Chapter 437: Chapter 423: Quarterfinals Grouping (3rd Update)

The final of the World Dispute Championship took place the next day.

Jiang Qiao only realized how popular the game Dispute was when he saw the final–it was being covered by international media as if it was the World Cup… All attention was focused on the Dispute final’s arena.

The stage for the final wasn’t just any sports stadium; it was a holographic theater built by the Dispute officials with hundreds of millions invested, using technology from China, aiming for the most realistic holographic projection experience.

The Dispute officials succeeded–the live broadcast’s holographic projection was incredibly realistic, even including large fans and other devices to emulate the actual atmosphere.

The match alone had a live viewership of 220 million! The Dispute officials could boldly boast that this was the most-watched match in human history since the advent of the internet… They even planned to declare a Guinness World Record.

As for this historically most-watched final, the eventual result was that Leaping Nucleus won the victory.

The victory was fiercely contested; Leaping Nucleus and Cola Frenzy tied at 6:6, eventually leading to an overtime round decided by a one-on-one duel.

In this overtime match, Juan Canyun was sent out to face Caramel… Juan Canyun finally won with a sliver of health left, beating his predecessor, whom he might have looked up to in China’s eSports circles.

This possibly marked the rise of newcomers in the eSports circle. Either way, Juan Canyun won all the honors in that match!

On the evening the match ended, even though Jiang Qiao was staying in a community two streets away from Wu University, he could still hear the boys in the university dorms shouting, “Leaping Nucleus is awesome!”

It wasn’t just at Wu University; universities throughout China were in a festive mood as if celebrating the new year, and plenty of people on Weibo were posting “My youth is complete.”

Jiang Qiao also followed the trend by posting a Weibo saying, “Leaping Nucleus is awesome.”

Unfortunately, Jiang Qiao’s personal Weibo wasn’t very popular, followed mostly by some college classmates of Jiang Qiao. Speaking of college… Wan Xiang had finished her college entrance exam a while ago.

However, her days of being grounded by her own mother hadn’t ended yet; she might have to wait for the exam results before she could log into Spirit.

During this time, Wan Xiang could only message Jiang Qiao via her phone to inquire about things concerning Spirit.

Although Leaping Nucleus had won the Dispute World Championship, their schedule was far from over… They, along with the players of Cola Frenzy, decided to directly participate in the Spirit Challenge on Eagle Country’s home turf!

So, the day after the Dispute World Championship concluded, while China’s eSports fans were still immersed in the jubilant celebration, the Spirit Challenge officially kicked off.

The challenge adopted a point system, which was integrated with the ladder ranking…the higher the ladder rank, the more initial points one would receive!

The players with the top eight highest points would qualify to advance into the next round of elimination matches.

The point matches lasted about five days, during which Jiang Qiao selectively live-streamed some of the more exciting player duels on the official Spirit live channel.

These included duels among the ten professional players from Leaping Nucleus, the recently returned champions, as well as the players from the runners-up, Cola Frenzy, which Jiang Qiao of course didn’t miss. Next up were encounters featuring incarnations of Fureya team members.

This might even have been a more popular livestream duel than those featuring the members of the champion team Leaping Nucleus.

However intense the fervor, in the eyes of most players, the Spirit Challenge was ultimately just an official event, nothing to do with professional competition.

Even at its hottest, it wasn’t as hot as the anchor Shen Meng from the Holy Spirit region. No… it was nowhere near Shen Meng, barely making it into the top five or six.

Jiang Qiao didn’t care much about the low popularity of the Holy Spirit Challenge Competition; this competition wasn’t meant to attract popularity to the Holy Spirit. If Holy Spirit really wanted to hold a professional competition, Jiang Qiao wouldn’t have organized it so hastily.

Despite being hastily organized, after five days of official competition, players who moved into the top eight gradually emerged.

On the fifth day, Eternal Rosh and Eternal Hilze’er advanced to the knockout rounds with an absolute advantage in points, and Fureya also successfully advanced that evening under the players’ “crowdfunded winning streak.”

After battling fiercely for almost half a month, Lady of Calamity also made it to the knockout rounds on the sixth day, but Drake, whom she had dragged along to compete… was beaten up by players ranked as Supreme Grandmasters.

Watching Drake’s match, Jiang Qiao felt that the Pirate King was holding back, not taking the match seriously, and his indifferent attitude upon losing said it all.

The seventh day finally saw a player’s spot confirmed, which was Caramel. He ultimately failed to maintain his position as the top player across all Holy Spirit servers.

However, watching Caramel climb the ranks frantically on the ladder recently, Jiang Qiao thought he might be planning to redeem himself in the top eight knockouts, driven by a strengthened victory mentality after losing out in the World Conflict Competition.

This made Jiang Qiao quite worried about his psychological state, but luckily, Cola Frenzy had specialized psychologists. When Cola Frenzy lost in the world competition, Bubble, the owner, had even posted on Weibo, “Sorry we lost. We will pay attention to the players’ condition.”

On the eighth day, Zhao Mingwei finally made it to the top ten national servers, securing his qualification for the knockout rounds. That evening, Juan Canyun, who was hailed by various esports reports in Hua Country as the top rookie in contemporary esports, also successfully obtained his qualification.

On the ninth day, only one spot remained for the top eight, and to Jiang Qiao’s surprise… the last spot didn’t belong to any esports powerhouse of Hua Country or any NPC but went to a high-scoring anonymous player, whose ID was Hidden Blade in the Brocade.

This high-ranking anonymous player was a frequent visitor among the top ten champions, although Jiang Qiao hadn’t paid much attention to him, and he was unsure if other professional clubs had…

After all, there were no official professional competitions for Holy Spirit yet, and Jiang Qiao didn’t plan to lead any initiative to start something like a Holy Spirit Professional League just yet.

In any case, after nine days, the top eight players for the Holy Spirit knockout rounds were announced: Eternal Rosh, Eternal Hilze’er, Fureya, Lady of Calamity, Caramel, Happy Gaming, Juan Canyun, and Hidden Blade in the Brocade.

Exactly four NPCs and four players.

For the pairing of these eight, Jiang Qiao simply pressed a random button, leaving the grouping to be decided by the Goddess of Destiny.

The Goddess of Destiny seemed to enjoy pulling pranks, as the final pairing results of the top eight were…

Lady of Calamity versus Fureya’s avatar, Juan Canyun versus Hidden Blade in the Brocade on the left side of the bracket.

Eternal Rosh versus Happy Gaming, Eternal Hilze’er versus Caramel on the right side.

“What kind of devilish grouping is this?” Jiang Qiao looked at the results and could already imagine a bunch of bizarre scenarios.

“I think it’s fine. These two Eternals meeting our two strongest Holy Spirits probably don’t stand much of a chance,” Hai Lan said nonchalantly, not seeing any issue with the grouping.

“Uh… I mean… okay, actually, it’s fine. Let’s announce it as is.”

Upon reflection, Jiang Qiao realized that this dramatic turn was actually what he had hoped to see, so he promptly published the top eight pairings.