"Do we kill Dark Clouds Sorrow?" Li Chengfeng asked me from far away.

I nodded strongly. "Of course!"

"How should we do it?" Lin Yixin asked from a different corner of the battlefield.

I said with a smile, "I’ll sneak up on him from behind while you guys corner him from the front!"

"Didn’t know you knew how to sneak up on someone…"

……

She wasn’t entirely wrong. Ever since I completed my sixth-promotion quest, the number of times I ambushed someone could be counted on one hand. For one, I was a bright and honorable warrior who fought gloriously at the frontlines, so such skulduggery was beneath me. Two, I hadn’t needed it in a long time since I was confident that I could beat even a top-tier expert like Candlelight Shadow in a head-to-head battle.

However, Dark Clouds Sorrow wasn’t as skilled a fighter as Candlelight Shadow, but he was many times more strategic-minded than the latter. Since the beginning of this war, the guild leader had avoided direct contact with China’s best experts and focused on killing our second-rate experts only. Many people had fallen prey to him already, and even Heaven’s Rain had almost died by his hand. The fact that Dark Clouds Sorrow currently sat at the second place of Japan’s Nation War contribution point leaderboard was a testament to his murderous scheme.

"Here I go!"

Li Chengfeng charged straight toward Dark Clouds Sorrow after letting us know that he was going. When he got close, he zigzagged around Copper Spear and a couple more players who were guarding the guild leader before slamming three magic knights out of his way with a mighty swing. Finally, he thrust his Dark Blade toward Dark Clouds Sorrow’s chest and used Dragonbone Flurry!

"What?!"

Dark Clouds Sorrow was caught off-guard, but he was able to react in time. He made himself into a smaller target, Guarded the first and second hit of Dragonbone Flurry, and parried the last hit with a swing of his broadsword. After that, he thrust his palm toward Li Chengfeng and fired a close-range Trapping Net!

Li Chengfeng looked surprised, but his reaction was even swifter than Dark Clouds Sorrow’s. He grabbed his opponent’s arm, pulled, and jumped off his mount’s back like some sort of spirit ape, his legs drawing an arc across the air. He landed on the right side of the guild leader and successfully dodged the Trapping Net!

Whoosh!

Light erupted from Dark Clouds Sorrow’s sword as he plunged the weapon into the ground. A gigantic magic formation appeared out of nowhere, and Li Chengfeng and all the Chinese players near Dark Clouds Sorrow immediately took massive damage. It was Dark Clouds Sorrow’s Divine General Skill, Sky-reaching Formation. It had a long cooldown but great damage.

The skill killed almost all the China players around him, and even Li Chengfeng’s HP had dropped below the 35% mark. The dragon warrior hurriedly parried a blow from Dark Clouds Sorrow, let out a shout and used Dragonblade Revolution!

Dark Clouds Sorrow proved himself to be a great fighter by activating Holy Shield quickly and greatly reducing the damage taken from the signature skill of our dragon warrior. The swarm of Ivory Towers close to him also helped to dish out all the DPS he couldn’t do he was guarding. It was absolutely torturous to fight any Elephant City player with their point defense set up. The killing part was already difficult enough, but now we had to destroy towers too!

Ding ding ding...

Li Chengfeng backed away as a number of arrows plinked off his shoulder armor. He shouted, "I"m done! I leave the rest to y’all!"

Ice Flame Slash had slammed onto Dark Clouds Sorrow’s shield and knocked him backward even before Li Chengfeng was finished shouting. The guild leader stared at Lin Yixin and exclaimed in shock, "Beautiful Little Pepper?!"

The girl merely smiled and deleted another huge chunk of HP with God’s Tear.

"Protect the guild leader, protect the guild leader!"

A group of panicking Dark Clouds players ran toward Lin Yixin and blocked her way before she could continue to pursue Dark Clouds Sorrow. The guild leader himself was backing away and shouting to his priests, "Feed me now, quickly!"

Rustle rustle…

I was sneaking toward Dark Clouds Sorrow from underground while all this was going on. The guild leader never noticed me until it was too late. Right before he was about to catch some healing, I dashed out of the ground and pierced his back with the Purple Ying Sword. The indigo cone surrounding the weapon was the visual effect of Universe Break of course!

142992!

He was a magic knight, but the attack still nearly emptied his health bar.

"You!?"

Dark Clouds Sorrow turned around in shock, but he knew better than to fight me under these circumstances. He brought his shield to bear, but too bad for him, I already knew what he was going to do and had planned for it accordingly.

Pa!

My Divine Martial War Boots left a deep footprint on the ground as I jumped, kneed his shield into the air—he was mounted, by the way—and opened up his guard completely. Then, grabbing the hilt of my sword with both hands, I growled, "Die!"

Pu!

The blade sank into his chest, and three flaming auras burst out of his back and into the ground immediately. Three giant damage numbers rose above his head, and this time no amount of priest healing was enough to saving Dark Clouds Sorrow from being one-shot—

80838!

123987!

152672!

……

Dark Clouds Sorrow let out a bloodcurdling scream and slowly fell from his horse. At the same time, a melodious ring entered everyone’s ears—

Ding~!

System Announcement: Attention all players, player "Broken Halberd Sinks Into Sand" (China) killed the Temple Guard, player "Dark Clouds Sorrow" (India), and obtained 10% of their contribution points, 103890 points!

……

I was super happy to see my Nation War contribution points skyrocket like, well, a rocket. Dark Clouds Sorrow had killed so many people that 10% of contribution points easily made my throne even more unassailable than it already was. In a sense, I should literally thank him for his contribution.

