Time passed quickly, and another three days passed by in the blink of an eye.

Everything was going smoothly according to the plan. After Beiming Xue, Lian Xin and me, He Yi and Murong Mingyue finally hit Level 180 and completed their seventh promotion quest as well. Speaking of which, priests gained a healing skill called the Life Heal that instantly restored a target’s HP to full at the cost of half their MP. The skill cooldown wasn’t particularly long or short—120 seconds—but it was still useful in PvP battles or boss fights.

As for magic knights, they gained a super imbalanced skill called "Trapping Net".

Trapping Net: Throw a holy net at a target and immobilize them for 7 seconds. The target can still attack and recover during this time. Cooldown: 30 seconds. Range: 20 yards.

The skill made seventh-promoted magic knights quite OP as landing a successful Trapping Net could easily mean the difference between victory or defeat. Professional player or not, getting caught by Trapping Net and being immobilized for 7 seconds was practically a death sentence to anyone. I could already imagine the birth of a new PvP tactic where 4 magic knights took turns to cast their Trapping Net on one target while their ranged allies shot them to death. Truly a disgusting tactic, tsk tsk!

At the very least, it was now necessary to pay attention to a magic knight’s movements when fighting outside a safe zone. Once a player allowed a magic knight to enter within 20 yards of them, they only had three choices: one, they leg it and put as much distance between themselves and the magic knight. Two, they use an invincibility skill and teleport back to their home city. Or three, trusting in their super resistance and inhuman reaction speed, they pull off the most scientific dodge possible and somehow dodge the skill in half a second. If they could do none of the above, then death was the only outcome.

……

The next morning, bright sunshine shone into the living room and put everyone in a cheery mood.

"Nngh! The crazy grind is finally over! I’m now a Level 180 magic knight, heehee!"

He Yi was sitting on the sofa and stretching her back with both arms raised. Consciously or not, the movement showcased her white skin, her beautiful mounds and her flat tummy perfectly. The magical sight was so stunning that I forgot to sip my tea for a moment.

The two younger girls in the household, Beiming Xue and Lian Xin, bowed their heads to hide their tears when they saw this. Like it or not, the gap between a young girl and a fully matured woman was night and day!

"Have all the things been carried downstairs?" He Yi asked me.

"Mn. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much ham and food in my life…" I cried manly tears as I complained, "What the fuck is wrong with sis anyway? Last night she dragged me to the supermarket with her three times—THREE!—and filled the entire trunk with food! How is it possible for someone to be this gluttonous!?"

He Yi giggled and grabbed my hand consolingly, "Calm down. It’s not a bad thing to have more food, this way your father and uncle will have less work to do. Also, I already told Mingyue that she and I will be cooking the dishes for New Year’s Eve dinner tonight."

"Mn. I’ll help out as well."

"Oh? You know how to cook?"

"Sure! You wash the rice and put it in the rice cooker, and I’ll press the on button for you!"

"..."

It was at this moment my phone rang. It was Lin Yixin.

"Beauty Lin?" He Yi asked me.

"Mn."

She immediately let go of my hand and said, "You’d better focus on the call then…"

Me: "..."

After I accepted the call, Lin Yixin’s sweet voice immediately entered my ears. "Are you awake, Little Cheat?!"

I replied, "Yep. I’ve been awake since an hour ago."

"Happy new year!"

"You too. Happy new year, Yiyi!"

"So, I’m going back to Shanghai to celebrate New Year’s with my parents! Let’s meet again next year!"

"Yeah, see you next year. I guess I won’t be driving you this time…"

"Little Cheat…"

"Yeah?"

"My dad bought me a car. Do you think I should take it?"

"That depends on the car, I guess. How much is it? Is it over a million?"

"You’re so despicable…" Lin Yixin giggled. "It’s a Porsche Panamera 4.8, the one with a ridiculously loud engine noise. I heard it’s the latest import model, and that it costs over 3 million RMB…"

My eyes widened. "Holy fuck, your dad is seriously rich, isn’t he?"

Lin Yixin giggled again. "Say, you wanna race me at Panshan Road when I come back?"

I gulped. "You serious? You want me to race your Panamera in my X12?"

"What, are you scared?" Lin Yixin let out an evil chuckle.

"Like hell!" I declared through gritted teeth. "I accept the challenge, but you’d better pay for my tires when the race is over! I don’t think you know how bad drifting is for tires…"

"OMG, you’re such a miser!"

I laughed. "Miser? No, this is just standard financial planning, okay?"

Lin Yixin let out another weird giggle and fell silent for a couple of seconds. Then, she said in a gentle voice, "So, when are you buying me a racing car, Little Cheat? I promise I’ll replace this Panamera immediately if you buy one for me!"

My eyes widened. "What did my poor wallet ever do to you? Sure, I might have owned Dark Moon City’s income some time ago, but things have changed a lot since then! These days, the accounts have become completely transparent, and I’m nothing more but a shareholder! Where on earth am I going to find the money to buy the car?"

"You have a shop at a prime location in Sky City, haven’t you?"

"It’ll still be half a year before I can earn enough money to afford a Panamera…"

"Hmph hmph!"

Another pause later, Lin Yixin asked me, "Have you eaten breakfast? You’ll grow fat if you eat too much though!"

