National destiny: Global tower climbing skills have decreased by 10,000 times.

Chapter 122 Burning Blood

Hearing him say that, Zuo Shi crossed his arms and snorted, thinking to himself, "Hmph, what a despicable act."

In his understanding, Ye Fei was holding a grudge from yesterday and was deliberately using a public occasion to get revenge.

On the surface, it's meant to build prestige among all team members, but in reality, it's aimed at him alone. They might even call him out on stage, forcing him to come up and embarrass him in front of everyone.

Since Xingyuan has already admitted it, he'll accept his defeat. But to deliberately set up this whole thing specifically to target him—isn't that holding a grudge?

"Even if you do have some strength, can you really be stronger than Xingyuan?"

He didn't get up, intending to ignore it. He planned to wait and see how things developed.

So he decided not to move. No matter what Ye Fei said, he wouldn't pay any attention to him.

Even if he were called up to the stage and won, he would never be satisfied. He wanted to see Ye Fei's skill level first before making any plans.

If he's really just a smuggler with garlic stuck in his nose, then there's no need to worry about him at all; just win the fight and don't expect to get any benefits from him.

As he was pondering this, someone in the audience stood up first, and Zuo Shi looked up to see.

The man was tall with broad shoulders and a thick back. He was already half a head taller than the people around him when he was sitting in the back row, making him particularly conspicuous. Now that he stood up, he looked like a wall.

His face has strong features, regular facial structure, and sharp eyes. Just by looking at his face, he looks like a respectable civil servant who has just stepped out of an office.

But the half-sleeve of floral print protruding from the left sleeve breaks this image, with the fiery red pattern spreading from the wrist all the way to the cuff.

—That's the iconic symbol of the Warrior class in Slay the Spire: burning blood and the shadowy figure of a demon, intertwined and meticulously designed with a distinctly dark aesthetic.

With this tattooed arm, he immediately exudes a roguish,江湖-like air, yet the two qualities surprisingly blend together seamlessly.

He walked steadily toward the stage.

Someone in the audience recognized him and exclaimed in a low voice, "Lu Zhen? Is that the 'Blood Gang Elder'?"

"With such an impressive-sounding name, I thought he was just showing off online. Is he actually doing this now?"

"I remember him, it was him, the amateur warrior who defeated three near-second-tier professional players in yesterday's tournament."

"I heard he's a leading figure in a new school of martial arts and has a lot of influence online."

"That's the Blood Gang! A grassroots group that plays warriors; I've even seen their posts."

"He actually stepped forward first. Judging from this, this is going to be quite a sight to behold."

Lu Zhen walked to the front of the podium and looked down at Ye Fei. Just by looking down at him, the scene immediately quieted down.

However, the first thing he did upon taking the stage was to bow and clasp his hands in a respectful greeting to Ye Fei. His voice was solemn and his attitude sincere: "Boss Ye, Brother Xingyuan introduced your name to me before. I believe that Boss Ye must have some extraordinary abilities to be able to sit in this position."

"But I still want to see what brilliant ideas you have, sir. Just to satisfy my belligerent nature, I'd like to ask for your guidance."

Ye Fei glanced at him and immediately recognized him as Lu Zhen, one of the key members highlighted in yesterday's data, an offensive warrior player.

Ye Fei's expression remained unchanged; he simply replied, "Okay, go get a room. I'll come in later."

After he said that, a sparse murmur arose from the audience.

Giving the other party control over the room settings means that Lu Zhen will decide the game mode, character selection, and difficulty settings.

It's like saying: No matter the difficulty or the character, it doesn't matter, I can play it and I can win every time.

"Is that possible?" That's what everyone was thinking, so they were more inclined to believe that there would definitely be further demands later.

Lu Zhen was slightly surprised, but didn't say much. He turned around, walked back to his seat, sat down, and started creating a room.

He paused, deep in thought, while setting the character restriction options:

Logically, while playing the same character should be fair, the warrior he plays isn't a popular class, so the probability of his opponent also playing a warrior is very low.

Now that the room settings have been handed over to him, he's using his role to his advantage to win. Isn't this taking advantage of someone else's position and being beholden to them, making his victory unfair?

It's not a real skill to beat your opponent with a character you're good at using a character you're not good at.

He wants to win fairly and justly.

So he selected "No character restriction" in the character restriction section.

He hesitated again when setting the difficulty level. He realized that the significance of Ye Fei's challenge to reveal his identity outweighed its practical value.

After all, it's reasonable for the boss to want to give himself a respectable position in the team so that he can easily command and control the team in the future.

Ye Fei dared to openly challenge and establish his authority, so he must have some strength, but it shouldn't be that great.

