Chapter 116 The Preliminary Round Begins

September 5th, 11:40 PM.

The members of Hell Frontline arrived as agreed in Wang Tanzhi's conference room, ready to play their first preliminary match of the Peak Brawl S2 tournament.

Although it felt like it was almost midnight, according to the game's sleep mode time, there were still a full two hundred minutes left. Anyway, as long as they joined the matchmaking queue before midnight, it would be considered "today's" match, so they weren't in a hurry.

"Oh? How rare, our editor-in-chief is actually ten minutes late (real time) today." Looking at Huajian, who was the last to enter the conference room, Feng Bujue, sprawled like a catfish on the luxurious sofa, revealed a mischievous smile.

It had to be said… as the leader of this guild, the captain of the team, and a professional when it came to being late… Brother Jue was the least qualified to mock others on this issue.

"Isn't it because you suddenly decided to start a new book…" Huajian narrowed her eyes, looking back at Brother Jue. "These past two days, I've been busy with the promotional plans and publication of *Nightmare Duet*, and I have to personally handle all kinds of proofreading and review matters. Who knew… someone would suddenly send an email today saying they're preparing a new book." She let out a long sigh, "Hoo… it made me have a bunch of extra things to do temporarily, and I had to work overtime for several hours to get home."

"Speaking of which… we were just discussing it…" Xiao Tan interjected from the side, "Starting a new book so soon doesn't seem to fit your usual style, Brother Jue."

"Hmph…" Feng Bujue snorted, "You actually think I have a 'usual style' and presumptuously believe you've grasped this 'style', hahaha…" He laughed a few times, "Naive! So naive!"

Watching this person's words and actions, Huajian couldn't help but rub her forehead and shake her head: "I must have been subjected to some kind of mental pollution… that I would suggest to management to promote this kind of person as a celebrity author…"

"Hmph… an author is an author, and a celebrity is a celebrity." Feng Bujue shifted his body, sat up straight on the sofa, put on a "Godfather" demeanor, and said in a deep voice, "Using standards other than writing to measure a person who makes a living by creating words… I personally find it very distasteful, let alone using it as a selling point."

"Heh…" A second later, Huajian stared with dead fish eyes and laughed dryly, "You weren't saying that after looking at the price quoted on the contract."

"Well… sometimes… I have to make a certain degree of compromise in the face of reality." Brother Jue still had a serious look on his face, answering without changing his expression.

"The process of your ideological struggle before compromising was banging on the table in front of the computer and laughing wildly, right?" Ruoyu chimed in at the right time.

"Oh… no wonder it took so long to reply to my email…" Huajian revealed a suddenly enlightened expression.

"That… everyone, let's not only discuss things about me, let's talk about something else." Two seconds later, Feng Bujue calmly turned his head and looked at Xiao Tan, "By the way, what kind of contraception do you usually use?"

After he asked this question, he was ganged up on and beaten by three female players.

Xiao Tan and a security robot of the system witnessed the whole process with blank expressions.

"Brother Jue, next time you want to change the topic…" After Brother Jue lay on the ground with a bruised nose and swollen face, Xiao Tan sighed and said, "Let's talk about the weather or something."

"Ah…" After catching his breath, Feng Bujue sat back on the sofa, "Good suggestion…" He covered one side of his cheek and continued, "Okay, let's get back to the point…" This time he was really going to say something serious, "After I went online today, I looked at the web pages in the login space for a while. Unsurprisingly… almost all the game studios have posted their preliminary results on their official websites."

As he said these words, his teammates had also sat down one after another.

"According to my observation and statistics, in the first round, most of the guilds under the names of the studios achieved victory." Feng Bujue's words continued, "Of course… there are still some third-rate, or non-rated studios, that failed in the first battle. Some of these studios… simply didn't update their results on the website, and some, although they announced the results, didn't forget to attach a large amount of text under the results to explain the reasons for the defeat… and the core content is nothing more than—the opponents were too strong, and they were careless."

He paused for a few seconds, and then said, "But overall, the win rate of professional teams is still shockingly high, and those who lost are basically the bottom of the professional ranks. The only first-line studio team that was defeated was 'Shishi Ichiban Team', and the reason was… they encountered 'Order One Team' in the first round."

"Well… that's really unlucky." Xiao Tan heard this and interjected, "Speaking of which… are there no other professional teams encountering each other?"

"There are." Feng Bujue replied, "But it's rare… I flipped through the web pages of hundreds of studios, and apart from Order and Shishi, I only saw one case where two professional teams met in the first round."

"Because the base number of participating teams is too large, right?" Xiao Ling added.