I grinned before letting out a sigh. "Yiyi, what do you want to say to me, really?"

Lin Yixin suddenly stopped talking. Five whole seconds of silence later, she whispered, "I miss you."

"..."

I replied after a moment of silence, "I’m coming back to Suzhou tomorrow. What about you? I can visit you tomorrow morning in Shanghai if you want to."

"It’s fine, I’m going back the day after tomorrow, and I don’t want to make you travel so far like this."

"Okay…"

"Oh right, how are your WEL preparations going? Is Lenovo ready to meet all the challenges?" she asked cheerfully.

I declared confidently, "All five players in our main roster have finished their seventh-promotion quests. What do you think? Hehe, these WEL preliminaries are ours to take!"

Lin Yixin immediately taunted, "So what? We have four seventh-promotion players ourselves! Hmph hmph, you’d better pray you don’t run into us too soon! Purple Marquis and Shadow Chanel may not necessarily lose to you!"

"Well… see you in the finals then. Whoever loses will treat the other one to dinner and hold the room card, if you get what I mean…"

"..."

Lin Yixin was speechless for a second, but she quickly recovered and chided me, "Bastard! I’m allowed to tease you, but you’re not allowed to tease me back, understand?"

"Fuck, this sounds pretty unfair…"

The call ended with Lin Yixin’s giggles after that.

……

Back in the living room, He Yi gave her coffee-colored skin-tight skirt a pull before saying with obvious jealousy, "Is it just me, or are Lu Chen and Beauty Lin looking more and more like the perfect couple?"

Beiming Xue looked up and replied with her bread still in her mouth, "Don’t feel down, Sister Eve. I think you and big bro fit each other pretty well too…"

Lian Xin said, "Yeah! Boss is the best match for Lu Chen! Big brother Lu Chen, do you like boss?"

I looked at He Yi before replying, "Well… Of course I do…"

"You womanizer…" Lian Xin rolled her eyes as she commented.

It was at this moment Murong Mingyue walked out of her room. Normally a down-filled garment would be enough to "flatten" any curve so to speak, but that wasn’t the case for her. She was just that big. She said, "Stop pressing Lu Chen already. It’s not his fault both Eve and Beauty Lin are peerless beauties, and he was unlucky enough to fall in love with both of them. He’s only going to feel guilty and regret if he gives up on either one of them…"

I drank my tea and said nothing to that.

He Yi rose to her feet and replied with a smile, "It’s just as you say, I suppose. Anyway, it’s time to go. We need to reach Yonglezhen before noon. It’s been a while since we’ve been there."

"Yeah. Let’s go!"

……

He Yi and I took the Lamborghini while Murong Mingyue, Beiming Xue and Lian Xin took the X12. The five of us formed a party and left to grind the pure, untainted map that was Yonglezhen.

It was a smooth journey all the way, and we didn’t encounter many cars on the highway because it was New Year’s Eve. We reached my hometown before 12 pm, and our presence attracted a lot of neighbors.

Every girl who accompanied me was extraordinarily beautiful and bright, and their fashionable attires caused the uncles and aunties to gossip like they never before in their lives. There were over-the-top praises like, "I’ve worked in the paddy fields, the towns, and the cities over half my life, and I’ve never seen this many pretty girls in one place until today", or loaded questions like, "So, which one of you is Lu Chen’s girlfriend?" Long story short, the girls were barely able to keep their cool, but it was only a matter of time before their embarrassment meter was overloaded.

I myself was feeling pretty embarrassed as I said, "No, I didn’t bring my girlfriend today. They’re just my colleagues. They’re here because they want to experience our countryside customs and New Year’s Eve celebrations…"

The experience began almost immediately as we steamed buns and wrote couplets. He Yi and I wrote two couplets each, but hers was so much prettier than mine that I felt like hiding myself in a hole.

These days it was easy to find a woman who dressed well, but much harder to find a woman with beautiful handwriting. I already knew that He Yi’s handwriting was amazing, but I didn’t realize that her calligraphy was just as elegant and powerful until now. Even Beiming Xue was misled into thinking that she was born in a family of calligraphers.

……

When evening arrived, He Yi and Murong Mingyue took over the preparations for the reunion dinner. To say that they were the perfect examples of successful women was an understatement. These girls could rule an office, work a kitchen, write code, investigate leads, murder trojan horses, climb over fences, drive luxurious cars, afford new houses, kick their mistress’s butts and beat the crap out of gangsters. What more could one possibly ask for?

The reunion dinner ended on a joyous note. After everything was cleaned up, He Yi and I sat down with my father and third uncle and played mahjong until very late in the night. Both He Yi and I lost over 2000 RMB, and our third uncle was so delighted he couldn’t stop praising our "thoughtfulness”...

……

The next morning, New Year’s Day, I drove my dad in my X12 and visited all our relatives. When the New Year call was done, we ate another reunion lunch before finally returning to Suzhou. The group stage of the WEL and the domestic elimination matches began tonight and would last for three days. In the end, four strongest teams would be chosen as China’s representatives and sent to participate in the internationals, also known as the offline matches. In fact, assuming we were chosen as a representative, we might have to travel overseas to participate!