CH 24.3

By the time he returned to the hotel, it was already almost 10pm.

Shen Changyu had thought that everyone else would already be resting. However, when he pulled the door open and entered, he was shocked by the room full of people. Upon closer inspection, he found that almost all of his team members were present besides You Jing. From the looks of it, it seemed that they had deliberately not gone to sleep, waiting for him here instead.

Shen Changyu was speechless. “We just had a match, so why are all of you still so energetic.. ”

Light seemed to flash from Liu Zeshen’s glasses as he gave a slight smile tinted with suspicion. “Vice Captain Shen, isn’t it just because we were waiting for you?”

Xu Yiming had been fighting with Xu Yichen over a bag of potato chips in a corner, both of them trying to grab it from the other. Who could have guessed that Xu Yichen would suddenly let go, causing Xu Yiming to step backwards too forcefully? He then stumbled and fell backwards, colliding heavily with the wall behind him. However, he did not pay much attention to the pain he felt at this moment. He lifted his head and looked at Shen Changyu with teary eyes and a questioning expression. “Vice captain, tell me quick, what’s going on between you and that gay? If you don’t tell me, I don’t think I can sleep at all tonight.”

Qin Lei did not say anything. He sat at the foot of the bed which was at the side and silently nodded, expressing his agreement.

“I really can’t win against all of you…” Shen Changyu did not know what else he could say. Yet, the truth of the matter between Lin Xiao and himself wasn’t easily explainable. He had contemplated for a long time before thinking of a reason that he could give. And if you looked at it in a certain way, this reason was in line with what he had originally intended to do as well. “Lin…Lin Xiao’s skills and techniques are very strong. Initially, I made an appointment with him today because I wanted to take this opportunity to invite him to join our team.”

As he finished speaking, the whole room fell into a strange bout of silence for some time. Then, this silence was shattered by Xu Yiming, who was the first to yell, “Vice Captain Shen, are you crazy! To invite that…that that damned gay into our team? Within minutes, Captain You will definitely kill you first, and then him!”

Everyone present couldn’t help but imagine what would happen if You Jing saw that die-hard fan in the team. They felt as if a strange, unexplainable chill suddenly spread throughout their whole body and involuntarily began to shiver.

Qin Lei looked up quietly and mumbled, “Senior, is the temperature setting of the air conditioning a bit too low? I suddenly feel so cold…”

Liu Zeshen took the remote and casually increased the temperature setting of the air conditioner by a few degrees. His posture remained unchanged since he did not get up, instead lounging elegantly on a pillow. He frowned slightly and asked, “Are you being serious?”

Shen Changyu nodded, “I’m serious, but he already rejected my offer.”

Xu Yiming had not managed to catch his breath and immediately began to cough out fiercely, “Rejected!? Vice Captain Shen, did you slam the door shut on his brain today? Having had such a good opportunity to get close to Captain You sent to his doorstep, I can’t at all imagine what reason he would have to reject it!”

Qin Lei secretly tugged at the corners of his clothes. “Senior, why does it sound as if you really wanted him to join?”

“Who said so!” Xu Yiming glared at him. However, on second thought his words just now had indeed been rather inappropriate, so he immediately shut his mouth.

Shen Changyu cleared his throat and tried to form a sentence with an awkward expression, extremely worried about how he should explain things. “Actually…he’s not like how you guys think he is…”

Xu Yichen spoke naturally, cutting off his words, “A crazed stalker and peeping tom who secretly takes pictures and rashly expresses his love by sending love letters that border on harassment and planning on forcefully kissing people at a fan meeting?”

“…” Shen Changyu did not speak any further and couldn’t help but silently light a candle for Lin Xiao in his heart.

—— Captain Lin, based on this situation, it looks like you’re on your own in the future.

The good thing was that because of Lin Xiao’s rejection, this topic stopped here without continuing any further. It was just that after tonight’s discussion, the flow of the conversation suddenly shifted and began developing in a strange direction for some reason. They began to discuss more restrained ways in which they could pursue the targets of their affections.

This went on till 11pm, when he saw the others off from his room. The moment he shut his door, Shen Changyu felt an all-encompassing sense of emptiness and exhaustion. His mind was so tired!

He turned back, looking at Liu Zeshen, who was mindlessly watching TV, and tossed a stack of documents from his luggage over to him. “I’m going to take a bath. You can first look through and consider these. Once we have come up with a new set of battle strategies, we will probably have to completely revamp all of our battle styles.”

After speaking, he entered the bathroom and did not see how Liu Zeshen was so shocked that his glasses dropped onto the floor.

Through the closed door, he could still hear the loud exclamation of this great gentleman who had lost his composure in a rare fit. “Change everything? You must be crazy!”

……

After sending Shen Changyu off, Lin Xiao did not dawdle. His days were spent enthusiastically immersing himself in 1 vs 1 arena battles.

After several consecutive days without rest or sleep, he had finally been promoted from the Fourth Division to the Second Division in one go. Henceforth, he could also be considered as one of the experts who were in the forefront of the arena rankings.

