Our beautiful guild leader was currently encouraging all of her subordinates to work harder in the guild channel.

He Yi: “Is everyone busy fighting in the champion arena?”

Gui Guzi: “Ah, this is so tiring. I’ve taken part in so many battles but I only just hit rank 781…”

High Fighting Spirits: “I’m good over here. I’m ranked 142 already. Hahahahaha~”

He Yi let out a soft laugh: “Keep at it, everyone. More than ten thousand gaming clubs were registered just this afternoon. Right now, all of the big sponsor companies have their eyes fixed on this arena ranking board. If your rank is high enough, you’ll definitely be scouted by some of these big companies. After that, you’ll be able to sign on to a big gaming club, and having a salary of over a million a year won’t be a pipedream anymore…”

Li Chengfeng gave a hearty laugh of his own: “The guild leader is right! Just this morning, someone from the State Grid Corporation of China called me and asked me to join their gaming club, but I rejected them.”

I grinned: “Isn’t that the one of the biggest companies in China? Why did you reject them? Logically speaking, there’s no way that they would lowball you with their offer.”

Li Chengfeng replied: “That’s right. The salary they were offering wasn’t low at all. In fact, it was set at seven million RMB a year, but after I heard that there were several people from Vanished God City already in the club, I decided to reject them. This is because I hope that I can enter the same gaming club as my brothers and sisters from Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls. I don’t want to fly solo, because I don’t find any meaning in doing that.”

He Yi smiled appreciatively: “Okay, since that’s the case, the next time one of us receives an invitation, let’s set one condition. And that condition will be that we want to enter the gaming club as a team.”

Li Chengfeng: “Yeah, our guild leader is wise indeed! Those were my thoughts exactly.”

Chaos Moon: “Hey guys, I’ve just discovered a problem…”

Xu Yang: “What problem?”

Chaos Moon: “Lu Chen isn’t even ranked among the Top 1000 players right now. That doesn’t make any sense! Could he have lost a few matches already?”

Chaos Moon’s words shocked everyone into action. Everyone in the guild channel started bombarding me with one question: “Lu Chen, what the hell happened?”

“Uh about that… there was an assassin that decided to play a game of hide-and-seek with me, so it took me a full eight minutes to hunt him down and kill him. I also happened to encounter a cute girl from Soul Battle Robes. I simply couldn’t bear to kill such an adorable girl, so I wasted six whole minutes in that match. In the end, I even got her QQ number…”

He Yi: “WTF!”

Murong Mingyue: “WTF!”

Beiming Xue: “Big bro, you…”

Everyone broke out into laughter. The men in the chat all understood my actions. In fact, I could even see looks of regret appear on High Fighting Spirits and Eighteen Steeds of You and Yun’s faces. They looked like they were intensely disappointed by the fact that they hadn’t met such an adorable girl themselves. If it were up to them, they wouldn’t mind even wasting all ten minutes of the match!

……

In truth, I was in no rush to climb to the top spot in the leaderboard. I mean, I was already ranked seventh in the CGL Hall of Fame, did I really need to prove myself again with these arena rankings? Entering the Heavenly Ranking of the arena leaderboard would merely add to my halo of brilliance.

Of course, I also hoped that I would achieve a satisfactory rank and catch the eye of some big gaming club. Once that happened, I would start earning a salary of at least a million RMB a month, and I would no longer need to work myself to the bone to earn money from this game every day. In fact, the reason why I had time to visit my father the last two times was because the game had literally forced me to stop playing by going on maintenance.

I started killing my way through the arena again, but before I started, I checked the leaderboard. To my utter and complete shock, I saw that Dominating Knight God was actually number one! I nearly spat out my proverbial drink when I saw that name on the top of the leaderboard! How the hell did this doofus who couldn’t even tank a combo of mine actually climb up to #1!? It didn’t make any sense! What kind of opponents had he been meeting on his way to the top!?

However, it was inevitable for Dominating Knight God to get pulled off this throne. Once a player entered the Top 100 in the arena rankings, the opponents they’d face would all be from the Top 200. Their fights were bound to make the points shuffle between the top rankers, so any player who didn’t possess absolute strength wouldn’t be able to stay on the arena’s Heavenly Ranking for too long.

