The King's Avatar Chapter 1121-1122

Chapter 1121: The Troubled Lin Jingyan

Translator: Nomyummi Editor: Nomyummi

To save or not to save, that was the question!

Lin Jingyan was uncertain what to do in such a situation.

Currently, Dark Thunder could easily run away, but Zhang Jiale’s Dazzling Hundred Blossoms had been trapped in a corner and was doomed. However, was he alone enough to save Dazzling Hundred Blossoms from the four members of Happy who had Ye Xiu in command? Lin Jingyan doubted it.

“Forget about me! You run first!” In this crucial moment, it was Zhang Jiale who made the decision for him.

“Huh?” Steamed Bun was confused. “How come he’s like Misty Rain’s little girls?”

Zhang Jiale was enraged. How dare they mock his heroic and sacrificial act!

“He really is like them,” Ye Xiu said.

“Die!” Zhang Jiale didn’t know that some of what he had just said really had been a repeat of what Misty Rain’s sisters had said, taking it as mockery from Ye Xiu and Steamed Bun, and wanted to risk it all in one final wave of attacks. But the four, in addition to the attacks directed over from the Ghost King, instantly suppressed him.

“Rest in peace!” Ye Xiu said as Zhang Jiale’s Dazzling Hundred Blossoms was finally defeated.

On the other side, Lin Jingyan had already ran for it with Zhang Jiale’s heroic decision. If they were both wiped up just now, Han Wenqing and the other two probably wouldn’t have an easy time fighting once they came over. Yet now, he had managed to escape and could take this chance to recover a little, By the time the other three arrived, they would be fighting four on four and had a good chance of winning. The current Happy really didn’t have a healer anymore, not even a cheerleader healer.

Dark Thunder hurriedly ran for it, settling down to one side to eat and drink to recover while keeping an eye on the situation.

After killing Dazzling Hundred Blossoms, Happy didn’t seem to have the intention to pursue him, turning back to the Ghost King.

This Ghost King was immense in size, with curled horns protruding from its head and red eyes. It dealt physical damage with a rock-shattering swing of its claws, and magic damage with swift blasts of energy from its mouth. It was clearly a powerful foe. However, Happy clearly wasn’t unfamiliar with this Ghost King anymore. They had figured out the Ghost King’s strategy, to the point where Ye Xiu could use it as a summons.

All the different monsters that the system controlled were nothing to pro players. After all, the online game was immensely popular amongst the general populace and tailored to normal players. No matter how hard it would get, it would be easy to adapt to for pros.

“Will they make it in time?” Lin Jingyan’s original worries returned. This wasn’t a problem of if they could win or not, but if Tyranny’s other players could arrive in time. Han Wenqing and the other three had gone in a completely opposing direction from Zhang Jiale and Lin Jingyan in the very beginning. Then, the three had split up even further as they searched, so they were currently very far from one another.

Looking at the Ghost King’s health and then asking after the other three’s positions, Lin Jingyan found that they really might not make it in time.

He had to do something.

Lin Jingyan’s Dark Thunder crept out again. If he faced them head on, then he would lose for sure. However, if he stayed idle, that wouldn’t be good either. He could only cautiously circle over. He had to find a way to do some damage, even if it meant directing a few attacks to himself, that would still help to lower their DPS.

Dark Thunder came closer, and Happy’s four ignored him.

Currently, he was definitely within Dancing Rain’s attack range, at least, but Dancing Rain didn’t even send a single missile towards him. Happy’s four focused on attacking the Ghost King.

Closer, even closer…

He continued to creep closer until, finally, some of his skills were in range.

Happy’s four continued to ignore him.

Lin Jingyan didn’t have the time to spare for further consideration. He was already here, so he should at least try.

Thus, Dark Thunder raised his hand and threw a Brick, aiming at the back of Soft Mist’s head.

Soft Mist dodged to the side and the Brick flew past. Lin Jingyan was about to follow up with a second attack to completely mess up Ye Xiu’s rhythm, but then he saw his Brick smash into the Ghost King.

