1251 Hot-Blooded Dodgeball

Do as promised? He said he'd throw the match, so he threw the match?

As expected, the crowd once again erupted with boos, but Song Qiying's expression right now was a bit subtle. He reacted very quickly - his eyes swiveled to the player area just offstage, where Happy's players were gathered.

If talking about doing as promised, wasn't there a player from Happy that was the biggest joke in history?

Happy's Tang Rou, after failing to complete her promise of a 1v3, didn't follow through and quit Glory!

But when Ye Xiu said "do as promised," he promised to throw the match, and then threw the match…

Throwing a match truly wasn't anything pretty. Even on the All-Star stage when most people weren't putting in their full effort, it was rare for anyone to throw a match as obviously and bluntly as Ye Xiu had. He'd even used a "GG."

Do as promised, but he'd promised to throw a match. Ye Xiu's words, were they supposed to be ironic?

Aside from Song Qiying, it seemed that most people for now hadn't thought of Tang Rou. Right now, the Tyranny fans' aggro toward Ye Xiu was very stable. Even though the Rookie Challenge had entirely ended now, they were still targeting their fire to send Ye Xiu off the stage. This Day 1 of the All-Star Weekend, no matter how you looked at it, seemed to be designed for Tyranny fans. First was that strong commemoration of Tyranny's Captain Han Wenqing weathering ten years of Glory, which let the Tyranny fans shed a tear. And then, it became focused on the primary target of Tyranny fans' hatred, Ye Xiu, as all of the rookies lined up to challenge him.

Even though Ye Xiu had pulled off the unprecedented circumstances of "GG" and "1v2," it had to be said that this year's All-Star Weekend Day 1 was still quite exciting.

Typically, there were no formal press conferences planned for the All-Star Weekend. The reporters stationed by various media organizations had their own designated seating area, but only the media groups with partnerships had the chance to enter and directly interact with players. This included the Esports Channel that was in charge of the television broadcast, as well as the most authoritative Esports Home. But most of their time in the stadium was just spent watching. Only when there was a suitable opportunity would they search for players to exchange a few words. No one anticipated a formal interview at a setting like this, and no one would try to get one.

Today? The reporters were of course gathering the opinions of the players of the various teams, their opinions of the ten-year Han Wenqing, their opinions of the rookies lining up for their challenge, and their opinions of Ye Xiu, who was so fed up that he used a "GG."

The topics wouldn't be very serious. It was the All-Star Weekend, it was all in good fun. Even things like GG or throwing matches, only someone with a waterlogged brain would use that as ammunition for an attack. To be honest, the reporters quite welcomed these unexpected situations that Ye Xiu caused. They were a bit tired of writing the same thing about the respecting the old and loving the young when it came to the Rookie Challenge.

After a few performance events planned by the organizers, Day 1 of the All-Star Weekend officially came to a close. The pair of death rivals, Han Wenqing and Ye Xiu, became the stars of this day. Han Wenqing's ten years of persistence left behind strong emotions; Ye Xiu's seven consecutive rookie challenges left behind chaos.

Some older Glory players couldn't help but reminisce, this wasn't even the first time Ye Xiu had experienced all seven rookies wanting to challenge him.

But that time, Ye Xiu had honestly and straightforwardly played seven matches with those rookies. It had been nothing like the ridiculous scene today.

The older the ginger, the spicier it was. Ye Xiu alone demonstrated this point most vividly.

"You're really something…" As the pro players mingled after the conclusion of the event, a number of players came to jokingly complain to Ye Xiu in the backstage passageways.

Thrown among this crowd, Chen Guo really felt like a dazzled fan. Once upon a time, these figures were all high and mighty, but now, they were all gathered right beside her, and everyone was really very ordinary. Just from this setting, it was impossible to tell how fierce were the characters that these players controlled in the world of Glory.

Li Xun, the Void Assassin who loved one-hit kills, was currently complaining to Royal Style's Tian Sen about his toothache. It looked like Tian Sen gave him a phone number, recommending some dentist.

Chu Yunxiu, Misty Rain's captain and the idol of female players, was accusing Zhang Xinjie, originally from City X, of giving her a bad recommendation. The hot and sour rice noodles from a food street he had recommended to her didn't taste good at all.

"Too sour!" Chu Yunxiu said, baring her teeth as though she could still taste them.

"You probably put in too much vinegar!" said Zhang Xinjie, very serious.

"How much are you supposed to put in?" Chu Yunxiu asked.

"Seven-tenths of a spoon. Just use the little plastic spoon that comes with it," Zhang Xinjie said.

Spoon? Who used a spoon to add vinegar? And seven-tenths?

Chu Yunxiu bore her teeth again and directly abandoned Zhang Xinjie to look for her close friend Su Mucheng.

Miracle's Guo Shao and Tyranny's Song Qiying, those two youths somehow ended up together. Amidst the crowd of seniors, the two were holding a quiet discussion, occasionally shooting glances toward Happy's players, stopping at Ye Xiu. It looked like these two were currently studying how to knock over the mountain that was Ye Xiu.

