The King's Avatar

While the girl working the cashier looked at him in confusion, the long-haired youth glanced at his phone and repeatedly said “oh oh oh”. Then, he lifted his head and asked with a grin: “Chen Guo?”

“Steamed Bun!” Someone called out from near the register. Ye Xiu and Chen Guo were standing there! When the Internet Cafe broadcasted a popular match, the two wouldn’t go to the front and steal a good seat from a customer. They usually sat far away and watched from the cash register.

“Yes?” This youth responded and turned his head around. He saw a male and a female nearby, smiling at him.

“Lord Grim, Chasing Haze.” Ye Xiu took out his account ID and introduced himself and Chen Guo.

“Oh oh, I’m Steamed Bun Invasion. I’m here!” Steamed Bun Invasion said.

“I can see that.” Ye Xiu laughed.

“What’s going on? Is someone making a ruckus? I’ll help you out!!” Steamed Bun Invasion wasn’t shy with strangers and quickly blended in as a Happy Internet Cafe employee. He had already begun rolling up his sleeves.

“No no, a match is being broadcast!” Chen Guo hastily stopped him. She was afraid Steamed Bun Invasion would start pulling a mob.

“Match? There usually aren’t any matches at this time! La Liga or Serie A?” Steamed Bun Invasion asked in wonder.

“It’s a Glory Alliance match...” Chen Guo said.

“Glory Alliance match….. Oh oh!” Steamed Bun Invasion suddenly understood what was going on and then said seriously: “You’re right. We’re going to be entering the Professional Alliance, so we have to watch more competitive matches in order to understand our opponents. Who will we be watching today?”

Right when he said this, the broadcast host began speaking. The most important match today, between Team Excellent Era and Team Void, was about to begin.

“Oh, Excellent Era, Void. These two teams. We have to watch them carefully.” Steamed Bun Invasion said seriously.

“Then let’s watch……” Ye Xiu said.

“Of course!” Steamed Bun Invasion turned his head, maintaining his pose as a cash register. His eyes began focusing on the match.

“I’m 100% certain that this person is Steamed Bun Invasion.” Chen Guo whispered to Ye Xiu.

“In any case, he’s definitely not Old Wei.” Ye Xiu said.

“Why?” Chen Guo asked.

Ye Xiu turned his head: “I’d recognize Old Wei.”

“Oh……” Chen Guo had to admit that she had asked a very stupid question.

The match soon began. Because it was an Excellent Era match, there were many Excellent Era fans squeezed into the Internet Cafe today. As soon as it started, there were lots of cheering and sounds of worry. Right now, the fans were very concerned with the team’s current situation.

“Huh! It seems like there’s a lot of support for Excellent Era? Team Void shouldn’t have any less fans than them!” Steamed Bun Invasion watched the match, but commentated on the Internet Cafe’s audience. He didn’t hear any Void fans competing against Excellent Era fans like he had expected. The noise from the Excellent Era fans covered up everything.

“Void has no energy! It looks to me like they’ll be losing tonight!” Steamed Bun Invasion came to this conclusion.

“Let’s watch the match, Steamed Bun……” Ye Xiu said.

“Roger that!” Steamed Bun Invasion respected Ye Xiu’s wishes and continued to pay attention to the match.

As the match progressed, more and more angry shouts were coming from the Excellent Era fans. The three Excellent Era players who came out to compete for the individual competition lost all three rounds, making the Excellent Era fans in Happy Internet Cafe very upset. Even Steamed Bun Invasion saw the result and whispered with wide eyes: “No way! How could it be like this?” It seemed like he had been very confident in his previous prediction.

Amidst the cursing, the group arena competition began. There were many twists and turns, causing everyone to be on edge, but in the end, Excellent Era managed to win the group arena and earned two points. The Excellent Era fans relaxed a bit and began nervously paying attention to the most important team competition.

“What’s your predictions?” Chen Guo liked to listen to Ye Xiu’s predictions of every match. Even though he didn’t predict every single match’s outcome correctly, his analysis was very knowledgeable. Chen Guo felt that her skill in Glory wouldn’t improve much from his analysis in terms of mechanical skill, but her theoretical knowledge improved greatly. Now, she was gradually learning and sometimes even looked down on the comments made by the commentator and analyst.

“It’s obvious.” Ye Xiu shook his head. He expression didn’t look too good.

“Excellent Era will lose?” Chen Guo saw the look on Ye Xiu’s face and stopped herself from stealing a laugh. Right now, she hoped Excellent Era would fail. However, seeing Ye Xiu’s mood, it wouldn’t be good to be too excessive. She could empathize with Ye Xiu’s feelings towards the team. As a result, at this moment, in order to hold back her laugh, she thought about Su Mucheng and how she would also fail alongside the team. By doing this, she wouldn’t say anything out loud about Excellent Era’s misfortune.

“Excellent Era is a disaster right now.” Ye Xiu said.

“The outside world is analyzing the reasons, but I think it’s mainly because of that one time.” Chen Guo said. When she said “that one time”, she was referring to when Excellent Era sent out their starting lineup into the game only to end up being smashed by Ye Xiu and a group of players. From then on, Team Excellent Era’s playing only got worse and worse.

