[Qingshan Academy Speedrun Leaderboard]

Qingshan Academy is located in the eastern part of the Divine Tree continent, an area beyond the newbie village. Getting there from Qi Ling Village required passing through several teleport points. When Zhou Sui arrived, he saw an ancient academy nestled deep in the forested mountains. The academy was dilapidated, exuding a chilling aura. Its weathered wooden gate hung ajar, creaking in the wind.  

A few players lingered at the entrance, chatting with the stone lion statues outside before vanishing.  

As Zhou Sui approached, a prompt for Qingshan Academy popped up in front of him—  

[A dilapidated academy, missing scholars, and a headmaster reduced to dry bones. You’re a traveler lost in the mountains, caught in a storm, seeking shelter for the night.]  

[Challenge Difficulty: ★★★; Entry Level Requirement: 28]  

[Player level detected. Dungeon adjustment activated, calibrated to A-grade difficulty.]  

The description was brief, matching the guide Zhou Sui had skimmed on StarNet. This was a mildly suspenseful dungeon where the ghosts of dead scholars roamed, attacking any players who entered. These ghosts were wandering souls—impossible to fully kill. Even when their health hit zero, they’d persist, inflicting debuffs to throw off a player’s rhythm. The only way to clear the dungeon was to take down the headmaster, the source of the heaviest resentment, and destroy his bound skeletal remains.  

The ghosts were the small fries; the headmaster was the boss. Among Divine Tree’s early solo dungeons, this one was on the tougher side. The challenge? Stir up too many ghosts, and their unkillable nature would drain a player’s stamina fast. StarnNet guides advised minimizing ghost encounters and beelining for the headmaster, even offering route suggestions and recommended items.  

The catch with dungeons designed by the mainframe was that guides couldn’t be followed to the letter. Escape paths and mob attack patterns could shift in thousands of ways, so most strategies offered general tips rather than copy-paste solutions. Even with detailed StarNet guides and decent gear, plenty of players still took nearly an hour to clear Qingshan Academy.  

Even leaderboard players, with all their mastered tricks, could stumble in dungeon speedruns.  

It’s said that the current top-ranked squad, Skyward Ascent, once wiped during their early days while attempting the high-difficulty level 30 dungeon, [Tiandi ^[1] Heaven and Earth Temple]. 

Rumor had it that the current top-ranked team, Skyward Ascent, had wiped back in their newbie days trying to clear the Level 30 high-difficulty dungeon [Tiandi Temple]. Because of this, there’s a common saying among players about the Divine Tree’s gameplay: “In PvP, at least your opponent is human, but the game’s AI is downright merciless. The gameplay is either designed to screw you over or to screw your ancestors over—there’s no in-between.” 

The top time on Qingshan Academy’s leaderboard was 14:25:12—a clear within 15 minutes.  

Extra StarNet trivia didn’t matter much to Zhou Sui; he’d already gotten the info he needed.  

Stepping into the dungeon, he first saw a narrow corridor flanked by small, isolated courtyards. The layout alternated between hallways and open yards, making it nearly impossible to move forward without pushing open a door or stepping into a new area. The academy’s interior was a maze, and as Zhou Sui entered, he quickly realized the setup didn’t match the StarNet guides at all. When he pushed open a door, a few ghosts drifted right toward him.

The ghosts drifted fast, closing in to attack Zhou Sui the moment they got near. At Level 28, these monsters hit harder than the snakes from the talent trial. As they swarmed him, Zhou Sui immediately tossed out a paralyzing powder, locking down the group within its range.  

The controlled monsters slowed to a crawl, and Zhou Sui seized the chance to slash them repeatedly. A few cuts later, their health bars hit zero—but they didn’t lose their mobility. Instead, they trailed him like lingering spirits, muttering poetry nonstop as if possessed by their studies.  

Zhou Sui flipped onto a courtyard wall. As soon as he landed, the clingy spirits followed right up.  

“They can follow me here too?” Zhou Sui muttered, surprised.  

From his perch, he spotted the headmaster boss’s courtyard farther ahead.  

The boss’s spectral form loomed larger than the scholars’. When Zhou Sui hopped up, its eyes snapped wide, locking onto him. Instantly, the wandering ghosts in the surrounding courtyards zeroed in on him too, as if guided by some signal.  

Following the guide’s advice, Zhou Sui confirmed his route and dropped back down. The Qingshan Academy boss wasn’t hard to kill—its difficulty lay in summoning ghosts and the maze of courtyards blocking quick access. StarNet players often failed not because of the boss, but because the scholars wore them down.  

