The King's Avatar

One Inch Ash, Qiao Yifan!

Despite having had very little association with the person, Chen Guo still knew who he was. Ye Xiu didn’t hide anything from those who were around him everyday, including Chen Guo.

Although Qiao Yifan was still a nobody among pros, he was still one of the best of the best in the game. Chen Guo immediately checked his character; as of now, One Inch Ash was level 55.

After being left way behind during the Christmas event, One Inch Ash had not only made a comeback, but he was half a level higher than Lord Grim now. There was nothing Ye Xiu could do. Between levels 50 to 55, there was nothing he could do but kill monsters in the wilderness to level up, and there was no efficient way to do so. However, the regular servers had plenty of quest chains and an abundance of dungeons. As long as players were willing to spend enough time, they could level up pretty quickly during this period.

This not only applied to level 50, but 55, 60, 65 …..

All of these levels used to be the max level in the game. To make the game’s content more diverse at the time, there were a large number of dungeons for players to enjoy for each max level. When the level limit was raised, those dungeons became treasure troves of experience points.

Qiao Yifan started his quests for Heavenly Domain while he was still leveling up. After all, being a professional player, the skill tests required in the quest posed no problem for him at all. As for the Arena aspect, Qiao Yifan was not Tang Rou, and so keeping a winning streak against regular players was a piece of cake.

Nonetheless, with Ye Xiu as the leadoff, Qiao Yifan didn’t spark off as much of a craze. His One Inch Ash was also unlike Lord Grim, who couldn’t gain any experience after reaching level 50 in the normal server and could only focus solely on the quest for Heavenly Domain. Lord Grim spent all of his time in the Arena, raking in victories, battle after battle. It was almost impossible for people not to notice him. Qiao Yifan, on the other hand, employed a much more gradual process. He saved up his victories one at a time, stretching it across a number of days, so no one noticed that he was another one who started the Heavenly Domain’s quests early.

Until he finished the quests, entered the Heavenly Domain and was announced by the system of his arrival did the tenth server explode in shock. Such announcements weren’t that rare in Heavenly Domain, but it did surprise people for it had came from the tenth server. The highest level in the tenth server was level 58. This proved to everyone that whoever just entered the Heavenly Domain was undoubtedly a brilliant expert.

The moment One Inch Ash had stepped into the Heavenly Domain, a curious crowd had gathered. Chen Guo and Ye Xiu were too busy at the moment to notice the system announcement. Ye Xiu noticed through a different way soon though, because Qiao Yifan sent the news to Ye Xiu along with his greetings right after he had entered the Heavenly Domain. Ye Xiu immediately called him over to help.

“F*ck! You actually called helper!” Wei Chen, who had 19 helpers with him, roared righteously. Chen Guo was losing more respect for god-level players by the minute.

The Ice Boundary’s constant freeze damage immediately interrupted Wei Chen’s Warlock’s Hexagram Prison. Unfortunately, One Inch Ash’s level was still too low. Under such extreme level suppression, the Ice Boundary’s freezing effect was rendered completely ineffective.

Wei Chen didn’t know One Inch Ash, and so he thought that the ineffective freezing effect was nothing more than a stroke of luck for himself. After all, the chances weren’t 100% to start with. He jumped out of the Ice Boundary frantically, swung himself around, and saw One Inch Ash’s equipment. One look, he knew that he had been tricked.

He was no longer a pro player who had to put all of his focus on professional matches. Indulging his days in the game, he knew all kinds of items by heart, so it was no surprise that he recognized the weapon in One Inch Ash’s hand was a level 55 katana, Sword of Carnot. It used to be a very popular weapon, but its fame had faded away with the level 55 level limit. Even nostalgists wouldn’t bring such a weapon to an important PK match.

As the thought raced through his mind, Wei Chen clicked on One Inch Ash, whose level of 55 displayed truthfully in in front of him. With such as low level, Wei Chen knew the limit of the character’s performance even without checking out the character’s equipment.

“This is your long-awaited helper?” Wei Chen laughed. Suddenly, a glimmering flash shot into his view. The sword of Carnot was glinting right in front of him. Coming from a Ghostblade, the flash gleamed with a haunting wickedness.

“Woah! Not bad!” Wei Chen exclaimed, stumbling to dodge the blow. His Warlock raised his staff the following second, trying to cast another spell. Unfortunately, it was interrupted by the following strike from One Inch Ash.

Ghostblade and Warlocks both used cloth armor, but they had completely different attack power when it came to close-range combat. Even with weak armor, Ghostblades were still considered swordsmen. As for Warlocks, they were the same as Elementalists, possessing no martial skills whatsoever.

Trapped in such a tiny space by One Inch Ash, Wei Chen was actually in a pretty dire situation.

“Ah! Slow down!”

Under One Inch Ash’s constant slashing assault, Wei Chen’s Warlock’s left and right dodging was rather unsightly. Undignified words rolled out of his mouth ceaselessly. Even if Wei Chen started begging for mercy, no one would find it strange.

However, Wei Chen was not undignified to such extreme degrees. When he deemed his endless stream of useless words was unable to ease the ferocity of his enemy’s attacks, his final cry was: “Help me!!!”

“Yifan! Don’t let your guard down! This guy will do anything to achieve his goal. He doesn’t have any sense of shame. Hurry up and chop him down! The faster the better!” Ye Xiu called out to stop Wei Chen’s distracting noise. He didn’t go over to help One Inch Ash out because some of Wei Chen’s guys had just arrived.

