Chapter 1185: An Opponent Thoroughly Understood
Translator: Nomyummi Editor: Nomyummi
In Happy's away game, with Ye Xiu's victory, Happy led 1 to 0. However, for those who supported Happy, this sort of opening was unable to excite them. Recently, Happy had this kind of tempo; their openings were good, but then they started dropping points, especially in the team competition. Up until now, their only team competition victory was against Team Hundred Blossoms.
What about today?
In the current climate, it was still rather rare for Happy's fans to come to their away games. However, Happy had fought in City B in the Challenger League finals. It was the place where they beat Excellent Era. Seven Fields and his group of guild buddies were all residents of this city. In the Challenger League finals, they had formed a small group and came to cheer them on. Guild Happy was flourishing at the moment, and Seven Fields and his guild buddies were core guild members. Team Happy was coming to their city to play a match, so how could they not organize guild members ahead of time to cheer for Happy?
The Pro League's seating arrangements weren't as casual as the Challenger League's. Away team fans would usually be grouped together in one area to avoid being mixed in with home team fans, so if any disagreements arose, there wouldn't be any conflicts. Seven Field's group sat at Happy's away team seats. Quite a few people had come. After Happy won the first round of the individual competition, all of them were cheering loudly. In a stadium usually filled with home team fans, it was quite a spectacle to see.
The second round of the individual competition took place under this type of atmosphere.
Team Happy, Qiao Yifan. Ghostblade, One Inch Ash.
Team Heavenly Swords, Zou Yunhai. Elementalist, Ocean Ahead.
Heavenly Swords' characters had been created when these friends first started playing the game. Now that they were in the pro circle, they switched out their equipment for new ones. After much effort from Lou Guanning and them, they replaced their old equipment for better ones. From this point, Heavenly Swords had pretty good equipment because their efforts were focused! The good things were all piled on their five core characters. Even if the other characters were butt-naked, they wouldn't care. With such a concentration of resources, their characters naturally became a lot stronger, albeit at the cost of their non-core characters.
Happy and Heavenly Swords used to play with each other constantly in the game, so they were all familiar with each other. After Qiao Yifan and Zou Yunhai entered the stage, they even chatted a bit in the chat. After the countdown started and the two began fighting, Qiao Yifan won in the end. His performance was always consistent. Even though he never had any overwhelming advantage over Zhou Yunhai, he always had control over the situation. When Zou Yunhai came down, his expression looked a bit ugly. He was clearly unhappy with being stuffed out in this fight.
Friendship first, competition second?
These were oftentimes just words. As long as one was on stage, who wouldn't want to win? Bad blood appearing because of a bad match wouldn't be anything new. Quarrels occasionally arose even when teammates practiced against each other, let alone an official match where victory or defeat mattered.
Of course, Zou Yunhai was just gloomy. He wasn't at the point where he would quarrel with Happy. It was just that after two consecutive losses, Heavenly Swords wasn't nearly as relaxed as before. Just because the two teams were good friends with each other, hoping for a peaceful ending was too sweet.
For Happy, their third player was Su Mucheng.
For Heavenly Swords, Lou Guanning had originally planned on saying a few words to their third player, but when he saw that their opponent was an All-Star, he ended up not saying anything. He simply patted their player's shoulder and sent him up.
Lou Guanning admitted that he was still a distance away from an All-Star. If he had to face an All-Star, whether he won depended on luck and how he performed that day, so he wasn't able to point out any crucial win conditions.
Heavenly Sword's player was called Li Weiyi. He was the one that Heavenly Swords had signed to meet the minimum requirements. The individual competition and group arena required six players to compete in, but Lou Guanning and his friends were five people. Among them, Zhong Yeli was a Cleric and could only come out in the team competition. Thus, there were only four remaining; two others were needed.
They didn't try to recruit any famed generals to meet this quota. The positions of the five friends were untouchable. What famed general would be willing to just be someone to meet the quota?
In the end, Lou Guanning found two people from who knew where. They had some skill, but there would be some objection to call them truly skilled. In the third round, Su Mucheng easily won. Happy had a 3 to 0 lead, sweeping the individual competition. Lou Guanning didn't say anything to the returning Li Weiyi. Asking a stopgap cheerleader to win over an All-Star was asking too much.
Team Heavenly Swords' roster was extremely abnormal. It wasn't like they didn't have the resources to change that, but rather they weren't willing to. Their original aspiration was to give the five of them an opportunity to fight on the pro stage. They weren't done yet, so they didn't plan on giving up on this opportunity to other pro players.
A short break followed after the individual competition. The two teams could talk and do some preparation for the group arena during this break. With the individual competition over, it was obvious who would be playing in the group arena.
However, the roster for the group arena was set before the match began and could not be changed at this time. The Alliance had considered letting teams make adjustments mid-match, but in the end, they hoped that the players would focus their attention on the match itself and not waste too much of their efforts on benefiting from making adjustments.
