translator: Oyen editor: Ciel
By the end of the second week, Mojue still occupied first place on the leaderboard. However, because the Mojue VS National Grace game ended with a score of 2:1, Mojue only earned 2 points. In comparison, both Dynasty and Frost Moon won with a score of 2:0 and earned 4 points apiece, narrowing the gap between themselves and Mojue.
After returning to Changsha, the team members trained according to Qin Mo’s arrangements, before setting off for the third location on June 27th—— Shanghai.
For the third week, Mojue’s opponent was the Whisper team, and the match was scheduled for Sunday afternoon.
Everyone arrived in Shanghai on Saturday. Qin Mo led the team members to watch the game live, with Li Muran habitually bringing along his laptop to take notes. Dynasty once again defeated their opponent with a score of 2:0 to earn 4 points, temporarily surpassing Mojue, which surprised the audience greatly.
Seeing the scoreboard, Shen He was also somewhat unconvinced. “We haven’t played this week’s match yet!” he complained quietly. “If we get 4 points tomorrow, we’ll take back first place!”
Hearing his apprentice’s murmur, Qin Mo asked faintly. “Is being the first at this stage really so important?”
Stunned, Shen He scratched his head. “But… I’m not happy about being overtaken.”
Qin Mo glanced at Li Muran. “What do you think?”
“There is no trophy in the three-players team competition. Only points will be rewarded, paving the way for the final team battle. It is more important to temper the team at this stage.” Li Muran replied calmly.
“That’s right.” Qin Mo’s lips curved upwards. “The small projects in the first half of the year can only train individual skill. The three-player team competition pays more attention to teamwork. If I sent the strongest lineup every game, Mojue would definitely rank first in terms of points, but when we fight in the five-player team battle, our cooperation will not be organised. Losing a game then would cost us 5 points.”
“You have a point, I, I…” Shen He lowered his head in shame.
“I, what?” Qin Mo asked.
“I’m short-sighted.” Shen He blushed.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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***
After going back that night, Shen He asked Li Muran a few questions, and finally solved the confusion from the past few days.
No wonder his master often sent him to train with Li Muran, Pei Yu and He Beiguang. This was to prepare for the different lineups during team battles. According to Li Muran, the different modes of the year-end competitions required different lineups. For example, the ultimate blood cow combination of He Beiguang, Qingyue, and Muran was most suitable for the defensive team playing the escort mode…
The more Shen He heard, the more his admiration for Li Muran grew. Li Muran really was amazing!
Seeing Shen He’s worshipful gaze, Li Muran’s mood soared, and he offered a rarely-seen explanation describing in detail the various lineup combinations he had analyzed during this period of time. Shen He, who was lying at the bedside listening to him attentively, would ask a few questions from time to time, while Li Muran would patiently answer. The two people with different personalities had inexplicably formed a harmonious relationship.
***
On the afternoon of the next day, Mojue welcomed their opponent for the third week of competitions—— Whisper.
The first game was Whisper’s home court. Luo Yuan chose the obstacle map suitable for the umbrella formation, sending out the black umbrella twins, Luo Yuan’s own white umbrella auxiliary, Wei Guanghua’s swordsman and the team’s healer. Just as before, Qin Mo chose not to ban players, and skipped to the next stage.
In the end, he once again sent the two-guarantees-one combination of Shen He, Li Muran and Zhu Qingyue.
The audience simply couldn’t stand it: “God Mo is so capricious! The captain has been on the bench for three weeks!”
“This is Dragon Song club’s tradition. The captain will sit on the bench and let the newcomers go up.”
“If the other side uses the umbrella array, the little monkey will not be able to withstand this round, right?”
Seeing Qin Mo’s method of dispatching people, Ye Chao wanted to swear. “Mojue’s score has been surpassed by Dynasty, but Qin Mo is still very calm.”
“He should have a bottom line, right?” Liang Ru was confused. “According to Mojue’s schedule, they will face several strong opponents in the later period, such as Sky, Without Fire, Frost Moon, and Dynasty. At that time, he will definitely have to play. It is better to accumulate points now, if not, the five-players team battle will be very stressful later.”
“It’s also true,” Ye Chao nodded. “However, if they don’t train in the three-player team competition, the price of losing a game in the five-player team battle is even higher. In fact, the other captains also know this. Dynasty’s Sang Jun and Without Fire’s Nie Yuzhu both didn’t play in last week’s game. Everyone is giving the opportunities to the newcomers, but god Mo is a little too much.”
“God Mo’s serious expression doesn’t seem to match the description of ‘too much’, right?” Liang Ru tried to hide her laughter.
“He is serious on the surface, but in fact, he has been working very hard. When he was younger, he tried desperately to fight against the big gods in online games. Now, he is desperately trying to get newcomers to play and be abused, the essence still remains unchanged!” Ye Chao replied.
This evaluation caused the audience to laugh out loud. Although Ye Chao’s words were said in a joking manner, they revealed Qin Mo’s current train of thought. He did work a little too hard, trying to give the newcomers a chance at the risk of being surpassed. However, on second thoughts, he was actually very stable, because he had his own considerations and believed that Mojue would be able to surpass their opponents and return to first place in the later stages.
