“No choice,” Tang Rou said from the shore, sounding rather helpless. “I could only chase them this far.”

“Chase?” Ye Xiu was focused on the water battle and wasn’t completely clear on what was happening on the shore, but he knew the approximate number of people. Their opponents were guild elites, a dozen or so of them, yet they had run away from Tang Rou, Steamed Bun Invasion, and Concealed Light, who was practically negligible until he started attacking?

“Hahaha, they know what’s good for them,” Steamed Bun Invasion said loudly, laughing.

Ye Xiu and Su Mucheng’s characters emerged from the lake one after the other, with Thousand Creations following behind. They came ashore and looked around, still able to vaguely see the figures of various guilds who hadn’t completely left. Aside from them, no one else would be in Thousand Waves Lake. Steamed Bun Invasion and Concealed Light were too low-level to be here. Even stepping on a monster would be a problem. Concealed Light had been nervous the entire way here.

“Where’s that Mahou Shoujo?” Steamed Bun Invasion craned his neck, looking in the direction of Little Forest.

“I told him to retreat first,” Ye Xiu said.

In the little forest, members of the various large guilds had replaced them. After escaping from the lake, they hadn’t run far, hiding in the places that offered cover. It was a bit of a distance from the lake, and they wanted to continue observing what these few from Excellent Era planned to do. If there was any danger, they could still escape in time.

At the same time, they were also thinking about the guy in the little forest who had fired the black cannon. The players from Misty Rain Guild had already confessed that this person was likely Mahou Shoujo, who had quit their guild. So, after rushing into the forest, everyone pointed to that name and searched, but there was no sign of him.

Then, another great battle broke out by the lake, with people falling into the water and running away. Following that, the team chat was filled with notifications. Every player who had fallen into the water hadn’t survived.

The higher-ups of the major guilds hadn’t died, but they felt even worse than if they had.

This operation at Thousand Waves Lake had come to an end without any results. 29 of their members had died in the water, nearly half of their forces.

The remaining half were now crouching in the trees and bushes near the lake, their faces contorted into expressions of constipation in front of their computers. They watched helplessly as Lord Grim, Dancing Rain, and their target, Thousand Creations, emerged from the water unscathed. The six people by the lake seemed to be chatting happily.

Looking at their own side, the guys who hadn’t been caught by Steamed Bun Invasion and the others had just arrived in a sorry state to join them.

“Too despicable!” The person who had come over then gave everyone a detailed account of what had just happened.

“Ye Qiu and Su Mucheng hid in the water and had those guys on the shore push us into the water!” one person said.

“You have so many people, and they only have three. You should have been able to push them!” someone asked.

“Uh… well…” The few who had escaped were a bit dazed. Right, what happened? They couldn’t seem to remember.

“What do we do now?” someone asked.

Everyone was silent. A bunch of guild leaders were here, so there was no need for them to discuss.

What to do?

The guild leaders were also discussing nervously.

“With the number of people we have now, we probably can’t beat those few head-on,” Jiang You said. He had personally fought against these people and had been utterly defeated. Their entire army had been wiped out, and they hadn’t even managed to take one of their lives.

“We can’t fight them. What do we do if they dive into the water again?” Tiannan Xing said.

“This is exactly the leveling area that suits their levels. If they just level here for the next few days, and then join the guild in five days, they can just swim over to the dungeon…” Chun Yi Lao predicted the future that no one wanted to see.

“Damn it!” All the guild leaders cursed.

“Let’s retreat first and make a plan. What are you still squatting here for, like idiots?” Tiannan Xing said, already turning to walk out of the forest.

As soon as he moved, the people from Herb Garden naturally followed. The others didn’t have any ideas either, and they also retreated.

“It seems a bit difficult to kill them in this place. We can only have the people in the various leveling areas pay attention to see if we can catch them somewhere else,” the guild leaders discussed on the way back.

“The problem is, what if they just keep leveling here and don’t leave?” Chun Yi Lao said.

Everyone fell silent.

Things like supplies and equipment repairs weren’t even mentioned. If they were lone heroes, they might have to return to the city because of these difficulties, but now that everyone was in a guild, these problems were no longer a concern. Someone could take care of it for them. And no matter how big a guild was, it didn’t have the ability to completely cut off their supplies.

A group of people left the Thousand Waves Lake leveling area. After walking halfway, they still hadn’t come up with an idea. Suddenly, someone in the crowd asked, “Where are we going now?”

The guild leaders in the front heard this and were stunned for a moment. They asked in uncertain tones, “Return to the city?”

“Return to the city to do what? Is there something else?” someone asked.

The guild leaders’ faces flushed. This grand operation had ended with them running back to the main city in a pathetic manner, without any conclusion. It was truly embarrassing.

