Chapter 32
At the same time, at the IAC base, Shi Luo received a friend request.
Shi Luo opened it to check—it was from the former deputy manager of NSN.
When Shi Luo first joined NSN, he and Zhou Huo had been at the same club for just two months. Then Shi Luo transferred teams, and shortly after, Zhou Huo went to another team. From then on, the two hadn't crossed paths again.
Zhou Huo told Shi Luo about his current situation, and Shi Luo learned this would be his future manager.
After exchanging some pleasantries, Zhou Huo brought up the same streaming suggestion to Shi Luo. After hesitating for half a minute, Shi Luo replied to Zhou Huo.
Yu Sui was in the process of contacting FOG China headquarters to recover his old deleted game account. He was on voice with the headquarters staff, typing while replying to Zhou Huo.
【Yu Sui】: [Decline.]
【Shi Luo】: [No.]
Zhou Huo: ...
Zhou Huo could understand Shi Luo still felt some resentment as the victim, but Yu Sui declining too and replying even faster than Shi Luo was confusing—what right did he have?! Zhou Huo quickly replied to Yu Sui.
【Zhou Huo】: [I never really understood what happened between you two, but the current situation is that your fans have a lot of hostility toward each other. You're about to be on the same team, and if things stay like this, my work will be hard to推进.]
【Zhou Huo】: [The new team was just established, and as manager I have too much work to do. A lot of things need fan cooperation.]
Yu Sui replied just as quickly: [Fans can disagree, can refuse to cooperate.]
【Zhou Huo】: [...]
Zhou Huo was confident about the team's performance that he was about to take over. Even if they weren't the best, they would definitely be firmly in the first tier—the four players' skill levels were摆着 there, which was unquestionable. But as for the team's reputation, Zhou Huo was certain a team full of bad boys wouldn't exactly have a good image.
【Zhou Huo】: [Whisper, there's something I've wanted to say to you for many years—besides the championship trophy, you can actually give fans something else.]
【Yu Sui】: [Can't.]
【Zhou Huo】: [Let me ask carefully, Lord Yu, do you know that as early as two years ago, or even earlier, you had the nickname of a "playboy"?]
Application completed. Yu Sui saved the account. When he looked at his phone again, Zhou Huo had already sent several messages.
【Zhou Huo】: [Setting aside whether we have a good chance of winning the championship this season, are we going to be ripped apart from qualifiers all the way to playoffs? The players will be under a lot of pressure.]
【Zhou Huo】: [Few people can be like you, completely immune to negative comments. Everyone cares about what's said online. Evil and Chen Huo are always arguing with trolls, clearly they're easily affected.]
【Zhou Huo】: [My work isn't just about gaining fans—it's also about giving the players a relatively relaxed public environment, trying to let them focus on competition without pressure.]
【Zhou Huo】: [That's my responsibility.]
【Zhou Huo】: [Of course, boosting the team's visibility and commercial value is also part of my job. Boss, you're both my boss and my player. I'm really in a tough spot here. Can we make some advance agreements? Regarding team operations, follow my arrangements, okay?]
Yu Sui was about to type that he wouldn't agree, but after thinking about it, he said: [Case by case.]
【Zhou Huo】: [...Fine.]
Yu Sui put on his headphones to queue for some games. His phone buzzed again.
【Zhou Huo】: [But for the sake of future work, I have to ask one more thing—did you and Evil ever date?]
Yu Sui looked at his phone, amused.
Was it because he had sowed too many wild oats in the past, so today everyone was taking turns twisting the knife?
Yu Sui typed: [No.]
【Zhou Huo】: [That's good. Let me ask one last desperate question—you really won't agree to streaming?]
Yu Sui knew Zhou Huo wouldn't give up, so he laid it out plainly. He was too lazy to type, so he picked up his phone and used voice messaging: "If we're doing a sincere streaming session, there obviously won't be any interaction the whole time. Fans would accept that even less. Pretending to put on a show, acting like teammates with deep friendship... I can't do it, don't want to do it, and don't want to make him do it either. It's meaningless and unnecessary."
Top-tier players who had climbed to this level couldn't possibly spare energy for this kind of thing anyway. Zhou Huo understood, so he had no choice but to drop it.
After getting rid of Zhou Huo, Yu Sui put on his headphones, opened the client to adjust some basic settings, logged in, and queued for a game.
When Yu Sui returned to China and coached Wa Wa at NSN, he had created a smurf account on the Chinese server. He'd climbed to top 200 in the past few days—decent enough to play, no longer pub-stomping. But the higher the ranking, the longer the queue. Yu Sui waited for the queue, staring blankly at the screen.
What would co-streaming accomplish anyway? Pretending with Shi Luo that they'd moved on?
Setting aside whether Shi Luo had moved on, Yu Sui himself hadn't.
Put on a show to appease fans?
Forget it.
Even without the acting, Yu Sui didn't want to be in the same frame as Shi Luo for now.
The game finally entered the queue. Yu Sui glanced at his teammates and muttered, "Fuck."
At the IAC team base, Shi Luo wasn't usually that proactive, but the closer to leaving, the more he felt he should treat every day like his last—站好最后一班岗. Just after watching a scrimmage, Shi Luo started streaming.
He entered the game. Three teammates' IDs didn't have team affiliations in front and he didn't recognize any smurf accounts—looked like a pure pub game. Shi Luo checked the enemy team and did recognize someone: Angel Sword, the medic from Saint team.
