However, Candlelight Shadow smiled and motioned at the forests and mountain ranges around us. "Lu Chen, you’ve only brought 70k cavalry troops with you, and you’ve lost almost 10k during the earlier battles. Do you really think you can destroy Candle Dragon with a force so small? The Dragonlight Cavalry may be strong, but they are definitely not the strongest unit in the game."

I scanned the surroundings with Dark Pupils. There were an incredible amount of red dots concealed within the forests and mountain ranges, which meant Candle Dragon hadn’t revealed all of their forces despite having come to assault Gold City. He was fighting Warsky Alliance, so I understood why he had decided to keep some cards close to his chest. In fact, Warsky Alliance had inadvertently screwed themselves over by claiming the City Lord Token too early and making them the public enemy of the day.

……

"Those players are… Hall of Immortality?"

I smiled. Some of his troops were hidden, but some weren’t. Rows and rows of Hall of Immortality cavalrymen started marching out of the forest edges. I caught a glimpse of Rose of the Holy Domain and Throne Seeker as well. They were Candle Dragon’s trusted allies, and their appearance made it obvious that they were going to do everything in their power to seize Gold City for Candle Dragon. Whatever Candlelight Shadow had promised them, it had to be incredibly good.

In the sky, Li Chengfeng hovered somewhere to my top right and whispered to me, "Lu Chen, I count at least ten different Candle Dragon allied forces in the area. They haven’t moved a muscle for the past twenty hours, probably because they were waiting for us."

High Fighting Spirits waved his battle axe and spat. "So what? Hall of Immortality and Throne Seeker are just trash! Let’s take the fight to them and kill them all!"

I hurriedly stopped him. "Calm down, Fighting Spirits. I bet you 100 RMB that Hall of Immortality’s eighth-promotion assassins have laid a million Freezing Traps, Blazing Traps and more in the forest, and they are just waiting for us to trigger them all. The Dragonlight Cavalry is powerful, but there’s no way we can assault multiple entrenched and fortified armies, not to mention that we have almost no healing at all. We would be doing exactly what Candlelight Shadow wants if we attacked them."

Gui Guzi placed a hand on his Dark Crystal Dragon’s head and asked, "Should we just stay here and focus on attacking Candle Dragon then?"

"Exactly!"

I nodded strongly and pointed toward Gold City. "All we need to do is to cooperate with Warsky Alliance and take out Candlelight Shadow, God’s Dance and everyone else in front of us. This will be easy as long as we don’t fall for the enemies’ taunts."

"Got it!"

"Charge!"

……

We ignored Candlelight Shadow’s taunts and charged Candle Dragon’s formation again and again, and it proved to be very effective. In a head-on battle, Candle Dragon couldn’t really endure our attack not only because the Dragonlight Cavalrymen were strong, but also because we had multiple Ancient Divine Skill owners and two newly minted dragon knights. Had He Yi been able to join us, this battle would have been over already. Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls currently possessed four dragon knights in total, or three high-level dragon knights and one Ancient Divine Dragon Knight to be exact. On the other hand, Candle Dragon only had Candlelight Shadow.

"Kill Candlelight Shadow!"

Gui Guzi was the most impulsive among us, and he showed it by flying deep behind enemy lines and reaping their lives with his spear. His amazing defensive stats and powerful recovery skills like Undying Shield made him nigh unkillable.

Furious, Candlelight Shadow shot to the air and stopped right above Gui Guzi. Displaying an uncanny level of skill for aerial combat, he was able to land a picture perfect Blazing Purgatory Slash on Gui Guzi’s chest armor and deal over 1.5 million damage. Unfortunately for him, Gui Guzi’s Undying Shield converted 750k of that into HP.

"Die!"

Candlelight Shadow’s eyes narrowed as flames erupted from the sword hilt and surrounded his blade. It was Shattering Sword and Shield!

Crack!

He stabbed Gui Guzi through his shield and out of his back. The skill couldn’t be guarded, so Gui Guzi took another 1.2 million damage. However, the latter still refused to die because he had an obscene amount of HP!

Buzz!

Finally, Candlelight Shadow activated his Heavenly River Transformation and prepared to use his SSS Rank Ancient Divine Skill, Pangu’s Axe!

There was no way Gui Guzi was going to be able to dodge this attack, and we were too far away from him to rescue him. He’s going to die!

Gui Guzi had a plan, however. As Pangu’s Axe took form, he smirked and raised the Ghostblade Halberd into the air. The next moment, a pair of bloody wings adorned his back, and he activated his S Rank Ancient Divine Skill, Shennong Tastes Grass, to heal him. His HP abruptly shot up by 75%—

+2259490!

Truly, this Shennong Tastes Grass was OP as hell. Gui Guzi grinned arrogantly at Candlelight Shadow and said, "You call yourself the Martial God, Candlelight Shadow? Hit me with your so-called SSS Rank Ancient Divine Skill then! Let’s see if you can actually one-shot me!"

Candlelight Shadow’s complexion turned purple with anger, but he obliged Gui Guzi’s wish and dropped the devastating energy on top of him and the hundreds of Dragonlight Cavalry behind him. The Ancient Divine Skill was powerful enough, but one must consider the splash effect as well!

2980064!

