Ever since Lord Grim appeared online, he was constantly receiving messages. It was firstly guild leaders, Happy guild members but also other players that noticed that he went online. This news started to spread quickly and Lord Grim's inbox was already exploding. After all, it was already a long time since he showed up in the Heavenly Domain.
Then Lord Grim arrived at the boss location at Crystal Valley and quickly gained the aggro of all teams. Just seeing Lord Grim was already disturbing enough for them. Yet he even dared to start trash-talking by thanking everyone for coming to his welcome back party. Not only Huang Shaotian was bombarding him with messages at the moment.
However, by far the most reaction was caused by a message that appeared in the world chat:
"We organized a welcome back party for Ye Xiu. All his fans and supporters are invited to join him at Crystal Valley!"
At first, some players were skeptical whether it is real since the message came from Smiling Lake. Someone then noticed that Lord Grim gave Smiling Lake a special role "Party Organizer". This proved the authenticity of the message and it caused a huge uproar. Players from all corners of Heavenly Domain headed towards Crystal Valley.
"What's the purpose of this?" Jiang Botao asked bewildered.
"We just want more people to join the party!" this time it was a woman's voice full of excitement that answered the question. These words were spoken by a Launcher with already a familiar name Smiling Lake but an unfamiliar voice. Pro-players could recognize that it wasn't Su Mucheng.
"Let's just kill him!" Sun Xiang's suggestion quickly gained support not only from his team.
"Did you guys not receive enough beating the last time?" Fang Rui's trash talk began rubbing salt into the Samsara's still open wound from the finals.
"I'll show them my strength again." Steamed Bun added.
Samsara decided to speak with actions rather than words. It was Zhou Zhekai who initiated the attack. His revolvers were firing rapidly.
Tyranny's team quickly followed and Zhang Jiale was the second one to start attacking from the distance.
Huang Shaotian wouldn't miss this opportunity and headed towards Lord Grim. Another Blade Master that belonged to Lu Hanwen was beside him.
Lord Grim retreated and used Aeriel Fire to land on a high rock that provided him protection. Other Happy players were still standing in the front and were prepared for the attack. Tang Rou was the first one to meet incoming Sun Xiang's Dragon Breaks the Ranks with hers. Both were wearing just orange equipment and thus skills just negated themselves. Tang Rou immediately followed with Double Stab, which got parried by Sun Xiang. Then he used Dragon Tooth but Tang Rou dodged. Then she wanted to counter-attack him but Ice Wave from Jiang Botao blocked the way so she directed her offense to someone else, i.e. Huang Shaotian. However, Huang Shaotian used a Tripple Slash to avoid Tang Rou since he had a different target.
Lord Grim's actions already received disdain from Huang Shaotian:
"You have no shame just standing there and watching as your team fights. Stop hiding behind your team members and come out to fight me one on one. What are you afraid of?
Hey Xiao Shiqin, why is your team just watching from distance? You also have no shame. Even Tiny Herb joined the fight."
"We don't know whether it's really a Ye Xiu" Yu Wanzhou interrupted Huang Shaotian. He was suspicious from the very beginning because he believed that it would be smarter from Ye Xiu to stay low-level and then take advantage of the surprise moment. When Yu Wanzhou saw that Lord Grim is not acting, it just magnified his suspicion but he still couldn't confirm that it is not Ye Xiu. In any case, he was still paying attention to the boss since that was the main reason for being here. No team has attacked the boss yet.
In the current valley terrain, it would be impossible to hide the boss from others since it was rather an open area with mountains in the distance from all sides. Yu Wanzhou noticed that some players appeared on the top of mountains. He spun around and discovered that players are coming from all directions. He sent out someone to scout the areas behind the mountains. Shortly after, he could see hundreds of players coming down from the mountains and already had a bad feeling about that. The report just confirmed this feeling since there were thousands of players already visible behind the mountain and even more players were already on the way. The last estimate was 10 thousands players.
This couldn't remain without noticing from other teams and everyone was wondering what is Ye Xiu planning to do.