You Think You Can Ambush Me?

As everyone knew, Kuang Dao had once been put through hell by five damn professional players. One of them was a Light Priest named Carefree Immortal... As for Xiao Xiaoxian, anyone with a functioning brain who saw his class would understand where his name came from...

In fact, Xiao Xiaoxian had never shied away from discussing his idol. He had gone on about his admiration for Carefree Immortal right in front of Kuang Dao several times, leaving Kuang Dao seething but too embarrassed to lash out-plenty of people liked the Beaconfire Team. He could hardly kill every last one of their fans.

Some veteran members, seeing how awkward things had become, had warned Xiao Xiaoxian a few times. Unfortunately, the kid had been fooled by Kuang Dao's outward magnanimity and had actually asked him about it to his face... Naturally, Brother Dao had told him straight out, "It's fine. I don't mind at all." So the kid really had thought nothing of it, and even praised the vice director's generosity to everyone he met.

Kuang Dao didn't mind?

Pah! Only an idiot would believe that! The veteran members scoffed at the idea. They knew their vice director's temperament all too well: he was a hotheaded man who always repaid a grudge! He might not quite have reached the point of avenging every petty slight, but he wasn't far off.

Once, a few unlucky fools who had no idea what was good for them had fought him over an herb out in the wilderness. A brief disagreement had turned ugly on the spot, and weapons had come out, splashing blood all around... Kuang Dao had lived up to his reputation as an expert, taking on all four and cutting them down with barely any health left.

Of course, that hadn't been the end of it. Afterward, Kuang Dao had mobilized the guild to hunt them down until two deleted their characters, one went AFK, and the last was killed until he had nothing left! Only then had he stopped, declaring, "That's what happens when you cross War Hero!" (AFK: away from keyboard. Literally, it means taking your hands off the keyboard, and it can also mean "busy, stepping away for a while." Among Chinese players, however, AFK often means quitting a game for an extended period or permanently.)

What would happen if someone so "generous" got angry... anyone could figure that out.

War Hero Yi Yan walked over and nudged Kuang Dao, chuckling quietly. "Hey, enough. Stop scowling. The kid doesn't know any better. Why hold it against him?"

With his old friend and former superior personally stepping in to smooth things over, Kuang Dao had to show him some respect. He glanced at Xiao Xiaoxian and lowered his voice as well. "That kid can't read a room to save his life. You need to talk to him more. Sure, he's pretty skilled, but if he keeps running his mouth like that, I can't promise I won't lose my temper one day and kick him out."

"All right, I'll talk to him. But you're no better. You know he's just a kid, yet you insist on taking him seriously. What's the point?"

"Fine, fine, I won't get mad at him. You saw me just now-I didn't say anything, did I? Oh, right. How do you think we should fight that level-twenty boss, the King of the Scarabs? People online say you can exploit a bug to kill him. No idea if that's true."

"You mean that post?" War Hero Yi Yan smiled. "I'd say it's probably bullshit. Ye's a Warrior. Why would he play a mage, something he's no good at? Besides, those screenshots clearly show him wielding two blades and fighting like a Warrior. Doesn't that contradict the poster's own claims? And the screenshots all show the name 'Dragonkin Guard Squad Captain · One Leaf Windwalk.' Obviously, that's an NPC. Maybe Blue Star is just poking fun at a celebrity player. Don't take it seriously."

"You can't dismiss it like that." Kuang Dao shook his head. "At least the boss's skills in those screenshots are real. I checked the official site, and the boss really does spew fire when he enters certain phases. How do you explain that... the poster fought the boss himself, then Photoshopped the pictures to smear One Leaf Windwalk? Countless people online have already checked them. Those are genuine game screenshots, not Photoshopped images."

War Hero Yi Yan said, "Who cares whether he's smearing One Leaf Windwalk? It has nothing to do with us. But you're awfully interested. Is this about that Yellow Shield?"

Kuang Dao chuckled and poked his old friend in the side twice. "Of course it is! A Yellow Shield! And look at those stats-it's top-tier! I wouldn't need to replace it even at level thirty. How could I not want it?"

"All right, all right. If one drops, the first goes to you. Who'd dare fight Brother Dao for a shield? Nobody's that clueless."

"We do have someone that clueless in the raid." Kuang Dao glanced at Xiao Xiaoxian. The kid's eyes were blank; he had clearly switched out of the game. Who knew which pretty girl he was having an intimate private chat with?

"Oh, come on. He's not a tank. Why would he fight you for a shield? Besides, he never likes competing with people for loot. We always have to force it on him." (Force it on him: ahem... not that kind of forcing. This means assigning someone equipment whether they want it or not.)

