Hot Sand City was a tier 1 main city belonging to the Vietnam server. It was also their only main city. Since the USA server had had three main cities—Hero City, Titan City and Seven Star City—since the release of Heavenblessed, and Hot Sand City had the misfortune of being put next to them at the north, they had no choice but to carry out their every whim like a lackey would for their boss.

……

Swhoosh!

Chill of the Nine Provinces gleamed intimidatingly in my grasp as I charged toward Wind City, "These fuckers have a part in the collapse of Wind City too, so don’t hesitate and send these clowns back to the real world! After we’ve retaken Wind City, we’ll march to the north and take out their home city next! We will beat the arrogance out of their veins and teach them never to mess with us again!"

Li Chengfeng, Gui Guzi, High Fighting Spirits and more guffawed loudly and rode even harder toward Wind City.

Around 60k Dragonlight Cavalrymen were riding at the forefront, and almost all of them were commanded by Famous Generals. There were a lot more Famous Generals these days, and while I hadn’t been paying attention to who became a Famous General for a long time, I knew that non-exclusive Famous General Skills that added 120% or so Attack to certain unit types such as Soul of the Soldier, Blood Blade and more had become a lot more common these days. We had 24 Dragonlight Cavalrymen with Soul of the Soldier alone, let alone the others. Famous General Skills were slowly but surely becoming widespread, but Divine General Skills were still as rare as ever.

The Vietnamese players charged toward us like their lives depended on it. It seemed that they were aware that they knew that this war would decide the fate of their server.

I decided that using our trump cards before our frontlines engaged would be a good idea, so I shouted, "Fighting Spirits, Heaven’s Rain, Diamond Dust, use your Ancient Divine Skills now! Take them down a peg or two!"

"Yessir!" they all responded in unison.

At the same time, I abruptly cranked up my movement speed and shot toward a group of tightly packed cavalry at lightning speed. Chill of the Nine Provinces abruptly shone like a golden sun, and a pair of bloody wings spread out behind my back. After Heavenly River Transformation activated, I raised my weapon and brought down a huge, 35-yard-long golden sword on top of my enemies and stunned the entire battlefield!

BOOM!

The deafening boom one-shot countless Hot Sand City players and stunned even more. The ground was split like there was an earthquake, and the cavalrymen who were struck fell off their mounts and into the deep ravine. In some cases, both the players and their mounts were straight up annihilated from existence. One only needed to look at the damage numbers rising above their heads to know how powerful the Ancient Divine Skill was—

1002872!

972183!

1126364!

982775!

……

"Heavens, this is… completely broken, isn’t it?" exclaimed Du Thirteen and Eighteen Steeds of You and Yun while exchanging a look of astonishment with each other.

The artificial path I carved out with my skill was rife with death and devastation. I doubted many SSS Rank Ancient Divine Skills would possess as much destructive power as the Xuanyuan Slash.In sheer power, it truly was the indisputable king of the SSS Rank Ancient Divine Skills.

Thud!

While the enemy was still dazed, I cut through to the middle and raised the "Death" side of the blade to the sky, shouting, "Xuanyuan Art!"

The special skill activated, and the three whirlpools that represented death spun rapidly. The next moment, every player within 1000 yards of me lost 50% HP in one go.

While this was going on, a transformed High Fighting Spirits roared like a madman, raised his axe and summoned the image of the ancient god Xing Tian. The image of the divine weapon, the ganqi, also appeared around his battle axe. One swing later, all the enemies who were struck lost their remaining 50% HP and became shredded into pieces.

Heaven’s Rain and Diamond Dust also unleashed their Tiger Wing Slash and Dog God Slash into a crowd of enemies. The charging riders instantly dropped to the ground like lifeless puppets.

Finally, He Yi sped up toward the enemy, activated her Ancient Divine Skill and caused the red shadow of a sword to appear beneath her mount. It was the effect of Chengying and Hanguang. For 12 seconds, all of he Yi’s skills ignored Guard and pierced invincibility. Her Attack was increased by 50% as well!

Boom boom boom!

Green Wave Slash and Purgatory of Ice and Magma erupted. By the time He Yi passed through the affected area, no one was alive to stop her anymore. Not done yet, she activated Godslaying Blade next, increased her attack range by dozens of yards and swung her weapon again and again, dealing over 200k damage per hit to an entire swathe of enemies. Her DPS was positively obscene right now.

……

The devastation wrought by the top elites of Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls utterly crippled the Hot Sand City’s cavalry, but their misery was just beginning. All we did was put holes in their defense, break their morale and enable our Dragonlight Cavalry to trample over them with impunity. However powerful our skills were, the true destroyer was still the Dragonlight Cavalry. The melee began, and their blades sank greedily into the Hot Sand City players’ flesh. It was a completely one-sided slaughter.

All 200k Vietnamese cavalrymen were killed in just 20 minutes. I had also skyrocketed to the first place on the contribution point leaderboard as well. The Xuanyuan Slash was just that powerful. Even if I could only activate it once per 120 seconds, when I did it was like the enemy was visited by a mini apocalypse. They were completely traumatized to say the least.

