"Split off five more teams?"
Everyone from Frost Heaven's Sword stared at Shi Feng, drawing sharp breaths.
The arrangement proposed by Yulong Qijue was conservative, perhaps, but it wouldn't lead to any serious mistakes. After all, they held absolutely no advantage in numbers — a single misstep and their hope of competing for seats would vanish.
But Shi Feng wanted to split off five more teams on top of that, each with a minimum of a hundred people. This wasn't bold anymore — it was outright madness.
"Guild Master Black Flame, isn't this a bit too reckless?" Mu Xin couldn't help but voice her concern.
Everyone in Frost Heaven's Sword already knew about Shi Feng's staggering strength. One Rider Against a Thousand was no exaggeration — even leading the smallest possible team, he could handle the vast majority of threats.
But the other four teams wouldn't have that same guarantee. No one else possessed Shi Feng's terrifying combat power. The strongest player in Zero Wing after him was Ziyan Liuyun, but her control over magic was far inferior to Shi Feng's — a fact that had been plain for anyone to see in her battle against Libra.
As for the rest of Zero Wing, their combat standard generally fell short of the Vacuum Realm. They could be considered fighters, sure, but they couldn't turn the tide of a battle.
Even Domain experts couldn't manage that on their own — which was exactly why Guild Master Yulong had assigned only the guild's elders and council members to lead teams of no fewer than three hundred.
At this moment, it wasn't just Mu Xin who felt this way. You Lan and Yan Tianxing also found themselves looking toward Shi Feng.
Zero Wing had made tremendous progress lately, and their roster of top-tier fighters was growing steadily — but they hadn't reached the level of world-shaking monsters yet. The only truly reliable asset they had was Ziyan Liuyun. Everyone else was clearly a cut below.
Splitting directly into five small teams meant a single stroke of bad luck could wipe one out entirely. This tournament was no child's play, and it wasn't some minor contest within the Divine Realm either. Every major superpower was holding back enormous reserves of strength.
These were the twelve provisional guild seats — the most coveted positions in the entire Divine Realm!
Every superpower would throw everything they had into this fight. Top-tier experts of the Vacuum Realm would be nothing more than rank-and-file fighters in this tournament. Each participating team would likely have several, even more than a dozen such experts in its ranks. They wouldn't be able to stir up much trouble on their own.
Only those who had mastered a Domain could be considered high-end combat power — but even they would probably have to flee if they ran into a hundred-man team alone. It would take a peerless expert to genuinely influence the outcome of a battle on any given front.
And that was to say nothing of the fact that a hundred-man team was the absolute minimum force allowed. Running into a five-hundred-man team would be a disaster, and facing a thousand-man team with a tenfold numerical disadvantage — there would be no surviving that.
"You're right, it is somewhat reckless. But it's also the only way we have any shot at earning a seat." Shi Feng didn't bother denying it. "Otherwise, Frost Heaven's Sword won't stand a chance at all. I think you all understand that much."
In his previous life, Frost Heaven's Sword had lacked the foundation to compete for the twelve provisional seats. They never had a prayer.
And the opening phase of the island battle was absolutely critical. If they didn't spread out across the islands as much as possible and instead concentrated their numbers on just one or two, they might as well give up on the seat contest altogether.
Even if they could monopolize one or two islands, there were only six seats to be claimed. The eighteen islands weren't counted by size — you needed to hold at least three to have a reasonable chance. And completely securing three islands was far easier said than done.
After Shi Feng finished speaking, the room fell into a heavy silence.
"I'm actually inclined to agree with Guild Master Black Flame's reasoning," Hong Xinyuan suddenly stood up and said. "Leaving twenty-one teams to scatter randomly across eighteen islands — that's pure gambling on luck. We might as well take a calculated risk instead."
"But if we split off five more teams, a single bout of bad luck could leave a hundred-man team stranded without any support from the other groups. They wouldn't be able to accomplish anything..." Yu Cang shook his head.
Thirty guilds were participating this time. Each island would end up with roughly two guilds' worth of players on average. Even if a hundred-man team landed on the right island, the situation still wouldn't look favorable no matter how you sliced it.
The Frost Heaven's Sword members fell silent once more.
"Tell you what — I'll agree to split off five hundred-man teams. But the only support we can offer those teams is regular Tier 3 experts. We won't be able to allocate any top-tier fighters to them," Yulong Qijue said after some deliberation.
"Guild Master?" Hong Xinyuan frowned.
Five teams were being spun off, sure, but without a handful of elite experts anchoring each one, this was essentially sending Zero Wing's people out to walk a tightrope. You could even call them sacrificial pawns.
He understood the reasoning, of course — a hundred-man team was already a sacrificial pawn by nature. This was a Hail Mary at best, and you couldn't afford to pour too many resources into a long shot. But since they were gambling anyway, why not put a few more chips on the table?
"Hong, say no more. My mind is made up," Yulong Qijue said, his tone leaving no room for argument.