# Chapter 76
Shi Luo cursed himself internally for being a useless idiot. He couldn't even bring himself to do anything, yet he'd ended up being the one "handled" by Yu Sui. Because of the eye drops, his eyes were still damp and uncomfortable. Shi Luo turned to Lao Qiao's desk, grabbed a tissue, and wiped the corners of his eyes.
When Lao Qiao pushed open the door and walked in, this was the scene he found.
Lao Qiao glanced at Shi Luo and paused for a second,试探道，"Crying?"
Shi Luo: "..."
"You... didn't used to be this fragile before." Lao Qiao struggled to understand. "Why are you so prone to crying lately? Cried when you hit top 100 on the server, cried again today after losing to Saint. If you keep crying all the time during Worlds, what are we supposed to do?"
Before Shi Luo could explain, Lao Qiao continued to comfort him, "It's okay, it's okay. You're still young. Honestly, it's kind of pitiful..."
"Going by normal school enrollment age, you should be at home being waited on hand and foot in your senior year of high school... But you joined this industry, which means you have to go through gaokao-like stress every other week, except it's all streamed with your performance on display. If you don't do well, nobody's there to comfort you—you just get torn apart." Lao Qiao had always made allowances for Shi Luo's young age ever since two years ago, and he was the same now. As he talked, his voice softened. "But what's the point of crying to Yu Sui every time? What comfort can he actually give you? You might as well come to me—I'm better at cheering people up than him."
Yu Sui, who was handing out accounts to the practice partners, didn't even lift his head. "Thanks, but no thanks. I comfort quite well. Xiao Shi Luo was crying quite thoroughly in my arms just now."
"I wasn't crying, you—" Shi Luo swallowed the "old man" that was about to leave his lips, too懒得 to explain. He grabbed two more tissues and wiped his face. "Fine, I won't cry anymore."
"If you must cry, make sure you do it behind people's backs." Lao Qiao walked to his station and switched out with Yu Sui. "Especially not in front of the camera... Do you know why the haters were flaming you so hard today? It's because of the second game... and the look on your face when the match ended. Others could tell your mentality had cracked, so they deliberately flamed even harder. These stupid haters... they know exactly where to twist the knife. Now that they know you're easy to tilt, they'll specifically target your mentality. Understand? That includes during interviews too—don't say whatever comes to mind, don't actually expose your weaknesses."
Shi Luo敷衍道，"Got it."
Shi Luo glanced at Yu Sui, thinking to himself: Relax, they haven't found my weakness yet.
After setting up the custom game mode, the three did a brief replay analysis of today's matches. Half an hour later, Zhou Huo and Puppy arrived. The four of them took their positions and started simulating today's match scenarios, having the practice partners mimic Saint to scrimmage against them.
Having just lost a match, playing these replay sessions was the most nauseating thing. Lao Qiao had been worried that Shi Luo would be frustrated, but Shi Luo was more serious than anyone. At one point, he even asked Lao Qiao to give the opposing practice partner's entry fragger some extra starting gold—he wanted to try weight training.
No matter how well the practice partners played, there was still a significant gap compared to active professional players. Normally, if team members felt their assigned practice partner wasn't providing enough pressure during these simulated scrimmages, they'd ask the coach to buff the opposing side. It was their own custom server, after all—they could modify any game data they wanted.
"Did Shi Shen get激怒 by the haters today?" Puppy smiled. "Suddenly so motivated? Don't worry... they won't be flaming you for long. You just need to survive until next Tuesday."
Zhou Huo茫然, shooting while he asked, "Why? Will the haters have forgotten by then?"
Yu Sui阴 in the shadows behind a tree, silently taking down the practice sniper. "Next Tuesday is Saint versus NSN's regular season match. After that, the haters will go flame whoever loses that match. They won't have time to bother with us."
Lao Qiao无语, "You lot..."
"Ah, this is experience forged through being flamed. What's wrong with sharing it?" Puppy sighed. "This is a总结 of blood and tears..."
