Chapter 21
The next day, Ji Yanhan flew back to Shanghai, and Yu Sui stayed to accompany Shi Luo through the second day of exams, also enthusiastically streaming for the entire day.
Having already gotten through one day, Shi Luo's emotions had gradually stabilized. He didn't make any strongly emotional resistant behaviors anymore. When Yu Sui asked him to greet the fans in the stream, Shi Luo even forced the corners of his mouth up, producing a ferocious and perfunctory smile.
Yu Sui was quite satisfied. Regardless of whether Shi Luo himself was happy, Yu Sui was definitely happy.
After Shi Luo finished his last subject, English, and walked out of the exam venue, Yu Sui wanted to take him out for dinner. Yu Sui's intention was for Shi Luo to rest for a day, then they'd return to Shanghai the next day. But the moment Shi Luo stepped out of the exam hall, he urged, "Call the hotel, we're checking out. Let's head straight to the airport—quick, get back to the base."
Yu Sui was confused. "What's the matter?"
Shi Luo was frantic. "It's been two days since I've touched my account! My ranking's probably already dropped out of the top fifty!!"
Yu Sui: "..."
Yu Sui was utterly amazed. "Luo Luo, as a substitute, I've truly never seen anyone this dedicated to their job. Your fighting spirit makes me think you're trying to steal my starting spot."
Shi Luo kept urging. "I'm not joking. Come on, let's go back."
Yu Sui had no choice but to nod. He entrusted his car to one of Ji Yanhan's local staff members and booked flights back to Shanghai for himself and Shi Luo.
They went straight to the airport, grabbed a quick meal there, boarded their plane, and flew in silence. When the plane was about to land, Shi Luo could finally hold back no longer. He removed his eye mask and hesitantly said, "You... aren't you going to ask me how my exams went?"
Yu Sui didn't open his eyes, responding quietly, "May I ask?"
Two days had passed, and Yu Sui hadn't asked a single question about whether the exam papers were difficult or how he did. Shi Luo had been dying to play it cool but had no room to do so, so he was already bursting at the seams. Shi Luo put on an air of casual elegance and said primly, "You may ask."
Yu Sui opened his eyes and thought for a moment before asking, "Was math... difficult?"
Shi Luo tried his best to appear nonchalant and shook his head. "Not difficult."
Yu Sui nodded, relieved. "As long as the questions weren't hard."
Shi Luo's brow furrowed. After a moment, he uncomfortably corrected, "...I mean, not difficult for me."
The key was on the words "for me."
Yu Sui looked up at Shi Luo. The corner of his mouth lifted little by little until he couldn't hold back and burst out laughing.
Shi Luo's face flushed red. "What are you laughing at..."
Yu Sui tried to hold back his laughter. "How much do you think you got?"
Shi Luo maintained his prim composure. "Around 130."
"Damn impressive."
Yu Sui asked about each subject one by one. Shi Luo worded his answers to discreetly brag about himself, his little face turning happily flushed.
"Ah..." Yu Sui straightened up. "You did this well, so you wouldn't be afraid to check your results, right? How about we stream the score check later?"
Shi Luo didn't hesitate. "No way, that's too dumb."
Before Yu Sui could speak again, Shi Luo added, "Unless you let Chen Huo take this year's national math exam paper."
Yu Sui had to concede. "He'd be ruined. If you told him the physics-chemistry综合卷 was the math paper, he'd believe it."
The plane landed smoothly. The two took a taxi back to the base.
Once back at the base, Yu Sui was no longer Shi Luo's alone.
From the day they returned, Shi Luo could barely catch a glimpse of Yu Sui.
The playoffs were about to begin. Yu Sui was determined to win the championship and stopped wasting any time, adding a full two hours of training to his daily schedule. He was holed up in the training room all day. As a substitute, Shi Luo had no training matches to play, and couldn't be bothered to go watch the four teammates train together in harmony. He just holed up in his dorm, focused on climbing the Chinese server rankings.
Shi Luo had always been quite satisfied with his Chinese server ranking. Even before becoming a pro player, he could surpass many pros while ranking up. Now having received professional team training, his skill level had steadily improved, and he could already break into the top fifty on the Chinese server. Occasionally, when he performed well, he could even reach the top forty.
For a medic, this was basically the peak achievement.
Of course, it didn't include Yu Sui.
Shi Luo pulled up the Chinese server rankings and stared at Whisper,稳稳居第一 in the first place, speechless for a long time.
What did it mean to be the professional ceiling? Yu Sui was.
What was most terrifying was Yu Sui's specific stats. Shi Luo clicked to look at Yu Sui's KDA—a medic with an average kill count of 3.2.
That meant he averaged 3.2 kills per match.
How insane was that number? Chen Huo, ranked twenty-seventh on the Chinese server and an assault player, only had an average kill count of 6.8.
And the prerequisite was that Chen Huo, as an assault player, had one heavy weapon more than Yu Sui, while Yu Sui the medic only had a sidearm and a military long dagger.
To leave as many public resources as possible for his teammates, Yu Sui rarely even used the pistol, mostly relying on daggers and other cold weapons that consumed no resources.
FOG was different from games where you gained tactical resources by fighting and advancing. Most games gained resources through invading enemies and capturing map territory. FOG was the opposite. At the start of the game, a total of 10,000 in economic resources were distributed directly to the players.
10,000 at the start: 1,000 for snipers, 1,000 for medics, 2,000 each for two assault players, plus 4,000 in shared public funds for the whole team.
Of course, the public funds couldn't be used arbitrarily. Assault players and snipers could only upgrade their equipment and access public resources after getting kills. Medics could only upgrade their equipment and use public resources after getting assist points or harming enemies.
