The King's Avatar

Because the competition for materials affected a team’s placing in the Alliance, it wouldn’t be good for Feng Xianjun to push this matter further. He could only console himself by saying that it was a feature of the Glory Alliance. In any case, the main offender being Happy made Feng Xianjun filled with interest towards this year’s Challenger League.

On the first of April, the teams participating in the Challenger League received official notifications from the Alliance. The teams would need to report in on the weekend of 4/19 and 4/20. The Challenger League’s offline tournament would officially start on 4/21.

The teams were notified early to make it easier for players to plan out their schedules. After all, apart from pro teams, most players were either studying or working. The Challenger League offline tournament would last for at least a month. To clear out a schedule for such a long period of time required some work.

At Happy, Luo Ji and An Wenyi were two students. However, Ye Xiu had told them about it a long time ago, so the two had even more time to get ready. Did they request a leave of absence or were they just going to skip class? Ye Xiu didn’t ask, but he preferred if they handled it appropriately. Skipping class was very worrying. It could greatly affect a player’s condition.

In the beginning of April, the pro players were still busy on both ends. Ye Xiu’s side had dwindled somewhat. Their two months of training consisted almost entirely of fighting with pro players every day. How much time they got to fight with these pro players depended on what bosses spawned that day. The pro players would be most active towards Level 75 wild bosses. Level 70 wild bosses were okay too, but pro players would almost never show up for bosses lower-leveled than Level 70. Apart from that, they often wouldn’t show up for past midnight or on match days. As a result, Team Happy’s sleep schedule started conforming to the sleep schedules for the pro teams.

During these two months, not only did their skill levels improve immensely, everyone was in a good mental state. Their equipment had also improved another step. The blueprint for the Level 70 upgrade of Lord Grim’s Myriad Manifestations Umbrella had been ascertained. The team was only missing a solution for skill books. Their understanding of level 75 materials was still very poor, so Ye Xiu didn’t have plans on getting his umbrella to level 75 for now. The current Happy didn’t have the resources to do brute force it by trial and error. Whatever extra materials they had would better be used for other Silver equipment.

Right now, it seemed like Soft Mist would be the first besides Lord Grim and Windward Formation to get a Silver weapon. After all, Ye Xiu’s experience towards Battle Mages was too deep. Let alone a Silver weapon, Soft Mist would have an enormous advantage for how to develop her other pieces of Silver equipment because of Ye Xiu’s knowledge base. As for the other classes, even though Ye Xiu was proficient with them, his experience with those classes couldn’t compare to his former main class that he had played as for so many years.

Silver spear: Dancing Fire Flowing Flame.

Although it hadn’t been created yet, the blueprint had been completely drawn out. Luo Ji had performed some calculations and confirmed that there were no mistakes. It just hadn’t been created yet because they lacked a few materials. The uncommon material requirements from the normal servers were the most difficult for Happy. They truly didn’t have the energy to spare to split their attention and participate in the boss competitions in the normal servers. Even though they had trained their guilds in the normal servers to a certain extent, they still couldn’t improve so quickly in such a short amount of time.

Ye Xiu was prepared to trade for these materials because despite these being wild boss materials, the club guilds enjoyed a monopoly on these materials in the normal servers. Those game studios were out of stock. In the end, Ye Xiu could only look for his good friends Conquering Clouds, Radiant, and Parade. These three guilds might be relatively small, but it wasn’t like they were extremely poor. Seeing how their relationship with each other was good, the three guild leaders expressed that they could help out and ask if a trade could be made.

The value of uncommon materials wasn’t ordinary. A single guild leader didn’t have the authority to make a trade on their own. They needed to talk to several departments in their club.

Ye Xiu wasn’t in a big hurry. He still had many things to do. Their recent training routine continued, but it was dying down. Everyone was saving energy for the upcoming offline tournament. Before it began, they needed to finish as much as possible in terms of their equipment. Dancing Fire Flowing Flame was only one part of their work so far. Ye Xiu’s knowledge wasn’t limited to just one weapon.

