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墨書 Inktalez
Only the team captains participated in the draw, so during the process, Cui Ming and Ding Ze were at the hotel using binoculars to observe. Li Qing was not fond of the binoculars at all and instead used a True Sight Guardian to watch the live stream. In the first round, the seeded teams had a bye, and the other eighteen teams felt quite similar in terms of their names. The draw was completed quickly, taking no more than ten minutes. The Beiyue Team drew the Snow Mountain Team, whose captain, Nunu, was a chief from a Northern Plateau tribe in the Eastern Continent and quite powerful. However, his team members were rather average with no remarkable achievements.
Cui Ming put down the binoculars and walked into the living room, saying, "In the first match, we need to play a big strategy of pretending to be weak; it will be very difficult for us to win."
Li Qing replied, "Junior Brother, it might really be quite challenging to win."
"Then we will lose," Cui Ming said. "If we find it very difficult to deal with an ordinary team, then there’s no point in continuing with the matches. My plan is to establish a certain advantage to ensure our victory while also creating various mistakes. It would be best if there were some internal strife."
The next day, the competition began as scheduled. Cui Ming attended as an audience member for the first time to closely watch the Competition Match.
The arena was large, divided into red and blue teams, with each team having a Main Base. There were four lanes in total: Set Off, Midway, Bottom Lane, and the Back Lane. The Back Lane was particularly special; by completing designated tasks, one could unlock access to it. The opposing team could defend against the entrance of the Back Lane, but if tasks were not completed, they could not enter that area for combat. The Back Lane served as a detour and was three times longer than regular paths. This was a tactical choice; unlocking access to the Back Lane usually involved tedious tasks that consumed much time and effort. However, once opened, it could effectively suppress and threaten the opponent's Main Base. Yet, during this time, opponents might strengthen themselves or launch a surprise attack on a main lane when they noticed all members entering the Back Lane.
This was a map filled with various treasures. Completing tasks or defeating opponents would yield money that could be used to purchase treasures or defensive towers. Defensive towers could be placed at designated spots on lanes to help resist enemy invasions. Money played a significant role in competitions; various treasures could substantially enhance one's abilities—Force equivalence, damage bonuses, defense bonuses, rapid Force recovery, etc. Killing enemy team members yielded the highest amount of money. Fallen team members had to wait for their team to revive them; revival required one minute of prayer and two hundred coins per fallen member before they could return from their Main Base.
In non-main lanes of the map, there were various creatures of differing strengths—some would attack actively while others retaliated passively. Many tasks were related to these creatures; defeating them could yield money or even one-time Magic Cards. These Magic Cards had no relation to cultivation and could be used by anyone. The greatest advantage of non-main lane wilderness areas was that they allowed passage through wild paths from Set Off to Bottom Lane or Midway for surprise attacks against opponents. Understanding enemy movements was also key to winning or losing in Competition Matches.
The first match began. The Blue Team took a standard approach by sending out three members who guarded the top, middle, and bottom lanes respectively while accepting nearby tasks. These types of tasks offered low rewards and were easy to complete—barely better than nothing. Each lane had seven basic Arrow Towers that attacked monsters and enemy team members; their power was quite average and required money for upgrades.
The first conflict occurred in the wilderness when a Red Team member collided with a Blue Team member over a task—they both needed to eliminate a monkey in a grove. The Red Team called in reinforcements from Set Off while the Blue Team summoned another Freeman for support. Although the Red Team ultimately secured the monkey, they left Set Off unguarded and lost an Arrow Tower to their opponents.
Just after this conflict ended, Red Team members on Bottom Lane engaged in battle after some probing in the central plain; both were ranged Archers dodging each other's attacks while launching their own strikes. Their Life Stones' health continued to dwindle as neither side gained an upper hand. During this stalemate, feeling uncertain, Blue Team members began to retreat towards an Arrow Tower's protective range while Red Team members pursued them. Unexpectedly, Blue Team's wilderness Freemen cut off their retreat route; outnumbered two-to-one without timely assistance from teammates, one Red Team member was killed by Blue Team, earning them three hundred coins.
With three hundred dollars in hand, Midway from the Blue Team used a return card that could be activated every eight minutes to acquire another three hundred dollars. He purchased an item to enhance his attack power and returned to his base. With the new item, Midway and the Blue Team began to exert strong pressure on their opponents. After several minutes of back-and-forth, the first Arrow Tower of the Red Team was destroyed. However, Midway did not dare to push further, fearing an ambush from the Red Team's jungle players, and quickly retreated to secure their defense. With the Arrow Tower down, the rewards for the Red Team's mission decreased while those for the Blue Team increased. If the Red Team did not find a way to counter this situation immediately, the Blue Team's advantage would gradually accumulate.
The match was rather uneventful; being the first game, it drew some fresh attention. By the second match, however, it had become dull, with some players laughing off the action and even leaving. Some felt that this Competition Match was quite boring.