Lin Jingyan coughed blood.

Bricks weren’t the strongest skill, but this strike enlightened him to Ye Xiu’s possible intentions.

This guy… First he lured the Ghost King’s attacks and dodged, resulting in the Ghost King’s attacks hitting Zhang Jiale’s Dazzling Hundred Blossoms. Now he was baiting Lin Jingyan’s attacks and then dodging, letting the attacks hit the Ghost King.

Damn you! You think I’m your summon!?

After Lin Jingyan finished coughing blood, he still had to figure something out.

Dark Thunder began to reposition himself as Lin Jingyan tried to find a position where Soft Mist wasn’t directly between him and the Ghost King. Otherwise, if his attacks missed, they’d hit the Ghost King.

However, Ye Xiu didn’t give up either. Soft Mist followed Dark Thunder’s movements, keeping him behind her.

Lin Jingyan wanted to cry. He was circling around from some distance away. The radius of his circular path was so long while Soft Mist’s was so short. He had to take several steps, but the other only needed one. He still hadn’t managed to throw the other off after so long.

Of course, Soft Mist wasn’t Lin Jingyan’s only possible target. Happy had four. No matter who he attacked, it would be enough to cause chaos and pull down their DPS. However, the problem was that the only target Dark Thunder could reach right now was Soft Mist.

Dancing Rain didn’t need to close in to attack and stayed far away, sending missile after missile over. If Dark Thunder wanted to attack her, he would have a to walk quite a bit to get there.

Steamed Bun and Deception were currently behind the Ghost King. That meant that those two, the Ghost King, and Soft Mist stood in a straight line. Then, when Ye Xiu repositioned himself, the two would cooperate. With that, they were constantly hidden behind the Ghost King. With Dark Thunder circling around, he didn’t have an angle to attack. Even if he did, a Brawler didn’t have such a long attack range.

“What accurate calculations!” Lin Jingyan felt pretty helpless and could only say something to try and distract them. Then, Dark Thunder came closer. He couldn’t not come closer. At this distance, he was being completely suppressed.

After getting closer, the radius of his path was much smaller. Lin Jingyan didn’t believe that he couldn’t succeed here.

Turn, move!

Dark Thunder’s figure swerved, beginning to move around again. As expected, Soft Mist followed his rhythm, turning.

No matter what, Soft Mist’s circular path had a smaller radius than his, so keeping up was easy. However, could you be certain that this continuous circling wouldn’t impact your DPS?

This was the first problem Lin Jingyan threw at Happy. Logically speaking, at a pro level, maintaining DPS while moving about wasn’t a problem. It wasn’t hard to keep up.

However, there was a second problem.

This time, Dark Thunder didn’t keep a set rhythm to his circling. Sometimes he’d go left, sometimes right, sometimes quickly, sometimes slow. This wasn’t done randomly either. Lin Jingyan was keeping a close eye on Happy’s attack rhythm and picking the most debilitating moments to move.

This problem was much harder to solve. Happy’s members had to keep a good grasp on their rhythm as well.

Ye Xiu could probably do this, but Steamed Bun and Mo Fan couldn’t always keep up under the changing rhythm, occasionally tripping up on their mechanics. Happy’s DPS rhythm was finally being affected. To outsiders, all Lin Jingyan was doing was circling around. He wasn’t attacking at all. Only other pro level players, with their experience, would be able to understand the debilitating effect this had on Happy’s attack rhythm.

“Looks like you’re asking for it!” With a yell, Soft Mist whirled around suddenly.

Lin Jingyan’s Dark Thunder hurriedly darted away like a rabbit, but then realized that Soft Mist was still attacking the Ghost King and hadn’t pursued him at all.

Tricked again!

