Chapter 1224: Void’s Ghost Duo
Translator: Nomyummi Editor: Nomyummi
"What's wrong, are we planning to lose to Happy 0 to 10?" In Void's player area, looking at the current scoreboard showing Happy: 3, Void: 0, Void's Captain Li Xuan, the one called the number one Phantom Demon, finally couldn't sit around any longer.
As a member of the Golden Generation, he garnered attention in his very first season, and in his second season he gained an exceptional partner and helper. But in six years, what had they achieved?
Even for the little award of Best Partners, he couldn't compete with his fellow player from the Golden Generation, Su Mucheng. He had to wait until Ye Xiu retired and left before he could pick up that award.
The tacit understanding between the Ghost Duo wasn't any less deep than that between Ye Xiu and Su Mucheng. But the value of the Best Partners title wasn't limited to the partnership itself. It also considered how much this partnership brought to the team as a whole.
Void was a frequent participant in the playoffs. And the old Excellent Era? After losing to Tyranny in the finals of Season 4, they had never entered the finals again. On some level, Excellent Era and Void weren't that different in terms of their . But during Ye Xiu and Su Mucheng's many years at Excellent Era, the award for Best Partners always seemed to go to them without any competition at all. Their so-called strongest competitors, the Ghost Duo, had in reality never managed to put any pressure on them at all.
The reason was simple. Void's Ghost Duo, when in direct confrontation against Excellent Era's Long Spear Short Cannon combination, always came up inferior.
They'd never won the championship, they'd never even entered the finals. Even for an individual award like Best Partners, they'd been beaten down for so long. There was no way that Li Xuan felt no anger in his heart. What "number one Phantom Demon"? It sounded cool, but in Li Xuan's opinion? He wasn't even number one in one of the 24 classes of Glory. One of the 24 classes was called Ghostblade, and he, he was only the number one of the Phantom Demon branch of Ghostblade.
There were only around 200 Glory pro players, so on average, each class didn't have more than 10 players. The Ghostblade class was further divided into the three branches of Phantom Demon, Sword Demon, and Phantom Sword, so if they took an average again, there were only three Phantom Demons. And so, Li Xuan was the number one of three people. First among three, was that anything impressive?
To this, Li Xuan could only shake his head and laugh bitterly. Of course, to be the number one Phantom Demon meant that out of the millions of Phantom Demon players in Glory, he was the best. But Li Xuan truly had no interest in using those outside of the pro circle to comfort himself.
Number one was number one.
In the old days, no one said that Ye Qiu was the number one Battle Mage.
Li Xuan also wanted to become a true number one. But after so many years, he was still just the number one Phantom Demon. He couldn't even get the title of number one Ghostblade. But the one who was blocking him from this title was his own teammate, his closest friend and best partner since Season 5, Wu Yuce.
What was up with this?
Sometimes, Li Xuan would mock himself like this.
But even if they were best friends and partners, Li Xuan and Wu Yuce, who was the best Ghostblade player in the end? This question, even Li Xuan himself couldn't help but ponder sometimes.
To be honest, he had no way of giving a clear answer, and the outside world had debated this question for many years, only to find that both sides had their arguments. And within Void? Everyone carefully avoided this question, and when asked by the reporters, the two would by tacit agreement always praise the other as superior. But even so, they wouldn't talk themselves down too much, either. And so everyone could tell, their responses were just out of courtesy. Who was the stronger between the two of them, they themselves never gave a true answer.
For now, judging from their positions in the team and the All-Star vote rankings, Li Xuan was still in the lead. But some people felt that this was only because Li Xuan debuted a year before Wu Yuce, and thus had a head start.
Who was stronger? Who was the true number one Ghostblade?
In the past, Li Xuan had been very sensitive about this topic. Regarding his lead, although he'd never say it aloud, he had been secretly pleased.
But now, after so many years, he was used to it, he was numb to it, he was no longer interested in this question.
What he wanted was to be the true number one, the number one of the league, and not some number one Phantom Demon or Ghostblade.
And the dream of being this number one was too much more difficult than those other number ones.
In the blink of an eye, it was already Season 10 of the Glory Professional Alliance.
Last season, the team promoted a rookie, Ge Caijie, and everyone said that the Ghost Duo finally had a new reliable helper, that they had a lot to look forward to.
Li Xuan also carried such hopes as he entered Season 10.
But up through now, he hadn't seen any sign of his team's strong rise. Void was still struggling against the other second-string strong teams for a spot in the playoffs. And now, Happy, this new team, was actually their direct competitor, and in this current confrontation had a 3-0 lead…
"What is our goal?" Li Xuan said, looking at his teammates.