Shi Luo typed in team chat: [The enemy medic is a pro player, amazing heals, try to focus him.]
Two teammates sent "ok" emotes. Only their own medic didn't say anything. Shi Luo was always lenient toward medics. He thought maybe his compliment of the enemy had upset their own medic, so he typed again:
【IAC-Evil】: [Don't worry, Medic. You're definitely great too. Stay with me, I'll take care of you.]
Their medic still didn't say anything. Shi Luo assumed the player might be aloof, or a skilled girl who was just shy about talking. He didn't think much of it and typed: [Stick with me. We can win.]
After almost a full minute, their medic slowly typed: [Okay.]
There was a general shortage of top-tier medics in the pro scene. After Whisper left for Europe, the domestic server had even fewer elite medics. But Saint's Angel Sword was definitely one of them.
However, his playstyle was different from Yu Sui's and even from the old Shi Luo. Angel Sword was a pure support medic—the kind who could keep you topped off so well you'd choke from overhealing. His mechanics were high and game sense was excellent. Every time Shi Luo random-queued with him, it was particularly comfortable. Angel Sword would never steal his kills, paid close attention to positioning, and while giving himself optimal vision, would constantly be finding angles to keep him topped off. Shields were applied before enemies could shoot, and if Shi Luo so much as got grazed, he'd be healed back to full immediately. Impeccable to the extreme.
Recently, Wa Wa had been dragging Shi Luo to be a practice partner, and during those agonizing moments, Shi Luo would always think of Angel Sword. That was what a babysitter-style medic should be!
But Shi Luo's requirements for random-queued medics weren't that high. As long as they didn't AFK, didn't wander aimlessly, didn't block his vision while juking around, didn't steal kills, didn't recklessly spend shared resources, and could throw a shield when his was breaking and top him off in clutch moments when low—that was enough.
With that mindset, after the game started, Shi Luo pushed forward with the medic. But the longer he played, the more surprised he became.
Their medic was even more angelic than Angel Sword!
After the game started, their medic first shielded the other two teammates, then followed Shi Luo the whole time. But it wasn't mindless following. In FOG, character models were solid physics-based. Players could collide with each other, and every action and collision with objects in the game world produced sound. Players could use subtle audio cues to track enemy movement. So unnecessary sounds from teammates—like repeatedly racking bolts or walking back and forth—would expose your position. The thing Shi Luo hated most was medics who followed too closely and revealed his location. But their medic had perfectly avoided this problem.
Their medic's map awareness was近乎完美. Not only did he always find the best cover for himself, but he always avoided thorny vegetation that amplified footsteps. He'd essentially hidden himself within the map.
Following at just the right distance, yet always ensuring Shi Luo stayed within his healing range—it couldn't have been more perfect.
Early in the game, Shi Luo picked off the enemy flanker's kill. Their medic simultaneously earned assist points. Both gained access to the shared economy, but their medic never used a single point of it. He was meticulous with every resource, wasting nothing, only消耗他自己那 one thousand starting credits.
The shared economy was limited. Shi Luo had almost monopolized all available resources, playing extremely aggressively.
The enemy Angel Sword was very good. With his support, the other three enemies seemed much tankier. But Shi Luo was far better than a random flanker. By the twenty-fourth minute, Shi Luo's team smoothly pushed through the fog all the way into enemy territory, destroyed the resurrection stone, and won the game.
It had been a long time since Shi Luo had encountered a medic who could heal this well. When the game ended, Shi Luo didn't leave the match. He casually sent a friend request and typed:
【IAC-Evil】: [Medic is insane, let's duo when you're free.]
Unexpectedly, the other person didn't immediately accept the friend request.
The stream chat was flying by incredibly fast. Shi Luo only checked the chat after the game ended. While waiting for the reply, he opened the spam filter and froze.
【啊啊啊啊啊啊啊啊啊啊啊啊啊啊......】
【666, the drama of the year.】
【Can this match footage be submitted to Esports Daily Headlines?】
【Two years later, the素材库 finally has new footage.】
【Drama of the year, drama of the year, drama of the year......】
【Does Evil even read chat啊啊啊 I've been screaming for half an hour, and you actually said hi to him?! Are you傻！！That's Whisper!!】
【Confirmed for real? He's not streaming, I checked every NSN player's stream room, couldn't find any clues. Lord Yu seems to have left the NSN base.】
【Whisper already moved bases.】
【This is definitely Whisper's smurf. Wa Wa was streaming on this account before—Whisper was on this exact one, it's definitely him.】
【I watched Wa Wa's stream. I was pretty sure this smurf was Lord Yu's, but now I'm not so sure. Lord Yu can actually play medic?】
【Just because it's his account doesn't mean he's the one on it, right?】
【Same question. Can Yu Sui even play healer? He never touched his signature long dagger the whole time. Could resist not killing? This is Yu Sui?】
【Absolutely him. That map control ability—no one else could do it.】
【That said, I get the logic, but Whisper can actually heal?】
【Who else could it be? Who's going on his smurf? Wa Wa wouldn't either. Even Wa Wa's heals aren't that precise.】
【啊啊啊啊啊啊啊啊啊啊啊啊 I can't take this anymore. It's been two years, why won't you two let me go...】
【Tears in Huangpu River. Two years, and these two stabbed me again.】
Shi Luo stared at the flood of chat messages. Fragments of that game flashed through his mind. For a long moment, he couldn't speak.
Only then did he realize—it was him.