Across the world, on all kinds of online communities, the hottest topic of discussion was now almost always the same:
“Did the Chinese cheat?”
Quite a few people had genuinely lost their composure over this announcement, especially the Europeans.
“What else could it be? The third stage hasn’t even ended yet. How could they possibly have already completed the fourth?”
“Exactly. It’s like we’re still fighting through The Burning Crusade while you’ve already reached Wrath of the Lich King. How is that supposed to be fair?”
Chinese netizens replied, “Don’t say that. You really shouldn’t say that—we’ve been through this before. Why wouldn’t it be fair?”
“Fun fact: China’s third-stage campaign on the Sky Screen has been marked as completed for ages. The Promotion Defense Battle is just a special PvP event triggered after completing the campaign. Nowhere does it say you can’t work on the fourth-stage campaign during that time, does it?”
“Bullshit! You Chinese are just exploiting the rules! You’re abusing a bug!”
“Then go ahead and have the system revoke our results. Nyah nyah nyah~”
“I think this damn system has gone senile too. How can it give them more than a hundred times the experience bonus? What’s the point of playing anymore?”
“I suggest the whole world unite and take China down first!”
“Heh. I won’t even talk about who would win. How are you supposed to take China down within three days? With your mouths? Besides, can whatever we do in the real world affect the results inside the battlefield? The first round of the Promotion Defense Battle starts in just over a day. What happens when the fighting begins and all those Asian countries that lose inside the battlefield become China’s vassals? The system could force them to turn their weapons on us. That would be hilarious. People from Hans Country, you should understand that, right?”
“So everyone can only sit around and wait to die?”
“Then you’d better pray that the people inside the battlefield can pull off a victory against China.”
“Like hell I’m putting my faith in them. If they were reliable, they wouldn’t have fallen so far behind!”
“Then why don’t you go in yourself? According to the information coming from China, Liu Xuan wasn’t among the first batch of people forcibly pulled into the battlefield. He was running a dungeon with others in the game at the time, and plenty of people can vouch for that. The number of Chinese players in the battlefield has never even fallen below thirty percent, so Liu Xuan must have entered voluntarily. If you don’t trust the others, you can follow his example and go in yourself. See whether you can turn the tide like Liu Xuan and sweep everything before you.”
Those words left everyone speechless.
The United States had already tried that before, forcibly pressuring the game company to hand over data and driving who knew how many players into the battlefield. Their progress hadn’t improved much either.
By now, it wasn’t just ordinary people. The leaders and politicians of every country understood that what they did outside was no longer the deciding factor.
If they lost inside, everything they did would be pointless.
All they could do now was hope that the people inside the battlefield would prove capable.
.....
Yet the people inside the battlefield, upon whom everyone had placed their hopes, were in fact the most desperate of all, with only a small minority being exceptions.
Only those who had personally experienced the battlefield understood how enormous a gap that experience bonus would create.
If the Chinese were ahead by an average of a dozen or so levels, how were they supposed to fight at all?
Even thirty thousand against five thousand wouldn’t be enough.
The attribute points gained from leveling were bad enough, but that wasn’t the most despairing part. The higher one’s level, the better the equipment one could wear—and that was what truly drove people to despair.
Equipment stats scaled dramatically with level.
At Level 10, even if you managed to assemble a full set of gear, you would probably only have sixty or seventy points of armor.
But what about at Level 20? A full set of equipment could easily provide two or three hundred armor.
Your attacks would barely tickle them.
And that was only counting armor. It didn’t even include the attributes and special effects granted by equipment.
As a result, many people pessimistically believed that, after this announcement, the upcoming Promotion Defense Battle would be extremely difficult.
On a certain battlefield in the island nation—
Seeing the sentiment in the chat channel, several teammates turned to look at their leader.
“Ikeda, do you think we still have a chance?”
Ikeda had his eyes closed, his expression solemn and his brows tightly furrowed.
The others immediately took it as a sign that even Ikeda thought the battle would be difficult.
Just as they were about to say something, Ikeda suddenly opened his eyes, a determined look on his face.
“Yoshi!” He stroked his weapon. “Looks like, in the end, I can only rely on myself!”
“Huh?”
His teammates stared at him in shock. “You have a way?”
Ikeda shook his head. “No. Winning this war will be very difficult.”
“Then you…”
“But I can win.”
What did that mean? The war might be unwinnable, but he himself could still win?
Ikeda wore a confident expression. “As long as I kill Liu Xuan when the time comes, then even if we lose the war in the end, it will still show the world that the men of our island nation did not lose to the Chinese!”