He was also Xingyuan's friend, so Lu Zhen decided that he couldn't let the other party suffer too much.

Therefore, he set the difficulty at A7—the most basic and lowest entry standard for professional players.

The room was created, and Lu Zhen sent an invitation. Ye Fei entered the room, and the character selection panel popped up. He barely hesitated, glanced at it, and immediately selected "Ironclad Warrior".

A murmur rippled through the audience again: "He plays a warrior too?"

"What a coincidence? Both of them play warriors, and they just happened to run into each other."

"Two warriors fighting each other, this is going to be quite a show!"

Lu Zhen was slightly taken aback, then a hint of surprise appeared in his eyes.

There are already few warrior players in the e-sports circle, and there are only a handful of warrior players present. Unexpectedly, Boss Ye happens to be a warrior player as well.

This means that this duel is a completely fair civil war between warriors. He had always longed to spar with a true master warrior, and this opportunity came sooner than expected.

Without thinking further, he clicked "confirm".

The game begins. The rules adopt the newly added "Duel Mode", which is the Dragon Slayer Ranking system. Players will engage in PVP after completing a level, with no character restrictions and the same seed and random number.

Since the Dragon Slayer Ranking Global Challenge, "Duel Mode" has been added to the international version as a new permanent online PVP mode.

Compared to the traditional "one-on-one mode", the "duel mode" has less balance due to the lack of character restrictions, but it is more competitive and confrontational.

Most importantly, it's extremely popular. Because players directly compete against each other, it creates many new dimensions of player-versus-player gameplay, making it highly competitive and entertaining.

Therefore, duel mode has now become the most popular PVP gameplay, and various amateur and professional players use duel mode as a common competitive method.

As soon as Lu Zhen entered the game, his expression changed immediately. He got into the zone and started using his most proficient "Star Abyss Attack Style".

This fighting style was invented by Xingyuan and is also the mainstream fighting style of the "Burning Contract Blood Gang". It advocates offense over defense, relying on quickly killing enemies to shorten the battle line and reduce casualties.

This is fundamentally different from the Dragon Kingdom's traditional "defense and health preservation" approach, and from the Will Kingdom's "bear-style power warfare" that slowly accumulates strength for a burst of power.

In China, this style of play is a completely new innovation, originating from Xingyuan's censored article.

In the first layer, he drew a lot of attack cards. Although the ratio of attack to defense was unbalanced, the coordination between the cards was quite tight.

Some unique combination moves are frequently used, such as "Muscle Strength" combined with "Continuous Punch", "Bullying" combined with "Melting Fist", and cross-turn vulnerability combined with "Heavy Hammer", which are quite powerful.

The speed of clearing stages is extremely fast, often taking only two or three rounds to defeat all the monsters.

Although the attack and defense ratio was somewhat unbalanced and there were occasional battle losses, he managed to control the total battle losses very well by relying on the strategy of "attacking to reduce battle losses" and the healing effect of the starting relic "Burning Blood".

The audience was amazed; they had never imagined that soldiers could play like this.

The battle between the two was displayed in real time on the projection screen. In contrast, Ye Fei's side was relatively uneventful.

Unlike Lu Zhen, he didn't draw many attack cards; he only cautiously drew three and took the opportunity to discard two of them.

When he arrived at the shop, he used his starting relic, the "Golden Pearl," and the money he had saved from defeating elites to buy one "Sacrifice" card, then deleted one "Strike" card and left.

The contestants were completely bewildered, wondering, "What is Boss Ye doing?"

'Sacrifice', a skill card, costs 0 mana, reduces health by 6, and grants 2 mana for 3 draws.

In the mainstream evaluation of professional players in the Dragon Kingdom, this is a "critical survival" card. The cost of losing 6 points of health is too great and cannot be used casually.

It is only necessary to use it in critical situations where you encounter a bad draw, are in poor condition, and do not have enough defensive cards to prevent damage.

Drawing three extra cards is to find defensive cards and reduce battle losses, while the "6 health" comes at the cost of "trading minor damage for major damage."

He sacrificed a small amount of blood to save his life.

Therefore, it will absolutely not be used unless absolutely necessary, and its applicability is extremely narrow.

Moreover, it is a lower-tier alternative to "Unwavering", because "Unwavering" does not require losing health and can completely defend against a round of attacks.

Therefore, if something is "unmoved", there is absolutely no need for "offerings".

In addition, the "deletion and printing" operation defied common sense, so they couldn't understand what "Boss Ye" was doing.

"There is no need for extreme survival on the first floor. It is not worth spending so much money to buy a 'sacrifice'."

A contestant who knew about warriors whispered an explanation to the person next to him from the audience.

"I knew it, he can't play everything. His skills are clearly not those of a warrior."