Glory of tactics

Throughout April, Whistling's schedule was very easy. Except for the round at the end of the month, the rest were weak teams in the lower half of the standings.

After sending Linhai away, the atmosphere in the team became a little loose, and the training also relaxed.

The league started in September last year and it has been more than half a year now. With only a week's rest during the Spring Festival, Wuxiao, which is dominated by veterans, has reached the point of exhaustion.

In previous years, the team's ranking would have been somewhere between seven and ten. If you weren't careful, you would fall behind, so you have to grit your teeth and persevere no matter what.

However, the state cannot improve due to fatigue. Most of the time, Whistling's record will suffer a big decline in the last one or two rounds, failing to score the points it deserves, and ultimately falling at the threshold of the playoffs with great regret.

And even if they managed to survive, if they had to face one of the best teams in the league two weeks later, Wuxiao would be exhausted, unable to make it far, and fall directly in the first round of the playoffs.

In fact, this is not the case for Wuxiao alone. This is the case for almost every team that catches the last train of the playoffs. Misty Rain, Voidness, and Excellent Era have always been like this.

However, Wuxiao is different this year. After a 10:0 victory over Linhai, Wuxiao has already put enough distance between itself and the void behind it. As long as we perform normally in the final rounds, we cannot lose the sixth position.

Moreover, in view of catching up with Yanyu, they will encounter Tyranny with competing styles in the playoffs, and Wuxia Shangxia will have little motivation for this.

For every difference in the final ranking, the club will receive a difference of 1 million in dividends. For Linhai, who was in financial distress, this was an income that could help him survive. But for Wuxiao, although it was a considerable amount of money, it was not worth fighting for.

There was no pressure on the team's performance for the time being, so Lin Jingyan simply arranged for the veterans to rest, allowing the young people and some bottom substitutes who had been unable to play in the game to play.

The lineup for the weekend match against deputy squad leader Ming Qing was arranged early.

Qiu Fei was the first to play in the individual competition, followed by Zhao Yuzhe and Lu Yiming. The three contestants in the group arena are Guo Haoran, Song Qixuan and Fang Rui. These six, plus Priest player Ruan Yongbin, are all the candidates for Team Howl to go north to Tokyo.

In the first half of the year when he was still at Excellent Era, Qiu Fei had played against Mingqing, also in an away game. At that time, Excellent Era won 8:2, which was not an easy win.

Although Qiu Fei could no longer remember the names and skills of his opponents after looking at the information, Qiu Fei still remembered their use of the map. Their meticulousness and tenacity left a deep impression on him.

That time, Excellent Era encountered considerable resistance in the duel. In the individual competition, both Liu Hao and He Ming lost successively, and only Qiu Fei won a victory after playing for three full minutes.

The situation in the arena competition is similar. Shen Jian and Guo Yang missed one after another, and it was only captain Ye Xiu who turned the tide to ensure that they did not lose two points.

Seeing how relaxed the team was, Qiu Fei felt that the game might be difficult if he took it lightly, so he went to Lin Jingyan alone to persuade him to take this game seriously.

Lin Jingyan said to Qiu Fei: "Don't worry, just treat this game as adjusting to your condition. We already have enough points, it doesn't matter even if we lose a few points. From now on, Xiao Qiu, you have to adjust your mentality. Our real next game is the first round of the playoffs, against the third place in the league. The next few regular season games, no matter how they are played, it doesn’t matter. Our goal is to win. We can reach beyond the second round this year.”

Qiu Fei actually wanted to say that the first round of the playoffs is still a month and a half away, so it seems a bit too early to start adjusting now. But judging from Lin Jingyan's tone, the matter had been settled, so he said nothing more.

Training, resting, and practicing trumpet, Qiu Fei's life was simple and regular. After several rounds, it was time for the weekend game again.

Mingqing is a young team that just entered the league this year.

They followed Xuanqi's successful relegation experience and invited former Thunder captain Li Bo as coach.

Then, under the guidance of this veteran, Mingqing introduced several rotation and substitute players from the two giants Blue Rain and Tiny Herb as pillars. Most of the other players have actually played no more professional-level games than Qiu Fei.

Swordsman player Shang Shanhe, who played against Qiu Fei last time, will compete in the ring this time. In the first individual match, Qiu Fei faced off against elemental mage player Tian Gaozhi.

Tian Gaozhi is also one of the players introduced by Mingqing this season. However, compared with Song Pingxiao and Shang Shanhe, the captain and deputy captain from Blue Rain, his background is a bit plain.

Last season, Tian Gaozhi played the main role in the Time Team. In the end, the Time Team ranked 19th and was eliminated together with the bottom-place Wuji Team. The team was relegated and went to compete in the Challenger League, nicknamed the Resurrection Tournament. Tian Gaozhi, because of his pretty good performance, was recognized by Li Bo and transferred to Mingqing, allowing him to stay in the league and continue playing together.

The news that only seven people came from Wuxiao could not be hidden from his opponents. But Qiu Fei's performance in the first individual competition was beyond Mingqing coach Li Bo's expectation.

The elemental mage has no advantage against the flexible magician. In addition, there is a large gap in strength between the two players. The winner of this game was decided in just one and a half minutes.

Ma Tao Ze Feng didn't even get a quarter of his health damaged, so he won the first point without any blood.

Qiu Fei's easy victory made his teammates underestimate the enemy even more, thinking that Ming Qing was nothing more than that.

Finally, what Qiu Fei was worried about happened. In the second individual competition, Zhao Yuzhe was defeated by former Tiny Herb substitute Shi Zhibo, and then Lu Yiming was defeated by Wei Guangji, a rookie in the same profession as him.

In both games, Mingqing players took full advantage of the self-selected map and took the lead from the beginning. After the individual competition, Mingqing led 2:1.

In the next arena game, Mingqing's home court advantage continued.

Shang Shanhe took advantage of the natural traps on the map to directly trick Guo Haoran, and won his first victory without any effort. The next Song Qixuan was no match for him, and was defeated after a big battle.

The roaring arena match collapsed too quickly, and two people were gone in the blink of an eye, which made the guard general Fang Rui dumbfounded.

Thieves are not a single powerful profession. Fang Rui defeated Shang Shanhe and Wan Yifu after him, leaving Gui Mi Su Sui with very little health left. Facing the last captain Ming Qing, he had no way to save himself.

After the first half, Wuxiao only scored one point. This made the Mingqing fans at the scene very excited and cheered for the home team with overwhelming momentum. They hoped that the team could continue their efforts and achieve a big victory to add a glimmer of hope for relegation.

However, the advantage on the home map has its limits. When the strength gap widens to a certain extent, no matter how well the map is used, it cannot determine the outcome of the game.

Qiu Fei once again became the key player.

Although he still used his horse to ride on the west wind today in the team competition, just like he used Luohua Fengyu in the previous game, Qiu Fei used his own skills to arbitrarily shatter Mingqing's formation and opened the door to victory for Wuxiao.

6:4, the final winner is still Howling.