Chapter 607: A Special Day
Translator: Nomyummi Editor: GravityTales
The successive messages from Wei Chen and Steamed Bun Invasion, along with the fact that it was April 1st, made Ye Xiu very suspicious, but then again, Wei Chen had asked for the address, so he himself could come over. It didn’t seem like an April Fool’s joke. Could he be thinking that they were going to host a huge welcome celebration for him and it would be funny if he didn’t show up? Even though Wei Chen was very shameless, he wasn’t stupid.
Ye Xiu was more doubtful about Steamed Bun Invasion though. This guy immediately decided to go buy a ticket over here. Then, he suddenly told him that he was on the train today. The several day gap didn’t conform with common sense. However, this was Steamed Bun Invasion! He wasn’t a normal person. Using common sense to figure him out would be a mistake. As a result, Ye Xiu asked Steamed Bun Invasion what he had been doing these past few days.
“Sigh. Nothing I could do.” Steamed Bun Invasion replied quickly. QQ indicated that Steamed Bun Invasion was using the app on his cellphone. Typing on the phone limited his typing speed.
“I bought the ticket that very day, but when my friends heard I was going to become a pro player, they wanted to give me a goodbye party. Today, we’ll party. Tomorrow, we’ll party. The next day, we’ll party. We partied for several days. I had to keep on changing my tickets until today.” Steamed Bun Invasion explained.
“Wow, I’m sorry for troubling you……” Ye Xiu said.
“It’s okay. I’ll be there soon! Senior, where am I headed?” Steamed Bun Invasion asked.
Ye Xiu saw that Steamed Bun was asking him for directions. It didn’t seem like an April Fool’s joke, so he gave him his address, just like he did for Wei Chen.
‘Can you find it?” Ye Xiu sent the address over to Steamed Bun Invasion and asked.
“Relax!” Steamed Bun Invasion was very confident.
“If you can’t find it, just give me a call.” Ye Xiu gave Chen Guo’s cellphone number to Steamed Bun Invasion.
“I think the probability of me using this phone number will definitely be zero.” Steamed Bun Invasion said.
“I hope so!” Ye Xiu said.
After giving the two people the address, Ye Xiu went to find Chen Guo and told her the news, but Chen Guo looked at him warily. After starting at Ye Xiu for several seconds, she finally asked: “Are you serious?”
Ye Xiu was helpless. It was a special day after all. You always had to be cautious. Ye Xiu put on his serious face and said: “I’m serious. Think of it this way, today is April Fool’s Day, but wouldn’t using this sort of joke be too lame?”
Chen Guo listened, but didn’t let her guard down. She actually became even more wary and nervously asked: “Then what do you plan on doing?”
“How old am I? Do you think I have something planned?” Ye Xiu looked at her in disdain and left.
Speaking of which, Chen Guo wasn’t usually afraid of April Fool’s Day. In the morning, Tang Rou and several other employees had pulled a small prank on her. Most people wouldn’t be too excessive with it. However, the G.o.d in her Internet Cafe could summon storms in game. Chen Guo was actually quite afraid of what type of shameless prank he might play on her. Seeing Ye Xiu look at her with disdain and walk away, Chen Guo wasn’t angry. She actually felt quite relieved.
The rest of the day went on like normal. It was just April Fool’s Day. It wasn’t a holiday or anything. Glory didn’t prepare anything special for today either. However, in the compet.i.tive scene, today was a compet.i.tion day and April was an important period for the pros.
The Professional Alliance usually held compet.i.tive matches every week. If there were any big holidays or other special occasions on those days, the schedule would be adjusted accordingly. The season usually started in the middle of August and ended on the first third of May the next year. The middle third of May would be the playoffs, where the top eight teams would enter an elimination style tournament until the champion was crowned.
April meant that the season was coming to an end. Teams with outstanding records or extremely terrible records might already know their general placings.
For example, in this eighth season, April 1st was a Sat.u.r.day, a match day. April had five Sat.u.r.days and May had two Sat.u.r.days for a total of seven match days until the season ended. This was a few days more than other seasons. Usually, when April came, there would only be five or six match days left.
At this point, the placements of a few teams were already determined. For example, Blue Rain, Samsara, Tiny Herb, Tyranny were way ahead of the rest. They had already been guaranteed a spot in the playoffs. The remaining seven matches would determine their seedings. Currently, after the All Star Weekend, Samsara had shot past Tiny Herb and grasped the number two spot. These seven matches would be a compet.i.tion between Samsara and Blue Rain to see who would take first in the regular season. Unfortunately, none of the remaining matches matched Samsara and Blue Rain in a direct confrontation.
