The King's Avatar

She… she won again?

This time, the entire crowd was truly shocked.

It was impressive enough that Tang Rou had managed to fight on equal footing with Yu Feng, and they considered her win to be a fortunate accident. But now, with only half her health, Tang Rou was able to defeat the third player of Hundred Blossoms… Even though Yu Feng had already lost a fifth of his health to Fang Rui's Boundless Sea, he still had four-fifths left. It was by no means a stretch to call this a 1v2.

A mere rookie, in her second-ever round of competition, successfully completed a 1v2, one of whom was an All-Star level superstar.

What was this?

What was going on?

The crowd was frozen for quite a while, until suddenly, the stadium exploded with applause, shouts, and cheers. When the results of the group arena were announced, the sound level transferred to the live broadcasts spiked. The clapping echoed through every corner of the stadium. Even those Glory fans who weren't particular fans of Happy and had just come to watch the excitement realized that they might be witnessing the rise of another Glory star.

Tang Rou walked out of the player booth, and she wasn't embarrassed by the sounds of the crowd going wild for her with their cheers. She lifted her hand in the air, letting everyone see her waving her clenched fist.

The crowd grew even more enthusiastic.

This was a truly remarkable victory, for Tang Rou, and for Happy. There were already people shouting spontaneous chants from the crowd. This was a true home stadium, enough to strike guilt and terror into the hearts of the opponents.

The uproar continued for quite a while, so much so that the sound broadcasting system of the stadium had no way of announcing the next round of the competition. But no one needed the announcement to know that after the group arena came the crucial team competition. And right now, Happy had a strong lead on Hundred Blossoms, 4 to 1. If they won the team competition as well, it wouldn't be a perfect victory, but it would still very much be a satisfactory victory. Especially with that performance in the group arena, which had been so exciting that it seemed to steal the spotlight from the team competition.

Even the crowd was this thrilled, so of course Happy's young and old wouldn't hide the joy in their hearts.

"That was too beautiful!" As soon as Tang Rou arrived back in the player area, Chen Guo swept her up in a hug. From the crowd members that were closer came several wolf whistles at the sight of two pretty women hugging, some people couldn't help but make some dirty shouts.

"You played beautifully." Ye Xiu praised her as well.

But they couldn't just spend all this time basking in that victory. After the group arena's conclusion, there was a relatively long break until the team competition. During this time, teams would often make adjustments or changes based on the opponent's condition or other problems that came up. So, after a short period of celebration, the team came together to discuss and prepare for the team competition.

Team Hundred Blossoms was doing the same thing. But it was one thing to postpone a celebration, what about an atmosphere of pressure? Were they also supposed to let themselves be happy for a moment before becoming dejected again?

It was clear they could not. They had a rough start in the group arena, but Mo Fan's penalty came as a great present for them, giving them the huge advantage of 2v1. But then the opponent pulled off an incredible reversal, crushing Hundred Blossoms's spirits for good.

"What's wrong, what's wrong with you all? Pull yourselves together. The competition's not over yet, there's still the team competition, we can win back enough points!" As the captain, Yu Feng had to raise the spirits of his teammates. But his speech didn't seem to have much effect. Although everyone acted like their morale was boosted, Yu Feng could tell that it was just to cater to his words. Their fighting spirit hadn't been ignited by this.

How did this happen?

Yu Feng knew that his words weren't anything special, it was something anyone could say. But he also clearly remembered his time in Team Blue Rain, when they were faced with extremely disadvantageous situations. Even in the finals of Season 8, where they were losing 2.5 to 7 on their home field to Samsara, Captain Yu Wenzhou's few simple words were enough to lift the spirits of the entire team.

The competition isn't over yet…

This was the phrase that Yu Wenzhou said the most often. Now, Yu Feng had become captain as well, and what came out of his mouth was the phrase he had heard the most in his previous team. But why couldn't he achieve the same effect that Yu Wenzhou could?

Yu Feng was frustrated and helpless. He had never actually experienced such a pathetic defeat before. To be defeated in a 1v2 by a rookie, where he, the captain and core player, had been playing...

Was it because he himself was one of the reasons why the team's spirit was currently so low? Was that why nothing he said could make a difference?

But there was no time for Yu Feng to ponder the wisdom of captaincy. He saw his teammates depressed and dispirited, yet he could do nothing to help. He could only stabilize himself first, calmly meet the upcoming challenge of the team competition, and hope that his own emotion would spread to his teammates.

While the two teams made their preparations for the team competition, the crowd was still enthralled by the victory of the group arena. During this break, the crowd reviewed the exciting moments of that battle, and the screens and the holographic projections were using all sorts of techniques like freeze-frames, close-ups, and slow-mos to display Tang Rou's mighty performance.

