The Great Thief

The Life Alliance was quite a relaxed group; most of the inner members weren’t capable in combat either. Half-Life Crystal’s greatest dream was to have their own land – a Stronghold would be ideal.

However, it was difficult to make this a reality. This was because many mega-clubs still didn’t have their own Strongholds either.

The motivation behind her and the Life Alliance’s constant support for Lu Li was that she hoped that he could make her dream a reality and take a Stronghold for the Life Alliance.

Half-Life Crystal originally thought that it would take around a year and a half, or an even longer time for her dream to come true. She didn’t expect Lu Li to contact her this soon for her to take the Stronghold. Furthermore, from his tone, it seemed that he was 100% confident in taking the Stronghold.

They were not very ambitious people. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that their type of ambition was different to a normal club’s. As such, safeguarding Ruling Sword’s Stronghold in

Grey Valley was not only without detriment to them, but it was better for them as well.

This Stronghold was Ruling Sword’s. If they couldn’t protect it, Ruling Sword wouldn’t just stand by and watch. They would try their utmost best to assist them. Furthermore, Life Alliance wouldn’t need to repay Ruling Sword for doing so either.

Half-Life Crystal was extremely excited.

At the very beginning of the game, she was just an ignorant little girl. After being saved by Lu Li, she started to grow more and more ambitious. With luck on her side, she also became more successful. Besides Ruling Sword, she also had good relations with other clubs as well. That aside, she had also managed to gain the support of a group of individual top players.

They would sell materials and equipment to these players at a discounted price, supporting them just as a mega-club would.

For example, if these players dropped items after dying in the Wild, they just needed to give Half-Life Crystal a call. She would immediately send equipment to the players who needed it, even if they didn’t have enough money. As long as they were top players, the Life Alliance was willing to support them. After all, they were financially capable to do so. Furthermore, they didn’t even care if the players owed them money.

This created a network of top players that the Life Alliance could rely upon in times of need. As soon as the Life Alliance requested for help, these top players would immediately rush to their side.

Lu Li asked for Half-Life Crystal to prepare 100 top fighters. This way, they would only need 40 more players from Ruling Sword. He didn’t expect that Half-Life Crystal would immediately prepare a list of 200 players. Of this list of 200 players, the top half were players with a strong reputation as well.

Lu Li realised that they were completely capable of taking down the Stronghold by themselves.

After all, Grand Hegemony was only guarding it in name. The ownership of the Stronghold was already decided beforehand.

Drinking Alone came twice more afterwards. The second time, he even brought along Northern Tang Dream and Northern Tang Kitty, hoping to regain their alliance with Ruling Sword. However, this was all rejected by Lu Li. What he was asking for was impossible.

The relationship between Lu Li and these people were quite shallow. After all, they only partied together once during the very beginning of the game. There was nothing more beyond that.

If there wasn’t a clash of principles, Lu Li wouldn’t mind building a better relationship with these people. He wasn’t a person who completely disregarded the past. However, after pushing him to the limit, Lu Li decided that they were not worth his time.

Emperor Hegemony also surrendered and quickly sent the money to Ruling Sword.

Besides paying the price for taking back the shares that they gave Lu Li, there was also the price of the Stronghold. It wouldn’t just be Life Alliance joining, but there would be other clubs too. For the sake of appeasing Lu Li, they also paid for that.

Truthfully speaking, no matter how confident and proud Grand Hegemony was, they knew that they couldn’t dare to offend Lu Li.

Despite crossing swords with Glory Capital again and again, Ruling Sword hadn’t suffered many losses at all. Lu Li was someone widely recognised as ruthless and heartless. Furthermore, he had a reputation for being narrow-minded and holding grudges. He would pay back all the wrongs that were dealt to him. If you offended him, you wouldn’t be able to even dream of sleeping well that night.

It was only Water Fairy, who was disillusioned by her love for her boyfriend, who felt that Lu Li was a legendary figure who was worthy of the glorious tales about him.

Although Glory Capital was occupied at that time, Lu Li did not let down his guard.

If he was Sorrowless, Glory Capital’s leader, he wouldn’t do things the conventional way. He would team up with Blood Red War Flag and the other clubs to take away Ruling Sword’s Strongholds.

Unfortunately for him, Sorrowless was Sorrowless.

His proud personality would never allow himself to do such underhanded things. From the very beginning when he took control of Glory Capital, he had always defeated their opponents the right way, and always in one on one confrontations. Even when Glory Capital was being teamed-up against, he never conceded. As such, Lu Li wasn’t worried about him.

The twelfth Stronghold wars officially began.

Ruling Sword continued to be on the defensive. Both the Black Sea Coast and Grey Valley had already been successfully defended more than ten times. Therefore, if everything went according to the plan, their defence would be almost guaranteed.

Drizzle Court controlled the first Stronghold in Westfall and aimed to gain the second Stronghold in the same map.

Peerless City was also on the defensive. They deployed some players to assist Drizzle Court in attacking the second Stronghold in Westfall to ensure their victory.

Life Alliance wasn’t a club. A club meant that there was military strength. Furthermore, clubs would also compete in different competitions. They spent a great amount of money to gain the right to attack the second Stronghold in Grey Valley and were battling against Grand Hegemony.

People with a keen eye would be able to sense that Grand Hegemony and Ruling Sword had resolved their issues.

Otherwise, they wouldn’t be spending that much money to fight each other.

For the sake of preventing clubs from cheating and sabotaging the integrity of the battles, the official administrators would judge the progress of each battle to see if it was legitimate or not. As soon as they decided that one side was acting, they would disqualify the accused club and inflict a harsh punishment on them. For example, they would forbid the accused club from participating in the Stronghold battles three times. If it was judged that both sides were acting, they would nullify the ownership of the Stronghold, then release it as a free Stronghold next time.

No one dared to test the administrators.

Grand Hegemony didn’t dare. They still wanted to take on other Strongholds. Life Alliance also didn’t dare to test them. It wasn’t that they weren’t strong enough to take a Stronghold for themselves, but that Grand Hegemony just didn’t need to defend it like their life depended on it. They just needed to fight normally.

With no external reinforcements from Ruling Sword or hired mercenaries, Grand Hegemony shamefully lost to the Life Alliance and became known as a joke for a long time.

The Stronghold battles this time had been exciting and went down in the history of the game.

The most exciting clash was of course between Glory Capital and Blood Red War Flag. It was a much better viewing experience than Ruling Sword’s defence.

Glory Capital was just as Lu Li expected. They did not ask for reinforcements at all.

They clashed with a combined strength of Blood Red War Flag, Azure Guard, Seventh Heaven, Grand Hegemony, Wings of Dawn, Peacetime Dynasty, Purple Lunar Paradise, Brotherhood and Majin Temple. This was an alliance of nine clubs.

Of course, each of these clubs had their own things to do, so they only deployed a small portion of their strength.