It was a good thing that the conference had started feeling like a tea party because the atmosphere became more and more relaxed. Chairman Feng Xianjun became more at ease and couldn’t help but give a bit of encouragement to every team. Of course, he didn’t care whether the team was the current first place Tyranny or the tenth place Thunderclap. As the chairman of the Glory Professional Alliance, he had to treat everyone equally. If he showed even a little bit of favoritism, it would be hard to avoid being trapped by people making a fuss.
Soon afterwards, the managers and captains of various clubs all thought about what had happened. This meeting had been resolved with just a few words from Yu Wenzhou, succinctly offering a resolution. Everyone had been called in from distant areas, when in fact just communicating over QQ for a bit could have led to this idea. It seemed that the chairman had indeed been very nervous.
Only, the big club teams hadn’t thought of the fact that the explosion of mistakes in February had been reported on by the media. But despite the discontent from the pro players, the number of players in the Glory Heavenly Domain was actually rapidly increasing. Why? Just going online to the Heavenly Domain and taking a look would give the answer. In the global chat, everyone was asking where the boss fights were. Everyone wanted to witness pro players battling at a close distance, especially the popular Gods, whose whereabouts were directly asked for by players.
For a short while, this kind of enthusiasm from the players covered up quite a bit of the discontent caused by the poor competition quality. But the Alliance didn’t dare neglect what was happening! Feng Xianjun was even worried that the large clubs, seeing this reaction from the players, would take the situation even less seriously. He personally called each of them on the phone, repeatedly warning them to be careful and protect the current state of affairs.
How to cope with the players enthusiasm, each club sent specialists to deal with the enthusiasm of the players. At the same time, Yu Wenzhou’s proposal was also decisively put into practice.
Thus, the new week began. For every level 75 wild boss that spawned, all the teams once again used their power to gather players together. When Ye Xiu began to search the guilds for pro players, he was astonished to discover that a group of troops had directly appeared in front of Team Happy.
This group of players had mixed names and tags, coming from nine different guilds. At this very moment, however, they resolutely stood together.
Before Ye Xiu could figure out what was going on and react, these nine players actually took the initiative to begin fighting.
Exchanging blows, Happy was caught by surprise and put in a bad position. But after they reacted, Ye Xiu was wild with joy.
These pros were really too reliable! Knowing that we were looking for them to train, they now specifically dispatched people to form a group specifically to PK. This was simply too considerate in every way!
After coming to an understanding, all of Happy’s members felt very moved, to the point that they were reluctant to fight back against these nine.
However, these nine weren’t polite at all in their attacks, looking like they wanted to quickly send Team Happy back to the city. But although these two teams appeared to be fighting against each other alone, in reality, they were both backed up by guild troops. With that much healing, even if they wanted to die, it would really be quite difficult for them to do so.
As a result the two sides could only exchange blows to kill time until the boss was killed. In this way, the conclusion was unexpectedly joyous for everyone. Every pro team finally thought that Happy had stopped being a nuisance. Happy, on the other hand, would no longer have to use every means possible to get close to and harass those pro players, who were using every means possible to avoid them. Now, everyone lined up in an orderly manner in front of them, volunteering to fight.
"This is good news!" Ye Xiu was happy to the point where he couldn’t keep quiet. The professional teams continued to do this time after time, fighting Happy again and again and hunting bosses one after another. This saved them quite a bit of energy. On Happy’s side, Ye Xiu and the rest could also focus on fighting pro players hand to hand, not having to randomly run around like in the past. The effectiveness of their training naturally increased as well.
Previously, Happy had trained every other day. But seeing this happy occasion, they couldn’t bring themselves to give it up. They would just need to train a bit harder! Even pro players couldn’t have this kind of training method. Their competition training would at best involve dividing the team into two groups to fight 5v5, practicing with a few fixed strategies. With the same few opponents every time, they wouldn’t be able to to break away from their familiarity with their teammates. But now because the teams in the Alliance rotated the players that they sent to fight wild boss, the players Team Happy faced also rotated every day. In this way, it was as if the pro players were coming out one by one to specially train with them.
This was a unique way of refining their skills and accumulating experience! They also an opportunity to better understand future opponents! Even in the Pro Alliance, if the two teams didn’t face one another in the playoffs, they would at most fight on stage twice. This kind of firsthand fighting experience wasn’t as common as most people thought.
Happy could finally face pro players in combat without any distractions. Pro players could finally stop trying to do two things at once. Both sides were content with the present arrangement. This went on for many days. Happy appeared as if they couldn’t break through the pro players’ formation, but they continued to persevere in their attempts. All the clubs felt conflicted, hoping that Happy would finally retreat, but they also afraid that after retreating Ye Qiu would also think up some new evil idea. After weighing the pros and cons, they decided that just continuing the status quo might be for the better.
