Chapter 1 In Late September

In late September, the preliminary rounds of Pinnacle Melee S2 were in full swing, with both live and recorded broadcasts officially launched.

Although the "Gathering of Heroes" would continue until October 25th, most teams decided their final scores within the first thirty-six days. So… if you were to compare these preliminary rounds to a long-distance run, it would be entering the second half right about now.

Looking back at the past half-month of matches at this time, one could basically describe it as uneventful. Apart from the brief clash between Corpse Blades First Team and Order First Team, there were no other encounters between strong teams. Overall, most professional teams had been advancing triumphantly, winning with unstoppable momentum.

It was only at this stage that the vast number of casual players at the lower levels of the game seemed to realize… that the points system was even crueler than the elimination system or the win-based selection system of S1. Under this format, the teams that could enter the rematch were definitely strong teams with solid strength, and those teams that desperately leveled up before the competition to barely meet the entry standards had no chance at all.

As a result, starting in mid-September, some dissatisfied voices gradually emerged on the forums. Posts with strong resentment, such as "Dream Inc.'s competition system simply doesn't give casual players a chance to advance," "Is it impossible to play the competition if you're not a professional team?" and "Going against the masses is shaking the foundation of the game," popped up one after another.

Dream Inc.'s official response to similar voices seemed confident and justified.

The customer service department even leaked the following reply: "Dear, let me give you an example with basketball. If… you can find three or five friends who like basketball and achieve better results than five professional basketball players in a basketball game, then there's something wrong with the competition system."

Yes, that's Dream Inc.'s attitude, and it's always been their attitude…

…………

By the early morning of October 10th, more than 70% of the participating teams had joined the queue during this period for their thirty-sixth preliminary match. And almost all professional teams announced their final preliminary results before dawn that day.

Order First Team, Second Team, Fourth Team; Deities First Team, Second Team, Third Team; Blade Edge, Heaven and Earth, Jianghu, Starlight… these well-known strong teams all showed off their undefeated records on this day.

However… since each studio would update the records of their teams on their official websites in real time every day, there didn't seem to be much surprise when the final dust settled.

However, as the saying goes, the moon shines on all nine provinces, some are happy and some are sad.

If there are teams with undefeated records, there will naturally be teams that didn't achieve undefeated records… Among them, the most depressed should be Corpse Blades First Team.

Logically speaking, their strength was by no means inferior to those undefeated teams. Unfortunately… they happened to encounter Order First Team once, which directly led them to enter the second echelon. Although scoring 105 points still gave them a high probability of entering the rematch, that "one loss" was ultimately an indelible disgrace.

…………

Let's talk about our Hell Front team. Their results were consistent with Feng Bujue's expectations—undefeated; and this record was achieved under the premise that Brother Jue had been sitting on the bench for a long time.

Of course, since the official had not yet announced the list of qualifiers and the scores of each team (to be announced one week after the end of all preliminary rounds), Hell Front was still an unknown team.

It is worth mentioning that, starting from October 8th, Dream Inc. canceled the privacy protection option in the competition, which meant that each team… would have recordings of at least three matches in the preliminary rounds preserved.

Faced with this situation, Brother Jue also made a very cunning response… under his instruction, the last three preliminary rounds of Hell Front were all fought with Blood Corpse God as the main force, while Xiao Tan and the others tried their best to hide their strength.

In this way, even if it reached the rematch stage, the information on the members of Hell Front would still remain a mystery. Even if the opponents went to study their match recordings, the only conclusion they could draw would be—this team has a summon that can be called heaven-defying, and that's it.

…………

October passed quickly.

In the blink of an eye, it was late autumn.

On October 25th, the "Gathering of Heroes" came to an end, but Dream Inc. did not immediately announce the results of the preliminary rounds. Instead, under the pretext of "statistical data," they held back the results for a whole week.

During these seven days, Dream Inc. held a product launch event, launched an "economic game pod," and took the opportunity to announce that the "Crazy Thinking 1.0 official version" had been developed and would be officially launched after S2. They also held a Halloween-themed offline event… in short, they didn't mention anything about S2.

