Chapter 46. Who is it? It's really hard to guess. ...

"Welcome everyone to the finals of the Juxing Cup!"

On stage, the host is passionately presiding over the opening ceremony.

"This competition is really exciting." As they lined up to enter the arena, Song Meng remarked, "It's almost as good as the league three years ago."

"The league isn't very popular right now," You Xin said.

"The average viewership for the regular season is 3.5 million. Isn't that good enough? But I heard that this year's numbers are down 10% from last year, and they all say it's because you weren't there," Song Meng joked.

You Xin said calmly, "That's because I didn't win the championship last year, the year before, or the year before that. I'm not that capable."

“Yeah, now that you mention it, it’s been three years without a championship. The last one was won by HYG.” Song Meng grunted. “The one before that was five years ago, the old CG… If this continues, will this game die in a couple of years?”

"Meng Ge, don't scare the newcomers," Nan Zhiyi interrupted him. "Xiao Yu is still waiting to go to youth training."

“He doesn’t need to fight himself,” You Xin said. “He’s fast enough.”

Song Meng smiled.

"By the way, have you guys been watching the league lately?" he asked.

Nan Zhiyi: "No."

He used to watch almost every ROE league match, especially the CG matches. Now, the Juxing Cup alone is enough to keep him busy. He plays ranked matches every day, watches opponents' replays, and thinks about the details of each game. By the end of the day, he's exhausted and has no desire to even click on the Spring Tournament livestream.

“The new guy CG brought in, what’s his name, something like X?” Song Meng pondered for a moment. “Xww? He was pretty good at first. I saw fans praising him, saying he was going to kick Yux and punch Milk. But lately his performance has been getting worse and worse, and it’s dragged down the whole team’s performance.”

Nan Zhiyi: "What's CG's ranking now?" He remembered that when the Juxing Cup first started, they were still at the top of the league standings.

"fifth."

"They dropped so much?!" Nan Zhiyi couldn't help but be shocked. "The spring season is almost over now, their playoff seeding will definitely be terrible."

“They’ve been thoroughly analyzed,” You Xin said. “Many newcomers have this problem: they think they’re invincible when they first step onto the field, but they usually reveal their true colors after about half a month.”

Song Meng: "You talk as if you're an old man who's been fighting for years."

"Anyway, I haven't been figured out by anyone." You Xin shrugged.

"You're really arrogant."

"At least he has the right to be arrogant," Nan Zhiyi whispered from the side.

What was said in jest was taken to heart by the listener. He recalled Meng, who was demoted in the Spring Split of 2023, and beer, who replaced him as the secondary carry. Beer did perform well when he first appeared, but his performance became increasingly bizarre as the season progressed. By the time of the World Invitational that year, he had become a notorious erratic carry who could drag the entire team down.

Therefore, sometimes managers would rather buy experienced players to secure a stable ranking than try their luck with newcomers and rely on so-called "chemistry".

"Brother Meng, you seem to be in a good mood today," Xiaoyu said. He had been sitting in front of the wall, probably because he was too nervous about playing in the finals for the first time.

“If we win this match, the next step is the Contenders Cup,” Song Meng said, narrowing his eyes. “...I’ll be meeting those familiar faces again. How should I put it? I used to feel very resistant and reluctant, completely unwilling to face them or see even the slightest bit of news about them... But after a month of playing, although I don’t know how it will turn out when we face them, I’m actually starting to look forward to it.”

At this point, the staff reminded them that it was time to go on stage.

"The unknown is always something to look forward to." Nan Zhiyi smiled, took the team flag that the organizer had made for them from the staff, raised it high, and was the first to stride confidently toward the stage.

-

Typically, the finals of a series are several times more popular than the previous knockout stages. As a result, the live stream of this finals was flooded with viewers who were just there for the excitement and watching the streamer's cup for the first time.

[Live update: Current odds: Angel's Choice 1.95, Little Bell 1.90]

[Yux's team has lower odds than the four opposing streamers, is that a joke?]

[They've come all the way up with clean sheets, do they really think they're that bad? Don't treat the bookmakers like fools.]

Did I really think that the opponent who swept all the way up was strong...?

Putting everything else aside, at least Team Little Bell hired their own coach. What good picks can you expect Team Angels to make on their own? Hiding a Witch in the fifth game of the finals?

Nan Zhiyi settled into his seat. Since they had advanced to the finals through the winners' bracket, the staff had informed them they had priority in choosing sides, so they chose the red team. He was currently sitting on the far right of the line, just in time to catch a glimpse of the blue team, the Little Bells, to his right.

