Sun Xiang and One Autumn Leaf.
If Excellent Era were still a powerhouse in the Alliance, this would have been a very cheap price for Samsara. No character in the Alliance could compare to the Battle God, One
Autumn Leaf. Even if his three-peat had been achieved a long time ago, characters
didn't age. The legend of the Battle God's era would forever be etched onto
him. Along with his former owner Ye Xiu being excessively low-profile, all of the
people's hopes went onto the Battle God's shoulders. No other Glory character
could compare in this manner.
28,000,000. If Excellent Era hadn't fallen so far, this price might not even be enough to buy One Autumn Leaf alone. Even if his prowess wasn't that much greater than the other God-level characters, One Autumn Leaf had always been the symbol of Glory's king. If you asked any Glory player which character was number one, everyone would answer One Autumn Leaf. There was no other answer. Even though Zhou Zekai's Cloud Piercer had won two championships in a row, he didn't have the same legacy as One Autumn Leaf. In the past two three years, he was the most popular among the new generation of players. However, even greater achievements had been accomplished by another in the past. In more people's eyes, number one still belonged to One Autumn Leaf.
But now, Excellent Era had capsized. One Autumn Leaf hadn't stood at the top for a long time. In the end, One Autumn Leaf was abandoned along with the team by Tao Xuan.
20,000,000. This was the price that Ye Xiu had heard from Lou Guanning for One Autumn Leaf's price. Clearly, due to Excellent Era's current situation, One Autumn Leaf's value sunk along with the team. Of course, different teams might get different offers. For example, the price of 20,000,000 given to Heavenly Swords might be different than what Samsara was offered. If the price was also 20,000,000, then Sun Xiang's transfer price would be 8,000,000. Compared to the price that Excellent Era had paid for him, it was higher instead of lower. That didn't make sense. Even though his talent and genius had been recognized by the scene, after Sun Xiang
transferred, Excellent Era had been relegated. Then, after a year through the Challenger League, they ended up losing the finals. Even if these disastrous results weren't because of him, his value would still be greatly affected. Excellent Era was currently on a sale too. His value increasing instead of decreasing wasn't logical.
Neither side revealed how this price had been negotiated. However, from the total price of 28,000,000 and Excellent Era's current situation, Excellent Era had gotten a good price. Or perhaps Samsara hadn't negotiated too hard. It was also possible that there were many others wanting to buy, so with Samsara's ambitions, Samsara didn't negotiate too much and quickly slammed down the hammer.
There were numerous guesses. In the end, most people thought it was because of this type of reason.
After all, whether it was Sun Xiang or One Autumn Leaf, who wouldn't want them? Excellent Era might be in a difficult situation, but those two were very valuable. There was no need to worry that they could not be sold. The buyers had competition, so it was hard to avoid the price not being raised. If you thought about it like that, it was easy to see this current outcome.
But in any case, this wasn't the focus of everyone's concern. Everyone cared more about the result itself: Samsara had taken in Sun Xiang and One Autumn Leaf.
As the newly championed team, it was somewhat surprising to see them make such a huge move so quickly. Sun Xiang and One Autumn Leaf joining the Alliance again wasn't an easy decision to make for any team. A core-level God, the number one character, it was a huge transfer that could completely remake a team.
However, Samsara had Zhou Zekai, the indisputable number one player in the Alliance. No one believed that Zhou Zekai would choose to leave the team. Even less people thought that Team Samsara would change their core that had brought them victory all this time.
But now, there were two core players. How was Samsara planning on resolving this issue? It was a different situation than Tyranny. Tyranny's four ace players sounded even more problematic, but in reality, it was different. For one, when Han Wenqing declared something, even the club's boss would retreat. His authority in Tyranny was untouchable. What's more, Zhang Jiale and Lin Jingyan were at the ends of their career. They came to Tyranny because their desire to be the champions had yet to die. As for their core position, they didn't care anymore. They had been the core for so many years and were done it with long ago. Champions. They wanted to be champions. Zhang Jiale had given up so much for that goal. Who cared about being the core?
Samsara was different. Zhou Zekais brilliance on stage might be spectacular, but he himself was like a piece of wood. He was a reliable ace player, but he definitely wasn't a good leader. Samsara's players were able to faithfully play alongside him, but what about Sun Xiang? He was a very prideful person. His addition to the team would be a huge challenge towards Zhou Zekai's weak leadership. Would Team Samsara stay as harmonious as before? Would they put Sun Xiang as the core and Zhou Zekai as the support? That didn't seem to be possible. For one, a team had to consider the fans. Such an upstage would definitely not go well with them. What's more, Sun Xiang didn't really seem to be much of a leader? And from what they had seen from him so far, if Zhou Zekai's leadership ability tended towards zero, then Sun Xiang's leadership ability was a negative number..
