(LG) “Thank you all for coming in today and welcome to all the viewers elsewhere to the ceremony where we give due credits to the greatest strategists that have participated in the Sun Alliance tournament. I must apologize as we could not invite as many of you here to make this announcement as we have done for the past few tournaments. This will be the norm from now on.” Li Guang, the face of the Sun Alliance, spoke to everyone present or watching him on the community screens being broadcasted all over the place.

The votes were in from the elders to announce which groups were deserving of the highest praise. Which individuals in particular, and which rank they would be put in. Whoever was invited to be present here were of no ordinary background as only the best and brightest of the Chinese community attended. For Baron, the Meng duo, Guan Yu, and Yue Fei, this was the first time that they had been invited to something so grand, it was truly an experience that they have never had before.

There were many big names here, the 4 leaders of the Yellow Wang faction, Madam Zheng and her two husbands, various elders and inner circle members of the Sun Alliance, and many more who have fought their way to the top. It was certainly a gathering of multiple talented and brilliant minds, one which could be said to have a certain noble air in the room.

(LG) “Let’s get down to business, many of you have been here before, but we do have a few new faces here today, which is just amazing and aspiring. So without further ado, here are the rankings as decided by the elders and inner circle members.”

Though the room was filled with more than a thousand prominent strategists, no one made a peep as they were all waiting for the results to come out of Li Guang’s mouth. For Baron and the gang, this was especially exciting for them as they had never been in the company of so many titans of warfare. However, they contained their excitement and sat quietly as they also waited for Li Guang.

(LG) “First place, once again, goes to the Yellow Wang faction. Your reward is 15 million coins that will be directly deposited to your treasury. Second place will go to the Sun Alliance, and since we are the ones hosting the tournament we won’t get anything, but you should all know that the prize for the second-ranking faction is 5 million. So let that be an encouragement for the rest of you to quickly improve your ranks and claim this amazing bounty for yourselves.”

Although there were no sounds other than Li Guang in the hall, everyone could tell that just about everyone in the room was drooling about such an amount of coins being unclaimed. This was especially true for Li Guang as he was facing everybody and could see quite a few grim faces looking back at him.

(LG) “Haha… Anyway. Third place goes to the Middle Kingdom, it seems as if they are still quite powerful even without their leader guiding them. We at the Sun Alliance hope he comes out next time to show us a few moves. Fourth place goes to the Vesper faction for being so dominating in the naval tournament. Fifth place will go to the Forever Pirates faction.”

There were intermittent applauses and shouts of encouragement whenever a new ranking was called out. This continued on until Li Guang reached rank 25 of the rankings.

(LG) “Now that the top 25 factions have been announced, let’s move on to the hidden gem faction that we here at the Sun Alliance have decided to be the best and brightest of the new generation. The Combined Dragon faction under Zhang Da Zhi!”

This was a bit of a surprise to everyone in the room. Many had speculated that it would be the Under 1 Banner faction under Baron that would win this prize. Truth be told, Li Guang was a bit surprised at this result as well, but he figured that it was likely someone from the Combined Dragon faction had bribed a few of the elders and inner circle members in order for them to be in this position. Personally, Li Guang felt this should have gone to Baron, but he could not do anything about the matter.

(LG) “The prize for being in the top 5 factions and the hidden gem award is that you will all be able to pick another blueprint from our treasury in addition to the other tournaments that you have participated and ranked highly in. Therefore, the tally for this is the Yellow Wang faction will be taking home 4 blueprints, the Middle Kingdom faction 1, Vesper faction 1, Combined Dragon group 2, and Under 1 Banner group 2 as well. To the rest of you, good luck next year.”

The reason that Baron and Zhang Da Zhi’s factions were able to claim two blueprints were that they had both won the hidden gem award twice. They would likely not be able to have this advantage in the next tournament as any group or faction that won this award really began to take off after being recognized as having talent and they grew to be known figures in the high ranking circles.

(LG) “Before we have the representatives of each faction come to browse through our collection, there are a few changes that we will be making to our tournaments from now on. First is that the tournament will now be held every 200 years instead of 50 with many of the prizes being double of what they are now. Second is that we will begin to host another kind of tournament with the same prizes and this will be an even grander tournament where the individual gets to shine as there will be no alliances and such. This will also occur each every 200 years, 100 hundred years after this tournament happens. Now, representatives of each faction that earned at least 1 blueprint, follow me to get a blueprint worthy of kings.”