However, Lin Jingyan was in a good mood and wasn’t frustrated at this at all, immediately darting back over. He still kept his distance, cautious. He didn’t dare get too close, if he was really caught by the other, then that wouldn’t spell anything good for him. Though it seemed like he was just circling around, this was quite a pain for Lin Jingyan as well. He had to observe the three’s attack rhythm while keeping an eye on Dancing Rain in the distance. He had to disrupt Happy’s attack rhythm while also carefully protecting himself. He didn’t know how long he would be able to last. This wasn’t an easy task; why else would he wait for Zhang Jiale in the first place? He would deal with this alone if he could. He had waited because he knew that the risk was rather high. Now, he had been forced to this point and carried out his task with 120 percent. Currently, it had some effect, but only a little. Happy’s attack rhythm was only being weakened, but not completely disrupted. Under this sort of harassment, their DPS wouldn’t be affected all that much. Lin Jingyan didn’t know if it was enough. He was currently rapidly trying to come up with more ideas.

“You again!!” As he was deep in contemplation, a loud yell sounded beside his ear. Lin Jingyan, startled, darted away again sunconsciously. But it turned out that Ye Xiu was just bluffing. Soft Mist hadn’t moved at all.

Lin Jingyan didn’t know if he should cry or laugh. Even he wasn’t used to this sort of bluff. This was because pro matches didn’t have voice, so there wouldn’t be this sort of jump-scare of a distraction. The effect of the same words sent into the chat was incomparable with a yell on voice. If it was just a message sent to the chat, Lin Jingyan would focus more on Soft Mist’s movements instead of acting with what he heard and subconsciously running.

Lin Jingyan, feeling rather helpless, once again had Dark Thunder run back over. Yet he hadn’t even began circling when he saw Soft Mist’s figure swerve to the side.

Huh?

Lin Jingyan was stunned for a moment. They weren’t in line anymore; he could attack!

He hadn’t even gotten the chance to attack when a black shadow sped in front of him. Some sort of skill from the Ghost King had arrived.

He hastily had Dark Thunder dodge and when he raised his head again, another black fireball was heading his way.

Was this a counterattack against him?

Thinking this, Lin Jingyan once again dodged the fireball. When he looked up again, Soft Mist’s spear had arrived.

When he wasn’t launching an attack, Ye Xiu had erupted into meaningless yelling again and again, but when he was actually charging over, he was completely silent.

Lin Jingyan didn’t dare to face the other head on and hurriedly retreated. This time, however, Soft Mist gave chase. As for the Ghost King, it changed targets and lumbered towards Dancing Rain.

“The aggro target switched!” Lin Jingyan was shocked, only just realizing that Happy had been doing something more during their quiet DPSing.

Chapter 1122: One Man Can Hold the Pass

Translator: Nomyummi Editor: Nomyummi

Without an aggro-establishing skill like the Knight’s Provoke, it was impossible to suddenly switch the target of the aggro. Even OT required that certain conditions be met. Otherwise, if it were as simple as your damage surpassed mine so the aggro immediately transferred, then two characters could simply take turns attacking and ping-pong the boss back and forth until it died.

The aggro system wasn’t designed so foolishly. To cause OT, the aggro had to surpass a certain percentage. Because of this, the fact that Dancing Rain had managed to suddenly pull away the aggro meant that they had prepared for this long in advance.

Dancing Rain was leading the boss away just like this, closely followed by Steamed Bun Invasion and Deception. Yet Lin Jingyan couldn’t do a thing to stop them, because Ye Xiu was right in front him.

In Ye Xiu’s hands, Battle Mage Soft Mist definitely wasn’t an opponent that Lin Jingyan could just easily blow past. In the blink of an eye, Ghost King and Happy’s three players vanished into one of the tunnels, while Lin Jingyan’s Dark Thunder continued to be beaten down by Soft Mist’s chained attacks.

For him, the important thing was to track where the Ghost King was being taken, but now, in order to accomplish that, he first had to defeat Ye Xiu.

For Lin Jingyan, this wasn’t an entirely impossible task. After so many years in the professional scene, the two had met on the battlefield multiple times, and Lin Jingyan did have some victories. But every battle was extremely difficult. Although it was possible that he could defeat Ye Xiu, he definitely couldn’t just quickly kill him with a chaotic flurry of slashes.

