Chapter 313 – News Conference
After the final match ended, the audience’s applause sounded somewhat mechanical. They clearly weren’t feeling any genuine excitement and were only giving them a courtesy clap.
Samsara’s ace player, Zhou Zekai, didn’t seem to mind. Once he finished the match, he waved his hands to the audience and gave a “thank you” before swiftly exiting the stage.
From the start of the opening show, he was supposed to be tonight’s brightest star. But in the end, it looked as if he was a part of some trash program played after midnight. All of Samsara sighed. Although this year’s Rookie Challenge was undoubtedly the most spectacular and successful show in Glory’s history, the competition hadn’t given any spotlight to their pro players. It had only made them even more depressed when they thought about it.
Once the Rookie Challenge ended, the All-Star Weekend’s first day was basically over. All of the matches were 1v1s, but even though each match wasn’t long, the intermission, talking and opening had made the event take almost two hours.
After this was another projection show and some raffle events. If this was in the past, by this time, most of the audience would have already left the stadium. But with the new projection technology, a large part of the audience weren’t satisfied just yet and stayed to continue admiring it.
The ending show continued for almost half an hour before the hosts officially announced that the first day of the All-Star Weekend was over. During this half hour, the security personnel, in charge of maintaining order as people left, had gotten to their positions. The stadium lights gradually brightened until the whole stadium was lit. The audience got up and began to exit the stadium. Several of the crazier fans were still looking left and right. While they were at the scene, they hoped to find a chance to see or meet one of their idols.
However, the host had obviously prepared for this. The pro players had their own passageway and wouldn’t mix together with the normal audience. When the lights turned on and the audience turned to look at the pro players’ seats, they discovered that they had already dispersed.
The crowd of people slowly moved outside. After they were outside, they immediately felt more freedom. Many of the audience members were local people, so they already had plenty of experience with the stadium. After exiting, they didn’t stop to rest and immediately scrambled over to the roadside. Even though several, more business-minded taxis had come knowing that there would be business here, there weren’t enough, making the roadsides unbelievably noisy.
These three weren’t unfamiliar with this type of scene. Ye Xiu, of course, obviously didn’t need to be mentioned. As for Chen Guo and Tang Rou, the Internet Cafe was right next to Excellent Era’s stadium. Whenever Excellent Era had a match in their stadium, the scene looked the same. How could they not have experienced this before? In the end, the three loitered around for another half an hour before finally getting a taxi.
When they returned to the hotel, the three were both tired and hungry. They had eaten their dinner on the plane. Once they arrived at City S, they ran straight to the hotel and then hurried over to the stadium without any time to rest. While they were focused on watching the matches, waiting in line and waiting for the taxi, they didn’t feel tired or hungry. But once they arrived at their final destination, they immediately felt as if their hearts were stuck to their backs and rushed straight for the dining hall.
After picking a few items, the three of their gazes fell onto the large TV screen in the dining hall.
Nowadays, the eSports business was vigorously developing and the Glory Alliance was among those that stood out. Adding in the extremely large Glory player base, the foundation for it was extremely solid. The hosting of Glory’s All-Star Weekend was naturally a grand occasion for City S. At this moment, the TV screen was showing a few highlights from the first day of the All-Star Weekend’s Rookie Challenge.
This went from the opening show to each match in the Challenge.
The three had just seen these, so when they saw the highlights, they didn’t find anything new. Chen Guo kept her excited state and called the two of them to quickly look whenever anything spectacular happened. The only gloomy part was the moment when Han Wenqing beat Sun Xiang. This was originally the night’s highest point, but for Chen Guo, she clearly wasn’t happy about it.
After the highlights were shown, the TV screen switched to the news conference after the event.
As the host, even though Samsara felt somewhat depressed at the way things turned out, they still praised the success of the projection technology, as well as the brilliance of the Rookie Challenge.
They then invited a few all-stars to talk with them. Most of them went by the official view and praised this year’s event. But how could reporters be so easily dispatched? The dispute over the new and the old in the Rookie Challenge was naturally tossed over to them in a series of questions.
But the Alliance was already prepared for this. The members who were sent out to talk with the reporters were all experts at interviews. Against these sharp questions, not one of them didn’t laugh, stressed sportsmanship and felt that the fight between the new and old players were a reflection of Glory’s development.
