Chapter 1 The Luck of the New Chairman

Compared to the previous chairman, Feng Xianjun’s luck was actually quite good. When he took over the alliance, Ye Qiu's dominance had faded, the Golden Generation was rising rapidly, and the professional circle presented a booming scene of talent explosion.

But despite his good luck, Feng Xianjun also had happy troubles.

Precisely because there were too many talented players, no one with Ye Qiu's dominance had appeared in the professional circle. Who to choose as the alliance's spokesperson really bothered Feng Xianjun.

In terms of results, after Ye Qiu, three teams had won championships: Tyranny, Tiny Herb, and Blue Rain...

Tyranny, with ace player Han Wenqing, Ye Qiu's nemesis, finally destroyed Excellent Era's dominance after Ye Qiu's three consecutive championships. Feng Xianjun took over as chairman of the alliance that year, and immediately wanted to promote Han Wenqing as the number one player. However, Han Wenqing's domineering personal image, no matter how it was handled, looked like a promotional photo for a crime film...

In the eyes of many people, games were already a scourge. Promoting a guy with such a criminal appearance as a spokesperson seemed like suppressing the professional alliance. Feng Xianjun hurriedly called a halt to this plan.

After Tyranny, Tiny Herb won the championship, with ace player Wang Jiexi, a dazzling player known as the Magician. But unfortunately, Wang Jiexi's appearance had obvious flaws. His different-sized eyes often looked particularly terrifying on camera. Wang Jiexi's image was also a bit difficult to manage. However, after Ye Qiu, Wang Jiexi's two championships were undoubtedly the most significant, and he could be said to be the leading figure in the alliance during this period. In the end, the alliance didn't directly avoid him like they did with Han Wenqing, but they didn't show much enthusiasm either.

Between Tiny Herb's two championships, Blue Rain won one, and the team's two star players were the famous Golden Generation, with acceptable images and temperaments. But unfortunately, Feng Xianjun personally disliked Huang Shaotian very much. His rambling personal style was seen as unstable by older people. Feng Xianjun didn't want the alliance's spokesperson to be such a guy.

In the blink of an eye, Feng Xianjun's four seasons in office had passed. Without a key target, he could only spread the net wide. The resulting star-making campaign was very successful. Countless star players beloved by players emerged, as could be seen from the grand All-Star Weekends over the years. But although the stars were shining brightly, they always lacked the brightest one, until Zhou Zekai appeared.

The emergence of this player brought the alliance's star-making campaign to its peak. He had many innate advantages and conditions, and then perfectly achieved one eye-catching achievement after another.

Team Samsara was now a new powerhouse in the league. But before Zhou Zekai joined, it was just a weak mid-level team that couldn't even make the playoffs.

As a result, thanks to Zhou Zekai's addition, the team experienced a complete turnaround, from a weak team to the current defending champion. Samsara's strong rise was unique in the current alliance. In addition to Samsara, Excellent Era, Tyranny, Tiny Herb, and Blue Rain, all of which had won championships, were veteran powerhouses that had laid their foundations from the early days of the league. They had the most powerful guilds in the online game, which was the best proof of their solid foundation. Samsara, on the other hand, broke this monopoly of the top teams from a weak team. Everything started when they had Zhou Zekai, a genius player.

Such a Samsara was definitely one of the powerhouses, and Zhou Zekai was the undisputed number one player in the league. The leading figure that Feng Xianjun had been waiting for for a long time had finally appeared.

In fact, since the seventh season, the league's inclination towards Zhou Zekai had been very obvious. However, since it was a competitive event, without the final championship trophy, the persuasiveness was always lacking. But all of this became a thing of the past after the eighth season. Zhou Zekai, from the public to the official, stood at the peak without any controversy. Countless media outlets also shouted for him, believing that Zhou Zekai's appearance had pushed the league to a new height.

Judging from the league's statistical data, Feng Xianjun couldn't deny this point. During the year Samsara won the championship, the league's overall revenue did have an explosive growth compared to the previous seasons. And in the new season, countless transfers with strong topics made the attention received by the ninth season reach a new historical high.

The Glory Alliance was moving towards the next stage of prosperity. At this time, there was a burst of mistakes, which made Feng Xianjun worried. According to the current feedback data, the crazy number of mistakes in the matches this month had not yet attracted widespread attention from players.

Firstly, few players would pay comprehensive attention to all events, and secondly, players would not systematically pay attention to the data of technical statistics. However, if players didn't pay attention, how could those media outlets that specialized in finding and creating topics ignore it? The media's habit was to summarize the situation of the month at the end of January. The strangeness of this February was destined to escape the media's attention, and it was believed that it would soon be widely reported. After the players belatedly realized it, the alliance had to give a reasonable explanation. The truth collected from the various teams was not a pretty story. Could they really tell the players that the quality of the matches this month was poor and there were many mistakes because the professional players were addicted to online games?

