The King's Avatar

”Ye Xiu, there are people looking for you!” Chen Guo pushed open the door of the practice room. She was a bit excited to see the expression on Ye Xiu’s face when he saw these four Gods suddenly appearing here.

”Who?” But to her disappointment, Ye Xiu didn’t even look up.

”Me.” Han Wenqing didn’t let Chen Guo introduce him, he just directly spoke.

”What are you doing here?” Ye Xiu asked.

”Match,” Han Wenqing said.

”The match is across the street,” Ye Xiu said.

The atmosphere instantly grew cold.

The match was tomorrow. Tyranny had clearly arrived in City H a day early to rest and adjust their condition before the match.

”Everyone, feel free to take a seat!” Chen Guo had to try and diffuse the tension, inviting the four to sit on the sofas near the wall of the practice room.

”Practicing hard?” But Lin Jingyan didn’t sit down, instead coming over to watch Happy practice.

”Do you have any dignity? Trying to sneak a peek at our practice?” Ye Xiu finally lifted his head, giving Lin Jingyan a disdainful look.

”Is this sneaking?” Lin Jingyan ignored him and stubbornly continued to look.

Right at that moment, Fang Rui happened to mess up.

”Haha, feeling the pressure from behind you?” Lin Jingyan laughed.

Fang Rui turned around and gave him two middle fingers.

”You changed classes pretty well!” But now Lin Jingyan stopped with the joking tone, and spoke sincerely.

”It’s alright!” said Fang Rui.

The two fell into silence.

Former teammates, the number one Brawler and the number one Thief, the famed Criminal Partners, now both abandoned by their team. No matter how honorably they left, it would never be enough to make up for their feeling of loss. And now, one went to Tyranny to persist with the little light he had left, while the other came to the newly-formed Happy, changing classes to strengthen the team. Although they were no longer teammates, the goal toward which they strove was still the same. Now, they would face off against each other onstage. They could no longer strive toward this shared goal together. It was inevitable that one of them would lose.

With Fang Rui’s practice interrupted, the team coordination practice could only stop as well. Ye Xiu stood up and looked at the four of them. ”Did you need something?”

”Nah, we’re staying nearby. We figured we’d come walk over and take a look.” As Zhang Jiale said ”walk,” he himself was walking around in a circle around Happy’s lineup of computers, finally stopping next to Ye Xiu. He looked at Ye Xiu’s character Lord Grim, who was still onscreen. Lord Grim, the character that had caused so many headaches for the Gods, big and small, of the the pro circle.

”Hey, let me try your little toy here,” Zhang Jiale said, trying to squeeze into Ye Xiu’s seat.

”Don’t you have any dignity? You also want to peek at our equipment stats?” Ye Xiu, of course, didn’t give him any room.

”Haha, what secrets do you still have to hide? The stats have long been figured out already,” Zhang Jiale said.

The stats of Silver equipment weren’t displayed, but for a long period of time, Lord Grim had worn one Silver and twelve Orange equipment. A character’s overall stats were displayed, as were those of orange equipment. With the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella as the only variable, it really wasn’t difficult to deduce its stats.

”That was before, now we’ve levelled up, do you need us to tell you that too?” Ye Xiu said.

”Really? 75? How sharp, let me look.” Zhang Jiale was still trying to force his way in. If talking about rules, his doing this was extremely inappropriate. Silver equipment were the secrets of all of the teams, no one would ever try to insist on seeing them. Zhang Jiale was taking advantage the fact that he was familiar with them, plus Happy with its grassroots origin didn’t have a very serious atmosphere, so he could struggle like this.

”Go away, go play over there.” Zhang Jiale was pushed away once and for all, and he could only bitterly give up. Watching him, Ye Xiu was all sorts of speechless. ”Don’t tell me you’re really here to spy on us! For those sort of methods, we’ll have to call the police.”

”Call the police? How embarrassing is that?” Steamed Bun jumped up. He grabbed a bag of drinks from under the table and swung it around in circles, instantly creating a fierce meteor hammer.

”Guys, can you stop!” Chen Guo yelled, exasperated and feeling the beginnings of a headache. Normally, these Gods were all glittering and glamorous, and she couldn’t help but worship them sometimes. But now that she thought about it, not a single one of them was older than herself.

With Chen Guo’s scolding, the practice room quieted down.

”So what did you come here for?” Ye Xiu asked.

”It’s been a while. We thought we’d come see you,” Zhang Xinjie answered. When Chen Guo had gestured toward the sofa, in the end Zhang Xinjie was the only one to neatly sit down, and now he politely gave a response. This made Chen Guo feel that he was the only good person here.

”How about it, it’s not bad here, right? Anyone want to come over? Our boss is right here, if you make a good plea, then maybe in the winter transfers you can hop on this championship bus,” Ye Xiu said.

”You’re really aiming for another championship victory,” said Zhang Jiale.

”Who isn’t?” Ye Xiu said, before adding, ”Oh, you’re not. You’d have to get rid of that ’another.’”

”You bastard!” Zhang Jiale cursed. Just in this room, there were many people who had never won a championship - Su Mucheng, Fang Rui, Lin Jingyan, none of them had. But Ye Xiu specifically attacked him, to mock his four second-place finishes, of course.