Besides the four contestants sitting in their seats, there was a coach in a suit and headphones walking around behind them, scribbling in a small notebook, looking exceptionally professional.

"Hello, hello, hello." Song Meng was testing his microphone. "They actually brought the coach with them."

Little Fish: "Are there any analysts?"

“The analysts aren’t coming up; they’re sitting backstage. There can only be one coach on stage.”

Upon hearing this, You Xin also glanced at the coach of the Little Bell team.

A moment later, he delivered an important speech: "It's utterly useless."

"Don't talk nonsense, or the director will cut it out of the broadcast." Nan Zhiyi pretended to scare him.

After confirming that the equipment was working properly, map selection began. Soon, the randomly selected map appeared before everyone's eyes—[Sky City].

"It's like the other side's home turf right from the start," Nan Zhiyi said thoughtfully, staring at the screen in front of her.

"CG seems to have a particularly low win rate on this map," Song Meng joked, glancing at You Xin. "Last year, it was only 38?"

“34, that’s because beer doesn’t practice long-range attacks,” You Xin said coldly. “It has nothing to do with me.”

The banning phase begins. The blue team specifically banned two classes that Nan Zhiyi has been frequently playing in ranked matches recently, showing that their training team has indeed studied their opponents' class pool. Meanwhile, the red team…

"Oh? Fortress Guardian, Celestial Guardian, the red team banned two shield-type classes?" A commentator asked in confusion. "Don't they ban Little Bell's archer? That's a super strong class."

As expected, the blue team immediately picked up the Archer, a very powerful unit in the current version and perfectly suited for the Sky City map.

Immediately afterwards, the red team captured the [Angel] and [Elf Hunter] in succession.

"Two marksmen!" the commentator exclaimed. "It should be the choice of the two carries in Angel's team."

"Yux has played support with Hunter before," another commentator pointed out.

"But they banned two shield-type units, so they probably want to play an air-to-ground bridge defense team, right?"

The Angel has wings and can fly for short periods. The Elf Hunter excels at jumping and can move freely between different bridges on the map. Two highly agile, short-range archers provide aerial damage, paired with two ground-based front-line classes, allowing them to block the enemy's path to the bridge after securing advantageous terrain.

In the Sky City map, the bridge-guarding team is a fairly standard and extremely predictable choice.

The solution is quite simple – there are more than two shield-type classes.

Sure enough, in their next selection, Team Bell chose the Gladiator, who wields a sword in one hand and a shield in the other.

Although his shield was much smaller than that of the two purely defensive guards, it was enough to block arrows.

I thought there would be some new tricks to see, but it turned out to be the same old, tired bridge-guarding tactic.

[Something that's been played to death in the league and nobody plays anymore]

[The blue side has a similar lineup, it's a magic-based exchange.]

The blue team added a long-range secondary carry capable of dealing magic damage in their third pick.

The red team then locked in... [Barbarian].

"Uh, what's this...?" The commentator was clearly confused. "Is this the class for Yux? Barbarian? That's not entirely a bad idea..."

The role of the Barbarian is less about charging into the front line to absorb damage and more about being an offensive option to break through the opponent's formation.

But in any case, at least they can withstand injuries, which is a good fit for the bridge defense team's lineup.

The Little Bells team was clearly also confused by their opponent's move. Their coach and players were exchanging glances and huddled together, nervously discussing something.

Ultimately, they added a more defensive-oriented class.

"Overall, although Little Bell's team has a somewhat cumbersome lineup, they can effectively withstand the aerial firepower of Angel Team," the commentator analyzed. "As long as they can protect their archers, they can maintain their advantage... Wait, yux revealed a Witch. Revealing a Witch seems to be a standard choice for Angel Team now... What?! He locked her in?!?!"

Everyone in the audience gasped in unison.

The four members of the blue team were equally stunned, looking at each other in disbelief.

"What kind of lineup is this? Are you kidding me?" Tangyuan couldn't help but mutter.

The coach of the Little Bell team on stage was also stunned for a moment. He subconsciously turned around and looked in the direction of the Red team. Usually, he would be shaking hands with the opposing team's coach at this time, but the place was empty.

In the end, he could only awkwardly wave his hand at the air and turn to leave the stage.

This lineup looks like something I picked while sleepwalking.

This is insane! It looks like a pro player in a random match.

"Okay, it seems the Angels team has their own ideas. Now everyone can have a no-prize guessing game to see which of the four professions will be played by which player." The commentator's voice sounded like a wry smile.

On the big screen, the weapon icons for different professions began to switch below the character's portrait.