That was too ridiculous!

What made Feng Xianjun even more棘手 (jí shǒu; thorny/troublesome) was that he couldn't call a halt to this kind of competition among the major teams in the online game, because this was also the guarantee for the continued development of the league. Organizing a league without detaching from the online game was a characteristic of the Glory League. In the early days of the league, it was precisely with this design, which was very close to the players and fans, that Glory eSports opened up a situation in many eSports projects and gradually prospered to this day.

eSports all relied on electronic games. And it was a miracle that a game could continue to be popular for so long, whether it was an online game or a single-player game. This was a win-win situation for both Glory Online and the Glory Alliance. Neither side had ever considered breaking up this special model.

But what frustrated Feng Xianjun was that if it was just competition between the major teams, it wouldn't have caused the current situation. The statistics of the events during the game updates well illustrated this point. This time, it was all because of Ye Qiu and his so-called Happy team. The feedback from the teams all seemed to prove this point.

Ye Qiu... Should I go to that guy and tell him not to mess around?

Feng Xianjun shook his head at the thought. First of all, this request was too broad and the other party had no reason to listen. Even if it was reasonable, was Ye Qiu the kind of person who would listen to others? If so, Chairman Jin Chengyi wouldn't have left the regret that "Ye Qiu's existence has delayed the development of the Glory Alliance by at least two years."

In the end, what Feng Xianjun could get was the support of the major teams, and he couldn't directly issue any prohibitions. He could only communicate with the teams through persuasion. Feng Xianjun thought for a while and simply summoned relevant personnel from the top ten teams in the league in his private capacity, preparing to hold a roundtable discussion together.

It was common for the alliance to call the teams together for a meeting. Because of the special nature of February, the major teams also had their own concerns, so they silently responded to the chairman's call and ran to the alliance headquarters for tea.

Feng Xianjun didn't specify who should come, so the major teams sent people according to the standard configuration for general meetings: the club manager plus the team captain.

Ten teams, twenty people. These people were no strangers to the large round table in Conference Room 1 of the Alliance Headquarters. It seemed that this forum was not too formal, and the seating arrangements were not arranged. When the teams arrived, they greeted each other and randomly found seats. At about the same time, Chairman Feng Xianjun also arrived at the venue.

The venue was quiet. Everyone knew what was going to be said. Because in front of everyone was a newspaper, the Friday edition of the Electronic Sports Weekly on February 28th. On the front page, in a prominent number, the total number of errors in the Glory Professional League in February was marked out. Below this, the number of errors in other periods was compared to let players know how amazing the total number of errors in February was.

"Cough..." Feng Xianjun seemed to intentionally or unintentionally press the newspaper in front of him, cleared his throat, and finally spoke.

"This situation is not very good..." Feng Xianjun directly got straight to the point.

"Now that it's been reported, the impact is inevitable. What I hope is that everyone can get back on track as soon as possible," Feng Xianjun said.

The managers and captains all smiled bitterly. How could they not want to? But the current situation was that they couldn't have both fish and bear paws. They had to grab the materials in the online game, and grabbing them would definitely affect their state. Everyone wanted the best of both worlds, but there was no way to do it.

"Actually... if Ye Qiu wasn't making trouble, it wouldn't be like this." The captains also took turns going to grab the Bosses and had been on the front lines. Liu Hao, the current captain of Team Thunderclap, which was currently ranked tenth in the league, decisively exposed Ye Qiu.

Liu Hao, the former vice-captain of Excellent Era, was part of the trade between Excellent Era and Thunderclap in the summer, along with player He Ming, and became Excellent Era's bargaining chip to acquire Xiao Shiqin. As a result, when he arrived at Team Thunderclap, Liu Hao was the tallest among the dwarves, and in the end, he was actually regarded as the captain. But how could Team Thunderclap enter Liu Hao's eyes? From the first day he arrived, Liu Hao had been seeking a better way out. But at least he knew that if he wanted a good way out, he had to perform well first. In the first half of the season, he performed exceptionally well in the matches as captain, leading Thunderclap to tenth place, and there was even a glimmer of hope of making the playoffs.

If he could achieve results, Liu Hao would of course cherish them, so he worked even harder, even fighting for wild Bosses for Thunderclap, naturally hoping to make the team stronger. If there was a chance to enter the playoffs, any professional player would do their best.

It was a pity that Thunderclap's online game guild was not strong in the first place. In addition, with Ye Qiu causing trouble, Thunderclap's paleness in grabbing Bosses made Liu Hao blush. Liu Hao would of course point all his resentment at Ye Qiu as much as possible. His resentment towards Ye Qiu had nothing to do with whether he was at Excellent Era or not.