As he swiftly won yet another battle, Lin Xiao looked with some satisfaction at the consecutive wins in his battle record. He yawned, feeling quite fatigued. When he raised his head, he saw a friend request pop up and casually closed it without taking a closer look.

Recently, his performance in the arena had been pretty fierce. Thus, he had frequently encountered noisy trolls with lousy skills who would pepper him with insults.

Be it his speed in typing out insults or his level of shamelessness, Lin Xiao personally felt that he was unmatched. Hence, when encountering such people, he would always treat them with the love, concern and sympathy that should be shown towards people with intellectual disabilities. He chose to calmly close off all the shouting these people did from his hearing. Inevitably, some of these people could not get over their anger and insisted on continuing with their insults even after the battle ended.

If they acted this way, it was definitely a bit too much, wasn’t it? Every time he encountered such people, Lin Xiao would type out an impressive ten lines of insults within a second with his explosive hand speed. After that, he would blacklist them before they had any chance to react.

Having seen so many of these cases, he got sick of playing around with such a meaningless matter. Thus, things had developed to his current situation, where he would immediately reject any friend requests without even looking at them.

This time, the ID he had rejected was called “Time Crack” and their profession was a Ritualist1

If it had been anyone else, they would probably find this name familiar. It was a pity that this name happened to be outside of Lin Xiao’s range of knowledge.

Lin Xiao had rejected him without any thought. On the other side, in Team Seven Stars’s player dormitory, Jiang Shiqi was feeling especially unsettled. “Damn, they actually rejected my friend request?”

Although he had just joined the eSports Alliance this year, he was still a professional player after all. Furthermore, he had been a wildly popular passerby expert prior to that. Most of the time, others would be trying to think of ways and means to reach out to him. This was really the first time that something like this had happened to him.

“Maybe they really don’t know who you are?” Tang Qian, who lived in the same dormitory, just happened to come back after refilling his water. He walked over and glanced at the screen, finding a strange ID on it. “Hm, I’ve never seen this name before. Did they just get promoted to the Second Division?”

“Che, who knows! They might have had some easy battles2 and gotten promoted by sheer luck alone. For all you know, they might be pushed back down by other people within a few days.” Jiang Shiqi spoke in a disagreeable tone as he casually opened up the other person’s battle records from the battle information screen3. Then, his whole body immediately froze in shock. Unsure of what he was seeing, he rubbed his eyes but the long string of nothing but wins in their record was still being displayed.

His hand that was gripping the mouse involuntarily shook a little. As he continued to scroll further and further through their records, his expression turned more and more solemn while he did so. Even after he reached the last page, there had not been a single loss. He nearly threw his mouse in an uncontrollable outburst. “Three pages of nothing but wins? It must be a lie!”

Tang Qian, who had been standing behind him, had seen everything. His expression was one of disbelief, but still he did not forget to diss his teammate, “I say, it looks like they won against you based on raw skill, it’s not a matter of luck like what you said.”

The corners of Jiang Shiqi’s lips suddenly twitched slightly, but he couldn’t think of a rebuttal. After all, he had no guarantee of being able to reproduce such a battle record. He stared at the screen for a long time, frowned and said, “Although he isn’t ranked in the First Division, this kind of win rate is pretty terrifying! What do you think, could this be a pro player’s side account?”

Tang Qian glanced at him with an expression conveying that he thought of him as an idiot. “The League is currently ongoing, do you think a pro player would be so free as to rank up their side account in the game?”

Jiang Shiqi choked, “If it isn’t a pro player, should we tell Captain? If we could scout him for our team, we would have found a treasure!”

Tang Qian was silent for a moment as he looked at the character information on the screen. Then, he said, “Currently, this person is part of the Black Dawn guild, so it’s hard to say whether or not he has any relationship with Team Black Rose. Let’s wait for a while and see how things go. After all, the most important thing for us right now is the League, so our team doesn’t really have the energy to focus on other matters.”

Jiang Shiqi nodded. “Sure. I’ll save this battle record for now and continue to monitor it now and then.”

At this precise moment, Lin Xiao had poured himself a glass of water and returned to his computer. He had no idea that his strategy of using his battle performance in the arena to attract the pro teams’ attention had already borne fruit. He slowly clicked his mouse and entered the matching queue for arena battles once more.

When the matching was complete, the battle preparation screen was displayed, and his opponent’s character ID appeared on the screen at the same time.

ID: Great King of the Mountains

At the same time, in live broadcast room number 1001 on the GY streaming platform, the screen of the streamer who was currently live displayed the exact same scene to his audience.

________________

TL comments: I really can’t wait to see how Lin Xiao will fit into the dynamics of Team Black Rose as the grandmaster of shamelessness xD

The word used means sacrifice, but that’s kinda awkward for a job class name.

Literally a blind cat that chanced upon a dead mouse, meaning an unexpected windfall that was unplanned for.

In most games with PVP, there will be a post-match screen displayed that shows the battle statistics for that particular match. Sometimes, you can look at your opponent’s profile and past records from that screen as well.