“Shut up, shut up!” The one who asked the question was immediately scolded by his guild leader in a private message.

“There’s nothing else for the time being.” In the end, Chun Yi Lao still stated the situation frankly. They hadn’t come up with any plan after discussing it all the way, and he believed that even if they continued to the main city, they wouldn’t come up with anything.

“If there’s nothing else, why don’t we go level up?” someone suggested.

This question was also quite cutting. Guild players usually leveled up in teams. If they wanted to level up now, each guild would naturally split up and level up on their own, but as soon as they split up, the scattered forces of each guild would be exposed.

“Whatever, let’s just disband first.” Chun Yi Lao was too lazy to bother with these things. He was the team leader for this trip, so he disbanded the team. Each team then existed independently, based on their respective guilds.

Once they were disbanded, each team consisted of two or three people, and they went their separate ways, appearing extremely desolate.

“We can’t just let this go, right?” The team had temporarily disbanded, and the people had split up, but the discussion group outside the game was still active. Tiannan Xing immediately joined the conversation.

“If you have a solution, then speak,” Jiang You said, his tone clearly revealing his frustration.

Tiannan Xing was silent. If he had a solution, he would have said it already.

“Let’s talk if there’s anything.” Chun Yi Lao finally summarized concisely, meaning they should only speak if there was a situation, and not waste words if there wasn’t.

So the discussion group fell silent, and the players who had disbanded the team and gone their separate ways were also temporarily speechless.

Time passed quickly, and it was soon the peak gaming hours of the evening, when everyone was online. This was also when the guilds had the most players online. As elites of the guild, they were all hitmen when gathered together, but when thrown back into the guild, they were all leaders who could stand on their own. Everyone quickly got busy.

In the blink of an eye, it was already dawn, and the number of online players gradually decreased.

After the guild developed, the leaders and elites couldn’t just bury themselves in leveling up. There were always some guild affairs that needed to be handled. For example, going to kill Thousand Creations, although they ended up covered in dirt, it could still be considered handling guild affairs.

After the crowds thinned in the early hours of the morning, these people finally had time to focus on leveling up. The dungeon instances had been reset, and they skillfully formed teams and set off towards the dungeons.

Chun Yi Lao and the others were in the new server specifically to handle problems, so they wouldn’t do things like leveling up. At this time, they weren’t even online in the tenth server, but were logged into their main accounts in the Heavenly Domain.

“Depressing!” Jiang You suddenly popped up in the discussion group and shouted.

Compared to before, this discussion group had even more people. Now, it wasn’t just Jiang You and the other three major guild leaders who were discussing. Guilds like Misty Rain, after hearing the news, had also begun to personally take charge and had been invited to join the discussion group. The guild leaders of the tenth server seemed very small in this discussion group.

“You have to work even if you’re depressed!” The one who replied to Jiang You was the guild leader of Howling Heights, Matada. He was currently organizing the guild members in the Heavenly Domain to run dungeons.

“Which dungeon are you running tonight?” Misty Rain Guild leader Misty Rain Locked asked.

“The Tower in the Tower… We’re only at 37% progress this week,” Matada said. The Tower in the Tower he mentioned was the largest type of dungeon, and it only reset once a week. A full team of one hundred people could enter at once. The difficulty of the dungeon was extremely high, and the battle lines were very long. When teams were running it, they usually only played to a certain point each day and then saved their progress, continuing from there the next day. This was a function that the system specifically provided for large dungeons.

“37%… That’s a bit tight. You’ll have to play all night tonight, right?” Misty Rain Locked said.

“Sigh, it’s all up in the air. Most of the people I’ve gathered this time are from the substitute team. With 37% progress, 22 people have already died. I’ll be satisfied if we can reach 75% this time,” Matada said.

These two guild leaders completely ignored Jiang You’s sigh about the situation in the tenth server and actually started discussing the dungeons in the Heavenly Domain. Although everyone was a competitor, they didn’t start yelling at each other at the first sign of trouble, except for a few mortal enemies. This was becoming more and more like the style of the pro scene. Everyone fought to the death on the field, but outside of the matches, they looked like friends.

“Gentlemen, this discussion group isn’t for you to discuss this,” Jiang You said, clearly annoyed.

“Haha, there are three major guild leaders here! We just need to wave the flag and cheer. What can we do?” Misty Rain Locked said.

“Hmph…” Jiang You couldn’t think of anything to say for a long time, so he just typed a random character to express his mood.

Just when he had nothing to say, another person suddenly appeared, but it was just the branch leader of the tenth server from Hundred Blossoms, Bullet Belt, with an angry emoji followed by a sentence: “Our dungeon team has been killed!”