Killing Wei Chen was of utmost importance. Unfortunately, Ye Xiu and Qiao Yifan’s characters’ levels were too low to kill a level 70 character in such a short span of time. Consequently, the priority became stopping Wei Chen’s people from regrouping with their leader. Ye Xiu had no idea where this group of people came from, but he did know that they were just a group of nobodies. Without Wei Chen’s commands, despite Lord Grim’s low level, Ye Xiu was confident that he could defeat each one of them one by one.

“Sh*t! Ye Qiu, you shameless scum! I left the scene a long time ago, so I’m not going to talk about my past glory, but speaking of no sense of shame, why don’t you introduce yourself?! Stop framing good people!” Ye Xiu didn’t pay a single shred of attention to Wei Chen’s honorable speech. More importantly, the Ghostblade in front of him wasn’t distracted by his speech neither. Instead, his attacks only became more fierce because of Ye Xiu’s “Hurry up”.

“Little brother, pretty nice moves you got there. Which team are you from?” Although Wei Chen retired many years before, he still played Glory and his judgement was still very sharp. Qiao Yifan’s cautious and organized style exposed his professional background clearly in Wei Chen’s eyes.

No matter how fierce a regular player’s performance was, some wild habits would always be mixed in. This style was unavoidable for the older generation of professional players like Wei Chen and Ye Xiu. After all, they all entered the professional scene after playing the game on their own for a very long time. Some of the latecomers were able to learn from the earlier generation’s experience, and thus avoided a lot of mistakes and wiped away some of the bad habits from the chaotic gaming styles back in the day. Qiao Yifan’s performance bared such marks. This was how Wei Chen was able to recognize the boy in front of him was not only professional, but of a younger generation as well, hence the source of the title, “little brother”.

Qiao Yifan was an honest child. In addition, he figured the person knew Ye Xiu well from the way the two’s conversed, even though he didn’t quite understand their relationship. In the end, he replied truthfully, “Tiny Herb.”

“Oh! Tiny Herb! It’s a good team. Speaking of Tiny Herb, I have some personal connections with your team leader. Your skills are pretty good. I can talk to him later and see if he’ll let you play a starting position. It’s the end of the season anyways. Tiny Herb’s general situation is already set. It’s such a small chance to let the youngsters shine. I am pretty sure I can do at least that much.” Wei Chen gave a reasonable response, “You’re not bad. All you need is an opportunity to shine.”

Opportunity!

Starting position!

To a pro player, these were no words more attractive than those.

If it were the Qiao Yifan from a week before the All Star, if someone promised such things to him, he would probably be on the floor, thanking them for the offer with excitement.

But after he screwed up that Rookie Challenge and thought everything over, with Ye Xiu’s help, he finally came to a realization.

Talking about opportunities, wasn’t the Rookie Challenge an opportunity?

Yet he was unable to seize that opportunity.

No opportunity could be understood as bad luck. Being unable to seize an opportunity, should this be counted as bad luck as well? At least Qiao Yifan knew that he wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t use that opportunity because his level of skill wasn’t good enough, that’s all.

During recent times, he was no longer restless. He would not try his hand at another opportunity before he knew that he was skilled enough for another one.

Qiao Yifan could now laugh off the offer that was able to move him greatly in the past. He could even tell Wei Chen sincerely, “Sorry, I’m not ready to take that opportunity.”

“No!” Wei Chen sounded much more certain than Qiao Yifan, “The you from the past might not be ready, but you’re different now. You’re completely prepared now.”

Delivering such a passionate speech, Wei Chen even forgot to move his character. His poor Warlock just stood there stupidly like a sandbag as One Inch Ash splashed him twice in a roll.

Such honesty and compassion made Qiao Yifan slight embarassed. Right then Wei Chen cried out, “Your time has come! Fight for it, Zhou Yebai!”

Qiao Yifan was puzzled, “I’m not Zhou Yebai.”

“What are you talking about? If you’re not Zhou Yebai, who could you possibly be?”

“Hahahaha!” Ye Xiu’s laughter resounded from the other side, “Very impressive. To be more convincing, you even abandoned moving. You used two strikes just to get a name out. RIP. You’ve got the person wrong, bro!”

“Really? Who are you then?” Wei Chen asked.

“I’m Qiao Yifan.”

“Qiao Yifan?” Wei Chen mumbled. He stole a glance at the list of Tiny Herb’s members that he had just pulled up and added, “Isn’t Qiao Yifan an assassin?”

“Enough already. Are you still trying to trick him? Yifan, don’t listen to his nonsense. He has no connection with your team leader. He doesn’t even know that Tiny Herb’s gate now opens from the South side.” Ye Xiu retorted.

“D*mmit! Who says I don’t know that?! I just met with your team leader for a meal just a few days ago.” Wei Chen protested.

“Our Tiny Herb’s has gate never opened on the south side.” Qiao Yifan added weakly.

“F*ck you! I told you that scum is worse than I am! I’m done with you!” Wei Chen roared and charged towards Lord Grim recklessly. A spell manifested in the Warlock’s hand.

Qiao Yifan was pretty confused by the exchange. He rushed forward, trying to stop Wei Chen, but only heard a warning cry from Ye Xiu, “Watch out!” With a flicker of his hand, the Warlock threw a binding spell behind himself.