Whether it was the personal funds credited at the start or the public funds that could only be accessed after eliminating enemies, the total was just 10,000. Not a single point more, with no other ways to acquire more.
Once it's gone, it's gone.
So players had to be very careful with their economy usage. If there was too much waste and the team ran out of all resources before putting down the enemy, the game would become terrifying.
All the guns became useless sticks—no money for bullets, so what good was even the best upgraded weapon?
At that point, everyone could only use daggers and similar weapons. Fighting those against the enemy's firearms... the outcome was obvious.
Of course, sometimes both sides would get bogged down in a stalemate, exhausting both teams' resources. Then the game got even more interesting.
Everyone was instantly thrown back to the cold weapon era.
The person who loved these resource-depleted slugfests the most was Yu Sui.
In the early and mid game when both sides had ample resources, even if Yu Sui's mechanics were godly, it was hard to overcome gaps in equipment and class disadvantages. But once all the economy was exhausted, the medic no longer had class weaknesses.
Everyone could only use cold weapons—who's afraid of whom?
Yu Sui loved racking up kills in these desperate battles. He'd been using cold weapons all the time, so he'd practiced them the most, and at those moments, few could match him.
As a medic, one slash, one assault player.
Shi Luo had watched Yu Sui's highlight reels of kills and had to admit—some things couldn't be made up for with后天 training.
Shi Luo didn't want to keep climbing the rankings anymore.
Even if he occasionally managed to push up a few spots by luck, he'd immediately fall back. When the ranking bounced around and stabilized at a certain level, that was his current skill.
Shi Luo's current level was around fifty on the Chinese server.
Shi Luo pushed his keyboard forward and checked the time...
23:35.
The four people in the training room were still grinding.
Shi Luo was annoyed. For several days in a row, he'd been solo queuing, eating alone, talking to himself, listening to himself—almost becoming invisible.
He couldn't even pick a fight with Chen Huo, let alone Yu Sui... Shi Luo couldn't even see the guy.
Just a week ago, those two days of eating and living together, they'd been together the whole time.
Now it felt like an event from some parallel universe.
Shi Luo randomly remembered a line he'd come across when searching Yu Sui's ID:
"When you become a fan of Whisper, you have to be prepared for both scalding happiness and suffering."
Yu Sui wasn't stingy with his treatment of fans. During the off-season, even if he'd already met his streaming hours quota, as long as fans complained on Weibo, he'd open another stream and freely contribute his massive traffic to the platform.
During streams, he'd open his mic whenever fans asked and turn on his camera whenever they wanted. When in a good mood, he'd even do phone streams for a bit, showing fans the flowers and plants around the base. If he saw a fan say it was their birthday in the comments, Yu Sui would even smile and hum a couple lines of Happy Birthday.
But this only applied during the brief off-season.
Once the official competition period began, Yu Sui could endure having the streaming platform charge him sky-high breach of contract penalties, going months without streaming. As long as he didn't want to be disturbed, even if fans screamed themselves hoarse, he absolutely would not spare a single minute of training time for anything else. His Weibo was also perpetually neglected, sometimes not posting a single update for half a year. The whole person seemed to completely evaporate, vanishing entirely from social and media platforms.
During competition periods, Yu Sui had only training on his mind. He wouldn't give anyone the time of day. It had been like this since his debut.
A few years ago, after one competition, the host jokingly teased Yu Sui, saying he'd already gone 172 days without streaming, and fans were worried he wasn't eating properly or smoking too much. Shouldn't he say a few more words now? The host also joked on behalf of the fans and questioned Yu Sui—had he forgotten his streaming account password? Hadn't he been pushing a little too hard lately?
Shi Luo remembered Yu Sui's answer from that video segment vividly.
Yu Sui said: I have to work hard. If I don't, the people who support me will have it rough.
When Shi Luo watched that video, he couldn't help but marvel—how could someone make "ghosting my stream" sound so righteous and assertive?
But the result spoke for itself. The fans, who'd been complaining about Yu Sui vanishing completely, instantly burst into tears and forgave this playboy.
What Yu Sui said was his true feelings, and also a very tactful truth.
After all, this wasn't a celebrity fandom. No matter how you pandered to fans, what good would that do without results? In esports, results speak.
The culture unique to the esports world wasn't as messy and toxic as people thought. Instead, it was straightforward and simple. There was only one ironclad rule: results.
Yu Sui's unsaid words were: if you don't work hard and have no results, fans won't even have the confidence to argue with haters for your sake. When people step on you and tear you apart, you can only shut up. What can you say? You suck.
Gossip and teasing—regardless of whether any of it was true—when people trash you, you just have to take it. That was true hardship.
The only thing Yu Sui could and would give his fans was this piece of confidence.
From then on, every time Yu Sui went MIA, the fans took it very calmly. They comforted each other: God Yu is working hard for us. After watching the competition footage, everyone goes and watches last year's stream videos to get their fix. What? You already have last year's stream videos memorized? How about the year before? The year before that? Big bro, you're a new fan, huh? Need me to send you a link?
The playoffs were coming up. Since even the fans had become so laid-back about it, Shi Luo didn't expect Yu Sui to spare any time for him either. He followed a forum link and was about to watch some of Yu Sui's debut-era videos while having a late-night snack, and maybe pick up some of his moves along the way. Two birds, one stone.
Shi Luo picked up his phone to order late-night food. Before he could decide what to eat, his phone buzzed. There was a WeChat message.
【Whisper】: Ordering a late-night snack? Want me to help you put in an order?