This situation put less pressure on the teams, but the Alliance didn’t like it too much. In Glory, they often called these situations “Killer Matches”.
In these remaining seven matches, these four teams wouldn’t care as much because they had already locked in their playoff spots, so there would usually be less highlights in these matches. In addition to that, these four teams were without a doubt some of the most popular teams in the Alliance. If their matches were less suspenseful, the number of viewers would drastically decrease.
At this stage, the media stopped placing importance on these popular teams and spent more time reporting the other teams fighting for the remaining four playoff spots.
Misty Rain, Void, Wind Howl, 301, Thunderclap, Hundred Blossoms, and Royal Style.
These seven teams were currently the focal point of the media and the only teams with the possibility of grabbing a playoff spot.
Misty Rain and Void had steady positions and led the pack. Wind Howl and 301 were under a lot of pressure. If the three teams behind them wanted to move up, the three teams would need to step over their corpses. Team Thunderclap was currently in ninth place, just outside the top eight. However, their seven remaining matches were against easy teams, so their chances of making it into the playoffs were highly likely.
Before Zhang Jiale’s retirement, let alone the playoffs, Team Hundred Blossoms were frequently in the finals. However, this season, their team had been thrown into disorder and their record wasn’t very stable. They kept on bouncing back and forth between the door to the playoffs. It was very likely that they wouldn’t be able to make it into the playoffs, making the fans very nervous.
Team Royal Style was in the worst spot of these seven teams. Not only was it in last compared to the rest of the seven teams, the next few matches for them wouldn’t be easy. However, since the top four teams had guaranteed their spot in the playoffs, it might not be so bad. The next matches would be difficult because Team Royal Style needed to face all of the top four teams, but since the top four had guaranteed their spot, they would be much more relaxed in their matches and Royal Style might be able to pull off a win against them.
The probability of which of the seven teams would earn a playoff spot had been a.n.a.lyzed by all sorts of professionals and fans, but because today was a special day, the headlines weren’t about these seven teams.
The headline: Excellent Era is out! Is this an April Fool’s Day joke??
Correct, Excellent Era continued to perform poorly. After the All Star Weekend, they had returned back to the brink of relegations. They were only one point higher than the second to last place team.
One point!
It was very likely that after today’s match, Team Excellent Era would drop into the relegation zone. And with their current morale, if they dropped, whether they would actually be able to come back was a very big issue.
The media and fans had criticized Team Excellent Era for over a month now. Team Excellent Era kept on expressing their stance on their record, but nothing worked. Their placing kept on dropping. They would occasionally show moments of brilliance in the individual and group arena compet.i.tions, but over the past three months, Excellent Era had yet to win a single team compet.i.tion.
The fans couldn’t help but think of the team’s glorious moments in the past and they kept on bringing up the retired team captain Ye Qiu. If Ye Qiu were still there, the team would still be such and such. This type of question would often come up in these sorts of moments. Many people happily forgot that Ye Qiu had led the team and they weren’t performing well either. These were the same people that had criticized him then.
Team Excellent Era’s match had become a focal point in the compet.i.tion too. As a result, like before, Chen Guo didn’t avoid playing Excellent Era’s matches when they were a highlight of the day. Tonight, Happy Internet Cafe had arranged to broadcast Excellent Era’s match.
After a period of time, Happy Internet Cafe had gotten used to not playing Excellent Era’s matches every time. Gradually, the weekend broadcasts became popular again.
City H had many Excellent Era fans, but that didn’t mean everybody was one. Even the area near Club Excellent Era wouldn’t only have Excellent Era fans.
Happy Internet Cafe’s broadcasts suited the appet.i.tes of fans, who supported other teams or only wanted to watch the big branded teams play, so these fans happily came over on the weekends to watch. However, without everyone supporting the same team, the atmosphere wasn’t as pa.s.sionate as before.
Even so, for those who had never seen this type of Internet Cafe before, it was still quite impressive.
“What’s going on? Are people protesting?”
A person stood at the entrance of Happy Internet Cafe. Half his face was covered by his long hair. The other half of his face showed his youthfulness. At this moment, he was holding onto his cellphone. He looked at Happy Internet Cafe very seriously before walking in. The huge crowd of people inside made him very surprised.
However, he didn’t show any fear towards the crowd. He calmly walked towards the front desk and flipped his long hair aside. He was just about to say something, when he suddenly stopped. He took out his cellphone, while calling out to the sister in charge of the cash register: “Hold on. I forgot the word.”