In a flash, March had passed.
This month the Alliance didn’t dare look up the numbers only after the end-of-month competitions. They closely followed the whole trail of statistics throughout the month.
There was still a higher-than-average number of mistakes, but it wasn’t anything like the weird explosion that had happened in February. Rather, it returned to a consistent level. level Feng Xianjun finally let go of his worries. He couldn’t stop himself from calling up each of the teams to give more encouragement and praise, while calling for the other teams to watch and learn.
The other teams appeared to not be affected too much, but their strength was weak to begin with. They already made more mistakes on average than the other teams. They were not that competitive in these boss fights either, so it wasn’t easy to be affected by this. There was an even more important reason though. This time within these other teams, Heavenly Justice, Conquering Clouds, Parade, and Radiant, were in an alliance with Happy. Ye Xiu’s group had decided to make increasing their skill level a priority, but it wasn’t like they could attack their allies, right? That would obviously break up the alliance between these guilds. This was a safeguard for materials when fighting for a boss, so they wouldn’t break it up for now.
As a result, these teams weren’t affected in the slightest, ensuring that the data for the "other teams" became worse . And in the process of fighting for wild boss, these pro players could also continue fighting together. This allowed them to make repeated gains during the boss fights. And in splitting the materials dropped, none of them really took issue with the current method, because as far as they were concerned, Happy’s valiant fighting off to the side stalled a lot of the pro players. This was one of the crucial factors in their success. This was also a merit that the players of small teams possessed. Being the disadvantaged group within pro players, they didn’t possess any arrogance or self-importance. Thus, they could easily see the value contributed by others.
Their frequent displays of strength only magnified Happy’s "tactics". The large clubs remained unaware that they were being used as Happy’s training partners. The Alliance management really wasn’t easy to deal with. Pro players had to directly come out. From time to time, some temporary alliances would be formed. With this new generation’s special background, these temporary alliances were not similar to the usual guild alliances, where the groups turned on one another at the earliest opportunity. After all, pro players all cared quite a bit about their public images. On the other hand, those who played dirty suffered. To the other pro players, these players stabbing them in the back was a certainty, so it was very difficult for these players wanted to make an alliance with others.
No matter what, another month of bustling activity passed.
This month, in-competition skill statistics weren’t as strange anymore. However, the team placements after this month were turned upside down.
These changes mainly came from the bottom half of the rankings, with Heavenly Justice, Conquering Clouds, Parade, and Radiant in the lead.
In reality, these changes had been visible during February. It was just that the difference between strong and weak teams in the Alliance was also quite scary. The divide between the top half and the bottom half seemed like a wide ravine. Thus, although the accumulated points had changed during February, the placements remained relatively steady. Everyone simply treated this as a fluctuation, not taking it seriously. It was only in March, when these so-called fluctuations persisted, that everyone discovered that these four teams had improved by leaps and bounds. From their initial positions among the weak, they had drilled their way through the bottom tier teams, steadily climbing towards the top half.
March 30th came, and the fifth round of battles in March finished. Among the four teams, Radiant had actually climbed to tenth place, and Conquering Clouds had reached eleventh. The ninth place team, 301 Degrees, was only 3 points ahead of Radiant by 3 points, and 5 points ahead of Conquering Clouds. The original tenth place team, the unexpectedly well-performing Thunderclap, was now kicked to twelfth place, with Heavenly Swords and Parade hot on its heels. It looked as if the team’s standings could continue to drop at any moment.
Based on performance data and points, the abrupt rise of these four teams was due to the fact that they had performed more steadily than other teams in this shaky environment. However, looking one step further, the reason was more obvious: in the online game, these teams were the ones in an alliance with Happy!
Happy was Happy, but Happy was also Ye Qiu.
Feng Xianjun was speechless. The teams that were in the Challenger League, by means of the competition in game, actually affected the state of the Alliance. If this continued to develop, these four teams might actually have a chance of making the playoffs!
Of course, this was something that Feng Xianjun couldn’t easily say to the teams. Even if he secretly wanted the playoffs to include as many current All-Stars as possible, a competition is still a competition, and first and foremost the competition had to be fair. This kind of thing, he could only hope in his heart. He couldn’t just go and underhandedly influence the results!
"This Ye Qiu only creates trouble! I don’t know what he’s going to do to the Challenger League…."
Regarding the Challenger League, the Alliance Chairman usually cared little about it, only appearing to follow what was happening, but now, he had truly become interested.