Chapter 451 – The Mystery Man

Club Excellent Era. The director hadn’t gathered every team member, but Sun Xiang and Liu Hao as well as the crowd members who were revealed couldn’t escape.

When they entered the meeting room, they saw how dark the director’s expression was. It looked as if it were dripping with malice. After they sat down, one of the team members asked in a meek voice: “What happened?” The director threw the newspaper he had picked up that morning at him.

Some of them had seen the news. Some of them hadn’t seen it yet. The person who had asked the question was called Guo Yang and was a part of Team Excellent Era’s main roster. He played a Qi Master named Qi Breaker. Yesterday night, he had been a part of the group chat and had followed along with everyone else to see the show. Today, his name had been revealed in the news, but he himself didn’t know what had happened. The director was absolutely furious and glared viciously at Guo Yang.

In the eSports newspaper, there were four pages besides the lead story with details, analysis, comments, and a whole bunch of screenshots. It was quite impressive that they had been able to write and print out everything that had happened just last night so quickly.

“What were all of you thinking? Our hated enemy isn’t popular enough right now, so you have to run over and give him advertisement? Am I right?” The director began shouting at them. Even though, he was only facing the few in front of him, he also cursed at the pro players from other Clubs who had been exposed as well.

At Excellent Era, there were four people who had went to watch the show.

Sun Xiang, Liu Hao, He Ming. They had went to watch because they cared a lot about the strength of Ye Qiu’s unspecialized. As for Guo Yang, he was there more as a cheerleader and now, he had attracted the director’s aggro. Who made him go in and act like he didn’t know what was going on?

As an old veteran in the pro scene, he had experienced the director’s shouting many times, especially this season. Their record was poor. Everyone had seen the director like this before. Only Sun Xiang hadn’t. In the past, when he was in Team Over the Clouds, he was considered a jewel. When he came over to Excellent Era, he sat as their ace player. It was his first time in the pro scene being yelled at like this. His expression immediately turned uglier.

“Cough.” Liu Hao cleared his throat as if he were about to say something, when someone knocked on the door. The director turned his head and roared “Enter.” An employee scurried in: “Director, there are reporters outside who want to interview a few players. What do we do?”

News stations which specially covered eSports often had reporters living in cities with Clubs. Yesterday night, they had been busy writing, so now they were here to conduct post-interviews in the morning.

The director had clearly expected this to happen. He waved his hands: “Have them wait a bit.”

“Okay.” The employee left. The director turned his head back and stared at Liu Hao: “What did you want to say?”

“I don’t think this is a random accident.” Liu Hao looked at the newspaper, “Even though we got a lot of attention when we showed up online, after entering the Arena, no one knew which room we had went into. Even if they bumped into it through trial and error, the room had a password. How could someone break in? Moreover, from this report, it couldn’t have been some random person who had chanced upon the room. The intruder had clearly come in with a goal. This was the work of someone’s scheme. We’ve all been used!”

“Who needs you to say something so obvious?” The director barked.

“We hadn’t thought of this at that time.” Liu Hao said helplessly.

“With things having come to this, there’s no use in talking about it.” The director said, “I looked at the news and it seems like Ye QIu’s identity hasn’t been revealed?”

“This.......” Liu Hao hesitated because there was no way he could remember every single detail from last night. Everyone at the scene knew that Lord Grim was Ye Qiu, so there was no need for them to mention it when they talked amongst themselves. Did anyone expose Lord Grim’s identity in the chat? He didn’t think so. This may be why the news didn’t reveal Lord Grim’s identity and described him as a mystery man.

But even if he was a mystery man, people would definitely try to guess. As a result, these guesses would be the main topic for today. But it didn’t seem like the mystery man would be much a mystery. With the rumors of Ye Qiu planning on creating a team, most people would guess the mystery man was Ye Qiu.

The few people would question this would be because of one issue: if he were Ye Qiu, it hadn’t been long since he had retired, so why would he create such an uproar and announce that he would come back? Wasn’t he a bit too quick in regretting his retirement? These types of disbelievers also didn’t believe the rumors that Ye Qiu was planning on creating a team.

Speaking of this, the rumors of Ye Qiu’s return was only an inference made in the All Star Weekend, when a Battle Mage had come out and showed a Dragon Raises Its Head. It wasn’t 100% proof that person was Ye Qiu.

“I remember. I think when Huang Shaotian shouted for a match, he mentioned Ye Qiu’s name.” At this moment, Guo Yang suddenly said.