1783773!

1823767!

……

A ton of damage numbers rose to the air. Gui Guzi shuddered and dropped to red health in an instant. Even with the Dark Crystal Dragon, Gui Guzi nearly got one-shot because Candlelight Shadow had scored a critical hit.

The good news was that Candlelight Shadow definitely couldn’t one-shot Gui Guzi. The bad news was that the hundreds of unfortunate Dragonlight Cavalrymen behind him were all dead.

Li Chengfeng swore while knocking back an eighth promotion magic knight, "Fuck, Little Gui is about to die! Save him, Lu Chen!"

I was the closest person to Gui Guzi, and I leaped forward after activating Fusion Armor. Right before Candlelight Shadow could swing his weapon another time, I activated Cold of the Nine Provinces and filled the sky with snow!

Swhoosh swhoosh swhoosh!

All Candle Dragon players within 100 yards of me turned into ice. Candlelight Shadow, his Wind and Cloud Domain, as well as mid-animation Rock Thrust froze into ice sculptures as well. Usefulness aside, Cold of the Nine Provinces was definitely a visually appealing skill.

While Candlelight Shadow was frozen, I cut his body three times with Burning Blade Slash but wasn’t able to one-shot him because the Frozen status drastically improved his Defense—

276161!

348128!

382827!

However, Candlelight Shadow only had a little over 2.3 million HP, so I could definitely kill him with Xuanyuan Slash. Of all 99 Ancient Divine Skills, the Xuanyuan Slash was rated as the best of them all. It possessed an incredible amount of hidden Attack, and more importantly, it ignored Defense completely. It was the perfect skill to kill Candlelight Shadow before he could break out.

Swhoosh!

I saw Candlelight Shadow’s eyes narrowing behind the ice as the golden sword filled the sky. Clearly, he realized that I would be able to one-shot him with the skill.

Just in case he did survive, I dropped an Ancient Seal on top of his head before unleashing the Xuanyuan Slash. Now, his chance of surviving my attack was zero.

It wasn’t meant to be, however. During the 0.15 seconds it took for me to unleash the Xuanyuan Slash, a charm abruptly hit my shoulder armor and immobilized me. It was Ye Yuse’s skill, Hold!

The Xuanyuan Slash was canceled just like that. I was milliseconds away from killing Candlelight Shadow, but I failed all the same!

"I’ll cover your back, boss! Get back to our healers now!"

Ye Yuse yelled while stepping out of a shrubbery and dropping her spells on me. One of her offensive spells, God Suppressing Pagoda, hit my back and dealt over 300k damage. It was impressive considering that it was me she was hitting!

Hold canceled itself when the affected target was hit by an attack. However, Ye Yuse’s timing was perfect, and she was able to land another charm before I could move out of the way—Petrification!

Unfortunately for me, the spell took effect and turned me into a statue. I had no choice but to command my apparition to attack in my stead.

Thud!

My apparition’s foot impressed upon the earth like a comet and brought his sword down on Ye Yuse’s head. Universe Break!

……

Ye Yuse moved her left foot backward—revealing her pale leg while doing so—waved her scepter, and miraculously succeeded in parrying my Universe Break. She even managed to land Hold on my apparition while it was in the middle of using War Crush. Unfortunately for her, War Crush took effect first, and three hits later her HP nearly dropped to zero.

"OMG, Lu Chen’s Attack is crazy…"

As Ye Yuse backed away from my apparition, a group of Qiu Beast Cavalrymen blocked in front of her and yelled, "Please retreat, vice leader! We’ll take it from here!"

The brave and loyal fighters were able to hack my apparition to pieces before it could do anything else.

Crack!

Right as the stone skin imprisoning my true body shattered, Li Chengfeng and the others showed up and dropped their skills on my would-be attackers. After that, the battle became a war of attrition. Whoever held out to the last was the final victor.

……

"Boss Broken Halberd!"

Some time later, Gui Guzi suddenly pointed his Ghostblade Halberd to the east and said, "Look! Hall of Immortality’s archers are making a move!"

I turned around and saw at least 10000 Hall of Immortality archers raising their bows about 120 yards away from our units and using the Far Shot mode to fire their Spiraling Arrow Blades and Skypiercers. The harassment did put us in a bit of a predicament...

"Those stupid motherfuckers are courting death!"

High Fighting Spirits charged straight toward the archers while shouting, "Seventh squad, follow me!"

About 3000 Dragonlight Cavalrymen immediately obeyed the command and followed behind High Fighting Spirits. At the same time, High Fighting Spirits dropped Xing Tian’s Defiance on top of the enemy archers.

Boom!

Over a hundred enemies died instantly. However, they pulled back into the forest without hesitation.

……

"Oh shit. Stop chasing, Fighting Spirits!" Chaos Moon shouted.

Unfortunately, the warning came too late. High Fighting Spirits was a brave general, but he was more likely to disobey your orders than not. Throwing caution to the wind, he and the 3000 Dragonlight Cavalry rushed into the forest only to be consumed by an seemingly infinite amount of Freezing Traps and Blazing Traps. I knew it. Judging from the sheer size of the explosion, there were at least a thousand assassins lurking in the area. The eight-promotion skill of the Assassin class, Trap, was just too good.