What’s worse was that Ye Xiu had the initiative right now, and Lin Jingyan was on the defensive. Lin Jingyan didn’t think he had the ability to defeat Ye Xiu in this current situation – just continuing to defend would be difficult enough.

No good would come from continuing this fight.

Lin Jingyan understood this clearly. So the only thing he could do was to recklessly charge through Ye Xiu’s blockade, to see where Ghost King went.

Just as he thought this, Ye Xiu suddenly stopped attacking.

Soft Mist jumped back several times, retreating away.

Lin Jingyan was surprised. As he watched, Ye Xiu controlled Soft Mist to stop right in the tunnel.

The area where they had been fighting the Ghost King was a relatively wide and open space, like an underground tomb chamber. But this tunnel at the end of the chamber wasn’t so wide. Seeing Soft Mist stand right at the entrance of the tunnel and completely blocking the way forward, one proverb flashed to the front of Lin Jingyan’s mind: One man can hold the pass against a thousand enemies.

“Hehehe. What now? Guess you can’t pass.” Ye Xiu said gleefully.

“Ye Xiu you shameless bastard!!” From Dark Thunder’s side came a somewhat distant shout. Ye Xiu, with all his experience, immediately knew that this was the sound of someone sitting next to the player yelling into the player’s headset.

“Which pro player is such a sore loser?” Ye Xiu asked.

He could even distinguish the owner of the voice. It was Zhang Jiale!

Zhang Jiale was already eliminated from this dungeon, but he still watched closely from Lin Jingyan’s screen. Seeing this situation, he immediately knew that things were bad. Even if they waited for Han Wenqing and the others to arrive and they were able to kill Ye Xiu with the advantage of numbers, after that, they had no idea where the Ghost King went and they’d have to start their search all over again. Happy would probably have enough time to kill the Ghost King before they found them again.

Zhang Jiale this time really became the screenwriter.

Lin Jingyan tried to rush Ye Xiu a few times. Ye Xiu didn’t try to compete with him, he just parked himself right in the tunnel and prevented him from passing. Every time, the effort was fruitless, and Lin Jingyan’s own health was almost depleted.

Then, Han Wenqing, Zhang Xinjie, and Qin Muyun arrived. In a 4v1, the outcome was as expected. This time, Ye Xiu didn’t continue to run. He blocked the tunnel with all of his life, but was eventually pushed over.

But now, where was the Ghost King?

The four continued to run forward, but they very quickly arrived at another fork in the road, shattering their hearts.

“Give up!” Ye Xiu sent a message to them in the global channel.

As long as it wasn’t over, Tyranny would never give up. They split up to search, but in the end, all they found was a system announcement.

Team Deception successfully killed the Ghost King.

The announcement was broadcast to the whole world. The players who were still online, after seeing this announcement, were in an uproar.

Although they didn’t earn the ability to participate in this bonus event, they at least knew that all of the participants were professional teams and players, including the Four Heavenly Kings of Tyranny.

They also didn’t know what had happened in Ghost Lair. But in the end, the team that successfully killed the Ghost King was Deception’s? Team Deception, wasn’t that just Team Happy?

Was Happy really this strong?

Everyone was discussing this outcome.

Of course, in the eyes of the ordinary players, a grassroots team like Happy was relatively weak. The fact that they had managed to vanquish Excellent Era was, after all, deemed a miracle.

But after defeating Excellent Era, Happy was able to get another victory in this competition, beating even Tyranny… A miracle was called a miracle because it was extraordinary. Something that happened often couldn’t be called a miracle.

Happy defeated Excellent Era, and now defeated Tyranny in this competition?

And not just Tyranny, but also Wind Howl, and Misty Rain, and Royal Style… These teams couldn’t be dismissed either.

Everyone was mulling over the implications of this; even the media reported on it.

Over the summer break, there were no battles to be written about, so there were much fewer topics of interest. Weekly esports newspapers that relied primarily on news about the Glory professional scene would shrink their publications during this time. But even now, everyone was still looking for stories to report on.