While the two were chatting away, one player's health bar in the raid interface suddenly plunged, hitting bottom in just a few seconds! Immediately afterward, another player's health bar started parachuting down too. About seven or eight seconds later, he joined the first player on a visit to Angel Sister... (After dying, players meet a Spirit Witch Doctor and can choose to have her resurrect them. Spirit Witch Doctors usually appear as winged women, so players commonly call them Angel Sister.)

"What happened?" Kuang Dao frowned and looked at War Hero Yi Yan, only to find his old friend looking back at him.

Those two were clearly the Warrior and Assassin who had gone ahead to take action. They hadn't even lasted twenty seconds before being killed. That was ridiculous!

Kuang Dao seemed unable to believe what he was seeing. After all, the Warrior called "Little Sword" had excellent equipment, and the Assassin was a renowned PvP expert in the raid. How could someone take them both down in a little over ten seconds?

[Raid][Kuang Dao]: What happened?

[Raid][Invincible Sword of Overwhelming Might]: Brother Dao, that mage's damage is insane! He practically insta-killed me!

[Raid][Cold-Hearted]: That mage actually has Blink, plus a skill that makes him immune to slows. I couldn't even touch him.

[Raid][Kuang Dao]: How long until you two can resurrect?

[Raid][Invincible Sword of Overwhelming Might]: Still running. About four or five hundred meters to go. (When players die, their bodies remain where they fell. They need to run back near their bodies to resurrect. Of course, they can also ask Angel Sister to resurrect them, but that costs levels. They can even have her resurrect them beside her, but that costs even more levels...)

[Raid][Kuang Dao]: Don't resurrect when you get there. Wait for us.

[Raid][Cold-Hearted]: Okay.

Kuang Dao drew the weapon from his back and tilted his head forward. "Brothers, follow me!"

"Yeah! Let that punk get a taste of War Hero's strength!" The fierce bunch eagerly readied their weapons and charged after Kuang Dao...

Ye Fengxing sat on an armored corpse, happily chewing on Magical Rations.

"Little mage, it seems you aren't very popular among your own people." Adaric looked thoughtfully at the two Dragonkin corpses on the ground.

"Oh..." Ye Fengxing answered casually. "I certainly can't make everyone like me."

"They seem to have quite a few more allies."

"I see them." Ye Fengxing narrowed his eyes, casting a sideways glance. His Perception stat was extremely high, and he had spotted Kuang Dao's group as soon as they gathered. That moronic Warrior called Invincible Sword of Overwhelming Might had actually dreamed of ambushing God Ye. What a joke!

In fact, even the Assassin who came afterward had been burned out of stealth by Ye Fengxing's Sea of Flames. That alone showed just how keen his senses were.

Skills such as Stealth and Wind Veil could only conceal the caster's form, making them invisible. They couldn't erase sounds, smells, the currents of air stirred by movement, and so on.

Players might play the Assassin class in the game, but that didn't mean they did that for a living. Most people who played Assassins relied on the abilities the game gave them, but in certain people's eyes, those tricks were nothing worth mentioning...

Ye Fengxing had never been an assassin, but that didn't mean he had never killed anyone. Perhaps his body count couldn't compare with those of world-famous assassins, but the people he had killed were people those assassins could never kill in their entire lives...

When a person moved, it was difficult to completely eliminate the information they transmitted to their surroundings, such as light, sound, smell, vibrations from their footsteps, and so forth. The game designers had played a little trick: stealth-type skills only concealed visible light, rather than hiding a person completely.

For most players, stealth was already terrifying, practically overpowered! But for people like Ye Fengxing, the skill wasn't nearly so formidable.

Ye Fengxing had heard the Assassin named Cold-Hearted breathing as soon as he lay in ambush nearby. When Cold-Hearted rushed at him, the footsteps trampling fallen leaves, flowers, and grass were even more "deafening."

To Ye Fengxing, this hardly qualified as an "assassin"... an ambush couldn't get much clumsier than that! If someone like this really worked as an assassin, he wouldn't last a week.

Most people who could truly make the Assassin class deadly weren't exactly decent sorts in real life...

Nobody knew who had first said that, but players generally thought it made a lot of sense.

Cold-Hearted clearly still had a long way to go. In fact, he was just a street thug. He could handle fights and brawls, but as for killing... it wasn't that he couldn't kill, nor was it a question of whether he had killed before. It was just that, in the eyes of certain "professionals," someone like him wasn't even third-rate... no, he hadn't even learned the basics.

"These days, there are more useless Assassins than you can count." Those words came from the North American Shenluo Team's star Assassin. Players hailed him as the "King of Assassins," yet every word he spoke stabbed his fellow Assassins in the heart.

Interestingly, angry as everyone was, they couldn't refute him-the Assassin class, played well and played badly, might as well have been two entirely different classes! "A massive gap" didn't even begin to describe it...