The Great Thief

Zhao Bo was old, and his words were often jumbled and repetitive. Lu Li wasn’t patient enough to chit chat around with him and quickly took his leave.

He didn’t bother to head back to the old house, in case the poor grandfather and grandson thought that he had returned to chase them out.

Although the old house contained 20 years of Lu Li’s memories, there wasn’t much worth remembering for him about it. What mattered to him was his sister, not the house itself.

Walking out of the alley, Lu Li held the umbrella as he continued talking with Water Fairy. Every now and then, he would point out the surrounding and tell her of the past things that had happened there. For example, the empty spot behind a bunch of rocks near the trench was now filled with vegetables thanks to Lu Li from ten years ago.

The trench was low and would be drowned whenever it was rain season, so no one was willing to build anything near here.

“So you can grow your own food and you can also cook them.”

Water Fairy was impressed by Lu Li, because she couldn’t do this. Everything that she had kept had died; she couldn’t even keep a cactus alive.

As for cooking, she didn’t need to do that since she had servants to look after her.

“My cooking is quite decent. You can tell from Xin Xin; it’s not easy to raise her up.”

Lu Li was proud about this. He could probably be proud about it for his entire life, especially the fact that he had finally reached so far in his current life.

“It’s so nice to have a brother,” Water Fairy sighed enviously.

If she had a brother too, her father would stop pushing so much pressure on her and she would have had a happy childhood. Her brother would be there to protect her from harm.

“Or, I can be your brother,” Lu Li joked.

Of course, Water Fairy couldn’t take it seriously. There was no way she could ever see him as a brother.

After the stone bridge, Lu Li pointed at the little cave below the bridge and said, “There’s a cave there; I’ve got no idea how it appeared. Although the cave is a little damp, there’s no water in it. One time when I was a kid, I upset someone and had to take my sister to hide there for a few days until the issue was solved.”

“You can’t be serious.”

Water Fairy bent her back as far as she could, but she couldn’t find the cave.

“Stop looking. Be careful not to fall down,” Lu Li reminded her.

The two continued looking around, spending almost their entire afternoon in the slum where Lu Li used to live. They didn’t even get to look at where Lu Li was living right now, or where Ruling Sword was located. This would have to wait until some other day.

Later on, the people from Peerless City left. Square Root 3 went to the airport to see them off while Lu Li went back online to continue levelling up.

He was currently ranked at the 9th place on the level ranking and was close to dropping out from the top 10. It was only a matter of time before this happened, but Lu Li didn’t want the gap between himself and the others to grow too large.

After another two days, the third random match begun. The System decided where the match would be held and it was in Jiangnan City like last time. The only difference was that Ruling Sword didn’t have a choice of the map. The map was picked at random by the system from the nine available maps – Dustwallow Marsh.

Dustwallow Marsh wasn’t a good one; they were unlucky.

Peerless City stepped foot back into this city again after two days.

This time, Water Fairy didn’t come along. Drizzle Court was having their second match against Seventh Heaven on the same day.

Regardless, there was no pressure at all for this third match. No matter what they did, they were guaranteed to make it into the final four.

The situation was similar for Glory Capital, who had been pressuring Blood Red War Flag. Perhaps, the most unlucky team amongst all was Blood Red War Flag. They didn’t want to pick Glory Capital at all because of the strength difference, so there was almost no hope of victory for them at all. Glory Capital was their living nightmare.

Wings of Dawn and Gale Legion were about even. One was from the Alliance faction while the other was from the Horde faction. The fans were constantly having a go at each other because of the faction difference, so it was probably the liveliest match amongst all.

Apparently, the match grounds were even more troublesome in real life. The government had sent out a good number of police to maintain the order, and the audience was banned from bringing any fake or cosplay items because real items could also be mixed within. Most of these items were cosplay weapons from the game, heavy enough to knock out someone.

The first player to battle from Ruling Sword was Fat Monkey. He was a Fire Mage and they didn’t need him later for the group match. As such, he had the first spot for the one-on-one matches.

The results were pretty much set, but Lu Li still had to do what was best for him.

As the first player representing Ruling Sword, Fat Monkey was placed against Professional Healer. It seemed like whatever went on between them in real life was solved and they were back to being their own selves.

Seeing this match up, Moonlight shook his head first and sighed.

“What? You’ve got no faith in him?” Lu Li asked.

“Monkey can’t beat Professional Healer. It’s not just about the class; their prowess and battle style are some of the reasons too,” Moonlight explained, then added, “And today is Peerless City’s final match. They’ll do everything they can.”

Professional Healer sounded like an ID for a healer, but he was actually a Shadow Priest.

In the current stage of Dawn, Shadow Priests were rare. They needed good equipment and skills to be viable. Otherwise, they couldn’t heal or deal damage, and could easily be killed by monsters.

In PVE, Shadow Priests could help with mana regeneration for magic classes, but this alone wasn’t enough for them to be wanted in a dungeon. As such, it was very rare to see any Shadow Priests at all in 15-mandungeons. It was only later down the track after 40-man raids were made available that Shadow Priests would start to be considered.

Professional Healer had Peerless City behind him and had no problems with equipment and skills, so of course he was a strong player.

It seemed like Moonlight had fought him before in the arena, so he was able to tell that Fat Monkey wouldn’t be able to beat him. He wasn’t wrong. Fat Monkey was quickly thrown off the stage. Although he took 30% of Professional Healer’s health with him, Professional Healer was also a Priest who could somewhat heal himself.

Lu Li was the next one to come on stage, facing off against Professional Healer, who almost had full health.

Shadow Priests were favoured for one-on-one matches, as they were similar to Warlocks. If you couldn’t kill them, they would eventually outlast you.

Three minutes into the match, Lu Li took the victory. Professional Healer was taken down by three consecutive critical strikes in a row. Lu Li used quite a lot of skills and special effects to defeat him.

Ruling Sword thought that Professional Healer was troublesome, but Peerless City thought that Lu Li was even more so. As such, they immediately sent out Green Flag Wine, who was obviously more certain about the situation since he could heal himself. It took him around a dozen minutes to finally take down Lu Li. His name and celebrity status obviously weren’t just for show.

Green Flag Wine was then faced with Mu Qiu. Both of them had a similar play style – they tried to tire each other out and the match dragged on for a long time. In the end, Green Flag Wine lost because he had less mana than Mu Qiu.

The one-on-one matches ended with a 5 to 4, with Ruling Sword taking the leading point.

At this point, Ruling Sword had already entered the top 4.