Because of their good relationship with each other, it was hard to avoid the two teams mingling together during this break time. The Alliance didn't forbid two teams from talking to each other during this break, but whenever there was any contact between two teams, the referee would always be watching over very strictly in case the players were violating the integrity of the competition. There was someone in Happy who had made a bet. With Happy's opponents being their friends, all sorts of rumors had flown around long ago. The staff members of the Alliance were watching the communication between the two teams very tightly.
But it wasn't Happy taking the initiative to go over and talk, but rather Heavenly Swords who had just gotten swept in the individual competition. Lou Guanning looked like he was at a funeral. He walked around Happy in a circle before finally saying to Ye Xiu: "God, you're too fierce. What you guys are doing is saving up your strength and then taking out the knife to start the operation!"
"Haha," Ye Xiu laughed, "It's undeniable, our understanding of you guys is the most comprehensive."
Lou Guanning was speechless. He was most scared of God Ye Xiu's calm and righteousness that was completely reasonable and irrefutable.
"But then again, you guys can't keep doing this long-term!" Ye Xiu said. "Even if you guys are constantly improving, if your team is always just you five, you lack variance. You'll quickly be completely grasped by others."
"I feel like… it's fine…" Lou Guanning said.
"That's because there aren't any teams who feel threatened by you guys, right?" Ye Xiu said.
"God…" Lou Guanning cried. Could you not be so honest? For their matches this season, Lou Guanning had felt quite satisfied with Heavenly Swords' performance. No matter who their opponents were, they always won a few points. In their fourth round, they even beat Royal Style 7 to 3.
That was Royal Style! Even though they were no longer frequent visitors of the playoffs, for good or bad, they had an All-Star and were a very experienced team. Taking them down gave Heavenly Swords a huge boost in confidence. All of them felt like they had grown and improved after a year in the Alliance. But to God Ye Xiu, they were just opponents "who weren't worthy of being studied."
This couldn't be considered as others looking down on them though. A team had 19 opponents in the Alliance. Everyone's time was limited, so teams needed to choose who to focus and who not to focus on. If a team tried to grab them all, it was very possible that the team would end up not grabbing any. And among these teams, Heavenly Swords belonged to the category of who not to focus on. Lou Guanning had no choice to concede on this point, which was why God Ye Xiu's words made him tearful.
"You'll be going up in the Group Arena, right? Hurry up and get ready. We'll let you guys see just how disastrous it is to be completely understood by your opponents," Ye Xiu said.
How disastrous it is to be completely understood by your opponents?
Lou Guanning and the others knew very well by the end of this match.
Facing Hundred Blossoms, they had won 2 points. Facing Blue Rain, they had won 1 point. Facing Royal Style, they had won 7 points. And facing Royal Style, who had beaten Happy, they had won 6 points. This season, they had utilized their home game advantage well. Both of their victories were their home games.
But this time, in their home game versus Happy, Heavenly Swords ended up with 0 points.
10 to 0!
Team Heavenly Swords was swept clean by a team that had only won one match so far.
Happy didn't give them any mercy. Of course, Heavenly Swords also maintained proper sportsmanship. In the group arena, after Tang Rou beat one of their players, she lost to their second player, Wen Kebei's Battle Mage.
1v3? Four rounds had passed, and Tang Rou had yet to achieve even a 1v2.
Her chance with Heavenly Swords ended with failure. Her only chance left was against Tiny Herb. A 1v3 against Tiny Herb?
What a joke.
In the post-match press conference, Ruan Cheng had snatched a good spot. He trusted that even though Happy had a perfect win today, their mood probably wasn't too good. From a long-term perspective, Tang Rou failing a 1v3 and leaving the team was an enormous loss to them, whether that was in strength or in popularity. This beautiful girl really did have some fans right now. Ruan Cheng had received no small amount of hate for his attacks on her.
"Did Tang Rou not come? What a pity. There's probably a lot of pressure on her, right?" Seeing that Tang Rou was missing from Happy's seats in the press conference, Ruan Cheng didn't even say any polite congratulatory words for their win today. He directly brought out the bet that he had been banking on this entire time.
"Everyone in the team from top to bottom is confident in Tang Rou," Ye Xiu said calmly.
"There's still one round left. We can't be too hasty with our words, so we'll just have to wait and see!" Ruan Cheng's words weren't said too early, but his confident look as if he had planned this in advance was truly loathsome. He might as well have just displayed the schadenfreude at the bottom of his heart out in the open. It would have looked more sincere and natural!
"Little Tang is too pure! I say, she only said what she would do if she didn't keep her promise. But if she succeeds? Don't you think you should do something?" Fang Rui said to Ruan Cheng.
"I'll send her my heartfelt blessings, really." Ruan Cheng put on an honest face. He wasn't about to be provoked!
"Grab me a bucket!" Fang Rui shouted. "I'm going to puke!"