In the first game, Zhu Qingyue, Shen He and Li Muran played against the pure attack combination of the twins Lu Boyu and Lu Zeyan, along with Wei Guanghua.
Because Luo Yuan himself was an auxiliary, he chose not to play in this round. If the opposing team had his junior brother, two auxiliaries meeting would be like a game of tug-of-war. The current commander of the Whisper team was Wei Guanghua. Luo Yuan also listened to Wei Guanghua’s suggestion and sent a violent output array to break Zhu Qingyue’s defense.
Facts proved that Wei Guanghua’s decision was wise. With Zhu Qingyue and Li Muran protecting Shen He, their defense seemed to be impeccable. However, the explosive power of Whisper’s double black umbrella array was extremely terrible. In addition to Wei Guanghua’s mobile swordsman, even Zhu Qingyue was pressured.
In the Tingyu Tower sect, the black umbrella flow and the while umbrella flow restrained each other. Zhu Qingyue’s invincibility array ‘Cyan Rain Curtain’ couldn’t be lifted by the other sects, but the black umbrella flow’s ‘Rain Without Traces’ skill could be used specifically to break the array. In fact, it had the function of breaking all array skills, including secret book arrays.
When faced with a member of the same sect, the invincible umbrella array failed. Zhu Qingyue quickly understood the power of the ‘new umbrella array playstyle’ that his senior brother had mentioned—— this kind of pure attack array that abandoned the auxiliary was indeed very powerful. The double black umbrella dominated the field from the back row, launching large-scale arrays to attack. Coupled with the interference of the swordman in the front row, even the defensive lineup of Zhu Qingyue and Li Muran was broken apart.
In the first game, Mojue’s trio held up for ten long minutes, before Wei Guanghua finally found an opportunity to break in and kill Shen He during Li Muran’s skill cooldown. Seeing this, Zhu Qingyue simply surrendered the match. With Shen He’s death, there was no need to waste time dragging the battle out with just an auxiliary and a healer.
Looking at the 1:0 score on the big screen, Ye Chao couldn’t help commenting. “The Whisper’s black umbrella attack style is first-class among all the pure attack lineups!”
“Indeed,” Liang Ru agreed. “The array effects of the double black umbrellas can be stacked. In principle, the group attack of the double black umbrellas is much more powerful than the double poison masters, but unfortunately, the black umbrella flow has too few single attack skills, and cannot be compared to the explosive power of the poison explosion skill. Still, the addition of Wei Guanghua makes up for this shortcoming. For Whisper to come up with such a combination is really surprising!”
“I always assumed that Whisper’s three-player team battle would feature an umbrella array with two black umbrellas and one white umbrella,” Ye Chao remarked. “I didn’t expect that captain Luo would sit out this time.”
“It can be seen that captain Luo is making some changes,” Liang Ru mused. “He seems to have abandoned his idea of the white umbrella auxiliary as the core, and changed the core to Wei Guanghua?”
Both of them had a heated discussion on this topic.
In the soundproof room, after Zhu Qingyue returned to his seat, he smiled helplessly. “I assumed that my senior brother would fight in this round. It seems that after Wei Guanghua was made the commander, Whisper’s playstyle has changed greatly.”
“En,” Qin Mo nodded in agreement. “They’ve become more aggressive.”
In the past, Whisper often gave others a gentle feeling. Even in the partner competition, Luo Yuan and Wei Guanghua battled to an unhurried, slow pace. However, while watching today’s matchup from the sidelines, Qin Mo realised that Whisper’s tactics had changed from a slow rhythmic control field to a sharper tactic of combining strong fielf control and violent group attack.
Perhaps, it might even be more than that…
In the second round, Qin Mo sent the combination of Liu Hong, Pei Yu, and Li Muran, while Whisper sent the combination of Luo Yuan, Lu Zeyan and Lu Boyu—— three umbrella players with double attack and one auxiliary. This was the original core of the Whisper team.
The rhythm of both sides was forcibly slowed down, but the shortcoming of Whisper’s three umbrella lineup was soon exposed—— its single-target attacking ability was too weak.
Both black umbrella players constantly spun their umbrellas to stack large amounts of group damage, but Mojue had Li Muran on the field. He only needed to constantly stack blood buffs and time his group heals properly to keep everyone safe.
Without single-target attack skills, if they couldn’t kill all three people at once, Li Muran would add the blood back, and the battle would only become more difficult.
The effect of a double black umbrellas and an auxiliary was obviously not as powerful as the previous combination of the double black umbrellas and Wei Guanghua’s output. On the other hand, Liu Hong and Pei Yu cooperated very well. Pei Yu constantly controlled the field from the back row, striking at the critical moment and giving Liu Hong the opportunity to take out one of the opponents. Whisper could only be defeated.
The score changed to 1:1, and they entered the final tiebreaker game.
Li Muran is more suitable to be Qin Mo‘s discipline lol
Thank you for the chapter and happy new year! @Oyen 🎇🎆❤️
Yess, but he already has Shen He as apprentice 🤣
You’re welcome, happy New Year Su~ ❤