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chapter-286

Chapter 286 – Harming Others for One’s Personal Gain

Midnight. Normally, Ye Xiu would have taken the shift an hour ago. But today, for the Christmas event, Ye Xiu had created such a crazy scene. Chen Guo was even more nervous about it than Ye Xiu was. She let him off with a break and randomly had someone else sub in for Ye Xiu.

Chen Guo had been controlling Soft Mist to collect the presents, when she heard several gun shots from her headphones. Lord Grim and Cleansing Mist had jumped down from the clock tower. Using their guns’ recoil, they reduced a portion of the damage taken from falling too far down. If not, if they had directly dropped down from the clock tower, they’d definitely die, which would then, just be a joke.

The two characters came down one after the other and also began to pick up their presents. However, while Lord Grim was picking them up, he was also throwing away potions. They were all blue mana potions. As he was doing that, he grumbled: “See, I told you that you bought too many!”

“More is better than less.” Cleansing Mist said and also threw away any excess items from her bag.

It had been about who knew how long it was since the first Christmas thief had dropped to his death. Actually, quite a few presents had already disappeared. But even so, the three still weren’t able to completely pick up all of the presents that hadn’t disappeared yet.

The three characters circled around and around the Christmas tree, picking up presents. All around the streets, several eyes stared at the scene.

The main force of the six guilds had withdrawn, but they had left a few players there who would report to the guild in case Lord Grim made a disastrous mistake. In the end, they watched till the very end as the corpses turned into presents, making their mouths water all over the ground.

The three quickly filled up their bags with presents. Seeing that there were still presents left, even Ye Xiu felt that it was a pity. In the end, he saw Soft Mist, who was being controlled by Chen Guo, turn around resolutely and leave without any signs of reluctance. Ye Xiu was admiring the boss’ heroic determination, when he heard Chen Guo shout: “Hurry up! Hurry up and exchange them. Maybe there’ll still be presents when we return.”

Ye Xiu quietly wiped away some of his sweat and followed from behind. Su Mucheng’s Cleansing Mist also followed behind them. But right now, the three characters were all burdened with a filled bag, so using Aerial Fire wouldn’t feel comfortable.

Santa could be found in every leveling area, making it convenient for players to exchange their presents. Sin City’s Santa was at the entrance of the city, so there was some distance between it and the clock tower, which was in the middle of the city. With their current movement speed, Ye Xiu didn’t have high hopes that they’d be able to exchange their presents and return in time before the leftover presents disappeared.

Ye Xiu calculated the number of points he had gotten in this hour, as well as his earnings from the presents.

For the top guilds, Ye Xiu had completely used up the thief resources in Sin City, so their gains weren’t much better than those in crowded places like Line Canyon or Desolate Land.

As for Ye Xiu, if he had been doing the quest normally, with his efficiency, he would have had around the same number of points as he had now from the shared 341 Christmas thieves. As for the presents, his losses were much greater. Normally, he wouldn’t have had to waste so many presents.

The end result however, was that the gap between Ye Xiu and the big guilds was huge, but by reducing the big guilds’ gains, Ye Xiu’s gains had been reduced as well. What he had accomplished was, in reality, harming others for his own personal gain.

And truthfully, this wasn’t what Ye Xiu wanted. He would have preferred to quietly gather up points and rewards. As for how much the top guilds profited, Ye Xiu didn’t care. Unfortunately, there just had to have been people making things difficult for him. Regarding this, Ye Xiu also felt bad. He hoped that, in the next 24 hours, everyone would eventually come to an understanding. For a rare event like Christmas, no one would gain anything from hurting each other.

As he thought about this, the three reached Santa. They naturally returned the lost presents back to Santa. Chen Guo hastily exchanged all the presents, turned around and dashed back to the clock tower, opening the rewards as she ran.

Her luck was quite good and, after opening up all of her rewards, she appeared on TV three times. She received two Purple equipment and even a skill book. Chen Guo had only realized this after she finished cheering that Soft Mist wasn’t her own account. Even so, she was still happy about her luck.

