Ye Xiu's mockery caused Parade's Captain Wu Shuai feel his heart skip a beat.
This exchange really was imbalanced. Happy's healer was such trash! But aside from this, what else could they do right now?
You couldn't afford to hesitate in a match! Wu Shuai was very decisive when he needed to be, so even though his heart jolted, he didn't waver. He continued to lead his team members to charge towards Little Cold Hands.
An Wenyi didn't waste any time. As soon as he saw people rushing toward him, he cast a Great Cure on his own Little Cold Hands, pulling his health very high. Then, Parade began their attack. But when Wu Shuai looked over at Happy's progress on the other side, he wanted to cry.
This wasn't a problem of whether this trade was balanced! This trade might not even be completed in the first place! Happy was progressing much faster in killing off their target.
"Bring him away!" Wu Shuai hurried to direct. As they attacked, they tried to pull Little Cold Hands away, to buy themselves more time to kill him off.
"Not fast enough." An Wenyi, the one who couldn't control a situation even when putting his all into a battle, actually found the time to type words right now, even when he was being surrounded and attacked from all sides.
Indeed they weren't fast enough.
Wu Shuai didn't lack judgment, he just wanted to put his all into striving for this goal. But when An Wenyi said this, he understood that Happy had calculated everything. Anything that he did was futile.
It ends here.
Wu Shuai understood very clearly that this match was going to be decided right here.
Wu Shuai sighed and watched as their team's healer finally fell. And Little Cold Hands? Even after being surrounded, the character still had a third of her health left!
What if we copied them?
Wu Shuai suddenly had another thought, to try and learn from the way Happy had surrounded Parade's healer. But before he could give any orders, a Satellite Beam was already falling from the sky, a spinning pillar of light that expanded. Parade's members instinctively began to dodge, and their encirclement was broken just like that.
There was no way. They had no healer anymore.
Wu Shuai discovered what the difference was between their current situation and that of Happy earlier. At that time, Happy had their healer helping out, while Parade's healer had been cut off in the encirclement. That was why they could play to wear them out. But now, even if they locked Little Cold Hands in an encirclement, they didn't have a healer to support them anymore, and stubbornly trying to maintain this encirclement would only use up even more of their health.
There was really no way.
Wu Shuai once again felt that they were at the end, and this time he finally didn't experience any new breakthroughs. By the time Parade's sixth player arrived, they were at a disadvantage in terms of numbers, and they still didn't have a healer. They couldn't turn the situation around. Wu Shuai actually began to feel a sense of longing for that Little Cold Hands, the one deemed by the entirety of Glory to be worst pro Cleric.
Right now, even if they only had a Cleric like that, would they lose? Absolutely not!
They were unwilling, but they could only fall. In the end, Parade couldn't defeat Happy in the team competition and lost in a bitter 1-9.
In the post-match press conference, the reporters asked Wu Shuai for his feelings about this match. He said the standard polite words, but as he talked and talked, he gradually began to think seriously.
Where was the match point of this team battle?
The beginning had gone so smoothly, they'd easily killed off one of the opponents. With that kind of lead, how come they fell over like a toppled mountain by the end?
Wu Shuai pulled himself back to the match, in that moment when they had killed off Happy's Phantom Demon One Inch Ash, pretended to surround Boundless Sea, lured in Lord Grim, surrounded him. But then Lord Grim, with a thrust of his palm, casually escaped from the encirclement that they had prepared so carefully. And the reason was that the character supposed to intercept him was unexpectedly hit by a Heavenly Fire and became unable to use any skills.
It had happened so quickly during the match, there wasn't any time to analyze it. Parade just thought that it was a skill that Lord Grim had put on the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella, but was that really the case?
Wu Shuai recalled that moment in detail. Lord Grim was surrounded, and then he immediately tried to rush outwards. Sacred Fire was a skill that required reciting lines. Where did he have the time to stop and cast?
It was Little Cold Hands.
It was An Wenyi.
Yes, that was correct, that was exactly how it happened
And then Happy counterattacked, scattering their formation, and the match situation was instantly flipped around.
The match point was when Lord Grim instantly broke through their encirclement. And that had been the result of that Cleric, who'd been looked down upon by them - no, looked down upon by the entire Glory circle! If it weren't for his move then, no matter how high Ye Xiu's skill was, he couldn't have immediately pushed open a road with one palm. Parade's brothers weren't noobs, after all!
That guy was really lucky.
