[601] Trades in Progress

The next day. As nine o'clock struck, Yu Xian immediately queued for a match. [Match Found] [Opponent has rejected your wager] [Opponent has proposed a wager: The loser must forfeit their Level 10 awakening skill to the victor. Do you accept?] Seeing this prompt, Yu Xian chuckled and clicked accept. An instant later, he was teleported onto the arena stage. Upon opening his eyes on the stage, Yu Xian saw his opponent standing across from him. Meanwhile, the moment the player laid eyes on Yu Xian, whatever lingering hope he harbored finally died altogether. Yu Xian's wager was easy to spot: he gambled on a random skill, whereas the wagers agreed upon by the other players targeted specific skills. The trouble was that wagers had to be configured prior to matchmaking, leaving no opportunity to adjust them. Even knowing he was horribly unlucky to run into Yu Xian, the opponent had no choice but to bite the bullet and carry on. In truth, the players had already hashed out an arrangement the previous night for trading skills. For instance, players who wished to trade a skill they had possessed since Level 1 were placed in one group, those trading a Level 10 awakening skill formed another, and those trading a Level 20 awakening skill made up a third. Through their respective wagers, they could easily tell which group an opponent belonged to. From there, it was a matter of queuing continuously: Level 1 groups had to lose to Level 10, Level 10 to Level 20, and Level 20 to Level 1. When a Level 1 met a Level 10, they had to reject the other's wager; a Level 10 meeting a Level 20 had to reject their wager; and a Level 20 meeting a Level 1 also had to reject. In this way, they ensured that only a single skill was exchanged per cycle. Any player who obtained the skill they needed was still required to lose away their unwanted skill in turn, keeping skills circulating through the player base until they landed in the hands of someone who actually wanted them. There was no binding contract among the players, but battle recordings served as proof. Anyone who broke the agreement would be universally despised afterward, and once they left the Zhen Realm, everyone would have license to strike them down. The problem was... Yu Xian obviously had no need to follow these rules. Had he changed his wager to gamble for a Level 1 skill, a Level 10 skill, or a Level 20 skill, it would have shown that he had read the rules and was willing to abide by them. Yet his wager remained set to a random skill, entirely untouched. That meant he had no intention of participating in this player-organized skill exchange; he remained like an enormous spider, waiting for prey to tumble into his web. Clearly, the opposing player had realized this as well, which meant he knew his Level 10 skill was as good as gone. [Yu Xian (Score: 1733) vs. Yu Tianzhen (Score: 766). Match begins!] The moment the match began, both moved simultaneously. A water droplet formed in Yu Xian's hand, while Yu Tianzhen nimbly dropped to his knees, shouting, "Big bro, I surrender! Seeing as we share the Yu surname and were one family eight hundred years ago, can we call it a draw this once? Spare your little brother just this one time!" "One family eight hundred years ago? Not eighty thousand, eighty million, or eighty billion years ago could we have ever been family!" Yu Xian retorted with an amused scoff. They weren't even from the same world—how could they possibly be related? The moment the words left his mouth, the water droplet pierced through Yu Tianzhen's head, bringing the match to an abrupt close. As Yu Tianzhen's corpse dissipated into white light, Yu Xian opened his attribute panel to inspect his skills. [Name: Yu Xian] [Enhancement: +1] [Level: 15] [EXP: 45] [Class: Order Guard] [Skills:] [Forward Light Shield], [Grand Dao Myriad Phenomena], [With and Against the Flow], [Water Control], [Imperishable Golden Bell], [Hard to Kill, Hard to Die] [Blood Burst: Allows control over blood that has left one's body to trigger an explosion. The stronger the Spirit, the greater the explosive power; the more blood used, the larger the blast radius.] …… …… Sure enough, any skill a player was willing to put up for trade was bound to have its drawbacks. Blood Burst actually packed decent power, but the problem was that it required consuming one's own blood. Without regeneration or hematopoiesis skills, using it was practically suicide. Evidently, Yu Tianzhen lacked healing or recovery skills, making this ability largely useless to him—a chicken rib he wanted to trade away for something he actually needed. [Congratulations to combatant Yu Xian on achieving victory] [Continue competing?] Yu Xian closed his attribute panel and chose to continue competing. While plenty of players took part in the skill exchanges, many others remained uninterested. Some already possessed sufficiently good skills and established builds of their own, with no need to trade anything away. Consequently, Yu Xian's second opponent of the day not only declined Yu Xian's wager, but didn't propose one of his own either. He was purely a competitor. Against this type of player, there was nothing to discuss. Yu Xian controlled the water droplet for an instant kill and moved straight to the next round. Over the matches that followed, Yu Xian took down several opponents in a row without encountering another player willing to wager skills. Clearly, players looking to trade weren't quite as numerous as anticipated. Finally, around eleven in the morning, Yu Xian ran into another player willing to trade skills. [Yu Xian (Score: 1844) vs. Chen Kun (Score: 996). Match begins!] The moment the match commenced, Yu Xian activated Time Stop. Yet opposite him, Chen Kun unleashed a skill at the exact same instant—his entire body was enveloped in glass in a flash. An instant-cast skill! And it was fast—faster even than Time Stop. Witnessing this, Yu Xian immediately directed the water droplet to shoot at the glass. The droplet carried tremendous power, blasting a crater into the glass in a fraction of a second, but it caused no damage whatsoever to Chen Kun inside. Seeing this, Yu Xian accelerated his assault, slamming the water droplet relentlessly into the exact same spot on the glass. Yet the properties of this glass were bizarre. The surface layer wasn't particularly tough, but it grew harder the deeper it went. His opening strike had blown out a three-centimeter crater, but now, each consecutive strike couldn't even dent it by a single millimeter. Evidently, if he kept this up, he would exhaust his Grand Dao Myriad Phenomena power without ever puncturing the glass to harm Chen Kun within. Left with no other choice, Yu Xian instantly activated Forward Light Shield. Stepping onto the light shield, he rammed directly into the glass. Given the nature of Forward Light Shield, it should be capable of breaking through any matter in its path. This time, however, he was disappointed. Although the impact smashed a massive crater into the glass, it failed to break through completely. He attempted a few more strikes, but the results were predictably even worse. Cancel Time Stop. Yu Xian retreated to his original position and decisively dropped the time-stop effect. The moment time resumed, Chen Kun inside saw the cracks across the surface of the glass. He let out a massive sigh of relief before slowly looking toward Yu Xian. Many players had been trying to figure out how to counter Time Stop. Most simply had no answer; rack their brains as they might, they couldn't crack such a near-shameless technique. Chen Kun had been in the same boat, but he had enjoyed incredible luck: in that morning's skill exchanges, he had acquired the exact skill he was looking for, providing him with the capital to counter Time Stop and even stand against top experts. [Name: Chen Kun] [Level: 22] [EXP: 13] [Class: Glass Sorcerer] [Skills:] [Glass Shot: Consumes a small amount of Spirit to form 3–5 sharp shards of glass to fire at the target.] [Glass Shield: Forms a glass shield around oneself to defend against incoming attacks from all directions.] [Glass Mastery: Grants absolute control over glass created by oneself.] [Stubborn Creation: Any object created by oneself is immune to Rule Branch effects and gains a massive increase in defense. Furthermore, each time the creation takes an attack, its defense increases by 90% of the damage of that attack, stacking up to 100 times.] That final skill was precisely the one he had traded for. Many might find this strange: wasn't that a god-tier skill? Why would another player be willing to trade it away? In fact, the reason was exceedingly simple.