A number of system announcements resounded across Sky City, Vanished God City, Wind City and Hot Sand City at the same time. It was the final result of the contest for the Cities of Heaven—

Ding~!

System Announcement: Attention all players, player "Farewell Song" (China) is the final holder of the City Lord Token. Their belonging guild, "Warsky Alliance" will own Gold City for 30 days!

Ding~!

System Announcement: Attention all players, player "From Water" (China) is the final holder of the City Lord Token. Their belonging guild, "Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls" will own Silver City for 30 days!

Ding~!

System Announcement: Attention all players, player "Wind Fantasy" (China) is the final holder of the City Lord Token. Their belonging guild, "Snowy Cathaya" will own Bronze City for 30 days!

Ding~!

System Announcement: Attention all players, player "Hundred Battler" (China)[1] is the final holder of the City Lord Token. Their belonging guild, "Candle Dragon"will own Dark Steel City for 30 days!

……

There was one final system announcement—

Ding~!

System Announcement: In descending order, the final contribution point ranking of the Cities of Heaven event is as follows—Luo River God of the Capital, Broken Halberd Sinks Into Sand, Legendary Brave, Candlelight Shadow, Warsky, Lian Xing, Beiming Xue, Gui Guzi, October Rain and Wind Fantasy.

The first place, Luo River of the Capital, is rewarded with "Spirit Heat Wristguards" (Archean Immortal-grade, Outstanding★★★★★★), Level +3, Luck +3. The second place, Broken Halberd Sinks Into Sand is rewarded with "Battle Maniac Poleyns" (Archean Immortal-grade, Outstanding★★★★), Level +2, Luck +2. The third place, Legendary Brave is rewarded with "Soul Breaker Cloak" (Archean Immortal-grade, Outstanding★★★), Level +1, Luck +1. Congratulations to all the winners of this event! The Cities of Heaven map will be entering a 10-hour maintenance in 30 minutes!

……

Pa!

I sat on top of a stone disc and planted the Chill of the Nine Provinces on the floor. I took out the Battle Maniac Poleyns I received as a reward and tossed them into Chaos Moon’s hands, saying, "Give this to Fighting Spirits when you see him. His defense and resistances are shit, and this Battle Maniac Poleyns give 70% Defense and 35% spell resistance [2]. He’ll want it."

Beiming Xue sat down beside me and consoled me, "Warsky Alliance got the Gold City in the end, but don’t be sad, okay big bro?"

I shook my head. "I won’t. So what if Warsky Alliance gets the Gold Cavalry? The Silver City’s Heart of the Holy Mages is the perfect counter to it. When we get back, we’re gonna train a ton of mages with Heart of the Holy Mages and shut up all those naysayers who claim that our mages are weak. Speaking of which, come closer, Little Xin. I want to talk about something with you.

“I’m going to transfer you the main controls of Silver City. We now have you, Moonlight Stone and Yu Tong as the faces of our mages, so I’m going to leave it up to your three to build our mage army. Mages with Heart of the Holy Mages are extremely powerful, so do your best to train up as many of them as possible."

Lian Xin let out a giggle. "No worries, big brother Lu Chen! I promise you we’ll have a super mage legion ready to deal with Warsky Alliance’s Gold Cavalry in less than a month’s time!"

Beside us, Li Chengfeng chuckled. "Hehe. As Lu Chen says, Heart of the Holy Mages is the perfect counter to the Gold Cavalry. They can train up as many Gold Cavalrymen as they want. When the battle line is engaged, and the God Devil Breaks and Galaxy Storms start flying, Warsky Alliance’s the one who has to ask themselves if they’re tough enough to survive our bombardment."

In front of the mill, Farewell Song slowly appeared into view before leaning against the wind mill with both arms behind his head. "Don’t you worry. Warsky Alliance will do everything to scale the totem of power. Who knows, maybe our Gold Cavalry will give you optimistic fellows a ‘pleasant’ surprise!"

Li Chengfeng shrugged. "Do try. Our Dragonlight Cavalry hasn’t encountered a worthy opponent since the start of the game. We’ll welcome any challenge with open arms."

Gui Guzi taunted Farewell Song, "I don’t know where you get your confidence from. Gold City can only train one Gold Cavalryman per hour, meaning that you can train a total of 720 Gold Cavalry at most even if we give you an entire month to prepare. Forget our guild, I alone can handle all of them."

Farewell Song: "..."

Beep!

He Yi sent me a message: "I’m giving everyone a 10-hour break, so please tell your men to return to Dark Moon City and log out of the game, Lu Chen. By the way, Silver City can only produce one Heart of the Holy Mages per hour. We need to find a way to speed up the production, or it won’t be worth it..."

"Mn, got it. I’m logging out now."

"Kay~"

I rose to my feet and said to all the Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls players around me, "Thanks for all the hard work, everyone! Guild leader has given us a 10-hour break, so please don’t hesitate to return to Dark Moon City and catch your beauty sleep. After that, feel free to visit our brand new Silver City. The real competition will begin then."

Everyone cheered before pulling out their return scrolls and teleporting back to Dark Moon City.

I didn’t leave immediately because there was still one thing I needed to do. I transferred the 50 million RMB I received from Luo River God of the Capital back to her account before calling her on voice chat, "Sorry, Sister Wang Luo. We grew lax during the last moment and gave Warsky the chance to steal Gold City from right under our nose. I’ve returned your money since we failed to uphold our side of the agreement. Let’s try again next month!"

