Chapter 27: Three-in-One. Ultimate Draw Luck is Here! Part 1
VEX’s marksman and support had just finished experiencing a thrilling and heart-stopping ride on the roller coaster with Manager Li.
The descent of the roller coaster in this amusement park was exceptionally steep. Many tourists came down with pale faces, some even with tears and snot smeared across their faces.
Manager Li wasn’t doing much better. With the support of the two players, he walked tremblingly to a nearby bench to rest.
Wall wiped his sweat and pulled out his phone to check WeChat: “Manager, Coach Zuo sent us the location of a hotpot restaurant. He told us to go eat first and continue with the other attractions in the afternoon.”
“Is that so? Alright then, I’ll head to the restaurant after resting for a bit.” Manager Li breathed a sigh of relief, then pulled out his own phone, letting out a small “Eh?” “Why are there so many missed calls and unread messages…”
Wall watched as Manager Li’s expression shifted from pale to deathly white after looking at his phone for a few moments. His breathing, which had just leveled out, grew rapid again. It was even more dramatic than riding the roller coaster ten times. Wall quickly asked, “What’s wrong?”
Manager Li bolted upright: “No more resting! We’re going to the hotpot restaurant right now!”
[#VEX Official Weibo Boldly Responds to Land’s Trial Incident#]
[#VEX to Sue Every’s Fans#]
[#VEX Declares Land is ‘Not for Sale’#]
…
After Zuo Chi replied to that comment, his Weibo froze.
The private messages, comments, and reposts in the notification center were growing exponentially. After loading for a while, no matter how much he refreshed, the words “Loading…” kept jumping out. He could only see the freshly minted trending topics hanging on the hot search list, their momentum quite massive.
The spicy beef tallow soup base bubbled and popped before him. He looked up through the swirling steam, his almond eyes tinged with a hint of doubt: “Manager Li, that reply of mine… was it too much?”
Manager Li took a sip of iced Coke, his tone complex: “It wasn’t exactly ‘too much’…”
If a team with good results had defended their player like that, the fans would have praised them to the heavens. It was just that their results were too poor, and many netizens had already begun to speculate whether VEX was using this opportunity to hype themselves up and grab attention.
Coupled with the fact that Every had many fans, the sounds of cursing far outweighed the positive evaluations.
The few remaining VEX fans were very zen about it.
[VEX fly bravely, bear the trouble yourself.]
[Every’s fans are already attacking, so I’ll run first. VEX, good luck on your own.]
“I don’t care about anything else, but those few people spreading rumors in the comment section—we must send them court summons.”
“That’s how it should be. I’ll contact our partner law firm when we get back today.”
The players had all uninstalled social media, so they had no idea what riddles were being discussed, but tacitly, no one asked.
“Coach Zuo, Manager Li, the meat is cooked. Stop talking about work and eat, eat!”
“Exactly, if we boil it any longer, the tripe will get tough—Mmm!!! Coach Zuo, this place you picked is great. It’s delicious!”
Zuo Chi adjusted his mood and smiled: “Land found this place, and he ordered the food too. Speaking of which, after the transfer period ends, it’ll be the Spring Split draw. There’s also a show match that day, and every team needs to select one player representative to participate. Who among you wants to go?”
Coaches could go up for the draw. The system had previously given him “Ultimate Draw Luck for the Spring Split,” and he wondered what kind of group it would give him.
The player representative was mainly there for the show match, and usually, teams would send their most popular player to help build hype for the Spring Split.
Wall: “I won’t go. My luck has always been poor. Back at ZAP, I wasn’t allowed to be present for anything related to drawing lots, otherwise the team would definitely draw a ‘worst-case’ omen.”
Beyond nodded repeatedly in agreement: “…I don’t really like those kinds of occasions. Can I not participate?”
Fugui: “I need to seize time to play ranked. I’ve been at the bottom several times. If I go for the show match, I’ll definitely be the one washing stinky socks that day.”
Wu Yang: “I h-h-ave an a-a-ccent wh-wh-en I s-s-peak, so I w-w-on’t g-g-o?”
Zuo Chi made the decision before Ning Luzhao could speak: “Then it’s you, Land! No making excuses to refuse!”
Ning Luzhao turned his face to look at him and nodded: “Okay.”
The Spring Split schedule was similar to the Autumn Split, also divided into group stages and knockout stages.
In the group stages, 32 teams were divided into 8 groups, with 4 teams per group. The top 8 teams from the Autumn Split were directly assigned to different groups, while the other teams drew lots to determine their placement.
After the groups were set, teams within the same group would play BO3 matches against each other. Winning a full match earned 3 points, a draw earned 1 point, and losing earned no points. Finally, based on the points ranking, the top two teams in each group advanced to the knockout stages, while the bottom two were directly eliminated. If points were tied, the head-to-head record would be considered.
In this situation, if they were assigned to a group with the champion or runner-up, the pressure would be massive. Since the league’s inception, there had never been a case where the previous season’s champion or runner-up “crashed” in the group stage, which essentially meant one advancement spot was already gone.
Fugui: “Coach Zuo, is your luck good? Have you ever won the lottery or anything before?”
“For things like luck, it won’t be effective if you talk about it.”
“Right, right, right! We won’t say it! During this time, we will definitely persist in praying silently, praying that Coach Zuo draws a legendary lucky seed for us.”
Zuo Chi gave an “OK” gesture.
After eating, they experienced some of the more popular attractions in the amusement park and then went hiking nearby.
They said it was hiking, but it didn’t take long for the cubs to stop—they were drawn to the crowds of people setting up tents and barbecue grills by the lake and quickly joined in.
Past 8:00 PM, everyone had had their fill of fun and took the car back to the team base.
Before Zuo Chi could even mention training, the cubs had already spontaneously gone to the training room to get their notebooks, sitting in a row waiting for his match review.
He lectured for over half an hour and felt that today’s review efficiency was exceptionally high. Sometimes, before he could even speak, the cubs were already actively speaking up to answer. He couldn’t help but praise: “Fugui, not bad. Your brain is especially sharp today.”
Wu Yang gave a “He-he”: “Of c-c-ourse he’s sh-sh-arp t-t-oday. H-h-e r-r-ode the r-r-oller c-c-oaster and h-h-ad his b-b-rains sh-sh-aken e-e-venly.”
“Wu Yang! You slander me every day!” Fugui made a gesture as if he wanted to “strangle” him, his face full of smiles.
“How about this, from now on, we’ll have a team building like today once a month, provided—”
“We train hard and don’t get cocky—”
The review, originally scheduled for two hours, was easily resolved in an hour and a half. The remaining time was left for the players to practice coordination themselves.
During these days, Ning Luzhao had also listed some combinations that were good for coordination. There were all kinds of pairings: some required the mid-jungle duo to create momentum in the early game, some required the mid-support duo to chain crowd control skills, and some relied on the solo lane and jungler to coordinate initiations in layers…
As for which two players practiced together and for how long, it was left for the players to decide themselves. After all, only the players knew their own chemistry with each teammate best.
Zuo Chi took the opportunity to “slack off” for a bit and tried to log onto Weibo.
He had to thank the official Arena Professional League for announcing the specific date for the Spring Split group stage draw this afternoon. It helped draw the fire away from them, and now most of the discussion was refocused on the Spring Split.
[I’m a fun-seeker so I’ll say it first: I want to see ZAP and VEX in the same group, to see Every play against Land. Dog-head-saves-life.jpg]
[I want to see it too.]
[Want to see +1.]
[Maybe after the transfer period ends, Every won’t even be in ZAP anymore.]
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