I swung the Dragon God Shield in an arc and stopped countless arrows from hitting me directly as I withdrew. I summoned the Phantom Wolf King to cover for me, but unfortunately the enemy’s firepower was too concentrated, and my pet didn’t have any lifesteal. In less than two or three minutes, it was completely torn apart by the enemy’s Spiraling Arrow Blades and Galaxy Storms. This outcome was to be expected though. It wasn’t a divine beast, so it didn’t have the stats to survive a prolonged fight. And even if it was a divine beast, this was such a massive battle that I wouldn’t be surprised if it was overwhelmed faster than expected. As the saying went, two fists cannot beat four hands.

Behind me, China players continued to march forward and fight with everything they got. Even paper classes like mages and archers were marching forward to keep up with their frontliners and dish out more damage. And of course, our White Marsh Catapults and ballistae continued to rain hell atop the enemy. So much blood was shed from the dozen-kilometer-ong battle line that even the sky was turning red in color.

……

Crack! Crack!

A spurt of blood dirtied my shoulder as my blade cut through armor, flesh and bone. I looked to the side and found He Yi’s white robes completely dyed in red as well. However, the beautiful guild leader continued swinging her spear relentlessly and wiped out many enemy’s troops and Ivory Towers. It was thanks to her we were able to push forward continuously.

TheIvory Towers killed many Dragonlight Cavalrymen and left a constant ache in my heart. Some distance away, even uncle Hot and Sour Noodles was fighting with blood-shot eyes. The battle was so fierce that practically everyone was lost in bloodlust.

The battle lasted almost 4 hours, but thanks to our army’s powerful and unrelenting pushes, we were able to deplete the enemy’s Ivory Towers before Snowy Cathaya and Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls dispatched a total of a hundred thousand cavalrymen to cut off their retreat. In the end, we were able to rout Dark Clouds and almost a hundred enemy guilds completely.

Elephant City’s war goddess Flowing Cloud was killed by Nangong Lexi with the assistance of Lin Yixin. And so, Elephant City and Purple Grape City’s resistance on Wildfire Plains ended in complete failure.

……

It wasn’t long before there were barely any red names left on Wildfire Plains. Even still, practically everyone was hovering between middle to low health, and in dire need of both equipment repairs and potions. In fact, the first thing many players looted from the battlefield wasn’t equipment, but potions. The war wasn’t over yet after all.

After Hot and Sour Noodles rode up to me, he wiped the bloodstain on his face and said in a tired voice, "It’s finally over…"

I nodded in agreement. "Yeah…"

He Yi gazed into the distance before ordering, "Chaos Moon, get me a casualty report now!"

Chaos Moon blinked and did as ordered. A few minutes later, she said, "I have the report, guild leader. We’ve suffered massive losses this time…"

"How massive are we talking about?"

"First, we’ve lost over 4000 Dragonlight Cavalrymen. Less than 10000 of them are left."

I felt like someone just cut a piece of flesh from my body. "What else?"

Chaos Moon continued, "We lost almost 1000 Dragonlight Archers, over 90k Cyan Tiger Cavalrymen—meaning that less than half of them are left—and as much as 80% of all other types of cavalry. Our mages, archers, tamers and other classes are doing fairly well though. Most of our cavalry had died to the Ivory Towers…"

Li Chengfeng asked with a frown, "Fuck, that’s bad. Do we even have enough to siege the city later?"

Hot and Sour Noodles said, "That’s nothing compared to our losses. Righteousness had almost 270k cavalry at the start of the battle, and now there are less than 50k of them left…"

"How is Snowy Cathaya doing?" I looked at Lin Yixin next.

She replied with a smile, "It’s not bad. We lost exactly 50% of the Kui Dragon Cavalry, so only 6k of them are left. We lost over 50k Purple Dragon Cavalrymen, meaning that less than 20k are left. As for the rest… long story short, our total casualty rate is 78%, so we won’t be able to act as the main force anymore…"

Purple Lily’s Moonkiss reported while gripping her blood-stained dagger, "Purple Lily’s casualty rate is 81%. We lost far too many people this battle…"

Stranger of Three Lifetimes said, "We advanced slowly, so we only lost around 63% people."

Indigo Collar reported, "Peach Garden is on the brink of annihilation. It felt like we were committing suicide when we were charging the Ivory Towers…"

I swore, "Fuck their goddamn Ivory Tower tactic, seriously. At least Flowing Cloud and Dark Clouds Sorrow are both dead now. We can finally breathe easier now."

Suddenly, Hot and Sour Noodles’ eyes turned sharper. "I wonder. I just received news that our old friend, Russia, finally acted and took out one of Elephant City’s sister cities. They even managed to infiltrate Elephant City and destroy all their teleportation formations…"

"Oh?"

My eyes lit up in joy. "That’s wonderful news! Candle Dragon tried 4 times to destroy Purple Grape City’s teleportation formations to no avail because Red Maple’s defenses were too perfect. I was worrying how we should go about destroying it, and now you’re telling me the Frostsword City had taken out Elephant City’s teleportation formations? Whose strategy was this?"

Hot and Sour Noodles smiled but said nothing. Obviously, he was the one who secretly planned this.

Not long after that, we received another good news: Capitalizing on Cyan Earth City’s carelessness, Warsky Alliance had sneaked 70k elite cavalry across the sea and successfully destroyed all of their teleportation formations. If the India server still wished to reinforce Purple Grape City, they would have to make the trip on foot now!

I was happy. It was always entertaining to fight side-by-side with intelligent people, and both Hot and Sour Noodles and Warsky fell under that category. Finally, this war was starting to look hopeful!