“It’s not only because of that time. The current Excellent Era has too many holes. No one in the team cares enough to try and fix them.” Ye Xiu said.

“How terrible! It’s such a waste for Mumu to continue being on that team. Is there any way to get her to leave early?” Chen Guo suggested. If Su Mucheng was no longer a part of the team, she could be at ease cursing Excellent Era to death.

But Ye Xiu didn’t reply to her question: “If this continues, Excellent Era might even get relegated this season.”

“Really? Wouldn’t that be tragic for Mumu?”

“Another thing. If Excellent Era is relegated, then they will be our opponents in the Challenger League. With Excellent Era participating in the Challenger League, things will be very difficult!” Ye Xiu said.

“Ah…….” Chen Guo didn’t think about this point. Now that Ye Xiu mentioned it, she suddenly understood. Don’t look at how terribly Excellent Era was doing this season. They still had the Battle God One Autumn Leaf and Sun Xiang. Their recognition wasn’t without a reason. If they didn’t have this sort of strong foundation, Excellent Era’s relegation would never have been reported as an April Fool’s joke. Clearly, such a strong team like Excellent Era being relegated was something unimaginable by fans and the media alike.

However, nothing in this world is absolute. This unimaginable occurrence was happening right now.

The team competition soon began. Even Chen Guo shook her head upon seeing the confrontation between the two sides. Excellent Era tried to coordinate, but their coordination was too mechanical. They didn’t seem to make any adjustments according to their opponent’s moves. It was as if they were following a script, executing it one line at a time.

Every single player executed their lines perfectly, but the problem was that their opponents weren’t blocks of wood. As soon as Void made adjustments, Excellent Era’s moves clearly stopped being effective. Soon afterwards, Void’s Ghostblade duo, Li Xuan and Wu Yuce, showed their might and completely gained control of the battle. Excellent Era quickly fell into a losing battle. Even the analyst and commentator could point out all of Excellent Era’s issues.

The team members of Excellent Era were losing so badly, they no longer had any confidence left. They knew that they needed to make adjustments according to the situation, but none of them dared to make them. All of them were afraid of being the ones to blame if they lost the match. As a result, they simply followed the tactical guidelines word for word.

It could be said that Excellent Era’s team was following the guidelines too well. This was a PvP competitive match. Following each step precisely was what players did in PvE situations. If they took that to a pro match, how could they not lose?

When the match between Team Excellent Era and Team Void finished, several other matches had finished as well. Among these was Team Bright Green, which had only been one point lower than Excellent Era. All of the fans checked the points tally. Fortunately, Team Bright Green gave them a thread of consolation because Team Bright Green also performed extremely poorly. Just like Team Excellent Era, they had only received 2 points. Team Excellent Era still had a one point advantage.

The teams already in the relegation zone wasn’t having it easy either. They were in just as tragic a position as Team Excellent Era. Speaking of which, even though Excellent Era had recently been declining, from the recent points earned, they couldn’t compare to Bright Green. Even so, the majority of people still favored Excellent Era.

After all, Excellent Era still had their resources. Their team’s strength was still there. As for Bright Green? Their team’s strength and record were their real strength. Bright Green couldn’t be used as an April Fool’s joke like Excellent Era could.

When the match ended, the Excellent Era fans were already numb to Team Excellent Era’s disastrous results. They didn’t curse or shout angrily. All of them felt dispirited as if their spirits had floated away.

“To think Excellent Era would actually lose so badly. It was totally contrary to my expectations. Tsk tsk tsk.” Steamed Bun Invasion sighed. He still believed the louder voice would have win. As for actual analysis of the match, he couldn’t compare to Chen Guo.

“Okay, stop reflecting on it.” Ye Xiu patted him on the back and turned his head towards Chen Guo: “Let’s get a late-night snack as a welcome gift for Steamed Bun.”

“Sure.” Chen Guo nodded his head and called over Tang Rou.

“Hi, Steamed Bun!” Tang Rou hadn’t squeezed into the crowd to watch the match. Only now did she come down. After hearing that Steamed Bun Invasion had arrived, she also ran over to call out to him.

“Soft Mist.” Ye Xiu introduced her by her game ID.

“Ah! It’s you! Amazing! You’re fierce in game and you look fierce too.” Steamed Bun Invasion was deeply moved.

“You look fierce….. Is that a compliment?” Tang Rou smiled.

“Of course of course.” Steamed Bun Invasion nodded his head.

“Okay, let’s go!” Chen Guo raised her boss voice and left the Internet Cafe together with them. After that, she took them to a place. Ye Xiu looked and sighed. He was also familiar with this place! When he was still in Excellent Era, he had been here many times to grab a late-night snack. However, at that time, the people he usually ate with…...

Hm?

Ye Xiu walked in, while looking back on his memories. Suddenly, he saw the person whom he had just been thinking about. He was sitting in his usual spot too.

Excellent Era’s boss, Tao Xuan.