Chapter 147: The Path of an Expert

After checking the character sheet, several teammates gathered around and showered him with praise the moment they met.
"Brother Chu Cheng, you are too incredible! At level 29, you leaped across a major realm to solo a terrifying-template boss, and you even got the solo kill. That's insane."
"Yeah, you're on a completely different level from us now."
Chu Cheng smiled, waving his hand.
"You're exaggerating. What different level? Aren't we all the same?"
Yao Ning shook his head.
"This isn't exaggeration; it's the truth. We're still at the stage of stacking attributes and gear to stubbornly tank bosses, but you've already entered the stage of soloing bosses through pure skill. That's the realm of true experts. I've got high hopes for you—Legendary status is definitely within reach in the future!"
"Legendary is overrating it. That's a once-in-a-lifetime kind of goal."
"The possibility is very high."
A smile spread across Chu Cheng's face. He turned and retrieved the loot chest, saying, "Who can say for sure? Let's open the chest first and see if we can get any good stuff."
With that, he popped open the chest, and a stream of purple light spewed forth. He glanced inside; there were only three items.
A black two-handed greatsword, an exotic soul gemstone, and ten portions of soul essence.

Black Knight's Greatsword (Epic/Light Purple)
Equipment Type: Two-Handed Sword
Equipment Requirements: Constitution 125, Strength 120
Base Attack: 325 Slashing, 275 Piercing
Bonus Attribute: Constitution +20
Bonus Attribute: Strength +20
Bonus Trait: Armor Penetration +15
Skill/Active: Death Slash. Charges for 1 day—wait, charges for 1 second, dealing physical damage equal to maximum attack plus Strength multiplied by 5 to the target. If Strength is higher than the target's Constitution, a critical hit is guaranteed. Cooldown: 2 minutes.
Evaluation: A weapon of the Black Knight, imbued with a wisp of the power of death.

Chu Cheng posted the stats and said in a deep voice, "A two-handed weapon. Starting bid is 150 gold. I'll bid 150 gold first."
Yao Ning immediately chimed in, "160 gold."
Wang Jing didn't bid; the weapon he was holding wasn't bad.
"170 gold."
"180 gold."
Chu Cheng hesitated for a moment and said, "220 gold. Any higher and it's yours."
Yao Ning bid again, "230 gold."
"Pass."
Light purple. Even though it was a weapon, this price was certainly not bad.
Next, the red soul gemstone sold for 5 gold, and the 10 portions of soul essence for 2 gold.
Tallying everything up, Chu Cheng thought for a moment and said, "It sold for 237 gold in total. I soloed the boss, so there's no problem with me taking half, right?"
The others burst into laughter. Yao Ning said, "Too little. According to the default rules, in this situation, you only need to give each of us 10 gold, and the rest is entirely yours."
"There's a rule like that?"
Feng Lingxing smiled and said, "Just ask your Senior Sister Fang Xi, and you'll know."
He looked over, and Fang Xi nodded.
"Yes."
"The boss was soloed by you, but everyone helped clear the surrounding lesser mobs so they wouldn't interfere and kept watch from the sidelines. Taking 10 gold counts as hazard pay."
"Oh, alright then."
He went with the flow and didn't stand on ceremony.
He wouldn't act like some protagonist in a web novel who clearly takes down a boss all by himself and yet insists on splitting the income evenly with his teammates.
Loot can be auctioned, and since they formed a party, that was the rule.
However, he deserved the absolute lion's share of the auction earnings, and he wouldn't modestly decline that.
10 gold for each of the five members, leaving 187 gold for him to enjoy exclusively.
Fang Xi also took 10 gold. Although they formed an official party and shared their finances, teaming up with others now meant that even if the money eventually returned to him, the accounts on paper still had to be calculated clearly.
Moreover, he still owed Fang Xi 400 gold; the 400 gold he used earlier to buy the Mark of Death had all been borrowed from her.
That would have to be repaid once they left the dungeon.