These scholar ghosts proved it with action: scaling walls, climbing trees—they let nothing slip by.  

One ghost reciting poetry was tolerable, but a chorus of them overlapping in a relentless, chattering drone was like a maddening earworm.  

As a Qi Ling Village weapon specialist at Level 28, Zhou Sui only had two AoE ^[2]AoE stands for Area of Effect in gaming. It refers to abilities, spells, or attacks that affect multiple targets within a specific area rather than just a single enemy. AoE attacks are commonly used … Continue reading skills available, both with cooldowns.  

Relying solely on pulling mobs and spamming AoE wasn’t viable—he’d take too much damage during the cooldown gaps.  

Resentful Scholars:

1. While “alive,” they continuously attacked, dealing damage.  

2. When “dead,” they assaulted players with ear-piercing recitations. Lingering too long triggered a combat power debuff.  

This was why Qingshan Academy was a tough grind. Even with their health zeroed out, the ghosts kept tailing players, only detaching once you fully left their courtyard’s range. Zhou Sui calculated that without skill cheese, it took him three normal slashes to drain a ghost’s health. As their numbers piled up, his AoE skills couldn’t keep pace.  

After clearing the first wave, he’d only crossed one courtyard, and it had already eaten up a minute and a half.  

Entering the second courtyard, he switched up his attack pattern. As the scholars rushed him, mouths opening to start their chatter, he struck first.  

The scholars, just about to speak: “…”  

This time, Zhou Sui swapped his scythe for a needle launcher. A flurry of flying needles shot from his hand, silencing the jabbering scholars mid-sentence and slowing their movements. Strapped to his waist was a special case—a new weapon he’d snagged from Tong Shi Town’s weapon shop a few days back.  

A hefty purchase, funded by Slack Bro.  

Divine Tree didn’t restrict weapon choices, but each class had weapons better suited to its strengths.

The weapon best suited for Qi Ling Village was the case.

The case was an evolved version of the medicine basket and scythe, something Zhou Sui only learned when he visited the weapon shop. It was part of the weapon system that unlocked for players after hitting Level 25.  

The case adapted to the player’s chosen Qi Ling Village faction: for Physicians, it became a medical case; for Apothecaries, a potion case. For Zhou Sui’s weapon specialist path, it transformed into a gear case, automatically tailoring itself to his skills. His gear case was a mixed bag—having picked five weapon skills (three single-target, two AoE), it had unlocked three tools: [Scythe], [Needle], and [Pestle].  

The Needle had both single-target and AoE effects with decent range—single shots could seal, while a volley caused stiffness.  

The Pestle was a melee single-target tool: one end a blunt rounded head for heavy strikes, the other a sharp blade-like edge. The blunt end delivered crushing single-target blows, while the blade extended farther, applying a sealing effect on hit.  

Zhou Sui’s case boasted high physical attack and speed stats—perfect for him.  

With a few moves, he silenced the scholars in this courtyard, then dashed to the next with the lingering spirits trailing him. Another wave of chattering scholar ghosts greeted him. He opened with the Needle to lock them in stiffness, darted past a few, then swapped to the Pestle. A swing of the long blade sealed the mouth of the ghost right in front of him.  

If the first wave was about testing his limits against the ghosts’ attacks, the second wave saw Zhou Sui weaving in the gear case’s versatility. He experimented with combo variations to maximize damage. Each attack skill had damage variance and recovery cooldowns, so finding the optimal chain was key.  

Needles applied stiffness debuffs, the Pestle picked off stragglers with sealing strikes, and the Scythe kept the pressure on with sustained damage—a fluid combo executed in one breath.  

By the time he cleared the second and third waves, five minutes had ticked by. He’d tested four Needle-Pestle-Scythe combos.  

On the fourth wave, Zhou Sui slowed down. He stopped wiping out the ghosts’ health bars—per the guide, zeroing their HP didn’t deal damage, just added debuffs. He tanked a few hits to gauge the small-fry damage and lingered a bit to listen to the scholars recite ancient poetry.  

By the time he reached the headmaster boss’s area, 13 minutes had passed.  

It was a decent run, but compared to the Speedrun Leaderboard, 13 minutes to the boss was still too slow.  

Unlike the torturous scholar minions, the academy headmaster didn’t recite poetry—he droned on about the academy’s rules. A tyrannical headmaster who’d oppressed scholars, paired with a bunch of study-crazed students, all trapped in their obsessions even after death. The boss’s mechanics were well-documented on Starnet. In its isolated courtyard, no minor ghosts interfered—clearing it was pure skill.  