The teammates looked at one another, all feeling that Ikeda was being wildly unrealistic.
“But according to the rankings, that Liu Xuan is already Level 24—nearly ten levels higher than you. And he still has another day to grind levels. By then, he’ll only be even higher.”
Ikeda waved a hand, his face full of sincere confidence. “I said it before: numbers are the reason strength reigns supreme.
“I’ll do my best to trade one-for-one with Liu Xuan. After that, the rest will be up to you. Don’t give up hope either. Perhaps once Liu Xuan dies, an opportunity will arise from it.”
“Hai!”
...
American Battlefield No. 1357.
Vaughan cleaved the swamp frogman in front of him in two, then shot a glare at several people nearby who were trying to steal his monsters.
Seeing his terrifying damage, they hurriedly slipped away.
A few of his teammates spat in disgust, then asked Vaughan in confusion, “Why are we leveling here? We just crossed the river, and there are people everywhere stealing monsters.”
“Yeah. Can’t we fight the higher-level monsters farther back?”
But Vaughan shook his head. “No. These frogmen have a chance to drop gloves with a Strength special effect. I have to farm them.”
“Gloves? You mean those Rare gloves someone posted in the chat earlier, the ones that increase Strength by 5%? They’re green gear dropped by ordinary field mobs—the drop rate must be absurdly low!”
“But they’re extremely important to me. I have to get them.”
Thinking back to the announcement that had appeared not long ago, Vaughan felt immense pressure as well.
The Chinese had actually completed the fourth-stage campaign and were about to fight a Promotion Defense Battle against Europe and Africa.
Did that mean the Americas would be next soon?
Before that happened, he had to raise his Strength as high as possible.
Only then would he have a chance to use [Designated Death] to instantly kill Liu Xuan.
That was why he was determined to get those gloves. After all, they provided a percentage-based increase to Strength.
Even a 5% boost would make a big difference for him.
The annoying part was that the player who’d gotten the gloves as a drop refused to trade them to him.
The battlefield was so vast that he couldn’t even find the other player. Vaughan had no choice but to keep searching for gloves to buy while spending time farming them himself.
Seeing that his teammates still looked confused, he said solemnly, “You just need to know that the fate of the entire United States... no, all the Americas... no, the fate of the entire Blue Star is in my hands. If there’s anyone in this world who can kill Liu Xuan, it’s me.”
Vaughan felt that getting the god-tier skill [Decreed Death] was God’s way of choosing him to put an end to Liu Xuan’s legend.
Yeah, judging by the look on his face, he was dead serious.
His teammates had no idea what he was talking about, but they obediently kept farming frogmen with him.
Just then, Tom sent him a message:
“Vaughan, my scout has uncovered some astonishing news in Orenburg, the campaign’s target. You’re going to want to hear this.”
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
and couldn't return to the real world. Finally, I gave up and decided to go with the flow, only to discover that writing a diary could make me stronger. Since no one could read it, Su Luo wrote freely, daring to pen anything and everything. Female Lead #1: "Not bad. This diary helped me steal all the protagonist's opportunities. I just want to get stronger." Female Lead #2: "I don’t care about reaching the peak of the cultivation world. Right now, I just want to enjoy the chaos." Female Lead #3: "What? Everyone around me is a spy? I’m the Joker Demon Lord?" ... It’s so strange. Why is the plot completely off track, yet the ending remains the same? Are you all just messing with me?!
e vast world of cultivation, where he becomes the master of the Heavenly Ruins Sacred Hall, a dying old man with barely a tenth of his former cultivation remaining. He is immediately confronted with a deadly crisis: his subordinates have rebelled, and his protectors are forcing him to abdicate. At the critical moment, the system descends from the heavens: [Ding! The host has been detected facing a life-or-death crisis. The system is now officially activated!] [As a gift, you have received the Supreme Beginner’s Pack and awakened the ultimate cheat: ten thousand years of pure cultivation essence every second!] Yin Tianjue: “Wait… ten thousand years of cultivation every second? That’s six hundred thousand years a minute, and in one day… I can’t even calculate it. Either way, I’m already invincible!” You’re a peerless prodigy rarely seen in ten thousand years? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re an undying ancestor who has guarded a sacred land for countless ages? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re the strongest chosen one, blessed with heaven-defying destiny? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. From this day forth, I have only one thing to say: “I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. Now, how exactly are you supposed to deal with that?”
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