During these two months, while organizing their materials, Ye Xiu and Wei Chen thought up of numerous ideas for Silver equipment. Then, they gave these ideas to Luo Ji to check. If their blueprint had been confirmed and there were enough materials, they could immediately create one. If it wasn’t for them already creating quite a few pieces of Silver equipment, they wouldn’t be stuck on creating Dancing Fire Flowing Flame. Most of the 2 million RMB worth of materials from Samsara’s trade were mainly from the normal server because Ye Xiu had been clear that his future activities would mainly be in the Heavenly Domain. He wouldn’t be able to manage their materials problem in the normal server, so he had planned ahead 1 .

They used bits and pieces of those 2 million RMB worth of materials, so their set of materials gradually became incomplete. The number of missing materials for their Silver equipment increased as time went on. But before Dancing Fire Flowing Flame, they had already created 19 pieces of Silver equipment. All of them had reached Level 70. Along with the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella and Death’s Hand, if they hadn’t gotten anything from when Team Everlasting disbanded, they would have one more piece of Silver equipment than Team Heavenly Swords.

At Happy, Ye Xiu and Wei Chen came with their own Silver equipment, the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella and Death’s Hand.

When Team Everlasting disbanded, they had purchased three pieces of Warlock Silver equipment.

After a period of time, they had created 19 of their own pieces of Silver equipment, bringing their total Silver equipment count to 24.

Among these, Wei Chen’s Windward Formation stood out the most. He had his own Silver weapon, and the three pieces of Silver equipment purchased from Team Everlasting had been for his Warlock. Later on, he and Ye Xiu researched Silver equipment, and just like how Ye Xiu was most familiar with Battle Mages, Wei Chen was obviously the most familiar with Warlocks. Of those 19 Silver equipment, 4 of those were for Warlocks. Windward Formation currently had 8 Silver equipment on him, far surpassing the average of 5.23 Silver equipment on a character in the Alliance. He was almost at the level of the God characters. Team Blue Rain’s number one Warlock, Swoksaar, only had 10 Silver equipment. It was only 2 more than Windward Formation. But then again, Windward Formation’s Silver equipment were only at Level 70... he couldn’t compare to Swoksaar in that area.

Besides these 4 Warlock equipment, there were also 5 Battle Mage equipment among these 19 Silver equipment. These two classes took up half of the total Silver equipment. There were 3 Brawler equipment, 2 Cleric equipment, 2 Ghostblade equipment, 2 Summoner equipment, and 1 Ninja equipment.

Ninja equipment was for Mo Fan’s Deception, which made Chen Guo a bit worried. Mo Fan also followed along when they practiced, but because both sides had the support of their guilds, there were very few deaths in battle, so his scrap picking talent couldn’t be fully displayed. His combat experience had improved significantly from fighting pro players though. However, Mo Fan was still as emotionless as ever. Chen Guo could never feel reassured about him. She always felt like one day, Mo Fan would suddenly leave without saying a word. At best, it would be in front of everyone…...

Chen Guo was worried that giving Mo Fan Ninja equipment would result in a loss. Ye Xiu was quite imposing though. He didn’t hesitate to hand over the Silver equipment that he made to Mo Fan. Mo Fan was even more imposing. He took it without even saying thanks and directly put it on.

Chen Guo couldn’t say anything about her displeasure. She really wanted to grasp Mo Fan by the neck to make him understand, but with Mo Fan’s personality, Chen Guo wondered that even if she did it, she still wouldn’t get a response.

After these 19 pieces of Silver equipment, it was either they didn’t any ideas on how to create any more Silver equipment, or they didn’t have enough materials like with Dancing Fire Flowing Flame. It would be best if those materials could be traded for as fast as possible. As for coming up with ideas for other Silver equipment, Ye Xiu and Wei Chen no longer spent all their energy on it. After all, the offline tournament was approaching. The two also needed to rest and adjust their mental state. Moreover, compared to Tang Rou, Steamed Bun, and the others, the two were ”old”. Keeping up their energy wasn’t as easy.

Under Ye Xiu’s experienced control, the day before the offline tournament, Team Happy slowed down their pace. If it was said that Happy had learned like crazy over the past year, then it was finally time for exam day. Before that, they needed to properly digest the accumulated nutrients obtained during this period of time in order to completely display their full potential.