The Hundred Blossoms players and fans could see all this as well, and they were upset. But this was Happy's home stadium, who would care about the feelings of the visitors? This was the home field advantage. After all, the home team fans were the long-term guarantee for the box office!

The players actively prepared for battle, the crowd enthusiastically reviewed the battle, and what about the media?

The commentator Pan Lin was currently analyzing the match between Thunderclap and Void, but when he heard the news about the twists and turns that resulted in Tang Rou winning a 1v2 against Hundred Blossoms in the group arena, he once again interrupted to switch to broadcasting this match and explaining the situation to the viewers.

The esports television broadcast station received numerous calls that night. The polite ones asked which channel they could watch the match between Happy and Hundred Blossoms and understood the broadcasting system; the more aggressive ones directly asked why they weren't showing the Happy vs Hundred Blossoms match.

The broadcasters couldn't blame Pan Lin for switching to talking about another battle, they themselves regretted their decision. But who could have predicted that Happy's match would explode with this kind of excitement?

Those watching the television broadcast could only continue to be helpless. Meanwhile, the online stream of this match was skyrocketing in view count, far surpassing the other nine matches. The online media who could release news quickly were already sending out draft news headlines about Tang Rou's performance to their respective pages. As for the newspapers and magazines that didn't release news as urgently, those reporters had already started to gracefully describe this group arena with their words.

Was the upcoming team competition even important anymore?

To them, it no longer seemed important. No matter the outcome of the team competition, Tang Rou's performance in the group arena was guaranteed to be tomorrow's headline. They only hoped that she wouldn't suddenly hit a low in the team competition, but even if she did, they could still use the poetic descriptor "sometimes angel, sometimes demon" to portray her. From this, it was clear that no matter what, there would be something to write about, and the reporters were all excited, bubbling with delight. It was only until the team competition was immediately about to begin and the players were walking onstage that the reporters finally started paying attention once again.

For the team competition, Happy's roster consisted of Ye Xiu's Unspecialized Lord Grim, Su Mucheng's Launcher Dancing Rain, Fang Rui's Qi Master Boundless Sea, Qiao Yifan's Ghostblade One Inch Ash, and An Wenyi's Cleric Little Cold Hands, with Tang Rou's Soft Mist as the sixth person.

From Hundred Blossoms, there would be Yu Feng's Berserker Blossoming Chaos, Zou Yuan's Spitfire Bright Blossoms, Zhou Guangyi's Assassin Cold Seasons, Zhu Xiaoping's Summoner Wind Carving, and Mo Chuchen's Cleric Arrogant Flowers, with Zhang Wei's Witch Endless Forest as the sixth.

Happy's roster had rotated a bit from the previous rounds. The inclusion of Cleric An Wenyi was expected, of course, but aside from that, Qiao Yifan hadn't yet appeared in this match either. Steamed Bun, who played in the individual competition, and Mo Fan, who played in the group arena, were both sitting back in the player bench.

For Hundred Blossoms, the healer Mo Chuchen joined, but everyone else had appeared in the earlier rounds. This sort of single replacement wouldn't be considered a rotation.

The two sides came onstage. After they shook hands and performed the other necessary tasks, they entered their player booths. The judge checked that both sides were ready, and confirmed the match's start. The sound of the countdown echoed through the whole stadium.

Finally, the team competition began.

The map used was Broken River.

The map was in the shape of a standard square, divided along the diagonals into four triangular regions. The top and bottom triangles were forests of stone, while the left and right triangles were forests of trees. The paths in both types of forests were complex and winding, while the northeast-southwest diagonal was a wide road, and the northwest-southeast diagonal was a river that was interrupted by the road at the intersection at the center of the map. The name "Broken River" came from this.

The water in Broken River rushed rapidly, but it flowed backwards. The intersection at the center acted as the source of the water. It flowed to the northwest and southeast corners of the map. There, the Broken River became waterfalls, and they were clearly the exits of the map. If a character fell into the waterfalls there, they would be directly announced as dead and eliminated from the battle.

The two teams appeared at the southwest and northeast corners. Aside from these two points, each of the triangular regions had a support zone.

Team Hundred Blossoms appeared on the upper half of the map, the northeast corner.

Team Happy appeared on the lower half of the map, the southwest corner.

The connecting road ran straight through the map with no obstacles. If they followed this road, the two teams would quickly appear in each others' view. Happy directly charged along the road, but Hundred Blossoms chose a roundabout path, quickly hiding in the stone forest of the northern triangle region.