Samsara was going to be busy this summer!
Everyone in the Glory scene sighed. They clearly thought that the conflicting chemistry between the two would be a difficult problem to resolve. However, in the new Esports Home issue, besides this transfer, there was an article, written by famed author with the penname Cha Xiaoxia, commenting on the transfer.
Cha Xiaoxia felt that although Samsara's championship victory seemed to be a huge victory, a great danger hid beneath it. Tyranny's problem with their old players' stamina had given them an opportunity to win. If Tyranny had been able to keep up their peak form all the way through, it would be hard to say if Samsara would have been able to win. From the first match in the finals, Tyranny had a way to suppress Zhou Zekai and Samsara's tempo. Facing Tyrannny's stable formation, the problem with Samsara's lack of a direct attacker could clearly be seen.
Samsara had been able to win because of the tournament format. That was what Cha Xiaoxia believed. If it had been the previous format, it wouldn't have been as exhausting, and Chao Xiaoxia believed that Tyranny would have most likely won in the end.
Samsara absolutely recognized this issue. So even though they won the championships, Samsara wouldn't be like last year and not make any changes. This was because there was a team that could suppress them.
Next season, Tyranny's old generals would definitely focus on fixing their stamina issue. Samsara couldn't hope for Tyranny to stay the same. Samsara needed to take the initiative to improve. However, improving wasn't something that could be done by fixing up their original foundation. Samsara had reached a bottleneck and needed to break through. As a result, they transferred over Sun Xiang and One Autumn Leaf.
This might be why Samsara was willing to spend 28,000,000 to quickly complete the transfer despite winning the championships. Cha Xiaoxia wrote. They needed a direct attacker. This type of attacker needed to be able to break through the concrete defense formed by Han Wenqing, Zhang Jiale, Lin Jingyan, and Zhang Xinjie. Just from that requirement, very few players qualified. This wasn't something that an average pro player could hope to do. The only ones that could shoulder that burden were the Alliance's top attackers and top close combat characters.
Thus, Sun Xiang and One Autumn Leaf. In addition to Excellent Era's current plight, anyone would make this choice. The key to their breakthrough had been found. However, it came
with a problem. Sun Xiang was certainly a qualified choice, but because of how qualified he was, how to resolve the inner conflicts in the team would be big issue. With how prideful Sun Xiang was, would he be willing to revolve around Zhou Zekai as the core?
Cha Xiaoxia also discussed this question in his article. He was optimistic about Samsara dealing with this problem. First of all, he looked favorably upon Sun Xiang's transformation. Getting relegated from the Alliance, losing the Challenger League, up until now, no God in the Alliance had suffered through such losses. Sun Xiang had once been a very prideful player and he still was in the Challenger League, but after these consecutive failures, shouldn't he turn his head to look at how he fell so far and examine himself?
Sun Xiang's attitude would undoubtedly play a critical role in this problem. If he became more mature after learning from these failures, melding in harmoniously with Samsara wasn't impossible.
In addition, Cha Xiaoxia mentioned the "most underrated player in the Alliance", Jiang Botao.
Samsara's vice-captain Jiang Botao had placed fifth in total votes for All-Stars. This seemed contradictory to "underrated" since he was clearly thought of very highly.
However, Cha Xiaoxia felt like Jiang Botao was thought highly because of Zhou Zekai's halo and the team's identity as champions.There were even people who claimed that even their grandma could pair with Zhou Zekai and win the championships.
That statement was naturally an exaggeration, but the contempt inside it was clear as day. Every player in Samsara had this issue. Whenever Samsara did well, everyone would credit it with Zhou Zekai. As for the others, they were just there to bask in his light.
Cha Xiaoxia didn't think this was the case.
Chao Xiaoxia wrote that Jiang Botao was adept at communication. Anyone would feel comfortable interacting with him. He could show consideration for everyone in any scenario, and he wouldn't steal the spotlight either. Outside of the stage, Jiang Botao was this type of person. On stage, he was an expert at connecting everyone together. If he could successfully meld Zhou Zekai into Samsara, he should be able to do the same with Sun Xiang. Jiang Botao was the glue that held the team together.
Chao Xiaoxia straight up gave Jiang Botao a nickname. After excitedly analyzing the transfer and talking about his expectations for the battle of dragons between Tyranny and Samsara next season, he suddenly switched topics: people undoubtedly had high hopes for these two teams, but he felt like there was another team that shouldn't be ignored --- the other champions this year, Team Happy.
"People are treating their declaration to win the championships next season as a joke, but I believe in them. What can I do? I'm already a Team Happy fanboy." Cha Xiaoxia wrote.