Without the ear-grating chatter, Zhou Sui took down the boss cleanly. His total clear time clocked in at around 17 minutes—solid, but not enough to crack the leaderboard’s top 100.

StarNet speedrun guides pegged the boss kill at 3-5 minutes. Zhou Sui’s kill took 4 minutes—pretty close to the mark. As long as he didn’t mess up, the boss’s fastest kill time didn’t vary much.  

[You have cleared [Qingshan Academy] and received the reward [Brush, Ink, Paper, and Inkstone] x1!]* 

Zhou Sui: “…”  

If it weren’t for the materials, he wouldn’t bother running this dungeon again.  

Zhou Sui claimed Qingshan Academy’s rewards and fed the materials to Serpent Venom Water. As expected, dungeon drops worked as fodder—just with different attributes, affecting the skill’s progress bar variably. Qingshan Academy offered two daily runs; Zhou Sui had used up his first. Instead of rushing into the second, he took time to break down each segment of his clear.  

“Boss kill in three and a half minutes… So the time gap comes from the early mobs and routing?”  

Zhou Sui meticulously reviewed his first run’s details, thoughtfully jotting down key points. He mapped out each courtyard’s layout. Though the paths twisted in countless ways, the distance from entrance to exit was consistent across courtyards. The variables were obstacles—fake mountains, ponds, corridors—and the roaming scholars.  

The boss wasn’t the hard part; the challenge was dodging the scholars to reach it quickly.  

Outside Qingshan Academy, the area was quiet. As Zhou Sui idled there, players filtered in and out—most clearing it once and leaving.  

Marking his notes didn’t take long. Once he pinned down the essentials, he queued up again.  

Barring mistakes, reaching the boss required crossing at least seven courtyards.  

The rest boiled down to positioning—how to avoid aggroing the wandering ghosts.  

At this thought, Zhou Sui slightly shifted his body. Positioning in a holographic game… relies on reflexes.   

This felt a bit like his old expertise.  

The eerie Qingshan Academy loaded again. This time, Zhou Sui leapt onto the wall the instant he entered, glancing toward the headmaster’s location to lock in his route. As the scholars swarmed below, he dropped down and darted behind the nearest fake mountain, recalling this courtyard’s obstacle layout.  

When he dodged out again, the flying needles hit the closest scholars, and the ghosts were stunned! Zhou Sui no longer had his basic attack heal, but he had also put a point into a healing skill in the Physician branch. It had a 15-second cooldown and was a continuous healing skill with limited healing per tick. This skill was his only way to recover health in instances besides using red potions, so he rarely used it in the wild, and timing its use in instances was even more crucial.

Serpent Venom Water’s combo could deal over 2% bonus forced health deduction damage, independent of Zhou Sui’s attack stat. Multiple combos triggered the 2% forced deduction reliably, and as a persistent skill with a 3-second duration, maintaining the chain could rack up a max of 6% health loss.  

The beauty of an auto-attack skill? It could be used during healing without adding extra cooldowns, slotting seamlessly into any faction’s combo chains.  

Plus, as a mutated version of Heal—a skill tied to the medical case—it shared the same faction as Zhou Sui’s upgraded [Serpent Venom Water]. No need to waste a second swapping cases to use it.  

The courtyards stretched long. In a solo dungeon, aside from healers who could self-sustain and inch along through the ear-grating noise, other players couldn’t just kite mobs indefinitely. The solution? Disturb fewer ghosts, clear their health, then break away. But attacking ghosts ate up time—and for Speedrun Leaderboard hopefuls, every second counted.  

Zhou Sui wasn’t a pure healer, but he was from Qi Ling Village.  

Unlike other classes stuck with a 120-second cooldown on red potions, his attack was weaker, yet he had a 15-second ticking heal. To shave down clear time, he didn’t need to fully zero out the ghost minions’ health. From his first run, he’d noticed their damage scaled with their remaining HP—hence the guide’s advice to wipe them out, avoiding extra health loss that could lead to death.  

Cut the time spent swapping to heal, limit attacks to two slashes, and let Serpent Venom Water take over.  

Serpent Venom Water’s combos could weave into his heal ticks. Successful chains brought solid damage, and the persistent healing let him tank hits… That’s where his edge shone. With Needle, Pestle, and Scythe dropping HP, and his heal ready, he could use obstacles and Serpent Venom Water-heal combos to transition, aiming for one goal—  

Save time, chip down scholar HP, and tank minions until he could break free.  

—-

StarNet TV, the most popular streaming platform of the Star Alliance era.  

