Chapter 139: The Top Hundred Rankings

Just as Li Gang stepped out of the room, he heard a commotion coming from the courtyard.

Pushing off with his feet, his entire figure seemed to instantly teleport into the distance, and with a few more strides, he reached the outer doorway.

Out in the open space of the courtyard, Lin Yan was holding a long sword, dancing with it in a flurry of motion—at times hurried, at times slow, yet extraordinarily agile. Sword flowers bloomed as the blade danced up and down in her hands, leaving behind only streaks of afterimages.

Her figure flipped gracefully back and forth across the courtyard with extreme swiftness, demonstrating a speed that completely transcended the limits of ordinary human capability.

Watching Lin Yan practice swordsmanship in the courtyard, Li Gang felt a deep sense of shock, secretly guessing that her speed value must have far surpassed his initial estimations; his eyes could barely keep up with her movements.

This must be the state in which the true extent of Lin Yan's power was unleashed.

He only felt that the gap between himself and Lin Yan had widened immensely.

Normally, the strength Lin Yan displayed when sparring with him probably didn't even amount to half of this.

Lin Yan had already noticed Li Gang's appearance, but she did not stop. Instead, her speed accelerated even further. With a single thrust of her sword, a blurred afterimage materialized, making it impossible to distinguish between the real blade and the illusion.

Clearly, her swordsmanship had reached an extraordinarily high realm.

Half a minute later.

Lin Yan withdrew her sword and stood upright, regulating her breathing before turning to look at Li Gang with a faint, gentle smile on her face.

Just moments ago, she felt that her comprehension of swordsmanship had crossed yet another threshold, reaching an entirely new height. She was certain that her close-combat prowess with a blade had more than doubled.

The bottleneck that had stagnated Lin Yan's swordsmanship for so long had broken through in that single instant.

Perhaps this was the result of accumulated effort finally yielding breakthroughs, or perhaps it was related to the fact that all four of her basic stats had broken past 500, with her speed stat alone soaring past 600.

Once the foundation is laid, everything else naturally falls into place.

Just as Lin Yan was filled with joy, a voice began to echo through the surroundings—a voice they were intimately familiar with, the voice of the God.

"This God hereby announces the official launch of the Chosen Top 100 Leaderboard, effective immediately. The leaderboard will be refreshed on a weekly basis.

The Chosen Top 100 Leaderboard will publicize the 100 Chosen Ones with the highest current comprehensive combat power values. To anyone who enters this leaderboard, this God shall bestow a surprise reward. The higher the rank, the greater the surprise. Stay tuned."

Just like previous occurrences, this voice from the God echoed precisely three times through the surroundings before fading away.

Both Li Gang and Lin Yan were momentarily stunned, and then each mentally connected to their respective smart systems.

They quickly discovered that a new option had been added to their functional menus: the Chosen Top 100 Leaderboard.

Li Gang pulled up the leaderboard.

Currently, the number one spot on the leaderboard was held by an old acquaintance, Huang Feng, whose comprehensive combat power value had actually reached 1874, towering more than 200 points above the second-place holder.

The rankings from second to seventh all belonged to foreign names, and the names on the Top 100 list were not localized into Chinese characters. Aside from a few English names he recognized, Li Gang couldn't understand the rest at all, having no idea which countries' scripts they belonged to.

He immediately recognized the country represented by the eighth-ranked name, however, as he was intimately familiar with that particular script—it was the writing of the D.Y. nation.

Li Gang had consumed a great deal of film and television from the D.Y. nation, so he was able to translate it mentally with ease.

The eighth-ranked D.Y. native, translated into a Chinese name, was Aozora Hikari, with a comprehensive combat power value of 1384.

Li Gang continued scrolling down, but what he found very strange was the absence of Lin Yan's name. In his estimation, Lin Yan definitely possessed the strength to break into the top twenty.

After checking the top twenty names thoroughly, he found only a single Chinese name: Huang Feng, who stood proudly at the very top in first place. There was no second Chinese name to be found, and Lin Yan's name was notably missing from that tier.

Feeling somewhat puzzled, he glanced secretly at Lin Yan beside him and found her expression ordinary, revealing neither joy nor anger. She was merely reviewing the Top 100 leaderboard in front of her with calm composure, her thoughts unreadable.

Looking away, Li Gang stopped dwelling on it.

He believed that Lin Yan undoubtedly deserved a place among the top one hundred; what he found strange was simply why she hadn't made it into the top twenty.

Scanning further down the list, he quickly found Lin Yan's name.

After all, amidst a sea of strange symbols and English names, a Chinese name still stood out quite prominently.

Lin Yan was ranked 44th on the Top 100 leaderboard, securing a spot in the top fifty with a comprehensive combat power value of 1081, safely over the thousand-point mark.

A comprehensive combat power value of 1081 was double his own, which seemed entirely reasonable.

Li Gang noticed that currently on this Top 100 leaderboard, everyone in the top fifty possessed a comprehensive combat power value exceeding 1000 points, while values below 1000 points only began to appear past the fiftieth rank.

However, the combat power values among these individuals did not differ drastically, and several shared identical scores. After all, even the Chosen One ranked at the very bottom of the Top 100 still held a comprehensive combat power value of 902.