Ye Xiu and Su Mucheng’s luck unfortunately wasn’t as good as Chen Guo’s, although they both made it onto TV once. The two didn’t care as much, though. But while opening the presents, they leveled up from Level 31 to 32. This event was an amazing time to gain experience and earn money. It was hard to come by such a prosperous time in the cold game. Otherwise, why else would all the players be going crazy for the thieves?

Seeing that they leveled up, Ye Xiu opened up his friends list and checked. Steamed Bun Invasion still wasn’t online and there was no sign of Qiao Yifan either. Ye Xiu didn’t really know that much about Steamed Bun Invasion’s situation. As for Qiao Yifan, it was very likely that the pro team would host some sort of party or activity on Christmas to bond with each other. Thinking about this, Ye Xiu messaged Su Mucheng: “It’s Christmas Eve. Doesn’t the team have anything planned?”

“They do!” Su Mucheng replied.

“Why didn’t you go?”

“I’m sick!” Su Mucheng said.

“What happened?”

“There’s an event today, so I got sick. I had to participate in the event to cure it.” Su Mucheng quibbled.

“……”

The three quickly returned back beneath the clock tower, though they hadn’t rushed there for nothing. There were still a few presents remaining there that hadn’t disappeared yet. There were only ten or so presents, which were then split by the three of them.

With the presents gone, the corpses also went away. The area around the clock tower looked as if it would quickly return back to peaceful times. Chen Guo wanted to continue, though. She got up and let Tang Rou use Soft Mist again. She pushed Ye Xiu and said: “Hurry up. Gather them again.”

Ye Xiu laughed bitterly: “Boss, think about it carefully. If I did it again, what’s the difference between me killing them normally and gathering them all at once?”

Chen Guo stared blankly. She then thought about Ye Xiu killing 14 Christmas thieves in one hour. Gathering all of the thieves didn’t earn him much more and he earned even fewer presents, right?

However, the three of them were now way above everyone else on the Christmas Hunting Leaderboards! Thinking of this, Chen Guo felt happy. But as for Ye Xiu, he preferred earning more presents. Did he really care about being ranked against normal players? Did he need to stoop that low?

Ye Xiu pushed away Chen Guo’s hopes of him gathering the monsters all up again and then left his seat. Having been doing the same thing for so long, he had to do something new.

He used the restroom, ate, and drank some water. Thinking about how there were so many players harboring evil intentions towards him, Ye Xiu cautiously decided that he wouldn’t stay online and chose to log out instead.

Lord Grim logged off!

When the guilds suddenly noticed this, they were startled at first and then became excited. As the Christmas thieves at the clock tower were killed, the thief population in Sin City began to recover back into its prosperous state, as it had been before all of this. Everyone was actively plundering about. Knowing that Lord Grim had gone offline was unbelievably good news for them, especially for Chen Yehui. The news felt as amazing as if finally having a thorn removed. Chen Yehui immediately checked the leaderboards. Even though the three were still ahead of them, the distance wasn’t hopeless.

Ye Qiu had logged off, but they hadn’t, which meant that they had time to catch up and surpass him.

Chen Yehui excitedly gave the orders and formulated a plan to surpass Lord Grim in four hours. After five hours, their fifteen heroes would once again dominate the leaderboards and obtain the first fifteen places.

Unfortunately, the good news didn’t last long. After half an hour of joy and hope, a system prompt notified everyone and struck everyone’s hearts.

System notification: Friend Lord Grim is online.

Friend Lord Grim! Everyone wanted to dig out these words and eat them. He wasn’t a good friend! He definitely wasn’t one!

Some angrily gave him a tag, giving Lord Grim a nickname of lowly thug, robber, bandit, evil beast…

But how could these random things affect Ye Xiu? After entering the game again, Ye Xiu sat in a comfortable position and looked at Chen Guo strangely: “Boss, you’re still not going to sleep?”

“Event!” Chen Guo said as her Chasing Haze ran about the Heavenly Domain.

“Tsk tsk!” Ye Xiu lamented. He turned his head back to look at a message that had come through.

He checked it and saw that it was Blue River: “God, are you still planning on playing like that?”

After Blue River knew of Ye Xiu’s identity, he addressed him differently and no longer called him Brother anymore.