Chapter 397: LAN (2/2)
Not only did we run into Flower Room in our last match, it was their second seed no less. We would annihilate them even if they were the first seed, so this was just the icing on the cake. I felt like we needed to do something special to properly celebrate this boon, so I looked behind me and consulted everyone’s opinion,
”I think we should let Chengfeng solo the first round. What do you all think?”
Li Chengfeng immediately raised his sword happily. ”No problem! This will be fun!
”Mn!”
Back in the ring, the Flower Room players were glaring at us. Heartless said, ”Let’s kill them and open the eyes of our guild leader!”
The Fish Who Doesn’t Know Water: ”Yeah. Let’s take out Broken Halberd Sinks Into Sand first and the dragon warrior second. The rest will fall once we take care of them! Also, make sure that no harm comes to our bard, get it? Girl, please buff me now!”
Galaxy: ”Haha, I can’t believe we encountered the first seed of Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls. I can’t wait to eliminate them from the competition!”
Eighthday: ”You guys are joking, right…”
Yes, they were. 90 seconds later, Li Chengfeng came back with five still warm corpses behind him.
1-0. It was too easy.
……
”Big bro, can I try soloing the second round, please?” Beiming Xue asked eagerly.
I nodded. ”Sure!”
Maybe it was because Beiming Xue was the only one who stepped out to fight them, but no one in the second seed of Flower Room showed any fear whatsoever. In fact, they tried to Charge her brainlessly and were rewarded with an Evil Spirit Volley and some Freezing Arrows to the face. One by one, Beiming Xue kited them and killed them all. At this point, I could officially declare that Beiming Xue’s skill had reached a point of perfection. She was as good as Transient Smoke and Clouds of Candle Dragon or October Rain of Warsky Alliance.
Without Beiming Xue, Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls’ archer group couldn’t be considered top-tier. I was very glad that I had decided to recruit her back then.
2-0. We had finished the preliminaries without a single loss!
Ding~!
System Notice: Congratulations, your party has qualified for the offline matches. The LAN tournament will take place at Eternal Moon VR Esports Center, Shanghai, and your flight tickets will automatically be booked within an hour. Please claim your boarding pass with your resident identity card and arrive at Shanghai a day before the offline matches for your registration!
……
Wow, Eternal Moon Corporation truly was rich as fuck. Considering how small the timing window between the preliminaries and the offline matches was, they must’ve pre-booked the flight tickets from all over the country long before the preliminaries even began. How on earth did they convince the airlines to do this?
”I’m so, so tired. I want my food now…” Murong Mingyue complained. The rest of the girls looked like they were starving as well. It was 7 pm in the evening, and normally they would be enjoying their dinner tea at this time.
”See you at Shanghai the day after tomorrow!” I bade Li Chengfeng goodbye and logged out with the girls. Again, we went to Chuyunge, the buffet restaurant to sate our hunger. It would be a shame not to considering how empty our stomachs were.
……
We hunted all over the place and filled our tables completely with food. Then, we sat down and ate to our heart’s content.
Not far away from us, a mounted TV was broadcasting a sports channel, CCTV-5. Suddenly, it changed to a footage of the game, and it was none other than our battle against the second seed of Candle Dragon. Since our faces were perfectly displayed on the HDTV, two uncles sitting at a table on the opposite side immediately looked at us in shock. One of them stuttered, ”H-hey… aren’t they the players on the TV?”
The other uncle said, ”Are they really… the core players of Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls? Fuck, if I haven’t become a herbalist back then, I would be a fierce general of Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls right now…”
”Get lost, how old do you think you are? The only thing that’s fierce about you is your age!”
……
We enjoyed the show while eating our food. When the broadcast was finished, the Top 32 teams of the China region was displayed. All the powerful guilds—Snowy Cathaya, Candle Dragon, Warsky Alliance, Purple Lily, and so on—had qualified for the offline matches as expected, and even our second seed—Gui Guzi, Xu Yang, High Fighting Spirits, Eighteen Steed Of You Yun, and Chaos Moon—had made it as well. It was to be expected. They were all good players in their own right.
There were a lot of parties that I hadn’t seen before. Some of them could be small fries, but it couldn’t be all of them no matter what. After all, every party in the Top 32 had endured a grueling 20-match preliminaries to make it to the offline matches.
……
”You know what, let’s skip the morning flight to Shanghai and drive there in the afternoon instead,” He Yi said with a smile. ”Suzhou is right next to Shanghai, so we don’t have to travel early like some competitors do.”
I nodded in agreement. ”I’m going to go online to sell some things later, but we all should sleep early tonight. Tomorrow, we can grind a bit in the morning before driving to Shanghai for the registration. I bet we’ll meet a lot of familiar faces, including Candlelight Shadow’s, hmph!”
Beiming Xue asked worriedly, ”Big bro, do we need to worry about literal, offline fights considering our grudge with Candle Dragon?”
”Heh, don’t worry, we have Xu Yang, Li Chengfeng, Gui Guzi and High Fighting Spirits with us. We would win ten out of ten times even if I did nothing at all. And if I do have to fight then it’ll only be worse for Candle Dragon…”
He Yi rolled her eyes and me and chided, ”The best fight is no fight at all. What if you get hurt?”
”I know, I know.”
Murong Mingyue said, ”Oh right, Beauty Lin’s party qualified for the offline matches as well, right? Should we meet up with them and travel to Shanghai together? We’re all from Suzhou, and we’re allies. We should put some effort into maintaining our relationship.”
”Sure, I’ll contact her later.”
”Mn.”
……
That night after returning to the workshop, I gave Lin Yixin a call and asked her if she wanted to drive to Shanghai together after lunch. She agreed as a matter of course.
I logged into the game and managed the shop a little. The good news was that the elite NPC I hired, White Fox, had proven to be a worthwhile investment. She barely needed any instructions to perform the work in the shop, and today’s sales had broken the shop’s personal records again. Even if I stopped selling equipment now, my shop would be earning the equivalent of a gold collar’s salary.
The night passed by quietly and peacefully. The next day, we grinded some levels as we said we would, but because there was no time to explore a new map, we simply grinded the mobs at the foot of Dragonbone Mountain Range.