As Li Gang reviewed the entire leaderboard, he spotted another old acquaintance: Qin Qing, the woman who always stayed close to Huang Feng, was ranked 52nd on the Top 100 leaderboard with a comprehensive combat power value of 1002 points.

Out of the top one hundred, three were Chinese nationals, and given their impressive rankings, it was a very respectable showing.

Li Gang didn't feel any displeasure or resentment about failing to make the top one hundred. After all, his current comprehensive combat power value was only 504, leaving him a gap of 400 points even from the hundredth-place score of 902, so missing the list was completely natural.

Furthermore, he gradually realized the reason behind this. Due to the selection strategy Lin Yan had initially formulated, he currently had 27 opportunities for comprehensive restorative healing at his disposal. This meant that out of all his enhancement opportunities, he had chosen comprehensive restorative healing 27 times instead of stat boosts.

Without Lin Yan's guidance, he certainly wouldn't have made such a choice. Once he had accumulated around 10 instances of comprehensive restorative healing, he would have stopped choosing it in favor of stats enhancements. If he had converted those dozen-plus enhancement chances into boosts for his four basic stats, his comprehensive combat power value would have skyrocketed.

Thinking along these lines, the reason Lin Yan hadn't broken into the top twenty likely stemmed from the exact same factor; the number of comprehensive restorative healing procedures she had accumulated should be roughly equivalent to his own.

Once he figured this out, seeing Lin Yan ranked 44th felt entirely logical.

In fact, there was one more thing he didn't know: aside from the heavy impact of the four basic stats on comprehensive combat power, the number of other Chosen Ones one had killed also played a significant role.

Gazing at the top-ranked Huang Feng, Li Gang wondered just how many comprehensive restorative healing opportunities that person had saved for himself.

Just as these thoughts crossed his mind, Lin Yan closed the Top 100 leaderboard projection before her and walked over to stand in front of Li Gang in a few strides.

Her expression turned somewhat solemn as she spoke, "Li Gang, if my intuition is correct, a new wave of the hunting tide is about to erupt."

A new wave of the hunting tide?

Hearing this, Li Gang felt a jolt of shock, coupled with considerable confusion.

While entering the top 100 would earn a surprise reward from the God, securing a place in the top 100 was immensely difficult to begin with. Moreover, since the God hadn't specified what the reward actually was, it shouldn't be enough to ignite the hunting instincts and desires of most Chosen Ones, right?

Could it be that Sister Lin had perceived some hidden trick that he had missed?

Casting a puzzled gaze at Lin Yan, he waited for her to continue.

Seeming to see right through what Li Gang was thinking, Lin Yan smiled and said, "Figure it out yourself."

"Oh."

Li Gang replied with a disappointed expression.

Seeing this, Lin Yan let out a light laugh and said, "Alright, let's go make dinner. After we finish breakfast and pack up, we'll get ready to leave this place."

Li Gang pursued the question, "Where is our first stop?"

It seemed Lin Yan had already planned this out long ago, as she directly answered, "P.E. City. We'll head there first to check things out. L.W. country is boring; from P.E. City, we'll cross the border into M.D. country. I've long wanted to visit some of those famous pagoda architectures in that country, but never had the chance."

Li Gang nodded in agreement. As long as he was with Lin Yan, going anywhere was fine with him, and he naturally had no objections.

After breakfast, as they prepared to depart, Lin Yan stood at the entrance of the village, taking one last look at the thoroughly familiar place before turning and climbing into the vehicle. "Let's go," she said.

Li Gang started the military jeep and drove in the direction of P.E. City.

Though P.E. City in Y.N. Province could not compare to K.M. City, it was still a renowned major city in Y.N. Province, rivaling K.M. City significantly in terms of both economic population and past prosperity.

According to the tracking map alone, there were currently five Chosen Ones within the boundaries of P.E. City. Based on the judgment of their relative positions, they appeared to form three separate factions.

Two people were together, another two people were together—located respectively on the eastern and western sides of the city—while the final person was isolated in a completely different direction, staying alone. Judging by the distances, this solitary Chosen One was actually not very far from the other two factions.

This detail was exceptionally peculiar.

Logically speaking, with someone isolated so close to two distinct factions, they should have fled far away.

If it were Li Gang, he would have run as far as humanly possible, refusing to leave himself in such a perilous position.

There had to be something fishy going on here.

With this thought, Li Gang asked Lin Yan beside him, "Sister Lin, why do you think this person dares to stay all by themselves right in the middle between two factions? Aren't they afraid of being cornered and attacked by both groups?"

Naturally, Lin Yan had also noticed this particular Chosen One. She smiled and said, "Perhaps they possess some special life-saving trump card, or maybe it's for some other reason. Who knows? We'll find out once we go take a look."

Nodding at her words, Li Gang felt completely at ease. With Lin Yan present, along with the three basic guidance manual fragments they had acquired early on, various state-of-the-art firearms for self-defense, and a matching set of the new J.G.S. bulletproof vests for each of them, he had zero fear that these people could pose any threat to the two of them. Even if all five of them attacked simultaneously, he wouldn't be intimidated in the least.

In truth, this solitary Chosen One was none other than Huang Yu, who remained trapped in the basement with no way out.

The other two factions had already visited that villa to investigate, but they had utterly failed to open the heavy iron door sealing the basement entrance, leaving them powerless to either rescue or assassinate the trapped Chosen One, Huang Yu.