Chen Guo discovered that only the discussions among rookies tended to revolve around Glory. The older players tended to talk about much more mundane topics.

301's Yang Cong and Tiny Herb's Wang Jiexi were talking about recent housing prices.

Jiang Botao and Xu Bin were talking about European soccer.

Tang Hao was complaining to Zou Yuan about the weather in City N. He was originally in Hundred Blossoms, and City K was his home; only after transferring to Wind Howl did he have to move to the city they were in, City N. It had now been almost two years, but it looked like he still didn't much like his new city.

Such ordinary topics allowed Chen Guo to truly feel that these… were all very much real, living, breathing creatures.

In the long passageway, the players didn't rest. They directly walked outside of the stadium, and then naturally said their goodbyes to each other, all going to their own team vehicles to head to the hotels where they were staying. Some teams were staying at the same hotels, and so the players instantly started mixing together and hitching rides randomly, continuing the topics they hadn't finished chatting about.

Compared to normal matchdays, the atmosphere was much more relaxed between all of the players. Chen Guo could feel this clearly.

The All-Star Weekend was really a good event! Amidst it all, Chen Guo smiled.

The second day of the All-Star Weekend soon arrived. Compared to Day 1, Day 2's events were bit more enriching, and there was some interaction with the live audience. They would choose some audience members to participate in the events alongside the pro players.

The first event would involve pitting Glory characters against each other in mini-games. In these past years, the All-Star Weekend would use MODs specially developed by the Glory creators. It was common that afterwards, they would become available within the normal Glory game, enhancing and diversifying the content of the game.

And what was this year's mini-game? The All-Star Weekend had already made a public preview. First up was Hot-Blooded Dodgeball!

It was called dodgeball, but in reality, it didn't strictly follow the typical rules of dodgeball. From the information that had been officially released, this game was more like the folk game sandbag toss. 

The rules were as follows: the participating teams would send three players onstage, and two teams would be pitted against each other at a time. Each team would take one turn defending and one turn attacking. The final victory was determined by how long the turn lasted. For this event, there would be eight participating teams, five of them professional, and the other three made from randomly-selected audience members.

The players from the five participating pro teams quickly gathered onstage. The audience saw that they were players from Samsara, Thunderclap, Tiny Herb, Miracle, and Happy.

These five teams were selected with some care. Samsara was the team with the vast lead, Thunderclap had demonstrated unexpectedly strong team performances, Tiny Herb hadn't lost a single group arena yet, and Happy and Miracle were the two new teams in the Alliance that were doing unexpectedly well. These five teams were all attention-grabbing teams.

There were only players from these five teams…

From Samsara was Vice-captain Jiang Botao leading Assassin Wu Qi and Blade Master Du Ming.

Thunderclap had Captain Xiao Shiqin himself on the roster, leading Elementalist Dai Yanqi and the Sharpshooter that transferred from Misty Rain, Lu Yining.

Tiny Herb had Gao Yingjie, Liu Xiaobie, and Zhou Yebai.

Miracle had Shen Jian, Guo Shao, and Battle Mage Jia Xing.

As for Happy, there was Wei Chen, Steamed Bun, and… the player who had yet to appear onstage this season, someone whose first appearance would be in the fun atmosphere of All-Stars: Luo Ji.

It was his first time on such a large stage, and Luo Ji was clearly a bit terrified. Even though he knew that this was just a game, but he couldn't help but be nervous. As he stood onstage, he had no idea what to do with his hands and feet.

"Pull yourself together, you have me here!" Steamed Bun said to him, patting his own chest.

Having teammates beside him did allow some of Luo Ji's nervousness to dissipate. For the first time ever, Luo Ji thought that having Steamed Bun next to him was pretty nice.

There weren't a lot of All-Star level players participating in this event. This was also a way of purposefully making this more lowkey. For one, it gave other pro players a chance to participate in the excitement, and for another, it saved the highest-level show of the All-Star Weekend for Day 3, with the All-Star Competition.

The pro players went onstage, and then it was time to select audience members, one two three four five six seven eight nine, nine lucky audience members were chosen. Each was asked which team they supported, which players they liked and so on, which took up a bit of time. Fortunately, all of them had at least some understanding of Glory.

Next, the lucky audience members were randomly sorted into three teams, and the system began to randomly assign teams against each other.

Even though it was a never-before-seen playing mechanism in Glory, the pro players had their base level of skill, so it was very unlikely that they would be defeated by some ordinary players. For a pro vs ordinary team matchup, the outcome was basically set. But there was one extra pro team, plus since the matchups were randomized, it wasn't guaranteed that three pro teams would face the audience teams.

Indeed, in the end two audience teams were paired against each other, and Tiny Herb was matched against the third. The other four pro teams were matched against each other, two and two.

"Hehe, looks like Samsara's win streak ends here." When interviewed by the host, Happy's Wei Chen saw their upcoming opponent and spoke with full confidence.

Happy's opponent: Team Samsara.