I continued to chop up noobs for about half an hour until I finally earned the 197th spot in the rankings! This rank didn’t satisfy me one bit though, onward!

Ding~!

System Notice: Hello, you have been successfully matched with player "Moonkiss"! The battle will commence in 5 seconds!

……

Hot damn! I actually ran into Moonkiss. A battle between CGL Hall of Famers was about to occur! What was the probability of that happening?! Tsk tsk, what an unfortunate coincidence! However, Moonkiss was currently ranked 104, so if I beat her, I’d earn quite a number of points!

Whoosh!

Once we entered the arena, I saw Moonkiss dressed in an exquisite set of leather armor, holding her dagger at the ready. Before the festivities began, she smiled at me cheerily and said, “Oh my, it’s been a long time, hasn’t it, Lu Chen? I’ve missed you…”

My sword dipped as I said, “It’s time to hand over those points, Moonkiss…”

Moonkiss: “...”

The battle began and Moonkiss was the first to strike. She threw a fiery red little bead at me from far away and it exploded against my side with a loud bang when it hit my armor. Smoke flew up everywhere, greatly obscuring my vision. Assassin class players were all quite sneaky and underhanded. They were always ready to hit you with a low blow and they had a whole bag of them! I thought these smoke bombs were only used by those ninjas from Japan...

Crack!

I felt a cold breeze brush past my back before Moonkiss’s dagger slashed against it, causing a streak of hot and bright pain to run down my back. This burning pain meant that Moonkiss’s attack had taken off more than 5% of my health...

5089!

She had clearly used a skill to attack me. I abruptly swung the Heaven-stealing Sword in a backhand sweep through the cloud of smoke that was still surrounding me, but it didn’t hit anything. Moonkiss had already leaped backward in an incredibly agile manner before my sword had even begun swinging toward her. After that, she raised her hand, causing her entire body to be shrouded in a dull red light. She had used a buff skill that had greatly boosted her movement speed and attack speed. Once it was activated, she sped towards me once again!

Clang!

However, to Moonkiss’s absolute surprise, the Heaven-stealing Sword swung out to intercept her dagger this time. She let out a small gasp and then abruptly shifted her body. Her feet spun as she borrowed the force of my blow to whirl to my left. As she spun, she planted two daggers into my shoulder. Ouch, that hurt! Assassins had a very high attack speed, so even though each basic hit only dealt about 1000 damage to me, she was able to shave off nearly 7000 points of my health in three seconds!

Moonkiss was still resetting her stance when her eyes suddenly widened in shock. Her body was still moving to the right when she saw the Heaven-stealing Sword shooting toward her, a cone of spiraling indigo energy glowing around its tip.

Universe Break!

19840!

Moonkiss limply collapsed to the floor with a soft groan of resentment. As expected, even a CGL Hall of Fame assassin wouldn’t be able to withstand my Universe Break if they didn’t parry or dodge it. At this current stage of the game, it would always one-shot them if it hit. It simply wasn’t an attack they could endure with their current HP pools.

Victory! As I was transferred out of the arena, I saw my points rise dramatically. I had now reached rank 172. Hah, just killing Moonkiss once had caused me to jump over twenty ranks! Not bad at all!

Alright, time to continue battling!

Ding~!

System Notice: Hello, you have been successfully matched with player “Tempest Shadow”! The battle will commence in 5 seconds!

……

Hahaha, Tempest Shadow was ranked 75 on the leaderboard and I was lucky enough to meet him! This is great! Oh, but this punk is really unlucky to meet me today. It’s high time he delivered some points to me!

Whoosh!

Tempest Shadow’s face went ashen when he appeared inside the arena. It was extremely clear that I was an opponent he never wanted to meet. The moment he matched up against me, he knew that he was going to lose a lot of points and his hard-earned rank would drastically drop because of this.

I rested the Heaven-stealing Sword against my shoulder as I grinned and said, “War God Tempest Shadow, it’s been a long time! Has everything been good with you?”

The muscles on Tempest Shadow’s face spasmed violently before he replied, “Lu Chen, aren’t you doing quite well for yourself in Sky City? After seeing how arrogant you’ve become, it’s quite clear that Candle Dragon should visit Sky City once and bathe your Dark Moon City in blood. We’ll let you know what a true number one guild looks like!”