……

Wind City was a super main city. Its walls were tough and about 40 meters tall, and it was crawling with people right now. The Nation War interface showed that there was a huge difference between our player counts—

China: 21087732

Northern Alliance: 7976763

Knowing that there was little chance they could hold Wind City, the USA server had dispatched only one to two million players to defend it. It looked like they fully intended to wear us down with Hot Sand City as the cannon fodder.

On the city walls, the number one player of Titan City and the guild leader of Olympus, Titan God, stared at us coolly while saying, "Whatever you do, hold the line until the alliance retakes Seven Star City! Understand that this is our only hope! This time, we won’t back down even if we go down to the last person! For the glory of the alliance!"

His players raised their weapons and responded, "For the glory of the alliance!"

Titan God’s lips curled into a sinister smile. "Archers and mages, Far Shot the moment the enemies approach within 200 yards of the city. The Chinese will not retake their city without paying the blood price!"

Swhoosh swhoosh swhoosh!

Groups of archers gathered at the edge of the walls. Even more flooded were the wallwalk and the city grounds.

……

I came to a stop about a thousand yards away from the walls and sucked in a deep breath. "We haven’t brought our siege weapons with us this time, so it’s all about that charge, people! Xu Yang, have our magic knights form 5-man mini groups to cover our engineers. Once we’ve gotten the cloud ladders on the walls, the Dragonlight Cavalry will dismount and begin scaling immediately! While the enemies are distracted, Little Gui, you will take 5000 Dragonlight Cavalry with you and attack the eastern gate! Deleting the gate’s durability is also one way to breach the city!"

Xu Yang and Gui Guzi nodded in unison.

A moment later, after 20k magic knights had entered into position, they raised their shields, protected the engineers and slowly made their way toward the walls. Besides that, the Dragonlight Cavalry were following closely behind them. Li Chengfeng, He Yi and I charged straight for the enemy’s gate.

Tink tink tink...

The Far Shot arrows struck my Dragon God Shield and bounced off almost harmlessly. I had grown so powerful that these arrow rain could no longer penetrate my Defense. In fact, most of them dealt only hundreds, tens, and even single-digit damage numbers per hit. It was pitiful.

After the cloud ladders were set up on two different sides of the city, the Dragonlight Cavalry dismounted and began scaling upward. They were of course beset by the usual rolling logs, falling stones, arrows, magical spells and much more random shit. The enemy mages had also turned the ground outside the walls into a sea of flames. Such were the conditions we had to endure as we fought.

Bang!

Gui Guzi struck the gate hard with his Spear of the Knight God, but he only managed to do 4k+ damage or so. The fortified defense of the gate was a perfect counter to Gui Guzi’s basic attack.

"Allow me…"

I walked up to the gate just in time to catch an arrow on the cheek. After I pulled out the arrow, I activated Heavenly Earth Transformation, fired up the Xuanyuan Slash again and smashed it against the gate with everything I got. The skill actually triggered the Mountain Crush effect, and the tearing chains and the ridiculous damage number that popped above the gate stunned all Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls players within the vicinity to speechlessness—

796766!

Li Chengfeng commented in disbelief, "Bruh, can you be any more OP than this? The gate has 1 million HP, and you just deleted 80% of it in one hit…"

He Yi giggled. "Looks like Lu Chen is our battering ram from now on!"

"Anyway, let’s take down the gate and end this as soon as possible!"

"Yeah!"

We all raised our weapons and threw all our skills against the gate. Hundreds or even thousands of our players were killed by the second, so we needed to end this as soon as possible. The sooner we breached the gate, the lower our casualties would become, and the bigger the army we could bring to the doorsteps of Hot Sand City. By the time we were done with the Vietnam server, they would learn never to clown around our presence ever again!

……

A few minutes later, the east gate of Wind City let out a loud groan and collapsed inward. All the Vietnamese engineers who had been trying to repair the gate were flattened into pancakes. Behind them was a troop of elite cavalry, about 300k strong. Clearly, they were ready and waiting for us.

Chiang!

Li Chengfeng unsheathed his Dark Blade and charged first, shouting, "Kill! Retake our main city!"

The rumbling of hooves restarted, and 40k Dragonlight Cavalrymen galloped into the city with impunity. Speaking of which, the Fruit Knife Goddess and her Kui Dragon Cavalry were right behind us. After summoning the white shadow of a sword beneath her feet—it was the effect of Gan Jiang and Mo Ye—she bathed a ton of people in the deathly flames of Ice Flame Slash before snorting in dissatisfaction. "We cannot let Ancient Sword claim all the contribution points! Purple Marquis, Lexi, we’re attacking from the right wing!"

"Yes, guild leader!"

Warsky Alliance followed suit, and soon the streets of Wind City were completely embroiled in a bloody melee. We made sure to enact the Three Alls Policy[1] upon all the NPCs—who were now considered USA NPCs—because Princess Karinshan would send a new regent and NPCs to replace them after we retook the city.

1. The Three Alls Policy was a Japanese scorched earth policy adopted in China during World War II, the three "alls" being "kill all, burn all, loot all." The Policy, sanctioned by Emperor Hirohito himself, was responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians.