Chapter 17

After a few days without any further incident, Puppy, the FS’ former sniper, also returned to China.

Puppy was never as popular as Yu Sui and Chen Huo, and he returned to China without any fanfare. There was no sensational news online, and only some of the more astute fans sniffed out that there was something strange afoot.

These were all former members of team FS and the timing of their return was a bit too coincidental, don’t you think?

And the rumors that Yu Sui had joined team NSN still hasn’t been affirmed by an official announcement on the team’s website. Yu Sui seemed like a free man and Chen Huo even more so. Although he’s also been living at NSN’s base since his return, he’s never even played in a training match. This whole time, he’s only served as Wawa’s training partner for a few matches. It felt like they were waiting for something.

But what could they be waiting for?

Small groups of fans began to discuss amongst themselves and they made a bold prediction. It couldn’t be that Whisper’s going to form his own team, right?

A fan posted his prediction on his Weibo, where an intrepid someone took a screenshot and posted it on the e-sports forums. This then instantly detonated the gunpowder kegs and blew everything up once again.

Yu Sui was indeed worthy of being the man who once unified all the haters in the e-sports circle. The slightest hint of trouble brought in tens of millions of online traffic. In one afternoon, the forum that published this issue was flooded and slaughtered. Strangely, about this matter Yu Sui’s fans and haters were in unanimous accord. Everyone wasn’t happy.

The haters naturally had ample reason. This defector was back. It was barely acceptable to them that he help out in whichever team as a paltry means to redeem himself to their regional division. But to dare form his own team?! Who does this team-breaking dog think he is?! Pah!!!!!

The reason of the fans though could reluctantly be considered as valid. Yu Sui’s defection, disbandment of his team, forcing his teammates to retire, selling off his teammates...all these heavy hammers have long pounded his fans until they could only lie prone on the ground. You could curse them all you want, they won’t explain anything. After all these years of difficulties and hardships, only the chillest of the chill among Yu Sui’s fans still remained. All they wanted now was for Yu Shen to peacefully spend the last few years before retirement in NSN and enjoy the life that a normal e-sports player should have. Afterwards, he can have a low-key retirement in the China region. This is now the only thing that his fans ask.

Yu Sui’s fans are low-profile enough, but Yu Sui was the original sin. After seeing these remarks, NSN’s fans quickly split into two camps. Some wanted Yu Sui to quickly leave the NSN base and f*ck on back where he came from. While the other insulted Yu Sui while still wanting him to stay and play in the starting line-up instead of Wawa.

If one were to look carefully, many of the so-called NSN fans who wanted Yu Sui to leave were actually haters in disguise. They were actually fans of other teams. The trippiest thing about it was that some even made posts wishing for Yu Sui to transfer to their teams...

Yeah, they wanted to curse and insult Yu Sui, but his strength was undeniable. Fans of other teams, especially those who weren’t satisfied with their team’s medics, couldn’t help but eye him covetously. They felt they could continue to curse at Yu Sui while having him render service to their team to atone for his crime.

During a lull in the training match, Shi Luo curled up in his gaming chair and watched the haters battle it out in the forums. Once again, he wanted to prostrate himself in admiration for these forum fighters. This fighting ability! It was a wonder how they didn’t spray Yu Sui to the point of mental collapse back then. The heavens really are heartless.

It would be a first in the gaming circle if the formation of a new team wasn’t met with much anticipation by both fans and haters.

In fact, Shi Luo has long been immune to the comments on the blogs and forums. No matter how unpleasant the words, he’ll remain completely unmoved. But after seeing the comments from Yu Sui’s fans, his heart felt inexplicably stifled.

Not even considering past events, Yu Sui truly is the only player Shi Luo knew who, ever since his debut, couldn’t go a day without causing a reign of terror amongst the e-sports fans.

When Shi Luo was still doing live broadcasts in an Internet cafe, Yu Sui had been pretending to be an underage kid to try to trick him. Later, Shi Luo started to harbor some suspicions about this non-mainstream type youth and when the two of them teamed up to play a match, Shi Luo suddenly opened a live broadcast and Yu Sui was exposed without him even knowing it.

