The King's Return Chapter 109

translator: Oyen  editor: Ciel

Lin Yao's appearance also allowed Qin Mo to realise the strength of the Huaxia Club's team in the new district.

Among the five players of that year, Lin Yao was his favourite. He wanted to train Lin Yao to be a long-range attacker, but Lin Yao transferred to the Huaxia Club. According to Xiao Han, Lin Yao did not perform very well after going to Huaxia.

In fact, it was not that Lin Yao's performance was poor, but that the archers on the Huaxia side were too strong. Naturally, Lin Yao would have no chance to play archers as well.

It was also a wise choice for him to change to a new game. At least in the new game, he wouldn't be bullied everywhere.

Still, Qin Mo was in a good mood, and knowing that several of his juniors had accomplished great things only made him happier. He went on to play several qualifying matches together with Xiao Han, winning ten games in a row to reach 3,000 points, before bringing the rest of Mojue team to 3,000 points, changing the title behind everybody's names to become the third rank 'Heroes'.

A month and a half has passed since the public release of Peerless Jianghu during the summer vacation. The number of players in the game were at an all-time high, with a historical record of online games played set in the area. However, school started in a few days; once the students left, the number of online players in the area should drop.

As autumn gradually arrived, so too did the sect challenge arena at the end of the year.

That morning, when Qin Mo turned on his computer in the training room, he heard Shen He shouting. "Master, there has been an official announcement about the sect challenge arena!"

Opening the official website, Qin Mo glanced at the eye-catching news written in red —— an announcement about the launch of the "All Sect Challenge Arena" at the end of the year.

The news of the sect civil war's opening at the end of the year was mentioned when the competition system was last announced, but no specific rules had been revealed. Today, the rules of the competition were finally stated in the announcement.

In fact, the all sect challenge arena served as a warmup for the new competitive season next year, allowing the officials to try out the network stability of the competition server, the effects of the synchronised live broadcast, and so on. The scale of the challenge arena was huge, with many official bonuses, and the participant entry threshold was limited to players who have reached the 'Heroes' rank in the arena, or higher.

To achieve the Heroes rank, one's arena score had to reach 3,000 points. Qin Mo's entire team had already achieved that qualification.

However, the competition was over two months away; it would not be difficult for online game players to achieve this qualification.

Since it was a sect civil war, the eight sects had to be separated. The schedule was divided into three stages, with the first round involving competitions between contestants from the same sect. After ten rounds, players with a winning rate of over 50% would enter the next stage and so on, until the top sixteen were decided. The top sixteen would then enter the semi-finals, with the points being counted in groups, until finally, the top four of each sect would enter the finals, which would use the cruel knockout system.

Because the entire event would be held online, people from other places did not need to go to the official headquarters in Beijing; as long as there was a network cable at home, they would be able to watch the competition. The live broadcast of the competition also showed only the game images- players did not need to fear their face being shown, which also greatly improved their enthusiasm to participate.

The registration channel would  be opened from November 11th to November 25th, while the competition would officially start on December 1st.

It was said that the winner would be invited by the officials to visit the game company's headquarters, receive reimbursement for the round-trip air tickets, as well as their accommodation expenses. In addition to the bonuses and trophies, they would also be given a special sect commemorative gift.

The civil war between sects was a competition that focused only on strength, as players of the same sect would not only understand each other, but would also be using the same skills. Losing to someone who came from the same cultivation sect would thus show the disparity between skill levels.

Each sect of Peerless Jianghu had two different ways of playing, and thus, the competition was also based on cultivation routes in order to avoid the situation of one sect suppressing another. For example, within the Zhuge Family, players using the mechanism flow would compete among themselves, and would not be matched with those who used bone fans. Hanhua Sword sect also had the two routes of the longsword flow and the short sword flow, who would also be fighting separately.

In other words, there would eventually be fourteen champions between the eight sects, so the win rate was actually quite high.

As to why there were fourteen instead of sixteen……

The official explanation was: "Healers and auxiliaries are not output-oriented professions, but instead are professions that contribute to a team. Excellent healers and auxiliaries need to be judged in a team battle; regardless of the number of skills they possess, as long as they can help their team win the game, these players are good at their professions. Fighting alone in the arena would be too time-consuming, and their strengths cannot be judged accurately."

This sort of statement was actually quite reasonable – in a fight, the two milk mom/dad would just keep adding blood to themselves, causing the people watching to also feel tired and bored.

As for the auxiliaries……

A group of people on Weibo laughed: "An auxiliary in Peerless Jianghu?" "We haven't seen an auxiliary before!" "The white umbrella flow of Tingyu Tower consists of little sisters who only look at the beautiful scenery, not many people actually know how to play!" "It is true that very few people are able to play a pure sect auxiliary without any output skills." "If you want to see a strong auxiliary, you'll probably have to wait for the professional league!"

Looking at these messages, Qin Mo's lips curved upwards slightly —— a powerful assistant, was it? Mojue would definitely have a world-class assistant; just wait for the team battles in future.

