A pure warrior party composition, eh. This should be easy.

I declared our strategy with a smile, “Beiming Xue will kite, and Li Chengfeng, Eve, and me will meet them halfway. Easy peasy.”

Li Chengfeng nodded in agreement. “That’s exactly what I’m thinking as well.”

It was simple but effective. Even if Beiming Xue wasn’t the famous Dark Archer, the enemy still had to kill her first to avoid being kited to death. Unfortunately for them, Li Chengfeng, He Yi and I would be blocking their way, so there was no chance they could ever succeed. Their meme party might be able to beat a weaker opponent, but never a powerful and scientific party like ours.

Swhoosh!

I growled and felt power surging throughout my body. The image of a war god rose above my head before it turned into a ring of light and landed around my feet. It was the Famous General Skill, Martial God, buffing everyone’s Attack and Magic Attack by 75%!

……

The system started counting down—

3!

2!

1!

Begin!

Beiming Xue immediately retreated to the back and loosed a couple of purple arrows in quick succession. When Evil Spirit Volley exploded in earnest, the Iron Mercenaries quickly discovered that the Dark Archer wasn’t to be underestimated—

3102!

2873!

3018!

……

Shocked, their guild’s leader, Iron War Tiger, shouted, “Brothers, we need to kill that Beiming Xue first! Her Attack is too high!”

Beiming Xue smiled sweetly as she retreated until she was exactly 40 yards away from the nearest enemy warrior. Then, she aimed at the ground in front of a charging warrior and loosed another arrow. Her prediction was perfect, and the arrow hit the female warrior called Iron Silver Fox square on!

3284!

Iron Silver Fox groaned and died just like that. Beiming Xue’s attack was just too much for her to endure.

At the same time, Li Chengfeng, He Yi, and I charged toward three clumped up warriors and fired our skills in unison!

4783!

4402!

4134!

These Level 100+ warriors all had around 8000 HP or so, but they weren’t nearly tanky enough to withstand our powerful attack. That single exchange was all it took to delete another three warriors from the battlefield.

The last warrior was still chasing Beiming Xue, but she constantly stayed out of reach and pumped arrows into his body like a deadly butterfly. In less than 15 seconds, he dropped to his knees and died as well!

Ding~!

System Notice: Congratulations, your party has won the first round of your first match. The second round will begin in two minutes!

……

Back at the orchard, Li Chengfeng commented with a smile, “God, that was so easy. We didn’t even get to drink a potion!”

I nodded in agreement. “Yeah, these Iron Mercenaries only have high levels, nothing else.”

Murong Minguye disagreed, “Actually, it only seems that way because your attack power is abnormally high. They would’ve done much better against a different party.”

Li Chengfeng and I laughed because Murong Mingyue’s assessment was more or less correct. Iron Mercenaries were actually pretty tanky, but they had the horrible luck of running into me. No ordinary Defense was ever going to hold up against my broken Famous General Skill, Martial God.

The second round began pretty soon, and everyone was teleported into the ring again. On the other side, the Iron Mercenaries stared at us with ugly expression for a moment before Iron Silver Fox spoke up, “I suppose it’s not the worst thing in the world to lose to the best experts of Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls…”

Li Chengfeng raised his sword and replied with a smile, “Sorry, it’s not like we’re doing this on purpose. Maybe you’ll run into a weaker party during the next Who Will Rise tournament.”

Iron War Tiger smiled a little. “Let’s go!”

The countdown reached zero, and this time it was we who initiated the offense. The three of us charged toward our respective opponents, and my target was the only one who managed to avoid being stunned. It didn’t matter though. I simply barreled into the enemy, swung my sword a couple of times and took them out, as easy as pie. Not far away, Murong Mingyue and Beiming Xue were working together to annihilate two warriors themselves. In just two minutes, we successfully routed the Iron Mercenaries without taking even a single point of damage!

It was a 2-0 victory!

Ding~!

System Notice: Congratulations, your party has advanced to the next preliminaries match!

……

In fact, we won our match so quickly that we had to wait another 14 minutes before the next match could begin. Each round had a 5-minute time limit, and most players probably hadn’t even finished their first round yet. Of course, 14 minutes wasn’t long, and our next opponent was displayed on the screen very soon—

Party: Blazing Hot Lips

Stranger Of Three Lifetimes LV-105 Mage

Nono LV-102 Archer

Scentless Water LV-101 Archer

Lasting LV-104 Soul Of The Wild

Eyes Like Water LV-104 Warrior

……

Li Chengfeng, He Yi and I immediately exchanged a glance with each other. What’s this? An all-female party?

The highest-leveled player in the enemy party, Stranger Of Three Lifetimes, was a female mage at the same level as Warsky. It would be unwise to underestimate her. She was joined by two archers and a Level 104 warrior, so clearly overwhelming firepower was the win condition of this party. Finally, they had a Level 104 tamer with a secret class called “Soul Of The Wild”!

“Interesting…” Li Chengfeng smiled. “Lu Chen, is it just me, or is this Blazing Hot Lips team actually a difficult opponent?”