The biggest news during the summer was news of transfers – reporters would jump on this treasured news, reporting on completed transfers as well as the barest hints of rumors. But this sort of news wasn’t enough to support the paper. After all, unlike the ten-per-week regularity of professional matches, news of transfers was spontaneous and sporadic.

So the media looked to other places for news, and the in-game world of Glory was a natural choice. The weekly esports newspapers would often have a section about the in-game gossip, and during a time where there weren’t matches to report on, nor other interesting news, the in-game section expanded.

The eleventh server, and the Heavenly Domain. With a few million players, there were countless topics of gossip springing up every day. As long as you had the patience, there was enough to report on – even if the weekly newspaper was changed to daily, there was enough material.

However, as a professional esports media outlet, Esports Home still hoped to find some high-end material.

Pro players spending the summer break working or training in-game certainly counted as high-end material. In past summers, there were plenty of pro players who had been discovered in game, and the papers were as diligent in their reports as ever.

And this year was even more exciting, especially with this summer’s event. The pro players of the various teams all picked up their accounts and entered the game, which was a rare sight to be seen.

Thus, this week’s esports weekly papers of course focused on the performance of the pro players during the Ghost Parade event. The reporters swiped their account cards and entered Glory, contacting the guilds, or directly contacting the pro players, and tracking their progress.

And tonight, there was even an easter egg unlocked. Suddenly five teams were thrust into direct competition, and the reporters anxiously waited outside for the outcome and to ask what happened.

The one who finally killed Ghost King was Happy? The reporters’ professional intuition told them that there was a story behind this full of twists and turns, and they all grew excited.

They paid attention to the five teams in the dungeon, and those that had the pro players added as friends could track the progress of the teams by seeing when these players went offline.

Because the pro players immediately logged off upon exiting Ghost Lair, the reporters had no way of interviewing them in-game. Outside of the game, the most convenient was to use a chat method like QQ. All of these teams had dedicated reporters that followed them, and these reporters all had the QQ’s of the various players on the team. However, it was one thing to send a message on QQ, and it was another to see if the player was actually available and would reply.

In the end, this was just an in-game event, not some explosive news, and there was still plenty of time before publication, so the reporters weren’t anxious in waiting. If they could contact the player directly then great, if not, they would find other avenues to get news.

So very quickly, reporters discovered that Fang Rui had just made a new post on Weibo.

This Weibo was sent from his phone, timestamped after he had logged off from the Ghost Lair.

Just four words in the post: The weather has changed. And then, a sighing emoji.

Below the post, a whole crowd of fans had gathered in the replies, but they weren’t able to find too much to discuss, just some comments like “Fang Rui make sure not to leave your clothes out in the rain” and such.

But reporters were perceptive, and would certainly ponder over what they saw. Especially the reporters following Wind Howl, they lived in the same city as Fang Rui. Seeing this Weibo, those reporters quickly pulled up weather reports, only to find that the weather was stable, with clear skies and bright sunshine forecasted for the next several days.

Even if it was some prediction made from analyzing the night sky… The reporters looked out their windows into the darkness, but there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary!

Then, looking at the sighing emoji, the reporters began to have a faint feeling of the meaning behind this post.

The reporters patiently flipped through the comments on the post. There was a lot to look through; after all, Fang Rui was a star of a pro player and had many fans. Not long after it was posted, the comments and replies were already in the hundreds. This actually wasn’t even as many as it could have been – given the obscurity of this post, many people didn’t know what to say and just didn’t reply.

The reporters patiently flipped through. Since Fang Rui was a god of playing dirty, his fans were naturally fans of dirty playing as well. In the numerous strange replies, there were more than a few dirty and vulgar comments, which wasn’t unexpected.

But after flipping through several pages of comments, the reporters soon found another clue.

One fan also seemed to have perceived that Fang Rui’s mood was different from normal, and posted an ordinary, “Fang Rui, what’s wrong?”

In the end, it was this comment that earned Fang Rui’s reply.

Five words: My love has been exhausted.