All players: I can choose my own dungeon rewards.

"Don't run away, big guy! You still haven't said how you want to die!"

Upon seeing the armored giant disappear into the clouds in the blink of an eye, Wang Zhifan couldn't help but raise his head and look in the direction it had fled, uttering a mocking remark.

It has to be said that this armored giant is quite interesting. Although he is foul-mouthed and his strength is average, he has a cleverness that is inconsistent with his huge size. This includes his trickery with the masked dual-wielding man, his feigned departure and subsequent return to ambush him, and his immediate reaction and frantic escape after discovering that he had taken his sign. All of these demonstrate why he can survive despite his foul mouth.

However, since Wang Zhifan had said he wanted this guy dead, he wouldn't let him live until tomorrow.

He immediately reached out and grabbed the three-zhang-tall giant who had just rushed into the white clouds outside the island. The giant was instantly pulled back to him and remained motionless as a stone, because Wang Zhifan had used the insightful ability of the mythical thinker necklace to control him.

Before taking down his opponent, he planned to gather some basic information about this world, since this guy, though not very strong, didn't seem to be the type to be ignorant.

About two minutes later, Wang Zhifan quickly reviewed the armored giant's mind and obtained the information he wanted.

First, let's talk about the identity and origin of this armored giant. He comes from a world called the Giant Spirit Realm. He is a powerful but not famous figure in the Giant Spirit Realm. He came to the Shattered Heaven specifically to make a name for himself.

This Giant Spirit Realm is one of the seven realms among the six domains and seven realms connected to the Shattered Heaven. Its name suggests that the people inside are extremely large, and this is indeed the case.

Just as this guy's three-zhang-tall stature is only of average level in the Giant Spirit Realm, the stronger the experts in the Giant Spirit Realm, the taller they are. This has led to the people of this world liking to call their opponents "shorty" or "little thing," which has become a popular regional term.

Then there was the issue of the plaques that Wang Zhifan was very concerned about. From the information in the armored giant's mind, he knew that the two wooden plaques in his hands were indeed appendages of the Shattered Heaven's Wind and Cloud Ranking. Their official name was Wind and Cloud Plaques, created by Shattered Heaven itself, but most people would just call them plaques, or refer to them by their material as wooden plaques, iron plaques, etc.

Wooden tokens are the most common and lowest-ranking tokens. Anyone ranked outside the top 100 million has a wooden token. Since the number of people entering the Shattered Heaven from the Six Domains and Seven Realms is extremely large, possibly tens of billions, the vast majority of people hold wooden tokens.

The second largest number of people on the wooden plaque is the one from one hundred million to one million. It is made of gray iron. Being able to enter the top one percent from nearly 10 billion strong people is enough to prove its value.

That's why the Armored Titan said he would apologize if Wang Zhifan possessed the Iron Plate. Of course, judging from the current investigation of Wang Zhifan's mind, this guy is more likely to plot how to kill the Iron Plate expert after encountering him.

It's worth mentioning that the Fengyun card is not only a symbol of personal strength, but may also have special functions.

Aside from the lowest-grade wooden plaques being completely useless, the iron plaques are said to possess powerful healing abilities. Even if the owner is severely injured, they can use this ability to recover quickly. Of course, there are definitely limitations on the number of times it can be used, but the specific limitations are unclear for this armored giant ranked over 200 million.

What he was relatively certain of was that he had learned that above the iron plate was a very rare jade plate, which was said to be obtainable only by masters ranked within the top million on the Wind and Cloud Ranking. As for the privileges of this jade plate, which was equivalent to proof of a great master, it was said to grant access to some secret treasure vault that was opened periodically, but he didn't know any more details.

Finally, there were some basic facts about the Shattered Heaven, which Wang Zhifan also carefully selected and learned about.

He learned from the armored giant's memories that the Shattered Heaven was originally a very complete and vast world. It was destroyed by an unknown powerful being in a great battle, which is why it has become the strange place it is today. However, it is still incredibly large and contains countless rare and precious treasures. Even though countless powerful beings have come from the Six Domains and Seven Realms over the past thousands of years, no one has dared to claim that they have fully explored it.

Currently, it can only be confirmed that the Shattered Sky is divided into several separate parts. For example, the place where Wang Zhifan is currently located is called White Cloud Sky, which is named because this area is scattered with many white cloud-like things.