I sucked in a deep breath before replying, “I’ve heard of Stranger Of Three Lifetimes before. She’s a mage in Ice Moon City, and she’s the only mage Luo River God of the Capital acknowledged as her equal. We also have to watch out for that Level 104 tamer. Keep your eyes open, everyone. This match isn’t going to be as easy as the first.”

He Yi nodded. “Who should we kill first?”

I said, “I’ll deal with Stranger Of Three Lifetimes. Chengfeng, the Soul Of The Wild is yours; prevent her from summoning her pets repeatedly at all costs. It’ll be bad if we got bogged down by her pets. Fourth-promotion Tamers aren’t easy to beat, especially this one with a secret class. I would rather not know how it feels like to face the full might of a Soul Of The Wild, and I imagine sis and Lil Beiming would agree with me.”

“Mn!” Li Chengfeng nodded. “Just leave her to me!”

He Yi chose this moment to speak up, “I’ll handle the two archers.”

“Okay!”

We waited quietly for the battle to begin after we discussed our strategy. Blazing Hot Lips were probably discussing how to fight us right this moment, weren’t they? I could only imagine how it felt to be in their position; to know that they only had two minutes to discuss how to fight against the first seed team of Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls!

……

Two minutes later, everyone was teleported onto the battlefield. Speaking of which, the battlefield was a 100x100 yard square platform made of hard marble. Relatively speaking, no player should be able to damage the platform in any way.

There was a barrier at the center that separated the parties before the countdown reached zero. On the other side, all five members of Blazing Hot Lips had already been teleported into the ring.

The female player standing at the forefront was the Level 104 warrior called Eyes Like Water. The girl was planting her sword into the marble and watching us with a confident smile. Directly behind her was the Level 105 mage Stranger Of Three Lifetimes. She was holding a scepter that glowed with a cyan light. Unless I was sorely mistaken, it was probably a high-grade weapon.

Even further at the back were the two high-level archers and Soul Of The Wild, Lasting. Lasting was a mature woman fully-garbed in leather armor. She looked to be around 25 years old or so, and she wielded a golden whip which she cracked in midair like some sort of S&M queen. Her smile spread wider as she stared at us.

……

Both Li Chengfeng and I shivered involuntarily when we saw the predatory gleam in Lasting’s eyes. We then exchanged a glance with each other. This party was no joke in more ways than one, it seemed!

Skimming through information regarding Blazing Hot Lips, He Yi said, "Blazing Hot Lips is a guild founded in Vanished God City, and nowadays they are known as one of the ten strongest guilds in Vanished God City. Hmm, the scepter Stranger Of Three Lifetimes is holding is a 3-star Outstanding Purple Gold–grade weapon, and the leather whip Lasting is holding is a Level 110 Spirit-grade weapon. Finally, that warrior called Eyes like Water is also fully decked out in high-level equipment. Everything she wears is Dark Gold–grade or above. This party is way, way stronger than Iron Mercenaries."

Beiming Xue giggled. "This match is going to be like Mars colliding with Earth. Are we sure the groups aren’t rigged or something? I can’t believe we ran into a party like this during the second match of the preliminaries already!"

I smiled. "Half a minute left. Get ready, everyone!"

"Mn!"

……

Everyone assumed their battle stances. The first worthy opponent we ran into in Who Will Rise was about to hit us with everything they got! The system started counting downward—

3!

2!

1!

Begin!

Li Chengfeng charged the Soul Of The Wild almost at the same time as I charged Stranger Of Three Lifetimes. No matter what the enemy was planning, as warriors, we couldn’t lose if we managed to shorten distance between ourselves and our opponents and force them to fight on our terms!

Swhoosh!

Stranger Of Three Lifetimes waited calmly as I blitzed toward her. Just before Thunderous Charge could make contact, she jumped two steps backward and allowed her Magic Shield to absorb the stun. However, that wasn’t the end of my assault. I continued running in an arc with the weight of my momentum behind me and slipped behind the mage before she could react. Then, I swung the Heaven-stealing Sword at her waist!

Pu!

Surprisingly, her Magic Shield didn’t break from the sweep attack. Her Magic Attack was as high as I suspected it might be!

One failed attack was no reason to stop the assault, but before I could do anything else a Freezing Arrow from Nono hit me and slowed my movement speed by 50%. I hated it when I got ganged up by a debuffer and an attacker. With good coordination, it was entirely possible for a pair of good players to whittle down a warrior from 100 to 0.

On the other side, Li Chengfeng wasn’t doing very well either. Not only did Lasting manage to dodge his Charge, he was slowed down by another archer as well. The good news was that dragon warriors were naturally tanky, so for now he could ignore the damage he was taking and pursue the archer!

"Hehe, I’m here…"

The Soul Of The Wild giggled like a bell as she withdrew to the back and drew a magic circle with her leather whip at the same time. The moment the magic circle was complete, a pair of snow-white battle wolves leaped out of it at the same time. They were high-level Snowy Plains Wolves!

……

Right after that, Lasting swung her leather whip again and executed two tamer skills in a row—

Heart of the Wild: Pet’s attack power increased by 50%

Ruler of the Wild: All pet stats increased by 25%