"That's right." Feng Bujue said, "Although Dream Inc. has not publicly announced the number of participating teams in this competition (it will only be announced after the privacy protection function is lifted in the later stages of the preliminary round), but according to my estimation… the total number of teams is at least 30,000, and it may even be 50,000. And among them… the number of professional teams is at most no more than four hundred, which is about 1%."

"Eh? So few?" Xiao Tan asked suspiciously, "But the competition doesn't stipulate that each studio can only send one team to participate, I thought there would be more professional teams."

"Heh…" Brother Jue shook his head and smiled, "Actually, there are very few studios that have the ability to form multiple teams to participate. The two first-line studios with the most teams this time are Shishi and Xingchen, the former formed as many as thirteen teams, and the latter also has ten teams; while the two strong teams, Order and Zhushen, formed four and three teams respectively; as for Hongying, Jianghu, Shanhe, and Tiandi these studios, even though they are also first-line, they only sent two teams to participate." He paused for two seconds, "Further back… such as Bingdi, which we are quite familiar with, as well as a large number of second and third-line studios, individual professional players, etc., can only scrape together one team."

"In this calculation, even the number 'four hundred' has some water in it." Huajian interjected.

"In terms of water… it's okay." Feng Bujue replied, "Judging from the results of the first round, professional teams are, after all, making a living from this. Even if some teams' combat power is not very outstanding, their overall strength is usually a bit stronger than ordinary players' teams."

"Are you going to say next…" Huajian continued, "Because there are usually one or two relatively weak people in the casual players' teams…"

"Yes." Feng Bujue nodded in response.

"Okay." Huajian replied helplessly, "Sorry for holding you back."

"That's not true." But Feng Bujue immediately continued, "There are no shortcomings in our team, you don't have to belittle yourself." His tone didn't sound like he was comforting Huajian, but very serious, "In my opinion, our Hell Frontline team is a top-tier strong team, and has a high chance of winning against any team."

"Oh oh~ Hearing you say that, I feel power surging from my body!" Xiao Tan was really someone who was easily stirred up emotionally.

"If you have to say there's any weakness…" As a result, in the next second, Feng Bujue calmly continued, "...that would be Xiao Tan."

"Hey—" Xiao Tan was shocked at the time.

"In short, what I want to say is… even if we face a professional team, we can completely win. If it's a team of ordinary casual players, then it's even more foolproof." Brother Jue ignored him and continued, "Everyone just needs to play as they did in the practice mode, don't have any pressure."

"There's no pressure anyway." Xiao Ling interjected at this time, "And your choice to enter the matchmaking queue in the last ten minutes of the first day greatly reduces the possibility of us encountering a professional team."

"Oh? So there's this reason why we waited until this time to queue?" Xiao Tan quickly reacted.

"Isn't it obvious…" Feng Bujue replied, "The situation in the following days is hard to say… but the moment the first day just passes zero o'clock, it must be a peak period for professional teams to queue up, because major studios can't wait to take the first win and publish the results on the website."

"Although the probability of encountering them is not high, it's better to avoid them if we can, right?" Ruoyu interjected.

"That's right." Feng Bujue said, "With my character, if we also joined the fun at zero o'clock today, perhaps the one who would have encountered Order One Team in the first round would be our Hell Frontline."

"Your character can already surpass even the probability of less than 0.03%?" Huajian asked with narrowed eyes.

"If it's a negative event…" Feng Bujue answered very seriously, "Yes… very likely."

"In any case… it's unlikely that we will encounter a professional team queuing now." Xiao Ling continued, "I also collected information during the day, and by three o'clock in the afternoon, basically all the studios' teams had announced their results. So… at least at this point in time, the probability of us encountering a professional team is infinitely close to zero."

"That's right." Feng Bujue said, "Therefore, as the captain and coach, what I want to say is… please enter this first preliminary match with a relaxed attitude. As long as you play at a normal level according to the rhythm of the practice mode, you can easily…"

"Don't even think about it." Before Brother Jue could finish speaking, he was interrupted by Ruoyu, "You hardly played the practice mode, and you want to spectate again this time?"

"Well… I think…" Brother Jue wanted to explain, but…

"Whatever you think." Ruoyu said coldly, "You're on this round, I'll be the spectator, and I'm giving you two hours to kill all four of them."

"Huh?"

"Huh?"

"Huh?"

In this second, Xiao Ling, Xiao Tan, and Huajian all had the same reaction. It was the first time they had seen Ruoyu make such a near-unreasonable request.

And Feng Bujue looked at Ruoyu for two seconds, "Heh…" And then he smiled inexplicably, he seemed to understand something, and then said in a tone of coaxing a child, "Okay~ okay~ I'll go, I'll go."