It was said that you shouldn’t expose or attack someone’s shortcomings, but because everyone here was friendly with each other, sometimes shortcomings were attacked like this. It was just like how Zhang Jiale insisted on looking at the equipment, which would be unacceptable in other contexts with different people. But the problem was, not only did he fail to see the equipment, he was still ridiculed by Ye Xiu. Zhang Jiale was rather depressed.

”If you’re not here for anything serious then hurry up and leave, stop disrupting our practice.” Ye Xiu started waving his hands to get them to leave.

”You’re still practicing even now?” Zhang Xinjie furrowed his brow. To someone like him, who always maintained the strictest of practice schedules, practice the day before a competition was unthinkable.

”What do you understand!” This was what Ye Xiu said to this Glory Master Tactician, a man that really understood quite a lot of things.

Zhang Xinjie didn’t retort. He stood up and said, ”It looks like your team still has areas that need urgent improvement!”

Chen Guo gulped. Just from this one little clue, he was already able to make such a guess. This ”only good person” was in reality quite terrifying!

”Not used to playing with unspecialized?” Zhang Xinjie looked at Su Mucheng and Fang Rui.

”Since you’ve guessed it, what else is there to say,” Ye Xiu said, helpless.

”I hope that we’ll have an exciting match,” Zhang Xinjie said.

”We will,” Ye Xiu said.

”See you onstage tomorrow.” Han Wenqing left this final statement, and the four Tyranny players departed.

”I’m feeling dizzy. They seriously just passed by to come say hi? Don’t they have anything better to do?” Seeing the four leave, Ye Xiu sighed.

”They completely guessed our current condition.” Chen Guo thought about Zhang Xinjie’s careful expression, and she shivered at how accurate his judgment was.

”It’s not hard to guess,” Ye Xiu said.

”So now what?” Chen Guo asked.

”We honestly don’t have much hope of winning the team competition. We’ll focus on getting the individual battles.” As Ye Xiu spoke, he glanced at the time. ”It’s about time, let’s take a look together at our opponents for tomorrow.”

”Are we chasing them back here?” Steamed Bun asked.

”Huh?” Ye Xiu didn’t understand.

”Aren’t they our opponents tomorrow?”

Ye Xiu was speechless. Steamed Bun was being himself again…

After that, the entire team went to the strategy room. Tyranny’s match recordings, especially those of the previous three rounds, had already been dug up and prepared. Every day, after doing the intense practice with the rest of the team, Ye Xiu still had to make time to organize all of these materials… Chen Guo deeply felt that they couldn’t continue like this. Wei Chen could help to some extent, but he couldn’t free Ye Xiu completely. Chen Guo could only be grateful that at least now they had Guan Rongfei and Wu Chen. Otherwise, if Ye Xiu had to manage things on those two ends as well, they would have to cut him into pieces.

Managing a pro team really wasn’t easy! During this time, she had been trying to recruit helpers. On the guild side, things were going pretty well. A number of people had been drawn in, giving semi-professional help to run the guild. Even though these people weren’t here, but work done in an online game didn’t require everyone to be in the same place. As long as there was internet, things could be accomplished.

On the R&D side, Chen Guo also wanted to find more help. Her number one targets were the R&D workers of Excellent Era after the team dissolved. From Guan Rongfei, she had managed to obtain the contact information of three of his former colleagues. But when she reached out, she found that these three were still together, and were still at Excellent Era - New Excellent Era!

New Excellent Era had applied to participate in this year’s Challenger League. When Chen Guo checked, they were advancing quite smoothly. Their current roster had Qiu Fei as the core player, and then some former Excellent Era trainees. This season’s Challenger League didn’t have any monster like last season’s Excellent Era; everything was back to normal. Chen Guo casually looked over, and also discovered Team Jade Dynasty, one of the teams they had fought last season. After the entire team had been fired, it seemed like they’d gathered another group of people from who knows where to give it another shot.

At the time, Chen Guo had invited Lin Yi and the others that Jade Dynasty’s boss had directly fired. They had expressed that they would consider her offer, and then there was no more news from them. Chen Guo contacted them twice more, but they were still wavering.

Not until the new season began did Lin Yi call her. He and two of the players from Jade Dynasty ultimately decided to join Happy, working for the guild in-game.

For them to reach this decision now, Chen Guo was quite able to understand Lin Yi’s state of mind. In the end, he still wanted to be a pro player, and this entire summer, he was likely working very hard to try and find such an opportunity. But by the time the new season began, he had been unable to find a team, and so his dream of being a pro player was put to an end. So, he contacted Happy, and became one of their guild workers.

Relative to ordinary players, Lin Yi’s skill at Glory was quite high. For him to be a team captain, he was exceptional in some areas. After he joined, he quickly became Wu Chen’s most effective helper.

With the hard work of these people, Guild Happy’s current development was very stable. On the high-end battlefields, because Ye Xiu and the others were no longer helping, the guild lost its overwhelming advantage. But in all of the various ordinary servers, Guild Happy was up and running smoothly. Happy finally had its own stores of basic materials filling its vaults. What had happened back in the day in the tenth server, with Ye Xiu selling his labor to obtain dungeon materials, would never have to happen again.