Both the forums and Weibo were filled with discussion about the all sect challenge arena, and the popularity of the game Peerless Jianghu was only growing.

After the challenge arena rules were announced, Qin Mo began his preparations.

Aside from Li Muran's healer and Zhu Qingyue's auxiliary, Qin Mo planned for everyone else in Mojue to be taking part in the competition. The all sects challenge arena would not be included in the team's points, and so the competition itself would have no impact on professional players. It could only be regarded as a warm-up game for the entertainment of the players. Still, the key point was that you could gain a full and comprehensive understanding of your player profession; it certainly couldn't hurt to take part, and the captains of the other teams will almost certainly feel the same way. Although it was a sect challenge arena, they could potentially meet other experts also participating in the competition.

Next, Qin Mo began to collect secret books.

According to the official announcements, secret books could be brought to the competitions. Only one skill could be opened from the secret book column, so players could only choose to bring one secret book into the game. Up to this point, the members of Mojue team had collected ten secret books —— eight bought through secret book fragments gained from the small five-person sect dungeons, one from the "High Mountains and River" dungeon, and the "North Goose Flying South" that Qin Mo and Xiao Han snatched together from the JIanshen Valley boss.

However, this was far from enough, because the officials had divulged that there were thirty secret books in Peerless Jianghu!

They had only collected ten, and still needed to search for the remaining twenty.

Qin Mo gave this task to the manager of the Mojue guild, Little Medicine Fairy, and asked the merchant, I Am Not A Profiteer, to go to the chamber of commerce in search of secret books that had been put up for auction. As long as it was a book that they did not already have, no matter how high the price was, the book had to be bought.

All members of the Mojue guild took action to find secret books. The number of people in the guild was large and their strength was great; eventually, the number of secret books collected by Qin Mo also reached more than twenty, but they were still short of the full number. As a result, Qin Mo personally took the Mojue team to kill the world boss, who dropped the secret books several times. By the end of October, all thirty official secret books had finally been collected.

The friendship between Qin Mo and Xiao Han had long since reached seven stars. They first copied the secret books from each other, before making copies for the other team members. This way, all Mojue team members had several secret books to choose from in their backpacks, and the skills of the secret books selected before the match could be adjusted according to their opponents.

In the process of collecting secret books, everyone still trained and played qualifying matches on time every day. Their arena scores had already reached over 4,000 points, and their titles had changed to "Great Master" of the fourth rank.

The "Great Master" rank was really full of experts. The eight people in the Mojue team would be divided into two groups to play the random qualifying match; if they were not careful when facing opponents, they could lose. It was estimated that many other players in this rank were professional players from the various teams, which was why the level of the qualifying matches was so high.

Above the "Great Master" rank was the highest rank —— "King". As it was too difficult for players in the Great Master rank to win in a row, no one was able to score more than 5,000 points at the moment. Even if Qin Mo and Xiao Han were experts, when they teamed up to play a qualifying match, they would still lose if they encountered a five-person lineup with a strong tacit understanding between the players on the other side. If they wanted to reach the King rank, they would have to wait until the Spring Festival at least.

Time passed by quickly, and soon, it was November in the twinkling of an eye.

On the 11th of this month, single dogs were celebrating Singles' Day, shopaholics were scrolling through Taobao, and the players of Peerless Jianghu were frantically searching the official website —— to the point where the server was almost paralyzed.

Why? Because today was the day of signups for the all sects challenge arena.

As long as a player's arena had reached 3,000 points, they could sign up, and it was divided by sects. All participants would receive gold coins and material rewards in the game, semi-finalists would also receive special titles and limited martial arts skills, while finalists would receive tens of thousands of yuan, precious collector's items of sect handicrafts, as well as a one-day tour of the official headquarters with food and accommodation fully paid for. How enviable!

The officials were very kind, and this incentive of 'participation is rewarded' also made the whole sect challenge competition more popular than ever.

Shen He watched the webpage refresh early in the morning, and quickly filled in his ID card number in the registration interface. In the end, the circle of “search characters” kept turning for two minutes without any result; Shen He could not help but complain. "Why is it so slow? It must be because many people are signing up at the same time!"

Li Muran said flatly: “No hurry.”

Shen He: “Of course you're in no hurry, you're a milk dad, you don't have to go to the arena PK!”

Liu Hong chipped in with a smile: "The first one to sign up doesn't win the championship; it's useless even if you are in a hurry."

Pausing, Shen He scratched his head. "Sister Hong is right! I'll sign up in two days, then." By that time, the waiting rotation of the search box was no longer present, and a line of words appeared on the screen, listing out the corresponding role of the identity card——

Xijing Moon, telecom district 1, Drunken River, sect: Zhuge family. Do you want to register this character for the first all sects challenge arena?

Excited, Shen He immediately pressed “Yes.”

Please select a cultivation route.