"The Hunter is the main DPS? No, the Hunter was given to Yux... Okay, the swap is complete now."

"The Angel team's lineup is: Angel as secondary DPS, Hunter as support, Witch as main DPS, Barbarian as tank... Oh my god."

The commentator abruptly paused, as if suddenly realizing something: "Could it be that Angel is trying to trick the enemy into playing a clunky lineup so she can make explosives and blow them up???"

"Little Bell, you've been tricked!!!"

He guessed right.

Over the next twenty minutes, the Angels team demonstrated to everyone what it means to "win faster with a stranger lineup".

Two archers donned armor and imbued their arrows with a slowing frost effect; a barbarian wrestled with a character on the opposite bridge; the witch smiled wickedly and pulled out a full pouch of explosive potions—

Trying to dodge an ice arrow? Bomb it!

Want to avoid the barbarians? Bomb them.

Want to hit me? Sorry, I'll blow you up too.

Of the three types of damaging potions that the witch can create, the Explosive Potion is an area-of-effect (AOE) instant damage potion; any enemy within the potion's blast radius will be affected.

However, to block the ice arrows, they had to huddle together and use their shields to block the rain of arrows—but the gladiators' shields weren't big enough! They couldn't withstand the damage from the potion's explosive effect!!

At this point, everyone finally understood why the Angels banned two Guardians of the Aegis.

The problem is, who could come up with that?

Who's some kind soul playing witch in Sky City?!

Just over twenty-one minutes in, all four members of Team Bell were wiped out by the explosive potion. With their respawn point destroyed, the first game ended in a way that left everyone speechless.

"Uh... this teaches us a lesson. If your opponent usually likes to play unconventional lineups, you must not let them lead you by the nose in the pick phase." The commentator remarked amidst the red team's victory effect, "Because you never know what kind of weird stuff they will pull out to trick you."

"However, I feel I still need to remind everyone that although this lineup is strange, it's not something everyone can play... The director just showed us some data: the archery accuracy of the Angel and Hunter classes in this game was 56% and 49% respectively. If you can't reach that accuracy, promise me you'll go to the shooting range to practice some more, okay? I really don't want to go home from get off work today, open the game, and find a row of Frost Archers hiding in my bed."

To be honest, the Blue Team's picks were really clever; they were much more pleasing to the eye than the formulaic picks of some teams in the league right now.

[You might want to criticize: CG]

[You guys are making such a fuss over a streamer tournament?]

[What's wrong with bragging? Why not brag about this instead of your stinking CG regular season?]

[If zds had even half the clarity of their pick strategy, they wouldn't have lost the fifth game last year.]

[One person wrote a petition in blood, declaring that the angel intended to go to CG and kick ZDS down.]

[A letter written in blood by two people]

[Fun fact: Angel's intention is that she's a die-hard fan of Yux and has long hated CG.]

[Are you really going, bro? Can you go and give ZDS a good kick for me?]

"Did you guys see their expressions just now?" Song Meng laughed loudly in the lounge. "They were practically stumbling around when they went down; they were completely dazed."

"It's pointless to say anything," You Xin mumbled, gnawing on an energy bar.

Nan Zhiyi tapped the table. "Everyone performed exceptionally well last game, and I don't think there's anything to review," he said. "However, strategies can only be used once. Next game, we'll most likely draw a melee map. If the opponent chooses a flanking composition, we'll go all out; if they go all out, we'll circle around them."

The second game features a random map, [Ruins].

The Little Bell team was still shaken by the maze-like map. Last time, they destroyed the opponent's respawn point early on, but unexpectedly, they were wiped out in the Time Warp Battlefield, losing three for four, and their own respawn point was accurately located.

But clearly, they have learned their lesson this time and are determined not to repeat the same mistakes.

The blue team's Little Bell team 1L once again secured the exact same Alchemist as before, while the South Zhiyi team successively locked in the Elemental Mage and the Thief.

After the red team selected "Catman" in the 3rd floor, all the viewers in the venue and online could see that the four members of the blue team were looking at each other in confusion, their heads shaking like four rattles.

What kind of lineup is this?!

"Do you believe that once the Time-Space Battlefield opens, they will definitely place the resurrection point right at their feet?" Nan Zhiyi said mysteriously after locking up the cat-man.

Song Meng: "I guess they don't want to drag it out until then."

The Little Bell team drafted a fast-paced lineup, naturally aiming for frequent early-game skirmishes.

However.

"Have you... seen them anywhere?"

In the blue team's voice chat, the support player asked a question, looking bewildered.

"No one is at point A in the east."

"Neither West A nor West A."