Liu Hao recalled and it seemed to be true. At that time, after Huang Shaotian defeated an opponent, Ye Qiu’s Lord Grim still hadn’t come down, so he shouted Ye Qiu’s name in the public chat. If this had truly been an intentional leak, then such a detail shouldn’t have been missed. Ye Qiu’s name would also create a huge uproar!

All of the Clubs knew that Lord Grim was Ye Qiu, but why did no one announce it to the public? It was because they didn’t want to help him cement this identity. Right now, Ye Qiu was one of their competitors. By utilizing the popularity from his identity, a lot of things would become easier for him. This was why they hoped to see Ye Qiu just die away like a nameless soldier. Because he had never revealed himself to the public in the past, it wouldn’t be easy for him to prove his identity.

For Excellent Era, especially their guild Excellent Dynasty, they were extremely nervous of Ye Qiu’s identity being revealed. The revelation would certainly have a huge negative impact on Excellent Dynasty. The guild had old members that had been in the guild for more than five years and many of them were fans of Ye Qiu. If his identity really was revealed by an official and trusted source, it wouldn’t be possible for Excellent Dynasty to go against Ye Qiu. The other guilds even needed to help block this bullet. Otherwise, if Excellent Era didn’t care about their image and popularity and would rather discard everything to be criticized.......

This was why Excellent Era was so worried about this.

The other Clubs were also quite angry that their players would help advertise him and raise their enemy’s popularity.

Loulan Slash’s team had been quite popular from the start. Afterwards, their advertising had only attracted more and more eyes, making everyone look forward to them. They felt like they would be a strong team that would rock the Alliance. Now, Lord Grim had caused another huge sensation, proving their strength again......

Even though the headlines wrote that the pro players had attacked Lord Grim, Lord Grim was already bound with a team. Loulan Slash’s team would have Lord Grim as the team’s ace player and spokesperson.

If Lord Grim was so strong, didn’t that mean the team he was in would be strong too?

And how strong was Lord Grim? From the detailed report of the fight, it described how he defeated Huang Shaotian.

Huang Shaotian! Who was that? To beat him, even if it was in the Fixed Field, would mean he’s an absolutely amazing expert, no?

Who exactly is he? Who is he? Who is he?

The newspaper invited many famous Glory commentators, hosts, and other professionals to give their opinion. Eighty percent of them suspected that he was Ye Qiu. Professionals were professionals. All of them knew what type of fundamentals was necessary to play a class like an unspecialized. Ye Qiu was without a doubt the most suitable to play one.

To the Clubs, Ye Qiu being revealed would also make their popularity go up another level. They weren’t like Excellent Era who had so many worries. This was also one of the reasons Excellent Era’s director was so anxious. These Clubs would certainly be interviewed. If any one of them nodded their heads to the media, the guesses that Lord Grim was Ye Qiu would be 100% confirmed......

“Director...... should we contact the other Clubs and probe their stances, so we can make preparations?” Liu Hao was an expert at currying favor. He had thought of these issues and had come up with a suggestion. The so-called stances were pointing to the other Club’s stances towards how they would reply to the Lord Grim question.

Who Lord Grim is and why the pro players swarmed over to fight with him would certainly be questions that would be asked by the reporters.

Excellent Era’s director thought about this suggestion and was just about to grab the phone, when Wang Sheng from their public relations department suddenly spoke: “I don’t think there’s any need to do that.”

“If this was something that had been planned, then there’s no way they would miss the fact that Lord Grim was Ye Qiu, no?” Wang Sheng continued, “In my opinion, revealing information step by step and escalating the speculation around Lord Grim would be a good tactic. They wouldn’t reveal everything all at once, but rather a bit at a time, revealing important details slowly. Lord Grim is Ye Qiu. We won’t say it, but it’ll be revealed sooner or later. If we say it, we can at least take the initiative, but if we wait for them to say it, we’ll have absolutely no control of the situation.”

When Wang Sheng said this, Chen Yehui began to grow anxious. No matter the case, he didn’t want Ye Qiu’s identity to be revealed. Not just in the future, but even now, if the guild players knew that Lord Grim was Ye Qiu, their Excellent Dynasty would have a huge wave of deserters.

“I can’t agree with that. If Ye Qiu identity is revealed, the guild will go into chaos!!!” Chen Yehui hastily said.

“Ha ha, this will depend on how we word the statement. Don’t worry Chen, we’ll make sure to consider this when we do it.” Wang Sheng laughed. Their public relations department was responsible for their Club’s marketing. Guild related issues would always be put into consideration.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“Oh? What do you plan on saying?” The director asked. Even though the wording for the statement would be Wang Sheng’s responsibility, the director still needed to know the general picture.