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At the beginning, when Michael first encountered the Magic Network, she was brimming with confidence, believing that she would quickly clear these games and achieve full trophy accomplishments, just as if she had always been the War Chess champion of heaven.

However, the truth proved that she was thinking too much. Those so-called strategy games were far more difficult than she had imagined, or rather, she really overestimated the strategic level of heaven.

After all, it is widely known that the art of military strategy is, in fact, more often a necessity for the weaker or evenly matched opponents. As the most ancient race of the Golden Calamity Race, heaven had been invincible for too long and hardly needed much military strategy.

When you're poor, you weave through with tactics; when you're rich, you simply blast it all away with a cannon.

The conquest wars that the Angels usually fought were all about crushing their enemies with overwhelming strength; military strategy? They hardly needed it.

The long unbeaten history had made heaven's level of military strategy decline a lot.

But it was different for the smaller otherworldly races. Therefore, sometimes the weaker the race, the more likely they are to produce great military tacticians and strategic commanders.

So, as the champion of heaven, Michael was not really that impressive. Heaven was actually a place of limited military strategy, a pitiful pond.

Naturally, when pond master Michael started battling others confidently, it was fine at first when her rank was low. But as her rank increased, she began to match against renowned commanders and great military tacticians from the otherworldly races.

Then, the painful routine of being thrashed began.

Of course, as a born God of War, Michael's talent was beyond doubt. Although she initially struggled, she learned quickly and didn't take long to become one of the top-tier players in the various strategy games.

If it were the era from over a decade ago, her level would have already been considered top-notch, enough to be awarded the title of God of War by the forums.

But unfortunately, ever since two invincible Gods of War made their swift and sudden descent ten years ago, no new gods had emerged in the forums, all because the records of those two fleeting greats were too brilliantly shining and eye-catching.

Their record from start to finish was a succession of victories without a single defeat—astounding indeed.

The individual known as "Fate Revelation" was the first to arrive, and battling this person felt truly like contending against fate itself. All your thoughts seemed to be anticipated by this great player. Every time you charged in high spirits, you would despair to discover you were walking into trap after trap. This player seemed truly omniscient, eternally invulnerable.

And a couple of months after Fate Revelation reached the top and disappeared, the Second-Generation War God known as "Guigu Zhuge" arrived on the scene. Unlike Fate Revelation, this great player wasn't as despair-inducing; at least they did not have the Prophecy Prophet cheat enabled.

But the bad news, this one had both the extreme operation and the copy-paste cheats enabled.

At first, Guigu Zhuge wasn't very impressive. The evaluation from those who had battled her was that she excelled in operation, but not so much in strategizing. She was a qualified general but not fit to be a commander.

She seemed to be able to command each soldier with extreme precision, which made her troops extremely formidable in battle—truly like a single united entity, representing the true conquerors' army.

At this stage, Guigu Zhuge wasn't considered terrifying yet. A skilled military tactician could still stealthily defeat her with various strategies and formations.

But the problem was, the excellent matchmaking system of the strategy game always pitted equal opponents against each other. And time after time, these equal opponents would push Guigu Zhuge into a corner, only to often get unexpectedly reverse-killed due to her exquisite operations.

And that's how Guigu Zhuge ascended to the top through countless "coincidences" of reverse kills.

Well, except for that final battle that sealed her as a deity, the Second-Generation War God fought all uphill battles.

But in the final battle, the player who had always been famous for her maneuvers rather than her military strategy displayed a terrifying prowess.

That last-revealed mysterious military formation known as "Eight Trigrams Formation" still leaves countless players in awe despite intensive research to the point of going bald.

It was after this battle that solidified her divine status that players began to look back at Guigu Zhuge's battle records, studying them frame by frame with magnifying glasses, and eventually discovered the truly fearsome aspect of this Second-Generation War God.

It seemed that with every battle she fought, she would become stronger. All the tactics used by her previous opponent would be copied by her, then utilized in the next battle, as if she treated each opponent as a teacher, whose teachings were sure to be applied in the next fight. Any trick that had fooled her once would definitely not work on her a second time.

It was as if she had activated a copy-paste cheat, draining every opponent of their signature moves.

Therefore, some people believed that the so-called ultimate technique of the Eight Trigrams Formation was actually the result of Guigu Zhuge integrating the strengths of various schools and creating a masterpiece of military strategy.

This speculation drove the bigwigs in the strategy forums completely mad, with countless players furiously studying the records of that last battle, trying to learn even a little bit from it.

The good news was that everyone's guesses seemed to be true. The Eight Trigrams Formation was indeed a military formation of great achievement, a supreme military strategy. Those players who had once had the honor of battling with Guigu Zhuge saw echoes of their own tactics within it and took this opportunity to learn a lot, significantly improving their own skills.

But the bad news was that the Eight Trigrams Formation was really too difficult; it involved too many elements, and even the aggregate of the strengths of various schools was just a superficial layer. The core of this unique technique involved Witch magic and even the Qimen Dunjia Technique from the distant Eastern Universe.

Witch magic wasn't too bad; many Witch players might still figure something out. But the Eastern Universe's Qimen Dunjia...

The connections between the Eastern and Western Universes had been completely severed by storms. Where could they find research materials on the Qimen Dunjia Technique?

In short, the treasure was right in front of their eyes, but no one could access it, which was really frustrating.

Michael had also been studying the Eight Trigrams Formation for a long time. Regrettably, even with the help of Divine Authority, she could only glimpse the tip of the iceberg of its exquisite unique technique.

As a result, she idolized Guigu Zhuge, even crafting her beloved War Chessboard in the likeness of the Eight Trigrams Formation.

Unfortunately, the contact and exchange between heaven and the Eastern Universe weren't extensive, and she barely knew anything about the Eastern Universe, much less found substantial knowledge related to the Qimen Dunjia Technique.

However, she had heard that the Witches had close relations with the Immortals of the Eastern Universe. Coming to the Witch World this time, she actually had the notion of searching for related materials.

But now, she didn't quite know whether she was fortunate or unfortunate.

The good news was that she found a Witch who knew about the Eight Trigrams.

The bad news was that this Witch was an annoyingly arrogant Clown.

Michael felt very conflicted.

"Aaah, so annoying, it should have been a smooth exchange, and I got the news I've always wanted. Two happy things intertwined—this should have been so wonderful. Why, why did things turn out this way."

...The Seraph in turmoil...