The King's Avatar

Fang Rui left the stage, and as he walked back to Happy's player area he waved and greeted the crowd. The last bit against Yu Feng was the most interesting part of Fang Rui's performance, but it was high-level in terms of technical content. Without the commentary, the live crowd had trouble understanding it, so they would need to go back to fully appreciate it.

But no matter what, to defeat one of the Hundred Blossom's players and then take down a fifth of the health of the captain and core player, Fang Rui had performed admirably. As the home crowd, of course they had to show their support with their applause.

In Happy's player area, Mo Fan silently stood up, and without saying anything to his teammates, he headed down toward the stage. Fang Rui was still interacting with the crowd, and all of their attention was on him, so not many noticed Mo Fan. It seemed that Fang Rui didn't notice him either, but when they passed each other, he simply said to him, rather abruptly, "Play well."

Mo Fan paused in his step and turned his head back to look, but Fang Rui didn't stop, nor did he look at him. He was striking poses for the crowd to take pictures of him!

Mo Fan continued to quietly walk onstage and entered the player booth.

The third battle of the group round: Happy's Mo Fan, playing Deception, versus Hundred Blossoms's Yu Feng, playing Blossoming Chaos.

One was a rookie, one was an All-Star level God. On paper, there was an extremely clear disparity in this match-up.

This battle was like the first battle of the individual competition, but now the situation was reversed. This time, it was Happy's player stepping onstage for the first time, against a first-string God in the professional circle. Mo Fan hadn't appeared in the opening round.

Learning from what had happened in the individual competition, the judge was somewhat anxious and made a special visit to check on the status of this Happy rookie. But all he found was that this player's face was as still as water.

Poor thing, he was so nervous that his facial expression was frozen stiff. The judge sighed in his heart.

"No need to be nervous, just treat this as a normal game," the judge said to him warmly. He sympathized greatly with rookies.

But the rookie only glanced at him. Without saying anything, he entered the player booth with that frozen expression.

He didn't hear me speak? But that's not right, he looked at me. He did hear me speak? Then what kind of reaction was that? The judge was at a loss. But this wasn't his responsibility, it was just his own good intentions. Doing this was enough, so he didn't pay any more attention, and went back to the judging area to check the confirmation status of both competitors. That rookie wouldn't be like the last one, would he? Entering the player booth and then not doing anything?

But the judge saw that both competitors had confirmed they were ready. The rookie's actions were decisive!

The judge checked the time and it was about time, so he allowed the new battle to begin.

The map was the same as before.

But Mo Fan was new to the professional scene. Even if he often played in the in-game Arena, he hadn't professionally analyzed these maps like most pro players did. And Yu Feng, on the other hand, had already demonstrated in the previous battle that he was no stranger to this map. No matter which way you looked at it, the victory in this round seemed like it was already determined.

Even the applause from the crowd was rather subdued, as though not wanting to give the rookie too much pressure. There were no shouts of "you must win" or anything like that.

The two characters entered the map. Yu Feng's Blossoming Chaos directly charged toward the center, while Mo Fan's Deception began moving along a roundabout path.

The four Nightwalker subclasses very rarely battled head-on, so Yu Feng was unsurprised when he arrived at the center of the map without seeing Deception.

He really was quite familiar with this map. He didn't even have to look around to determine the positions from which the opponent might launch a sneak attack.

Yu Feng stared at these positions. At this time, Mo Fan's Deception had already arrived, and was hiding at one of these positions, staring at Yu Feng's Blossoming Chaos.

Neither side moved. The battle was at a standstill.

For Glory competitions, whether or not to introduce a time limit had always been a source of controversy.

With a time limit, playstyles would become more utilitarian, and the battles would become more uninteresting and ugly to watch. But without a time limit, there would be patient stalemates that made the battle suffocatingly dreary, especially for the broadcast. These tactics wasted time with nothing happening, and it drove them crazy.

Right now, for example...

Neither Yu Feng nor Mo Fan took the initiative to attack. They were both waiting for the other to expose an opening they could exploit.

This sort of tense, anticipatory atmosphere sounded like it carried a lot of feeling, but when watching, it looked like a frozen image.

The players were testing each other's patience, but they were also testing the patience of the crowd. If everyone had enough patience, would this scene just drag on forever?

Part of the reason why this situation could come about was because of how Glory maps were designed. The maps they used for battles were extremely vast, increasing the number of options available in battle and increasing this sort of hiding and testing patience.

How to solve this? People had pondered this for several seasons now, but no satisfactory solution had been reached. But they had to solve this problem, otherwise it could really happen that neither side attacked and instead just stared at each other for an hour.

