"Shock Arrow, go! Stun that motherfucker called Lu Chen!"

Now and Forever shouted while shooting Ghastly Plague at me himself. This skill was extremely imbalanced, and its slowing effects were better than your standard Freezing Arrow. Its weakness was that it took slightly longer than Freezing Arrow to channel, and it traveled in an arc, not a straight line. Therefore, it was possible to dodge.

Pa!

The Armored Ice Qilin Horse abruptly zigzagged according to my control and successfully dodged Now and Forever’s Ghastly Plague. Now that the timing was right, I locked onto the closest warrior to me and Charged!

Swhoosh! Lightning rippled behind me as I slammed into the enemy frontline. At the same time, six or seven knights swung their shields at me!

Bang!

The impact caused a gust of wind, but I managed to block them all without a hitch. My Strength giga-boosted by several Divine Armaments and Archean Immortal-grade equipment, so there was no way a couple of normal players would be able to threaten me.

War Crush!

Three bloody shockwaves erupted in a 5x5 yard area and one-shot all the Sword Lord of Jianghu players around me. That was how high my Attack was with Martial God!

Buzz!

A Level 184 high-level magic knight raised his shield and shouted, "I’ll stop him! Archers, get serious already and stun him!"

I immediately felt increased pressure on my left arm and the Dragon God Shield. Despite my best attempts to weave around the arrow rain, at least several hundred archers were shooting at me from close range. Of course I wouldn’t be able to dodge all of them. The good news was that I wasn’t stunned despite having tanked a dozen or so Shock Arrows.

Whoosh! A column of fire swirled around the Purple Ying Sword, and I fired Burning Blade Slash at the Level 184 magic knight as I laughed. "You think you can stop me? Who the fuck do you think you are?"

Chiang!

The first strike alone knocked his shield sideways. The next two strikes straight up penetrated his torso and exploded him and the players standing behind him. My damage was so high that an entire group of players saw damage numbers at least 80k or higher rising above their heads.

Now and Forever gritted his teeth and fired Hellish Tribulation at me. It was a 10-yard-wide AoE skill, and this time, I wasn’t able to dodge out of the way!

79932!

I had to admit that his Magic Attack was strong and painful. Not only that, a group of fighters immediately surrounded me and hit me with their Barrier Breaks.

38188!

21992!

54727!

……

My Defense was high, but no one could tank this many attacks without losing a significant amount of HP. My health dropped below half in an instant.

But instead of retreating, I retaliated with my own Barrier Break and successfully skewered two magic knights in one hit. Even better, it was a critical hit, so the damage numbers and lifesteal numbers were shocking to say the least—

290283!

+43542!

302824!

+45423!

The 15% lifesteal of the Purple Ying Sword was just fantastic. It was always nice to heal via dishing out even more damage! I bet Sword Lord of Jianghu is in a world of hurt right now!

Pa!

Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay lucky forever. My body suddenly froze up, and I got the notification that I was stunned for 1.75 seconds—and this was after my stats had reduced the stun duration—by a Shock Arrow. It didn’t look like much, but I was an unmoving target being targeted by hundreds, if not thousands of archers and mages! This could easily be the end of me!

Now and Forever laughed as he ordered, "Kill him now!"

Another arrow rain hit my Dragon God Shield, and the system notified me that I had been stunned 7 times in a row. Fuck! If this continues, I might just be chain-stunned until death!

So, I controlled my apparition to exit Earth Escape and launch its attack! The very first skill I used was Purple Dragon Howl!

"Roar!"

Purple Dragon Howl killed or wounded countless enemy players and dealt a ton of damage. Not done yet, I controlled the apparition to fall back until its 3-second weakness period was over before following up with Coiling Dragon Revolution and Burning Blade Slash. It instantly tore a hole in Sword Lord of Jianghu’s defense line.

"Ignore his doppelganger and kill Lu Chen first!"

Now and Forever hated me. He hated me because Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls had destroyed Sword Lord of Jianghu’s dreams in the WEL, and I was the one who had played him like a fiddle in our 1v1 battle and humiliated him before his lord and master. For him, the only way to resolve this grudge was to kill me, and I was only too happy to oblige. There was nothing more I hated than people who willingly chose to become the minions of the government...

Galaxy Storms, Spiraling Arrow Blades and Barrier Breaks kept hitting my Dragon God Shield. There was nothing I could do because I was still stunned. Despite Murong Mingyue’s best efforts to keep me alive, my HP couldn’t rise higher than the 25% mark. It was seriously dangerous. All it took was a couple of lucky crits from the melee players to cost me a level.

It was at this moment the person I was waiting for finally showed up. Lian Xin had moved to a different corner of the battlefield before using Blink to teleport amid the enemies and raising her scepter. A ton of deadly spells such as Ice Spiral Matrix, Dimensional Storm and Gravity Trap instantly exploded around me and disrupted the attackers.

Swhoosh!

At the same time, a shiny arrow soared into the air. It split into a storm of arrows before raining down on the attackers like the rain. It was of course Beiming Xue’s seventh-promotion skill, Skypiercer!