In addition, there are various special areas such as the Fire Prison Heaven, the Lust Heaven, the Military Tomb Heaven, and the Black Sea Heaven. These are said to be battlefield ruins left behind by great powers in the past, but no one knows who those great powers were.

The different special areas differ significantly not only in size and environmental features, but more importantly, in the level of danger they pose, something everyone who comes to Shattered Heaven must be aware of.

The White Cloud Heaven we are currently in is a well-known "safe zone" in the Broken Heaven. This safety does not mean that experts do not fight in this place, but rather that there are no dangerous environmental factors in the White Cloud Heaven itself. Basically, people who come here can wander around without worrying about being suddenly killed by something.

But other parts of Shattered Heaven are different; each one is more dangerous than the last.

For example, the Fiery Hell is filled with terrifying flames, and those without the ability to resist fire dare not enter. The Lustful Heaven is extremely strange; anyone who enters it will encounter their own inner demons, and those without sufficient resistance will quickly be devoured and corrupted by them.

However, the dangerous places in the Shattered Heaven also have their advantages compared to the safe White Cloud Heaven. These places produce a greater quantity of rare and precious natural treasures, and some special locations even have unique and precious resources that cannot be found anywhere else, including the Six Domains and Seven Realms outside the Shattered Heaven.

As a result, although the safest place in the Broken Heaven, White Cloud Heaven, has the largest number of people, they are mostly the lowest-level Wood Token players. It is very lucky to meet even an Iron Token master. The real masters have mostly gone to dangerous special areas. Some are looking for precious resources, while others are simply looking for people to fight. They want to improve their Wind and Cloud Token ranking and level in order to gain great fame and practical benefits.

There are also some well-known patterns regarding improving rankings.

First of all, the rankings are constantly changing, especially the wooden sign rankings. A person may not do anything and their ranking may rise or fall several times within an hour. However, the range of these rises and falls is generally not too large, at most jumping by a thousand or so places.

Furthermore, eliminating a higher-ranking player in the "Wind and Cloud" card ranking does not necessarily improve one's ranking, and eliminating a lower-ranking player does not necessarily fail to improve one's ranking. There are general rules in this regard, but they are not fixed.

In the Shattered Heaven, some curious individuals had already discovered that if a wooden plaque expert ranked 200 million kills a large number of people ranked after him, his ranking will also improve to some extent, just like the Wind and Cloud Ranking encourages him to bully the weak. However, this method can not improve the ranking much, at most by 10,000 places.

Conversely, if a martial arts master ranked 200 millionth (using the wooden plaque) encounters a dying martial arts master ranked 80 millionth (using the iron plaque), and easily kills the dying iron plaque master, his ranking likely won't change. In other words, the ranking list doesn't consider him capable of replacing the deceased master and reaching 80 millionth place. In short, the people of Broken Heaven have long understood that the ranking list is highly correlated with individual strength. It's difficult to climb to the top through opportunism or luck; without corresponding strength and achievements, one simply cannot gain recognition from the ranking list.

It is precisely for this reason that people in the Six Realms and Seven Worlds attach great importance to the ranking of the Wind and Cloud List, using it to determine whether a person has real skills.

This has attracted more and more people from the Six Realms and Seven Realms to come to the Shattered Heaven to fight to the death. Many times, they are not driven by a desire to be the best, but by practical interests that drive them to fight and improve their ranking on the leaderboard.

Having absorbed so much basic intelligence, Wang Zhifan suddenly felt that his next dungeon plan was in place, and pondered:
"My current goal is still to clear the level as the top of the Ranking List, so I have to climb the rankings step by step and see how the Ranking List judges my strength. Once I enter the top 100 of the Ranking List, I will clear the level immediately. So the key is how to quickly climb from outside the top 100 to the top... I feel that the biggest problem is how to find the top few on the leaderboard? If they are not in the Shattered Heaven, I will most likely have to go to the Six Domains and Seven Realms to find them..."

Wang Zhifan was confident in his own strength. He didn't think there were any real threats to him in this instance. The biggest problem was finding someone with a high enough ranking to wipe them all out.

However, one must take things one step at a time. For now, Wang Zhifan is prepared to start by taking down Xiao Karami in his hand and witnessing his first round of rankings.