Void hadn't announced it to the public, but within the team, they felt that their roster was complete, and they had this strong rookie, Ge Caijie. They felt that this season was the season to taste the rhythm of charging for the championships. But playing up until now, they'd lost to Samsara, they'd lost to Wind Howl, they'd lost to Thunderclap, they'd even lost to Miracle. What kind of championship rhythm was this?
They'd lost to Miracle! And it had been their home game!
The seventh round of competition had been a harsh blow for Void.
Then what about now?
"Do we plan on losing 0-10 to Happy?" Li Xuan repeated this question.
"No…" Of course, his teammates could only reply like this.
"If not, then get your spirits up!" Li Xuan said.
"Yes…" everyone answered.
"Zhaolan, you're up!" Li Xuan nodded toward one of the players.
"Yes." Ge Zhaolan nodded and followed the orders to head onstage.
Void's Spitfire was named Transparent. It was instantly apparent that the name had a common source as Yang Haoxuan's Launcher Translucent. Indeed, these two characters were brought into the team by the seniors who established Team Void, and had always stayed in the team. But now, these two characters were just side characters in the team, largely because Void had never found any especially talented players for these two classes.
When Zhang Jiale retired from Hundred Blossoms, the team was caught off-guard and had no plan. They were entirely unable to find a replacement player and could only promote someone from within the team in a hurry. To some extent, this was a sign that the current Spitfire players weren't up to par. It wasn't that they were bad, it was just that they weren't outstanding enough.
Ge Zhaolan unfortunately was one of the Spitfire players who had been deemed not good enough. But the good thing was that he wasn't an especially ambitious person. He knew his position very clearly, and something like this didn't affect him. He continued to work diligently for Void. And now, Void needed him to show his strength.
They lagged behind the other team 0-3 after the individual round. In the group arena, Ge Zhaolan and his Spitfire Transparent would lead the battle for Void.
And Happy? Their first player in the group arena was Fang Rui, with his Qi Master Boundless Sea.
Happy's roster had basically been figured out by all of the opponents by this point. In the individual round and group arena, Ye Xiu, Su Mucheng, Fang Rui, and Tang Rou would always appear.
There was no dispute over having the three All-Stars appear. Even if Fang Rui had been affected by his class change, it was exactly because of his class change that he needed more battles to improve more quickly. As for Tang Rou, despite her infamy, objectively speaking no one dared underestimate her strength onstage. But after that promise-breaking incident, people suddenly had higher expectations of her. As long as she didn't 1v3, in everyone's eyes it was a weak chicken performance. 1v1.5, 1v2, these performances were normally impressive, but if it was Tang Rou, everyone would just laugh and say: look, that person who wanted to 1v3, couldn't even do a 2.5, how weak…
In this match's individual round, Ye Xiu, Steamed Bun, and Wei Chen had appeared onstage. Thus, it was already clear who would be appearing in the group arena. Now, Fang Rui was first onstage.
The map selected for this group arena battle was relatively open, a bit better for unobstructed sight that Su Mucheng needed and the simple direct confrontations that Tang Rou liked. However, this map didn't have any of the complex features that Fang Rui needed for his dirty playing.
This was also a difficulty in picking a map for the group arena, and was also a factor to consider when deciding the player order.
Fang Rui was the sacrificed piece in Happy's selection of this map. After entering the battle, he had Boundless Sea charge right towards the center of the map. It looked like he wasn't about to try and force some dirty playing onto this relatively simple map.
The two sides' characters quickly met at the center of the map. A Spitfire didn't have too many demanding requirements of a map, and Ge Zhaolan, this rejected player, didn't have a particularly distinctive playstyle, he was right in the middle. Seeing that this was the map, he simply controlled his character to head right toward the center. When he spotted Fang Rui's Boundless Sea, he calculated the distance, and as soon as he entered the Spitfire's attack range, Transparent lifted his gun without any hesitation.
Gunshot, Boundless Sea ducked to the ground. That rolling and crawling Thief-like moving style once again appeared with this Qi Master Boundless Sea.
The audience applauded. This Qi Master style that Fang Rui had invented had already attracted attention and a few imitations.
To ordinary players without any sort of high-end in-depth background, they just made their best approximations, drawing a tiger like a dog. But in the professional circle, the Qi Masters who saw Fang Rui's current playstyle could only shake their heads. They didn't reject his style altogether, but this kind of style was just entirely different from their habits. This sort of rolling and crawling was only familiar to Fang Rui. If they had to do the same, they would all feel that it was strange.
And this kind of playstyle wasn't as simple as making such postures. After some detailed analysis by some so-called experts, they all concluded that this sort of playstyle was closely linked to Fang Rui own personal qualities.