“Cut the crap and face me! I’m short on time!”

Brandishing the Heaven-stealing Sword,I suddenly started barreling toward him. As a magic knight, Tempest Shadow was able to summon his mount into battle. He immediately swung his body up onto the back of a battle wolf, causing all of his stats to rise dramatically. Furthermore, Tempest Shadow’s Famous General Skill was Resolute and it raised a player’s Attack by 25%. Right now, it was raising his Attack by 71%, so it wasn’t bad at all. It was just a little inferior to my Martial God right now. My advantage in this match was my high attack power, while his were high HP and Defense.

Both of us swung our weapons the instant we shot past one another. My longsword had swept across his neck while the tip of his iron spear slammed into my arm. Damn, that really hurt! This punk’s Attack was high enough to break my Defense.

8810!

5221!

After the first exchange of blows, I saw that Tempest Shadow still had over 70% of his HP left even after being dealt nearly 9000 damage. This dumbass had a total HP pool of at least thirty thousand.

“Heh!”

Tempest Shadow grinned as he raised his arm into the air. Green energy instantly started shrouding his body and his HP bar started to rapidly fill up! This was one of the magic knight’s signature skills, War God Recovery, which would heal the user for 100% of their HP over 60 seconds!

A drawn-out battle was absolutely disadvantageous for me. I had to get rid of him quickly!

Tempest Shadow looked like he didn’t want to waste any time either. He charged at me with his spear raised. As soon as he reached me I parried the spear, but the punk’s eyes suddenly lit up with satisfaction and delight. His weapon suddenly started to whistle as a spiral of energy that looked like burning flames shot toward me! He had actually used Barrier Break!

Fuck, Candlelight Shadow had definitely helped the CGL Hall of Famers in Candle Dragon learn that skill!

Pfff!

A deep, sharp pain radiated out from my chest. This Barrier Break had caused his spear to sink straight into my chest and a huge damage number flew up above my head. 14890!

Holy shit! I only had about 21000 HP right now, so I definitely couldn’t compete with Tempest Shadow on this front. But I didn’t panic, because the moment Tempest Shadow hit me with that Barrier Break, he had already become a dead man!

Thunk!

My arm shoved aside his long spear with a soft thud, and Tempest Shadow was now completely open to my counterattack! His eyes widened in shock and fear as they fixed on my Heaven-Stealing Sword in terror. An indigo energy that resembled raging flames was swirling around its tip and the entire sword was shrouded in burning red flames. This was clearly a skill combo—Universe Break + Burning Blade Slash!

17849!

6789!

8010!

12842!

All four attacks hit him dead-on! Tempest Shadow’s mechanical control was far inferior to Candelight Shadow’s. In fact, he might not even be a match for Li Chengfeng or Purple Marquis in this regard. He was at about the same level as Moonkiss when it came to control. As a result, he wasn’t able to dodge a single one of my lightning-quick strikes. As the damage quickly piled up, he knew that not even a health potion could save him!

Whoosh!

I left the arena in victory, my rank flying up once again!

I didn’t meet any truly tough opponents over the next few matches. The only competent ones I was matched against were players like Dominating Archer God, Night Sorrow, Hero In A Dream, and Familiar Scent. By the time the clock struck 5, I had finally made it into the Top 20! My current rank was 14 and I had kept my unbeaten streak all the way to the top!

There was no time to relax ! I had to continue because I wasn’t more than two victories away from entering the Heavenly Ranking!

By this time, Dominating Knight God had long since been kicked out of his #1 spot, and out of the Top 10 even. God knows how many people had trampled over him during this process...

Ding~!

System Notice: Hello, you have been successfully matched with player "Luo River God of the Capital"! The battle will commence in 5 seconds!

……

I was stunned when I saw the system notice. Did it really match me against Luo River God of the Capital? Hahaha, my luck wasn’t bad! Right now, Luo River God of the Capital was ranked second on the champion arena ranking, so if I could defeat her, I would earn a lot of points. I couldn’t help but grin when I thought of that.

Whoosh!

The moment we entered the arena, Luo River God of the Capital took one look at my face before her delicate body shook with anger. “What the hell, Lu Chen! Why are you smiling in such a disgusting manner? Oooh, I so want to slap that look off your face…"