Shi Luo didn’t watch any competitions and didn’t follow any of the e-sports players so he wasn’t very sure. But it was impossible for the live broadcast fans not to know. As soon as Yu Sui’s voice came out, the whole live broadcast chat blew up.

That was Shi Luo’s first contact with the e-sports circle.

Shi Luo followed the vine to get the melon and entered an e-sports forum. He searched for Whisper’s ID and opened the door to a new world.

Judging from the past posts in the forum, although Yu Sui’s career could grudgingly be considered as having gone well, it certainly hadn’t been easy.

Yu Sui had also made a name for himself when he was young but he had been even younger then than Shi Luo. When Yu Sui played his first professional game for Team Knife Edge, it wasn’t even a week since his sixteenth birthday.

Just barely over the minimum age required to participate in the FOG League.

There were a lot of young people who got to debut, but very few were able to do so as part of the starting line-up for a first-tier team. Back then, the sprayers first said that he was too young, that he didn’t deserve to take the place of more seasoned players in the starting line-up. Then they found that he was really strong and qualified. They then changed to criticizing his assassin-type medic style of play. They said he was exploiting his striker teammates’ natural resources; that he was a malignant tumor on the team by unnecessary increasing the overall difficulty for the team.

After much difficulty, the team managed to polish their plays. The haters finally acknowledge Yu Sui’s abilities. Before long, he managed to garner achievements in international competitions. Team Knife Blade’s club executives went completely overboard. If IAC were to be compared to Knife Blade’s management team back then, IAC would be considered as philanthropists.

Knife Blade’s boss never expected them to achieve any results. He never would have thought that after Yu Sui’s debut, the team would advance by leaps and bounds. Now, it even faintly seemed like they could make a run for first. No one ever thought you could achieve that kind of success with a team with a medic as its core. Everything had been a pleasant surprise.

The Knife Edge’s boss was absolutely beyond pleasantly surprised. Seeing this situation, he suddenly asked all the players to sign a more demanding economic contract on top of the player’s contract. This wasn’t a big deal. A lot of the other teams had this kind of contract. However, all the players on Team Knife Edge understood that their boss wanted them to operate like idols.

The signs were already there as early as half a year ago. The club’s publicity department would publish eight personal Weibo posts for each of the players every single day. If they don’t shoot them while waking up, they would while they were eating. Sometime, the publicity department would go too far and even shoot them while they were sleeping.

At that time, Yu Sui and several of the other more popular players had completely no privacy. What time they get up every day, what clothes they wore, what they ate for lunch, what they ate for dinner, even what color pajamas they wore... the fans knew it all.

They could have lived with it if it were just that. However, players still needed to shoot all sorts of promotional videos for various event platforms during the competition season. The team’s only manager for player affairs and the operation department quarreled every day because of the players’ schedules. A foul atmosphere settled over the team. There simply wasn’t a moment of peace.

None of the team’s players were old, almost all of them were teenage boys, and their bodies would be dragged down by being made to run around like that. After one instance where they weren’t allowed to rest even after 48 hours of continuous activity, Ji Yanhan, their captain and the eldest team member at that time, was finally driven over the edge. He along with several players, canceled their contracts and formed another team.

That was what would later become the gaming mecca — the FS team.

During the early years, it wasn’t so expensive to terminate a player’s contract. Several players hadn’t had time to renew their contracts. Moreover, the captain and another older player had been playing for many years and had saved up a bit of money. They managed to scrape together enough to help these younger players to pay the cancellation fee. Cancelling their contracts had gone off without a hitch. Naturally, they were quite poor when they initially started the new team, but finally they no longer needed to participate in endless strange business activities, and it was no longer necessary to expose every minute of their life.

At long last, Yu Sui was able to sink his heart into the game and quietly polish his tactics under the protection of the new club. After a breaking-in period that lasted more than a year, the impoverished FS team won the World Championship, at the same time causing a sensation that rocked the entire e-sports circle and set themselves at its pinnacle.