The Skypiercer’s range was insane. It enveloped a small half of the forest clearing and dealt an insane amount of damage—

162626!

282768!

172644!

……

Now and Forever was shocked. "What the fuck! Is this really Skypiercer? Since when is Skypiercer so powerful? Most people only deal around 10 to 20k damage!"

I snickered on the inside. Beiming Xue had the ridiculously powerful Windchaser set and the Archean Immortal-grade Ice Soul Feather that boosted her Skypiercer’s damage by 100%. This meant that her "normal" Skypiercer was equal to another archer’s critting Skypiercer, and when she did crit—in her particular case, it was about 30% of her shots—that was 4 times more damage than normal!

Finally, Beiming Xue was riding the Dragonscale Beast, which boosted her already insane Attack to even greater heights. She was the living nightmare of all foot soldier!

Now and Forever trembled all over. "Kill them! Stop them at all costs!"

Swhoosh!

Suddenly, a fiery red cone struck Now and Forever and left a deep gash on his body. It was none other than He Yi hitting him with Barrier Break. She wasn’t able to land the full hit and so didn’t one-shot him, but he was brought low enough that he had to withdraw in panic. The magic swordsman, Amber Pupil, rushed toward her with ice surrounding his sword, but He Yi easily parried his attack and retaliated with Purgatory of Ice and Magma!

"Fuck!"

Amber Pupil had completely underestimated He Yi. He didn’t expect her to counter his attack so quickly and so easily. Left with no choice, he crossed his sword in front of himself and Guarded!

The five waves of mayhem cut through a crowd of players. No one survived except Amber Pupil himself.

Swhoosh!

When Beiming Xue fired her second Skypiercer, I could see that Sword Lord of Jianghu was about to break into tears.

Meanwhile, I had finally woken up from the chain-stun. I should’ve known better to charge myself, I supposed. The moment I recovered, I ignored the enemy’s attacks and galloped toward the enemy’s main group. Since I had hidden my left palm behind my cape, they didn’t see the golden seals falling down from the sky until it was too late. Screams filled the air yet again.

I fired off 17 seals in a row. My ID was blood-red because this was a massacre and not a fair battle by any means. It didn’t matter though. I could easily clear my name by entering the A4 instance and killing the mobs.

Not willing to fall behind, Beiming Xue unleashed Well of the Abyss that caught a group of charging knights perfectly. The funny part was the knights at the back were unable to stop themselves in time and stumbled into the skill. It really was an abyss; a bottomless hole.

"Lian Xin, get ready!" Beiming Xue shouted.

Lian Xin chuckled. "Don’t worry. My greater spells are at the ready!"

As she promised, she unleashed Dimensional Storm + Galaxy Storm + Ice Spiral Matrix that absolutely annihilated the magic knights who were released from Well of the Abyss. They didn’t even have time to split out and run before the damage numbers rose above their heads, and their screams filled the air.

Swhoosh swhoosh swhoosh!

Speaking of which, I dropped three Icy Cyclone Domains around the girls to mark our territory and warn the enemy not to approach our three ranged attackers, or else. These days, even Icy Cyclone Domain did at least 50k+ per hit because its damage was based on my Attack. It definitely wasn’t something most players could charge through.

……

Finally, after losing a couple hundred players, Sword Lord of Jianghu finally realized that they didn’t have the power to defeat us.

Now and Forever gritted his teeth for a moment before growling, "Prepare to retreat! It’s pointless to fight any longer. Next time, we’ll bring our mage party with us to kill them!"

Before he left, he threatened us, "Don’t think you’ve won, Lu Chen. Just you wait, we’ll wipe you the moment you come out of A4!"

It was the usual. Their lines might differ a bit, but it was more or less the same meaningless threats every time.

I watched the receding players and let out a sigh. Then, I said to He Yi, "They talk like we’ll stay around to greet them after we finish A4. How stupid do they think we are? Of course we will teleport back to Dark Moon City once we’ve finished the instance."

He Yi giggled. "We should go. Honestly, we should avoid provoking people like him if possible. You know the saying, better to offend an honorable man than a dishonorable one."

I nodded. "Yeah, the worst kind of people are those who’ll stab you in the back when you aren’t looking. Anyway, let’s go, people! Oh right, tell Li Chengfeng and Gui Guzi to come over with the Dragonlight Cavalry and Dragonlight Archers. If Sword Lord of Jianghu really does return, we’ll just take their territory from them…"

Murong Mingyue rolled her eyes. "The Dragonlight Cavalry and the Dragonlight Archers? A thousand Dragonlight Cavalrymen is enough to turn them into grandsons, you know that right?"

"Hahaha…"

……

We laughed and entered the map. As it turned out, the A4 instance was nothing, especially when I was the tank.

We grinded until past midnight, and the Ancient Divine Dragon gained a couple of levels. It was around this time that Chaos Moon sent me a message and told me to go to sleep sooner. I hadn’t forgotten that we had come all the way here to sweep the graves, not to travel or play games. Otherwise, I would’ve brought Lin Yixin or He Yi with me, not Chaos Moon.