After splitting the gold, the party set off again, wandering across the wasteland between the City of Scourge and the Death Fortress.
Undead were everywhere in this region, and elite monsters and bosses were quite numerous. However, finding ones that reached level 40 or above with a terrifying template was extremely rare.
Aside from the Black Knight they had encountered that day, they hadn't run into any others over the past few days. They were all minor bosses in their thirties or elite monsters above level 40.
Whenever they encountered such monsters, Chu Cheng would solo them single-handedly.
However, to avoid giving Feng Lingxing and the others any reason to feel resentful, they had agreed beforehand that regardless of whether the upcoming bosses were soloed by him, the loot would be split evenly.
After all, they could solo these minor and intermediate bosses themselves. Having him hog all of them would be like eating alone, and anyone in their shoes would feel annoyed.
Not to mention being able to solo a terrifying-template major boss—these minor and intermediate bosses went without saying. He didn't even need to use potions or buffs, turning them all over completely by himself with a single sword.

Master-tier one-handed sword and dual-weapon combat skills had brought a qualitative improvement to his combat techniques. Even without any change in his attributes, his actual combat power underwent a qualitative leap.
All weapon skills below Expert tier belonged to one category, with little difference between them.
Expert tier and above belonged to another realm entirely, known as the expert level.
Furthermore, beyond Expert tier, every single rank was a hurdle, every single rank a new realm.
Expert tier, Master tier, Grandmaster tier, God tier—each one was more powerful than the last.
Once a weapon skill reached Master tier, it could be considered marvelous. Parries and blocks could reduce incoming damage by 30%. Generally, below the Transcendent tier, non-lord, non-caster, non-behemoth, and non-mythic bosses would find it difficult to be his match.
Going a step further to reach Grandmaster-tier weapon skills meant reaching the pinnacle of perfection.
At this stage, parries and blocks not only reduced damage by 50%, but they also took effect against various spells. Attacks gained the power of spell-breaking; a single sword strike could cleave a fireball in half without letting it detonate, or a horizontal block with the sword's flat could intercept lightning and frost, which was utterly exaggerated.
In addition, Grandmaster-tier swordsmanship could deflect force, also by 50%.
Literally speaking, if the enemy exerted 100 points of force, he only needed 50 points of his own force to block it, making it ideally suited for dealing with opponents possessing super-strong physical strength.
Note that all the aforementioned prerequisites required successfully blocking or parrying the enemy's attack. If he failed to block, whatever damage should be dealt would be dealt.
To achieve high blocking and parrying rates, one's agility had to be high enough to possess sufficient speed and reaction time to parry and block.
Merely having the consciousness and reaction in one's mind was useless.
It should be noted that the benefits of Master or Grandmaster-tier weapon skills were not limited to these; these were merely the numerical manifestations. Beyond the numbers, they encompassed numerous combat techniques. Exquisite swordsmanship could effortlessly pierce an opponent's defense and impale the target—none of these were displayed in the numbers, but they always existed.

"Next up is the Grandmaster-tier one-handed sword skill..."
Chu Cheng felt a subtle premonition. Even though he consistently used one-handed swords, wanting to advance further required—
"A year is enough?"
A vague intuition told him that if he could continuously maintain high-quality combat, it would only take about a year to upgrade to the Grandmaster tier.
However, if he couldn't constantly maintain high-quality combat, it might take two or three years to reach that step.
The magical effect originating from his golden finger provided him with a guaranteed baseline.
"So, how did those true weapon masters train themselves?"
Other people didn't have a cheat like his to rapidly improve their weapon skills. Even raising one was so difficult, and leveling up a dozen or twenty weapon skills...
That would be far too monstrously talented!
He shook his head, casually cleaving a charging ghost into two halves with a single stroke of his sword, turning it into two wisps of clear smoke that dissipated.
"Oh!"
Just as he was about to continue moving, he suddenly received a new message. Opening it, he saw it was from Thunder Roaring:
"Get to the east quickly. The Cursed Knight is here."
Below it was attached a set of coordinates.