Yu Sui also officially became their division’s sharpest blade, and the skepticism has finally disappeared.

But the good times didn’t last. After a few years, Yu Sui did the biggest thing ever to shake the e-sport circle.

Thinking back to the difficulties and hardships they experienced when he left for Europe, Shi Luo pitied Yu Sui’s fans.

To stan Yu Sui was to endure a lot of hardships.

“Now we only hope that Yu Shen can spend the last few years before his retirement peacefully. We hope that he may also enjoy the life that a normal e-sports player should have.” They weren’t trying to sell pity to calm down the ire of the haters. To have been able to stan Yu Sui for so many years, all his fans must think this way now.

We’ve felt sorry for you; we’ve cheered for you; because you, we’ve cried and we’ve laughed. We have shared in your glory, and in your condemnation by the public. We’ve been disappointed in you but we’ve also loved you dearly. We’ve stuck by you through wind and waves and now we can still stay for this calm. We only wish that you can live a peaceful normal life for a few days.

But Yu Sui stubbornly refuses to.

The training match started up once again. Shi Luo didn’t play. Instead, he was observing his substitute. He would be leaving IAC soon and he readily began to hand over his duties to his replacement, helping the substitute player to get used to the tempo of the competition matches as quickly as possible.

Shi Luo didn’t need to be very focused when observing the match. He only needed to take note of the mistakes and corrections and give them to the coach after the training match. Shi Luo was multitasking and the more he thought, the greater his headache.

Right now, it’s just unconfirmed news that Yu Sui was going to be making a new team and things have already blown up to this extent. What more when it’s officially announced? Most terrible of all would be when they officially announce that he’ll be transferring to Yu Sui’s team.

His and Yu Sui’s fans have been at each other’s throats for so long that they were now as incompatible as fire and water. After hearing this news, he was afraid they’d shovel open each others’ ancestral graves.

What a beautiful scene it would be if his fans and Yu Sui’s fans could each hold down their nausea and deign to sit together to support them in their matches once they’re on the same team. But Yu Sui didn’t even dare to imagine this.

It would be enough if they could just maintain superficial civility. Worst comes to worst, someone might take the joke too far and directly bomb the new team base.

Shi Luo didn’t want to wind up on the news. He was worried that his old man would see it and rejoice.

He had to think of a way ...

He remembered what he’d heard from Wawa that day. In fact, the best way now would be to directly disclose that he was together with Yu Sui. Maybe both their fans would very reluctantly accept each other, after they’ve mentally collapsed and ground their teeth into dust that is.

However, the price was a little too high. It’s probably not as bad as all that. Shi Luo was confident that he could still find a way.

Shi Luo looked at the screen, thought for a moment and then picked up his mobile phone. He wanted to send a message to Yu Sui when he suddenly remembered that he and Yu Sui hadn’t added each other’s contact info since they deleted it two years ago.

Shi Luo had long forgotten Yu Sui’s previous number and even if he did, it would probably be useless. Most probably, he had already canceled that number long ago. Shi Luo frowned. He was still friends with Chen Huo on WeChat, but he didn’t want to talk to Chen Huo.

Shi Luo carefully looked through his contacts, and found that he still had Puppy’s contact details.

Shi Luo’s relationship with Puppy was also just so-so, but it was much better than his relationship with Chen Huo. Puppy was a kind and honest person. Shi Luo has always had a very good impression of him. Shi Luo opened the chat interface and quickly sent a message to Puppy.

[Evil]: Tell Whisper not to announce for the time being that I’ll be transferring to your team. I’ll make some arrangements.

After Shi Luo sent the message, he put his phone aside and continued to watch the substitute’s practice match. After the match, Shi Luo picked up his phone and saw that Puppy had replied with a voice message.

Shi Luo opened it...

Yu Sui’s voice came through. “Okay.”

Shi Luo looked down at the phone screen. After half a minute, he couldn’t hold back. He clicked and listened to it again. Then, he clicked it for the third time and listened again.