In the end, the Alliance gave the power to the judge. If such a situation came up in battle, they could make a ruling.

Yu Feng was of course familiar with all of the rules of competition. He didn't move.

Mo Fan was now a pro player, and of course he understood the rules, but he had never experienced the rules. He didn't move either.

Thus, soon there was an announcement in the battle system.

It was from the judge. After this long standoff, the judge declared that Mo Fan would be given a yellow card for wasting time in battle.

Even though Yu Feng hadn't moved either, he had directly approached and was out in the open, while Mo Fan's intent while hiding was obvious. In these conditions, the one who would be given a warning was Mo Fan; he was the one expected to take the initiative. Yu Feng was clear on this point, so he wasn't worried. He patiently waited until Mo Fan was forced by the judge to make a move.

One yellow card was considered a warning. Two yellow cards would become a red card. In football, a red card meant that the player was dismissed from the game. In Glory matches, in an individual match, if a player got a red card and was expelled, victory was given by the judge to the opponent.

Mo Fan had read the competition rules, and now, he finally experienced the rules.

After the yellow card, if he continued to maintain this situation, the second yellow card would come much sooner, and he would quickly get a red card.

So Yu Feng knew, after this Mo Fan must move. He focused all of his attention on his surroundings.

As expected, Mo Fan moved.

Deception left the place he was hiding, and quietly walked, switching to another position. And then, he hid himself again.

He continued not to move.

The judge was instantly furious!

At first, he had cared about this rookie, but this rookie was trying to play this sort of clever trickery with him. Switching to a different position to hide, you think that that's enough to consider yourself as taking the initiative?

Seeing that Deception appeared to have no intent of attacking, the judge sent another announcement in the system.

Second yellow card, changed to red card, Deception is disqualified!

The crowd was in an uproar.

Mo Fan was shocked.

What? Was this not allowed?

The system declared Yu Feng's victory. Even Yu Feng himself was surprised.

What was this rookie from Happy doing? He got a yellow card and still didn't move, was he looking for that red card? Yu Feng had no way of knowing that Mo Fan did move, but his movement made the judge feel that this player was mocking him. The rules were not made so you could find loopholes in them like this!

With the red card, Mo Fan was declared the loser, and players that earned a red card were banned from the next round of matches. Depending on the situation, there could be even more severe suspension penalties.

The live crowd was speechless. They had no idea how to express their current feelings toward all of this. After all, this was a rookie playing onstage for the first time, booing him seemed a little harsh! But being red carded like this was equivalent to giving the opponent a perfect victory, this this this… it really made people upset.

Under the conflicted eyes of the crowd, Mo Fan left the stage and headed back to the player area.

Happy's players wanted to cry. This was all an issue of miscommunication! But the problem was, it was truly too difficult to communicate with this kid. They let him figure things out on his own, and it resulted in this sour outcome.

Mo Fan returned to the player bench and returned to his seat. The others shot conflicted looks at each other, but no one went up to say anything.

And Mo Fan? His face was finally no longer so expressionless and now revealed some hesitation. After some internal struggle, he finally opened his mouth with uncertainty. "What… should I have done?"

He only said this one sentence. Even the point of his speaking wasn't clear.

"I'll teach you," Su Mucheng said, smiling. She stood from where she was sitting in the front row and went back to the corner next to where Mo Fan was.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

But Chen Guo was still in low spirits. They'd gotten off to a good start in the group competition, but now with Mo Fan's red card, they were suddenly in a bad situation.

Happy's third competitor in the group round was Tang Rou. Facing this difficult situation, she was actually quite excited. But she was also now very clear about her own skill level.

"I'll give it a shot!" These were the words Tang Rou left as she headed to the stage.

It was unlike her normal confidence, but for a rookie facing the All-Star God Yu Feng at four-fifths health and then another player at full health, being able to say "I'll give it a shot" already demonstrated remarkable courage.

Tang Rou went onstage to the sound of enthusiastic applause. She was currently extremely popular, and not just among Happy fans. Throughout the entire Glory circle, many people were paying attention to this pretty female competitor. Of course, it was wrong to judge a book by its cover, but one had to admit that physical appearance was often the basis of first impressions. Being attractive was always advantageous.

Another rookie, but after being played by Mo Fan, the judge was feeling much less sympathetic toward rookies. He didn't say much to Tang Rou, and after confirming that she entered the battle, he quickly declared the battle to begin.

In the previous round, one scene of silence was swapped for another, and then victory was decided by a red card.

This round, 23 seconds after it began, the two opponents met in the center and began to fight.