He released his mental control over the armored giant from the Giant Spirit Realm before him, binding it firmly only with the laws of space, and then spoke to the behemoth whose heart was overflowing with boundless fear:

"I'll ask you one last time, how do you want to die?"

Hearing him ask again, the armored giant, who had just had his mind searched, was almost scared to death and begged for mercy in a tearful voice:
"My lord, spare me! My lord, spare me! I was blind and didn't recognize your greatness! If you spare me this time, I'm willing to serve you like a slave from now on..."

"Heh, where did your arrogance go? How come you've suddenly become so cowardly? It's truly despicable..."

As Wang Zhifan made his final assessment of the armored giant who kept begging for mercy, he casually clenched his free left hand, and an incredibly powerful spatial force pressed down on the armored giant's body!

In an instant, the giant's body, which was three zhang tall, was compressed proportionally and shrunk continuously. In the blink of an eye, it was compressed into the size of a small chicken, not even as big as an ordinary person's palm!

Wang Zhifan watched as the armored giant's compressed, tiny corpse fell to the ground like a child's toy, and a knowing smile immediately appeared on his face.

"Calling me 'little dwarf' or 'little thing,' now you've truly become a little rascal."

He then shifted his gaze to the two wooden plaques on his right, observing the changes in their rankings.

A line of clear hieroglyphs slowly emerged from the center of his blank wooden plaque, which, according to the translation in the game, read: 137,401.

The other wooden plaque obtained from the armored giant has not changed significantly for the time being, and remains at the same ranking as not long ago: 213,009,660.

Wang Zhifan was not entirely satisfied with the result, as he felt the ranking on the popularity chart was somewhat inaccurate. Even after he made a show of skill, he was still ranked outside the top 100 million, dashing his expectations of being promoted directly to the Iron rank.

"This popularity ranking doesn't seem accurate. Although ranking me a hundred millionth ahead of this dead thing shows the correct direction of judgment, why is it still ranked after a hundred millionth? I just used orthodox spatial law power to compress that dead thing into a small toy bit by bit. Doesn't such a technically sophisticated operation deserve to be ranked in the top hundred million? Am I being too optimistic?"

Feeling somewhat annoyed, Wang Zhifan reluctantly put his lowest-ranking wooden plaque into his pants pocket. Then he noticed that another wooden plaque belonging to the deceased was changing; it was slowly disappearing.

This means that the Fengyun Token of the deceased owner cannot be directly occupied by others. The Fengyun Ranking will completely destroy it. For example, Wang Zhifan's possession of the Fengyun Token of the Masked Double-Sword Man not long ago does not belong to this level. After all, the Masked Double-Sword Man's ranking record was directly cleared to a blank at that time, and Wang Zhifan started from scratch.

"This ranking design feels a bit like a game... Could it be that the Shattered Heaven Ranking was deliberately created by the game? A retro version of the competitive, high-stakes game?"

With a little thought, Wang Zhifan sensed a familiar feeling and deduced that this strange popularity ranking was probably not native to the current world, but most likely created by some troublemaking entity.

He remembered entering a similar instance world, a very crude treasure-hunting game world created by a supernatural game, the entire worldview revealing a strange absurdity.

"If it is indeed confirmed that the ranking list was created by the extraordinary game, then I can no longer start from the ranking list itself to figure out the mythological points, which would mean losing a path."

After thinking for a moment, Wang Zhifan's figure disappeared on the island beneath his feet, then reappeared a hundred miles away, and then repeated itself.

Next, he planned to traverse Baiyuntian at a slightly slower pace, to see if he could gather more information about the top-ranked experts on the Fengyun Ranking in this area, which was said to have the largest population.

After that, he would definitely have to go to other more dangerous areas of the Shattered Heaven to seek out experts on the Wind and Cloud Ranking and gradually improve his ranking.

In fact, given his strength, he could have considered holding onto the lowest-level wooden plaque and then suddenly unleashing his power at the right moment, achieving the feat of leaping directly from a ranking of over 100 million to the top. In that case, he might have been able to complete a hidden quest and obtain Mythical Points.

But this idea was more likely wishful thinking, and Wang Zhifan decided to proceed cautiously, improving step by step, which was more in line with his consistent gaming habits. (End of Chapter)