"Keep an eye on the elements. He seems to be constantly switching to wind mode. He'll probably be on the wall soon."

"The entire West District is deserted. I just went upstairs to check... Holy crap, but they've already opened the treasure chest?"

Meanwhile, from the vantage point of view of the audience and commentators, the movements of the Nan Zhiyi team were crystal clear—

"The alchemist went upstairs! He went upstairs. It seems that Angelic Will has already discovered his movements. He jumped directly from the window to the outer wall. His wind form prevented him from landing immediately. He cushioned his fall and left from a blind spot in the alchemist's field of vision."

"Meng is manipulating the thief, leading the cat, and if he keeps going in this direction, he'll run into the other side... Hmm? But suddenly he changed direction! Now the people on the other side can't see him at all... What is this thing, spider-sense?"

"A full 23 minutes have passed! The score is still 0-0! If I were Little Bell, I would be going crazy by now—once the 25 minutes are up, Alchemist's early advantage will be gone! And the other side didn't suffer from poor development because they avoided early fights, because they took a detour and stole a lot of resources. Let's look at the total gold of both sides... 31k to 29.8k, only a little over a thousand gold difference!"

"Although there hasn't been a single kill yet, this is the most interesting match I've seen all year," the commentator laughed. "The nature of the game has completely changed! What you're watching now is a hide-and-seek tournament in the Eternal Rebirth version!!"

Thirty minutes later, the time-space battlefield opened precisely on time.

As the game progresses into the later stages, the Red Team's lineup is undoubtedly in its strongest period.

Less than two minutes later, the Red Team wiped out the Blue Team with a score of 0 to 4 and destroyed their Resurrection Stone.

"Huh? Huh?? It's over?!" Hearing the commentator's voice, he seemed to jump up from his seat with a "whoosh." "A 32-minute match, and it's over with a 4-0 score??"

"This is absurd!!!"

[Little Bell is devastated]

This match was so frustrating! You couldn't use your strength effectively; the opponent just wouldn't engage you and kept circling around you. What could you do?

[Who's in charge of the blue team? Is Yux in charge? He seems to have a clear view of the enemy's movements. That flanking maneuver at the west corner was probably just a guess, right?]

If he were really that good, would the CG in last year's finals have been so terrible? [smile]

[You might also like to see: "Hide and Seek on the Ruins Map" - by Angel Yi, her third video from last year]

Oh no, I've recorded footage of him again.

[Please leave Little Bell alone, Angel Yi. He looked like he was about to cry when he stepped off the stage.]

[What a boring game! Couldn't we win fair and square just once?]

[Homepage mystery solved: I supported the CG team in the CG vs HYG match, come join me!]

【↑Why doesn't your team win a single game? Don't you want to win?】

[CG fans, stop messing around! I'm punishing you by making you watch yesterday's XWW jumping over the wall and getting instantly killed [laughs][laughs]]

The third random map is the [Jungle].

"Old Zhao, do you think there will be a map 4 in today's match?" The commentator asked mysteriously in a low voice as they entered the ban/pick screen.

Another commentator immediately said, "I'm warning you, don't try to trap me. I never said there wouldn't be picture four today."

He added, "Dear viewers, Mr. Aoki is an Angel Italian fan, he's openly a fan. I saw him asking for a photo with someone last time. If he really loses, everyone should go after him!"

"It's the final battle." On stage, in front of the screen, You Xin gently tapped the keyboard in front of him with his fingertips. "How about I play a game of Bard?"

Nan Zhiyi was both amused and exasperated: "Is this how you use 'final battle'...?"

"You can play this too?" Song Meng asked curiously. The Bard's skills are quite complex for a support character, and there's no option to use him as a carry. At least that's the case in the league.

"I know a little," You Xin said. "Someone taught me."

Song Meng: "…………"

It's really hard to guess who it is.

"Oh? Angel Yi picked Bard. Actually, I guessed it was a support pick." The commentator on stage said loudly in agreement. "Although we all know that this is Angel Yi's signature pick - in the first game, Angel Yi also played Yux's signature Witch. Playing each other's signature picks is reasonable, and it's not the first time we've seen it."

During the Pick phase, both sides selected the professions they wanted.

"Let's see what Angel Team's final picks are: archers, swordsmen, bards, fortress guards... Wow, what a powerful offensive lineup! Looks like they're about to 'draw their swords'?"

-----------------------

Author's Note: I originally wanted to release the final exam all at once, but I've had a lot of written exams these past two days, so I haven't had the time. I'm so sorry, I've been so busy lately and feel dizzy QAQ