Compared with Lu Yan's absolute strength, Zhao Dezhi's battles had always been a major attraction for the officials. Since Zhao Dezhi had lost to Lu Yan by a single move on the battlefield last year, media outlets around the world had crowned Zhao Dezhi the World's Second Strongest.
In the game, the fastest way to become famous was to challenge the strong. Lu Yan was elusive, appearing and disappearing without a trace, while Zhao Dezhi could be found at any time. As a result, Zhao Dezhi was frequently asked to spar.
Faced with this situation, after Lu Yan guided Zhao Dezhi to victory in the airport battle, he had Zhao Dezhi recruit top experts as disciples and let them help fend off challengers.
Zhao Dezhi might not have been good at much else, but he was absolutely first-rate at talking people into things. After fooling several experts in a row, throughout the past year, anyone who challenged Zhao Dezhi had first been required to defeat his disciples. Though those experts were ostensibly taught by Zhao Dezhi, they had actually been trained by Lu Yan, and every one of them was a super first-rate expert.
As a result, not a single person had managed to challenge Zhao Dezhi in an entire year. The people praising him online believed Zhao Dezhi was even stronger than Lu Yan, because Zhao Dezhi had trained disciples while Lu Yan had none.
But there was another opinion online, claiming that Zhao Dezhi was a fraud who actually knew nothing and was only good at talking people into things.
Quite a few players believed that view, and the officials used it as a selling point to heavily promote the match. By the time the two were ready to fight, the number of viewers exceeded even the audience