But the third match changed everyone's perspective. Although both teams were relatively mediocre, each had a strong player: Jinjin from the Red Team and Jayce from the Blue Team. Due to the unique nature of this Competition Match, Jayce casually joined a random team while Jinjin had no team willing to take her in because she was too wild.
There is a significant difference between being crazy and being mad.
As soon as the match began, Jayce and Jinjin engaged in a fierce battle in the Bottom Lane. Both sides fought fiercely, and seeing that neither was backing down, their teammates rushed in for support, resulting in a five-on-five skirmish in the Bottom Lane. Unfortunately, both groups lacked coordination. In the end, Jayce's group managed to cut into the backline and heavily injure Jinjin. Forced into a retreat, Jinjin fell back while Jayce's group eliminated two opponents in a five-on-four situation. However, after gathering her strength, Jinjin unleashed her ultimate move—a massive Force missile that grew more powerful the longer it flew. The missile screamed through the air but ended up exploding on one of her own teammates instead, creating a mushroom cloud that sent all practitioners within three hundred square meters flying and left them reeling from the Force shockwave.
Jinjin then charged back into battle with some of her Life Stone data restored. Armed with a rocket launcher and grinning maniacally, she went on a rampage, taking down not only four members of Jayce's team but also eliminating her own two remaining teammates in the process. She relentlessly pursued Jayce, demolishing three Arrow Towers along her path.
Having successfully lured Jinjin deeper into enemy territory, Jayce turned around to confront her under an Arrow Tower. As Jinjin attempted to escape amidst her frenzy, she found herself entangled with Jayce. Ultimately, although she managed to kill Jayce, she was also struck down by the Arrow Tower.
With no one left standing on either side—ten players had fallen—the match ended in a draw.
In a rematch where the arena shrank by half, this competition showcased the value of skilled players. Jinjin and Jayce took positions in their respective lanes and leveraged their superior abilities against their opponents to push forward aggressively. After one successful wave of attacks, Jinjin purchased equipment to enhance herself while Jayce opted for upgrades for his soldiers. Ultimately, despite Jinjin's dominance in the Bottom Lane, Jayce capitalized on his enhanced soldiers' support to storm Jinjin's base and emerged victorious.
This match highlighted that while all ten players were referred to as practitioners with similar Force levels comparable to those of the two masters involved, there was a significant gap in skill and tactical awareness between them. Simply put, their application of Force was vastly inferior compared to that of these two experts. Previously there had been no friendly matches; during competitive events, either all participants were skilled or they were all mediocre—without comparison, one could not discern differences in ability. Additionally, since members of the league tended toward peaceful interactions with few opportunities for sparring sessions, many expressed confusion over such dynamics. This scenario illustrated that a skilled practitioner could take on three opponents without losing ground.
Gold Medal Broadcaster Ding Dewen commented live: "The amount of Force is never a true measure of a practitioner's strength; many practitioners do not understand their direction and merely replicate others' successes without forging their own paths. One who can carve out their own niche is truly a hero."
Following this match, a new term emerged: hero. This term did not refer to moral character but rather to skill level. Ordinary individuals could only be called league members; only those with exceptional abilities among them could be regarded as league heroes. This distinction marked a dividing line—only those who crossed it were considered heroes. Taking Beiyue Team as an example: Beiyue believed all four members had crossed into hero status except for Mi Xiaonan who remained on its threshold.
After the match, Bufon explicitly opposed media definitions equating heroism with strength; he argued that practitioners formed one big family among other points. However, Liu Na's Force Report countered Bufon's stance by pointing out that throughout hundreds of years since the league's establishment, every crisis had been resolved by hero-level league members. Liu Na then asked President Bufon how many heroes versus how many pretenders existed among league members?
Cui Ming read the newspaper over breakfast, feeling that Liu Na was somewhat excessive. Indeed, among practitioners, there were clear distinctions between the strong and the weak, and sometimes these differences were quite pronounced. However, there were always objective factors at play. For instance, when one had just learned the Six Elements, they certainly would not be a match for anyone. Some individuals simply did not have an interest in cultivation, while others had yet to encounter their opportunities.
Li Qing held a slightly different view from Cui Ming. Previously, his perspective was similar to Cui Ming's, but during the application process to join the Hunters, the Hunters first required candidates to meet a standard of strength before considering Li Qing's moral character and other issues. In other words, the Hunters and even the Alliance were aware that the distinctions between practitioners were quite clear, yet they chose to downplay this fact. The clear division between strength and weakness was an objective reality that had to be acknowledged.
For example, there was Beiyue, who inherited a treasured sword from his father. With exceptional talent, Li Qing managed to enter the Alliance Academy. Ding Ze came from a prestigious family and possessed a Mysterious Amulet. Then there was Cui Ming, who had an inexplicable Strategy. They all had something that set them apart from ordinary practitioners; whether due to fortuitous encounters or personal reasons, their Starting Points were simply different from those of regular cultivators. If Ding Ze with his Mysterious Amulet and an ordinary practitioner without any treasures had comparable strength, that would defy logic. (To be continued.)
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