When Wu Shuai thought this problem through, this was his final conclusion. Ultimately, he still didn't believe that An Wenyi had such ability. He still felt that that player was just a blind cat that'd run into a dead mouse. But since he'd already thought to this point, he couldn't help but think more about Little Cold Hands' performance this match. And after doing so, he discovered that that player had appeared again and again at the crucial points of the match.
We lost to that Cleric?
"Impossible!" Wu Shuai suddenly said aloud.
"What's impossible? What did you say was impossible just now?" The reporters had been listening to another player from Parade answer a question, but when they suddenly heard this word from Wu Shuai's mouth, they immediately turned their attention toward him.
"Happy's Cleric isn't so simple," Wu Shuai said.
"Hehehe," the reporters all snickered. What was he saying? He couldn't beat Happy, so he didn't even agree what Happy's weak point was anymore? How petty! With your strength, it was no big surprise that you weren't able to beat Happy, do you really need to make excuses like this?
Wu Shuai's words didn't incite any excitement from the reporters. They continued their interviews, until Parade's conference was over and Happy's began. And then, the first sentence they heard from Ye Xiu's lips was praise for An Wenyi.
"Today's victory was all thanks to An Wenyi's outstanding performance."
An Wenyi?
Outstanding performance?
Putting these two phrases together, how come it felt so conflicting? Could they really be written together? The reporters felt a bit dizzy.
"What? Did no one notice?" Ye Xiu asked, extremely surprised, as he watched all the reporters exchange glances. He added, "Did you watch the match?"
"Of course," the reporters all answered.
"Did the stats for this match come out yet?" Ye Xiu suddenly asked the Alliance worker at the side.
"They're out," that person answered.
"Who was the team competition MVP?" Ye Xiu asked.
"An Wenyi." The Alliance employee gave the answer from the stats.
"Huh?" The gathered reporters were shocked.
Ye Xiu grinned. "I'm glad that the Alliance was watching the match seriously."
The reporters were greatly embarrassed. An Wenyi was the MVP of this match? The reporters forgot the interview and all began discussing with each other, but everyone only had a fuzzy impression of An Wenyi's performance in the match. Before they watched the match, they were already in a certain mindset. Matches should be enjoyed, but they didn't have that mindset toward An Wenyi, so much so that even though they were Glory specialists, they hadn't even realized the MVP of this team competition.
Without being able to figure out the why, this press conference couldn't continue. The reporters could only bring out a few scripted questions, like asking An Wenyi about his view of his performance today.
"I did the right things at the right times," An Wenyi said.
"Oh? Could you give us some detail?" the reporters asked.
"You you should just rewatch the match!" An Wenyi was a bit speechless. They wanted him to use words to describe his performance? It wasn't that he was disdainful, he was rather embarrassed, because those were all his highlights. He couldn't just open his mouth and say "at that most critical moment, good thing I used my Sacred Fire" or whatnot. He was An Wenyi, not Wei Chen.
The press conference ended inconclusively like this. By the end, the reporters still had questions in their hearts. They didn't understand how An Wenyi became the hero of this match. After the conference finished, they all immediately revisited the match, and now that they were in the mindset of looking for highlights, these specialists quickly realized what they had missed during this match. This was too unprofessional.
"An Wenyi found his footing?" the reporters wondered.
An Wenyi, whom the entire Glory circle viewed as dragging down his team, suddenly became the team MVP. Wasn't this change just too dramatic?
The reporters of the various media were all already imagining the articles to write about An Wenyi. The match between Happy and Parade originally wasn't anything interesting to report on. But now that An Wenyi had become the MVP of this match, this topic was really quite incredible.
As for those looking for thrilling headlines in this round, Samsara's home game against Tiny Herb and Tyranny's home game against Blue Rain were both top-level confrontations.
In the end, both matches ended with the home team's victory, both 7-3. Tiny Herb's win streak in the group arena was finally broken in this round. Of all the consecutive win records in this season, only Ye Xiu's individual win streak had yet to be sniped.
In this round, Wind Howl, who'd been swaggering with their recent win streak against weak teams, finally ate a loss. And this time, their opponent absolutely couldn't be called a strong team.
Miracle!
One of the new teams this season played their home game against Wind Howl and ultimately defeated them 7-3. In the confrontation between previous Excellent Era players, it was actually the seemingly lower, lagging members of Miracle that obtained victory.
Wind Howl was the team that defeated many weak teams to appear strong. But after this loss, their standing on the rankings immediately changed. Right now, they were seventh place with 148 points, followed by Hundred Blossoms only one point behind them. After that, ninth place was the recently-strong 301. After defeating Royal Style 8-2 in their home game this round, there were now only 7 points between them and the playoff zone.
But this time, 301 didn't use the fierce Life-Risking Strike again.