4/5. On the first Saturday of April, a guest came to visit Happy early in the morning.　

Su Mucheng. Everytime Chen Guo met with her, the two would chat about random things forever, but today, when Chen Guo saw her, they only did some small talk before quickly changing into the appropriate attire.

Chen Guo knew why Su Mucheng had come today. It was the Tomb Sweeping Day**. Su Mucheng, Ye Xiu, and her would all be going to the same place.

When the three went out the door, they called a taxi and headed over to Nanshan Public Cemetery. Along the way there, the three chatted casually. The mood was neither heavy nor light.

”I’ll go find you guys later.”　　

Just like last year, Chen Guo’s destination was slightly closer, so the left the group for now and first went to visit her father.　

”See you.” Ye Xiu and Su Mucheng called out and then headed over towards Su Muqiu.

”Dad, I’m here.” Chen Guo placed fresh flowers in front of the grave, while cleaning up the surroundings. Chen Guo didn’t only come once a year on the Qingming Festival. She would often come ordinarily. She just didn’t tell anyone, that’s all. However, Chen Guo was more formal on the Qingming Festival. She would be more traditional and explain how her year went to her father.

”It’s been a busy year! Who would have ever imagined that our team would actually be formed. I didn’t see wrong. Even though that guy gives me mixed feelings, he’s truly very reliable! I honestly feel like I haven’t helped him at all, but even so, we were still able to form a team. Right now, we’re participating in Glory’s Challenger League. If we win, then we’ll officially become a pro team! Happy! It won’t just be the Internet cafe. It’ll be a professional club!”

”But no one is too optimistic about us because there’s a Team Excellent Era in this year’s Challenger League. Team Excellent Era! Did you know? They’re our next door neighbors. I used to love that team. Not anymore though, of course. Because now they’re our opponents and because they’re not nice. Then again, if they were nice, I would never be able to have this type of opportunity and I would never have experienced everything I did this year. I’ve been very happy, and my life has been filled with things to do. In the last third of the month, we’ll be playing in an offline tournament. We have to win! Don’t you think so?”

Chen Guo said with a smile.

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**TLN: Sorry, another long TLN. I wish there was a better way to post long notes and images :(

The Qingming Festival is also known as Tomb-Sweeping Day. It’s a day where people visit the graves and pray to their ancestors. They sweep the tombs of their ancestors and give offerings such as flowers, food, joss paper.

There are other traditions often celebrated on this day too such as going for a walk, planting trees, flying kites, and a bunch of other things. They engage in physical activites so that they don’t harm their bodies after the Cold Food Festival, where you’re not supposed to eat cooked food three days before the Qingming Festival.

The origin story comes from the Cold Food Festival. The story or at least the prince is pretty stupid in my opinion, but here it is:

”During the Spring and Autumn period, Prince Chong’er of the state of Jin endured many hardships while he was exiled from his home state because of the Li Ji Unrest. While heading towards the Beidi, only 15 men accompanied him, one being his friend and subject Jie Zitui (介子推; or Jie Zhitui 介之推). Jie Zitui was the only one who followed the prince through his 19 years of hardships, seeing his final ascension to the throne as Duke Wen of Jin.

Once, when Chong’er and Jie Zitui passed through the State of Wey, all their provisions were stolen. In order to help the prince who was tormented by hunger, Jie Zitui cut off the flesh from his thigh and offered it to the prince for sustenance.

Later, when Chong’er became Duke Wen of Jin, he ordered a search for Jie Zitui who had gone into hiding in the remote mountains with his mother. Jie Zhitui had no political ambitions and felt ashamed to work with his hypocritical fellows, hence refused invitation of the Duke. Duke Wen ordered the mountains to be burned down in order to force Jie out of hiding. However, the fire ended up killing Jie and his mother.

Filled with remorse, Duke Wen ordered that each year during these three days the setting of fire is forbidden – all food was to be consumed cold. Therefore, the Festival is thus named.[4]

Thus, there exist a Chinese Proverb that goes ”While one can burn off an entire mountain, others are refrained even to light up to eat their rice” - depicting what transpired in the burning of the mountain and the subsequent annual banning of using fire on that day to commemorate.” -Wiki