Wang Luo chuckled. "Thanks, but I don’t blame you for the failure. Ancient Sword has fought against Candle Dragon, Hall of Immortality, Pop Culture, Dark Mercenaries and finally Warsky Alliance throughout this event. If your strength hasn’t been depleted from all these battles, I’m sure you could’ve dealt with Warsky Alliance’s divebombing tactic easily. It’s also my fault for using up most of Purple Lily’s forces during the earlier battle against Candle Dragon and Warsky Alliance. Anyway, thank you again for everything. As you say, we’ll try again next month!"

"Yeah. See you sometime!"

I smiled after turning off the voice chat. Purple Lily might’ve lost most of their players and still failed to seize the ultimate prize, but Luo River God of the Capital had walked away as the biggest individual winner of this event. It was because she went all out that her contribution points had surpassed even mine by a significant amount. On a related note, poor Beauty Lin was unable to score a good placement despite owning the Crimson Crystal Dragon. It was due to a lack of competition. After all, how could she accrue a good amount of contribution points when there were no enemies to kill?

……

Swhoosh!

I teleported back to Dark Moon City after that. No matter what happened, Dark Moon City would always be our true headquarters. The city was currently undergoing the upgrade to Rank 11, and I hoped to be pleasantly surprised when the process was complete.

I logged out at the territory hall because it was the safest place of all places.

I removed my gaming helmet and felt as tired as a dog. It was noon right now, but I didn’t care. I could adjust my bioclock another day.

I stepped out of the room and entered the living room. He Yi and Murong Mingyue were sitting at the sofa, and Lian Xin was taking a bath. I stopped behind He Yi, massaged her shoulders and said, "You all must be exhausted after staying online for so long, so stay here while I’ll go downstairs to buy some lunch. We can sleep after we fill our stomachs."

He Yi nodded smilingly. "Sure! I can’t wait to eat the lunch you bought."

I smiled back. "Mn. Go take a bath or something in the meantime. I’ll be back very soon."

"Okay!"

……

I was still wearing the Versace-brand clothes Lin Yixin had bought me, and I didn’t feel like changing right now. So, I went downstairs right away and stepped outside. The fresh air and the lazy midday sun invigorated me almost immediately. It reminded me that I shouldn’t spend all their time on games when there could be other things to enjoy in life. Of course, I didn’t mean that I should give up on gaming completely, especially because it was the starting point of my dreams. Well, this is life. It’s impossible to lead the healthiest possible life all the time.

I looked around as I walked along the streets. A while later, I decided to order food from a nearby Anhui cuisine restaurant.

There was a surprising amount of people in the restaurant. I had to wait in a queue for my turn to order my food. A while later, a fairly pretty waitress walked up to me and asked, "Are you booking or are you eating here, handsome?"

I shot her a polite smile before replying, "Takeaway. Can you hand me the menu please?"

"Sure!"

I ordered six dishes of both the light and the spicy kind in total. Then, I sat at the chair near the entrance and waited for my food to be prepared. While watching my phone to pass the time, I noticed that the forums were bustling with activity right now. There was a highlighted title that stated: Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls loses the Gold City to Warsky Alliance despite joining hands with Purple Lily and Peach Garden. Is this the rise of Warsky Alliance?

I gritted my teeth. The poster of this thread had avoided mentioning the ridiculous amount of opponents we had fought before we tackled Warsky Alliance, not to mention that we had started with a pure cavalry troop at first. Moreover, Warsky Alliance had managed to occupy the city at the beginning only because Candle Dragon had invested most of their efforts in taking out Purple Lily and Peach Garden’s main forces first. It had no direct correlation with their guild strength at all.

I was pretty sure that the administrator who stickied this thread at the top had been bribed by Warsky, and I was right. The administrator was named Free Swimmer, and I heard that he was Warsky’s subguild leader[3]. To be fair, it wasn’t a bad idea to have someone in control of the forums in your pockets. There was also another stickied thread by Warsky that was just as popular as the one about our "defeat"—

Summoning All Heroes! ~Thread Poster: Warsky (Stickied)

Content:

“Brothers and sisters of the China server, thank you all for your continuous support! Half an hour ago, Warsky Alliance has finally seized Gold City from the hands of Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls, Purple Lily, Peach Garden and Candle Dragon. This means that Warsky Alliance will be the only guild in the China server who has the Gold Cavalry. We will continue working hard to make sure that we don’t betray all those who expect great things from us.

“Currently, the China server is in control of one Hot Sand City, the former main city of Vietnam and a hinterland of the Northern Alliance. However, there is no doubt that the wolves of Hero City, Burning City, Seven Star City and more are just waiting for the right opportunity to retake the ground we’ve gained. As a Top 3 guild of the China server, it is our responsibility to ensure that doesn’t happen. Therefore, I, the guild leader of Warsky Alliance hereby summon all the heroes of China to join us. All players who are within the Top 100 of Heavenly Ranking or any power ranking may shoot me a private message to join Warsky Alliance immediately. In return for your services, we offer a starting monthly salary of 50k at least. Let us spill our blood, sweat and tears together and contribute our strength to the China server! The doors of Warsky Alliance will always be open to you!

1. T/N: looks like Hundred Battler really has defected to Candle Dragon

2. T/N: don’t ask me why it’s not Magic Resist, I’m just the translator. I’ve translated a game where damage mitigation and damage reduction exist in the same game, so I can’t say this is wrong

3. E/N: Some people may call this reveal random, but since the beginning of the novel, Warsky was very often within the first 3 comments of the important threads. Recently the narrative even joked that Warsky must have been really busy because he wasn’t one of the first commenters. Now we know how he’s been doing that