These actions… puzzled all the players and even many outside media. It made many teams looking forward to the results of the preliminary rounds anxious and restless.

As the saying goes, strike while the iron is hot, but Dream Inc. went the opposite way, having a whole week of "halftime" between the preliminary rounds and the rematch of S2. This was undoubtedly… another one of Woody's tricks.

Sometimes… in order to maintain the heat of something, appropriate cooling is also necessary. This is called balance.

Sure enough, on November 1st, when Dream Inc.'s official website updated the announcement, it immediately set off another wave of S2 frenzy in all circles.

On the same day, the rules of the second stage of Pinnacle Melee S2—【Fierce Battle in the Four Realms】—were released.

But before that, the focus of people's attention was obviously still the list of qualifiers and the score rankings of the preliminary rounds.

According to the data given by the system, the lowest-scoring team among the 256 teams that successfully passed the preliminary rounds actually had 104 points. That is to say… in thirty-six battles, reaching thirty-four wins and two draws was only barely squeezing into the threshold of the rematch. Teams that had lost one match could only qualify if they won all the remaining matches; and teams that had lost two matches, or had one loss and one draw, could directly say goodbye.

What was more unexpected was that, among the two hundred or so teams that qualified, there were also seventy or so non-professional player teams… and among them, eight teams even made it into the top 100. This data also shut up those guys who were previously dissatisfied with the competition system. They were also non-professional players, but they could get all wins, or only lose one match, or only draw one match. How could you be embarrassed to shout about the unfairness of the competition system with a win rate of around 50%?

Of course, among the top 100 teams, the number of professional teams still occupied an absolute advantage.

These 100 teams all finished with an undefeated record of 108 points, and the system's way of ranking them was the one mentioned earlier… calculating the various numerical losses, time spent, skill point gains, and so on in each match.

In the end, the team ranked first… was Deities First Team.

This time, they could really breathe a sigh of relief, overpowering their old rival Order and taking the lead on a highly credible list.

And those five monsters from Order First Team were clearly ranked in second place… this result undoubtedly made the higher-ups of Order Studio very dissatisfied. The dream combination of "the number one player in Thriller Paradise" plus "the four Drunken Dream Life masters" was actually surpassed by their deadly rivals in such a key ranking. Someone had to take the blame for this, right?

So, the captain 【Wu Si Can Xuan】 took the initiative to stand up and made a profound self-criticism to the leaders of the unit.

"It's my poor work and leadership. For such a big competition, I only got second place in the preliminary rounds. I, as the captain, should bear the main responsibility." Such laughable dialogues were the main content of his self-criticism.

Aside from the competition between those two veteran powerhouses, the list from third place onwards was quite interesting.

First of all, the team ranked third was called 【Trash Alliance】. This self-deprecating team name clearly did not belong to any professional studio. And their match recordings only numbered three, which meant that they used the anonymous function throughout the preliminary rounds and did not join the queue again after playing thirty-six matches.

Such a mysterious dark horse would naturally attract a considerable amount of attention. However… after looking at the member list of this team, the sense of mystery disappeared. Because four of the five members of this team were masters who had made it into the top 50 of the individual competition in S1.

They were Trash Uncle, Honghu, Zhao Ying Wang, and Juan Meng Huan. The first three were already well-known professional individual players, so no need to say more. And Juan Meng Huan's identity had long been gossiped about—the former Corpse Blades ace player, who had now also joined the ranks of professional individual players.

Looking at the next few names on the leaderboard… Jianghu, Blade Edge, Red Cherry First Team, Hell Front, and then… Ice Emperor. And then… Corpse Blades Second Team, Order Second Team, Deities Second Team, Heaven and Earth…

That's right, Ice Emperor, the Ice Emperor led by Atobe-shao ye, achieved an undefeated record in the preliminary rounds of Pinnacle Melee S2… and judging from the overall data of the thirty-six matches, they were also ranked ahead of Corpse Blades and Order Second Team, second only to Hell Front… Even Feng Bujue was a little shocked when he saw this list…

However, in the eyes of outsiders, Ice Emperor was still a team from a game studio, and the "Difficult to Name Trio" was already well-known, so this team could not be called a dark horse.

