chaos Moon, and Eighteen Steeds of You and Yun couldn’t hold back anymore. They also showed off their Barrier Break in front of me.

Chiang!

Not to be outdone, I unsheathed the Heaven-stealing Sword and smiled. "Looks like I need to teach you noobs what a real Break looks like…"

They didn’t understand what I meant, but that was fine. After I activated Universe Break, an Eight Trigrams formation appeared beneath my feet, and I thrust forward to conjure an indigo-colored, cone-shaped energy in front of my sword. Beautiful puffs of air also circled the skill as it cut through the air. Long story short, Universe Break’s visual effect was much cooler than Barrier Break’s!

"Wa…"

Chaos Moon’s mouth fell open for a moment. Then she walked up to me and pulled my arm with both hands. "What is that skill, Lu Chen? It’s so beautiful! Can I learn it?"

I shook my head. "I’m sorry, but you can’t. It’s a unique skill that only the Undead Swordsman class can learn. More specifically, it’s what my ‘Desperate Gambit’ evolved into..."

"Uuuu…" Chaos Moon sounded incredibly displeased. "It’s so unfair. I can’t believe you got to learn such a beautiful skill. You’re going to break so many hearts with this, you womanizer…"

I stared at her. "Skills are used to kill players and mobs, girl. Whoever told you it’s used to break hearts? Even if I could, I would never use such a low pickup tactic…"

Everyone laughed until Li Chengfeng said, "Seriously though, this Coldblade War is incredibly rewarding, and our guild was the biggest winner of them all. At least 40 of our players are over Level 120, and practically all of them have completed their fifth promotion quests. In fact, we have the most number of fifth-promotion players in the world right now!"

I smiled. "Yeah, so let’s grind hard and maintain our lead, everyone. Speaking of which, it’s probably time to expand our sub-guilds. Xu Yang, please discuss this with our guild members and select five reliable players to become the guild leaders. The plan is to increase our number of sub-guilds by five in one go and grind up their ranks as quickly as possible. After all, we can’t fight in Nation Wars with just the main guild and Bloody Mercenaries alone."

Xu Yang nodded and said in English, "OK, I GOT IT!"

Gui Guzi, Li Chengfeng, High Fighting Spirits, Eighteen Steeds of You and Yun, and me immediately stared at him in shock. "What the fuck, since when can you speak English? That’s amazing!"

……

It was at this moment a system announcement suddenly dinged above the city—

Ding~!

System Announcement: All players, please be informed that player "Wind Fantasy" has killed the Spirit Rank boss, Odala the Wild Soul and summoned its territory. The territory is located at location (47893, 90483) of Sky City, and is temporarily occupied by the Dark Elves. Defeat the Dark Elves and take control of the guild hall for 5 hours to obtain permanent ownership of the guild territory!

……

We exchanged disbelieving glances with each other until Xu Yang sucked in a deep breath and broke the silence. "Holy shit, Beauty Lin is amazing. She literally murdered the second guild territory of Sky City into existence. What do we do?"

Li Chengfeng placed his Tempest Sword on his shoulder and declared, "Do you even need to say it? Snowy Cathaya is our closest ally. Let’s rally our people and help her take over this guild territory right now!"

I opened the world map and put the coordinates in. I discovered that it was situated at the end of Dragonbone Mountain Range and was right at the border between our city and Vanished God City’s domain. To its left was a monster-infested forest, and to its right was a blue and vast unexplored area. The territory was surrounded by high-level mobs, and it was at most half an hour away from Dark Moon City. This meant that it was possible for both cities to reinforce each other if necessary. Long story short, the territory was a great one, and we absolutely had to secure it for Snowy Cathaya. We wouldn’t have it any other way. If it fell into enemy hands, we would have a foe just half an hour away from us. Who could rest easy with an enemy so close to them?

Ding~!

As expected, Lin Yixin had sent me a message: "SOS, dear…"