Shen He selected the mechanism flow, and then a line of characters appeared on the screen——

The registration was successful. The current number of participants in this cultivation route: 507 people. Game start time: December 1st; please pay attention to the system notification during the game.

Excited, Shen He exclaimed: "The registration window has only been open for ten minutes, but more than 500 people have already signed up!"

Pei Yu sighed. "Calm down, more than 800 people have signed up for the Luoying Valley jade flute flow."

"There are more than 800 people in Kuangdao Gate," He Beiguang added.

Xiao Han followed accordingly. "There are also more than 800 assassins competing in the dagger flow."

Stunned, Shen He could only stare for a little bit, before turning to Qin Mo to ask: "Master, how many people from Hanhua Sword sect are participating?"

Qin Mo replied calmly: “More than a thousand people.”

Everyone: “………………”

The swordsmen in the game were too handsome, causing many players to select the sword cultivation flow.

However, Shen He was very happy at the news that Qin Mo had to beat so many players from his sect to reach the finals. These thousand people were surely canon fodder, coming all this way to offer his master their heads as practice. After all, quantity was not the key, quality was ultimately the most important!

Although the Zhuge family had fewer people in the competition, it was difficult to operate, and definitely had many experts!

Shaking the mouse roughly, Shen He asked: "The registration page said to wait for a notification in the game. Perhaps the specific competition arrangements will only be told to us after the registration is over?"

"Of course," Qin Mo agreed. "Since there are so many people signing up this time, the officials will have set up some automatic matching procedures in the background. It's impossible to do everything manually; it would take too much time."

Upon hearing this, the Shen He who had wanted to go to the arena immediately to PK with others could only sigh. "Ah, then I'll wait."

The waiting time was extremely long. During the registration period from November 11th to November 25th, Shen He ran to the official website daily, refreshing the registration interface and informing his teammates about the registration numbers of each sect in real time. At 8:00pm on the 25th, the exact moment when the registration finally ended, Shen He read the number of participants aloud. Simultaneously, the officials uploaded a notice about the statistics on Weibo——

The Hanhua Sword sect had the largest number of participants, with the number of applicants in both the longsword and short sword flow breaking 10,000 respectively.

The sect with the second-largest number of participants was Luoying Valley, with the guqin and jade flute flow both having over 8,000 applicants.

From most of the other sects —— Fangcao Hall poison masters, Tingyu Tower black umbrella flow, Yongye City iron claw and dagger flows, Kuangdao Gate's dual swords and broadsword, Zhuge family's bone fan, and the Xuanbing Palace's whip —— the participant numbers did not have much difference between them, and ranged from 5,000 to 7,000.

In contrast, the number of players in the Zhuge family mechanism flow and the Xuanbing Palace double ring flow were the least, with around 3,000 applicants. This was mainly because the operation of these two sects were very difficult; there were too many pets in the mechanism flow, while the two-handed weapons of the double ring flow could be hard to coordinate.

The officials would have tried to balance the data between the different sects, so as to not create an overwhelming advantage in the challenge arena, but it was impossible for the player numbers to be balanced.

It was normal to have fewer people playing in the difficult sects. As for the number of applicants revealed in the screenshots of the official site, everyone agreed that they were happy– when added together, there were over 100,000 players participating, which just about qualified this to be called a national competition.

If the threshold was lowered to under 1,000 points in the arena, the number of participants was expected to increase several times over. After all, there were many dungeon players in the game who did not go to the arena often.

At the same time that the final statistics about the applicant numbers were released, the official website also released an announcement about the competition period —— from November 25th to November 30th, all players who were successfully registered for the competition could select the “Peerless Jianghu first challenge arena special arena” when logging into the game, familiarise themselves with the rules of the competition field, and test their home network. Once the match started, a connection loss will automatically be ruled as a defeat.

The competition server was divided into fourteen sub-areas. Players who signed up for the competition could wait in the area with their own sects and weapons. After a match was found, the system would automatically invite players to enter the competition room. Abusive words were forbidden in the competition room, and players would be eliminated if they were found breaking the rule.

The competition server was open from 10:00am to 10:00pm daily, with every player needing to complete ten matches a day, at their own leisure. After 10:00pm, the system would count the records; players who had won at least five of their matches would proceed to the next round, while those who did not complete their matches, or lost too many matches, would be directly eliminated. This system would continue until there were only sixteen players left in the cultivation route, after which the semi-finals would start.

After reading the rules carefully, Shen He laughed. "It seems that there are too many people signing up for this competition. Since the officials can't send referees, then let the system itself be the judge! In other words, starting from December 1st, all we have to do is to log on into the competition arena, wait for the system to assign us opponents, and play ten games a day, right?"

Qin Mo nodded. "En, the audition makes use of the system to automatically assign opponents and determine the outcome. There is little pressure, everyone should be able to achieve a 50% win rate."

As professional players, if they couldn't even maintain a win rate of 50% amongst thousands of people, they might as well use their IDs to commit suicide!

Chapter end