Countless channels streamed Divine Tree, and a glance at the trending list showed four or five high-traffic rooms. Right now, a top streamer’s channel was broadcasting live combat from the game’s advanced zones. First-tier pros had long since blown past 20% world progression, rocketing to Level 60.  

Compared to the leisurely leveling pace of newbie servers, the leaderboard slugfest in advanced zones was cutthroat.  

In just two days, the level rankings already boasted a Level 52 player.  

The level leaderboard only tracked first-tier progress. Players fixated on rankings cared more about the weekly standings. The big shots’ weekly speedrun results would drop in 10 minutes—a prime chance for standout players to shine. New talents or gifted squads always emerged with each leaderboard reveal.

[Man, that’s insane. The top ten on the advanced zone dungeon leaderboards are almost all ranked players.]  

[You think the big shots climb the ranks just with gear? It’s all about skill, okay?]  

[Griffin’s got some serious momentum—snagging first on a bunch of dungeons…]  

The streamer, Xiaoyao Xian, was a member of the ranked team [Hidden Immortal], running a Beastmaster build from the Tian He Mountain · Beast branch—currently Divine Tree’s strongest summoner class. Not long ago, he’d set a damage record in a high-level dungeon. A chatterbox with great live energy, he quipped, “Griffin got that record by cheesing it. That assassin ate every buff in the book to pump out crazy damage. Me, a summoner, trying to out-speed an assassin? Am I nuts?”  

“This week’s list is the last one for the Level 50 bracket. Once levels go up, the skill tree unlocks new skills, and next week’s rankings are gonna flip hard. Griffin’s only got a few days to gloat—their team’s got too many duplicate classes.” Xiaoyao Xian glanced at the leaderboard and noticed that their Hidden Immortal ranking had dropped recently. Stacking advantageous classes to dominate the leaderboard was one of the reasons he wasn’t too fond of Griffin. That talent squad was backed by a big-name gaming company, training elite players and a horde of grunts to farm materials for them—turning the game into a corporate machine.  

Take the newbie servers, for instance. On the hotter, higher-ranked ones, Griffin’s company raised armies of alts to hog leaderboards and lock down materials.  

Speedrun stage rewards were bound, usable only by the account that earned them. But refreshing personal clear records had a chance to drop tradable materials. Those groomed alts were there to game the odds for rare drops, jacking up dungeon clear times in the process.  

In other words, it was like a pay-to-win squad built by hiring people to power-level accounts.  

Not that it was outright wrong—everyone played the game their way. Xiaoyao Xian had rolled alts to challenge records too, but he only pushed solo account highs.  

Griffin’s method, though? Multiple accounts, multiple pilots—it bloated newbie server records, making it tough for newbies to snag rewards. Some of their squad’s streamers even threw shade in their broadcasts, which only fueled Xiaoyao Xian’s growing irritation.  

If you’ve got the guts, come slug it out in the advanced zones. What’s the point of flexing in the newbie pool?  

[Like that Mysterious Frog in Qingshan Academy?]  

[No way, that guy’s held the top spot for two weeks straight!]  

[No one’s policing this leaderboard mess?]

[Big shots are too busy pushing progression. Who’s got time to babysit a single list all day? Material drops from special events outclass this anyway.]  

At that, Xiaoyao Xian pulled up the newbie server’s hardest-hit solo dungeon, [Qingshan Academy]. Solo dungeons were simpler—no team coordination needed. With fewer players, a skilled pilot could replicate top scores across multiple accounts.

Compared to team dungeons, solo dungeons were far easier to replicate. Someone from Griffin had mastered Qingshan Academy’s speedrun tech, and the server-wide leaderboard was dominated by alts from Griffin’s company—top spot included.  

“Some high records in the newbie zone are worth checking out—either a dark horse newbie or a ranked pro on an alt,” Xiaoyao Xian said casually, flipping through the weekly rankings. “But those deliberately farmed scores? Skip ‘em…”  

Suddenly, the rustic Tiantong leaderboard lit up. The neatly arranged player IDs flickered downward in unison.  

Xiaoyao Xian’s hand froze mid-switch. One minute before the weekly list locked, Qingshan Academy’s rankings refreshed. Every ID shifted down in perfect sync, leaving the top slot blank for a split second—until a brand-new record claimed the first position.  

Xiaoyao Xian blurted, “Holy crap? 12 minutes?”  

[What the—?!]  

[It refreshed?!]  

Clear time: 12:22:11—a full two minutes ahead of second place!  

The previous champ, ‘Mysterious Frog,’ who’d held the top spot for two straight weeks, was gone. In its place was a never-before-seen ID—  

Cycle of Eternity.