After looking at the member list, the real dark horse in people's eyes… was only "Hell Front" left.

Apart from "Crazy Jue" and "Wasted Sigh," the other three members of the team were all unknown players with no information at all, and even Crazy and Wasted were not professional players.

They were a team composed entirely of casual players who did not belong to any game studio, and… they were ranked in the top ten of the preliminary round leaderboard.

In hindsight… Hell Front seemed to have become the main team in the minds of most casual players, and had also become the focus of research for major studios…

…………

November 2nd, midnight.

Somewhere in the suburbs of S City.

"Hoo… in the blink of an eye, it's already late autumn…" A middle-aged man wearing an old man's hat and black-rimmed glasses leisurely walked to a lamppost and took a breath towards the sky.

"I say… Vice Section Chief Qi." Not far away, a young man happened to walk over, "You called me to this remote wilderness in the middle of the night… you're not planning to kill me and silence me, are you?"

"Hehe…" Qi Zhi raised the brim of his hat and looked at Brother Jue with a smile, "If I wanted to kill you and silence you, would I need to choose a location?"

"That's true." Feng Bujue also smiled, "According to my deduction… you've found a 'Job for Division Nine' for me?"

"No." Qi Zhi immediately denied Brother Jue's deduction, "There is indeed a 'Job for Division Nine' here…" He raised his hands and made quotation marks, "But it's not prepared for you… it's what I'm going to do."

"A vice section chief personally coming out to run this field mission?" Feng Bujue's eyes changed slightly, and he immediately began to vigilantly scan his surroundings, "Could it be that the Baltan aliens have already invaded Earth?"

"Alright, alright~ It's just a general incident, don't make such a fuss." Qi Zhi gave Brother Jue a look of disdain, "Wasn't it Halloween a few days ago? A lot of messed up things happened outside, so the bureau is a little short-handed these days, and I can only come out and run around more."

"Oh~" Feng Bujue said, "Then you called me here to… be your assistant?"

"No, I have something else to ask you." Qi Zhi replied, "It's just that I have a job here and can't leave, so I can only ask you to make a trip."

"Then what exactly is it?" Feng Bujue asked again.

"The ten years of cultivation I gave you, it's about time to take it back." Qi Zhi continued.

"Huh?" Feng Bujue exclaimed, "So I have to return it?" Before he finished speaking, he instinctively took two steps back, "Wait… don't tell me there's interest?"

"Do you think I'm a loan shark?" Qi Zhi shrugged and replied, then explained, "The reason for taking back the cultivation is because you don't need it anymore."

"What makes you say that?" Feng Bujue asked suspiciously.

"When I came to see you last month, I found that the power in your body had been diluted quite a bit." Qi Zhi replied, "But… that power did not merge with my spiritual energy, but instead, after using my spiritual energy, it eliminated it outside of its origin to ensure its own purity."

"Whoa~ My power is quite principled…" Feng Bujue must have understood what the other party meant, so he took the opportunity to complain.

"Whether it has principles or not has nothing to do with me." Qi Zhi continued, "In short, I have to extract the spiritual energy from your body again now, otherwise it will become a burden to you." As he said this, he sized Brother Jue up and down with a rather strange look, "Presumably… after the spiritual energy in your body is completely eliminated, the power that you yourself have awakened… will also reveal its true face."

"Oh… so that's why you called me to this kind of place…" Feng Bujue seemed to have noticed something from the other party's words and expressions, and smiled evilly, "Hehe… just in case the true face of my power is some kind of world-destroying demon king power, you'll just take care of me in this deserted place, right?"

"Yes." At this moment, the smile on Qi Zhi's face disappeared completely, his expression was cold, and his answer… was also concise and forceful.