Clearly, the reporters weren’t going to get much out of these players. The reporters waited patiently though, because they knew that, according to the rules, part of the participants in the Rookie Challenge had to accept interviews.
In the end, four of the participants from the Rookie Challenge appeared at the news conference. From the rookies came Dai Yanqi from the first match and Samsara’s rookie from the sixth match. As for the veterans, Wang Jiexi and Zhou Zekai showed up.
When the reporters saw this, they took note of the host’s slyness! None of the people they wanted to interview appeared. What was there to ask Dai Yanqi and that Samsara rookie? The only person the reporters were interested in was Wang Jiexi.
The reporters quickly flocked over and flooded Wang Jiexi with questions. Naturally, their questions were focused on his loss to Gao Yingjie.
Wang Jiexi was an old veteran. Even more so, that match had been completely engineered by him, so the current situation had been anticipated long before. Him participating in the news conference was something he personally requested. How could he be unprepared for this?
Wang Jiexi didn’t hurry or delay over the reporters’ questions and replied clearly to them.
Even though the reporters didn’t get anything amazing like they were expecting out of him, Wang Jiexi’s truthful responses were acceptable to the reporters. It wasn’t easy for them, either. Facing the star, who knew how many times they received supercilious looks from their sharp questions. There was no shortage of questions towards Wang Jiexi. There were even questions on whether he intentionally lost, which Wang Jiexi patiently replied to.
Compared to him, Zhou Zekai and the others weren’t given much attention. Only those who weren’t able to squeeze into Wang Jiexi’s crowd came to ask them a few questions.
This type of scene was quite common. In reality, getting interviewed wasn’t something exciting for the majority of the pro players. Some of them were even happy when they were ignored by the reporters.
For example, Zhou Zekai, who was currently Glory’s most popular player, felt quite pleased when receiving such little attention.
Though, compared to the two rookies, Zhou Zekai still received more attention. The God’s opinions on things were much more attractive than some rookie’s opinion. The majority of the players who couldn’t get to Wang Jiexi ran over to Zhou Zekai.
“As a representative of the mid-generation players, towards this year’s Rookie Challenge and towards the rookie’s drive, do you feel like this sort of behavior is a form of disrespect towards the veterans?” a reporter asked.
Silence…… Several seconds of silence. After thinking for a while, Zhou Zekai lifted his head and then said earnestly: “It’s fine?”
And then…. and then there was nothing after that. After saying these two words, Zhou Zekai already looked at the reporters, indicating that he was ready for the next question.
The reporters were stump. They did know beforehand that interviewing him was a very difficult task. Considered as the number one most handsome guy in Glory, he definitely had the appearance to match it. But when it came to talking with others, he was quite uncommunicative, especially towards the media. For extremely long questions, he would sometimes only reply with a “Yeah”, “Ah!”, “Oh” or a “No” like how he had replied earlier with his “It’s fine?”. It couldn’t be said that he didn’t reply to the reporter’s question, but……. What was the point in reporting this type of response?
“Ha ha ha ha……” Chen Guo, who was watching the interview, laughed, pointing at the screen: “I like watching his interviews.”
For Tang Rou, who was watching an interview of Zhou Zekai for the first time, she immediately discovered that he was different than the norm. She asked in astonishment: “Were those two words his reply?”
“Yeah.” Ye Xiu nodded his head.
But how could the reporters be so quick to give up? It was rare for them to not need to scramble in order to ask Zhou Zekai questions. Everyone was determined to overcome this difficult obstacle.
“Tang Hao defeated Lin Jingyan today. Do you think he can be called Glory’s number one Brawler now?” A very direct question.
Zhou Zekai thought for several seconds again before speaking: “They played very well.”
“They? Who exactly do you mean by they?”
“Um……” thinking, “Everyone!”
“Everyone? Then do you think your skill level is at the same level as Yu Nian’s?” Yu Nian was the rookie who played against Zhou Zekai.
“Uh…… he tried very hard!” Zhou Zekai said.
“But trying hard doesn’t mean he’s skilled, no?” Another reporter asked.
“As long as you try your best, then it’s good.” Zhou Zekai said after a short pause.
The reporters had their cheeks streaked with tears. Chen Guo was already hitting the table in laughter. Tang Rou couldn’t resist laughing either and asked Ye Xiu: “Is he actually like that or is he just playing with the reporters?”
“Trust me. He really is like that.” Ye Xiu nodded his head.