Lao Qiao patted Puppy's back from behind. "Focus!"
After boosting the practice partners' starting equipment and raising the gold limit, they continued drilling the Saint-counter strategies. Once they'd磨合the "Running Out of Ammo" strat they'd used in the match, Yu Sui developed a new one, so they started another round of drilling. They went until five in the morning before the practice team's medic finally couldn't take it anymore and called for a stop.
Zhou Huo had难得 stayed to train with everyone. Originally, he'd wanted to film some footage; then he'd considered filming everyone getting off at dawn, thinking he could post it to虐一波粉. But they'd played game after game until the sky was just starting to lighten. Zhou Huo had been dozing off and on on the sofa to the side. When he finally heard everyone wrapping up, he frantically grabbed his phone, eyes blurring, and started recording video.
"This isn't虐粉... this is literally虐我..." Zhou Huo murmured while filming: "Full team wolves... almost worked the practice partner to death..."
Lao Qiao was furiously taking notes while discussing the flaws in Plan B with Yu Sui. He笑了下, "You think results come easy? If we don't crack this, and we face Saint again in playoffs, they'll just use this same method to shut us down. And it's not just Saint—other teams with good medics saw this match, and they might start thinking about it too, practicing this strat specifically to counter us. We have to solve this. Alright... take a break, we continue tomorrow."
Shi Luo rubbed his eyes. "Angel's Sword, damn it... I'm going to sleep."
In the days that followed, Free canceled all external scrimmages, went into闭关 training, and focused entirely on cracking this problem. To avoid exposing their strategies, the team didn't stream for several days, training with single-minded focus. After finally磨合the strat derived from Angel's Sword—colloquially called "Running Out of Ammo" or "Who Can Outlast Who"—they finally felt confident enough to face Saint again. But Yu Sui thought the method was too stupid.
They'd already used it in the second game of the match, and they'd磨合it since, but playing this strat meant dragging out the game. A normal match, if things went well, would end in twenty-some minutes; if not, thirty-some minutes. But using this Running Out of Ammo tactic required at least fifty minutes, sometimes up to an hour, otherwise you simply couldn't拖死 the enemy or drain their economy.
Yu Sui didn't just want to win—he wanted to win quickly.
Therefore, the闭关 training still wasn't over. Yu Sui continued drilling his new tactics. During this time, Shi Luo, Puppy, and Lao Qiao all contributed new ideas, each with merit, so they had to try them all.
Zhou Huo had always hated thinking. He couldn't come up with any complete strategies himself. During these闭关 days, what he feared most was when someone suddenly said: I have another idea we could try...
"Everyone has ideas—the teammates have ideas, the coach has ideas, the data analyst has ideas... everyone's got ideas..." Zhou Huo cursed. "What's most无语 is that even Manager Zhou had his idea yesterday!! What does he know? Does he even know how to play this game? How dare he have an idea?!"
"It was just a suggestion, even though it was pretty扯..." Lao Qiao适时安抚道. "Fine, while the other plans aren't as solid as the first one, at least we're not afraid of them anymore. We're done training tonight. You guys can go climb ranks or play duo queue—whatever you want. I don't care anymore."
Zhou Huo's expression relaxed slightly. "Damn, how many days has it been since I was on the server? My ranking must have dropped."
After dinner, the four of them were finally officially ungrounded. Shi Luo logged back onto the server.
Days of闭关 hadn't just dropped his ranking—it had also cut into his streaming hours. Shi Luo checked the backend of his streaming platform and saw he'd only streamed less than ten hours all month.
Shi Luo opened his stream but didn't queue. He just left the game client open and waited.
Zhou Huo had just pulled Yu Sui downstairs, supposedly to show him this month's financial records or something. He should be back in a few minutes. Shi Luo wanted to duo queue with Yu Sui.
Shi Luo nestled into his gaming chair, playing a single-player mobile game. About ten minutes passed, and Yu Sui still hadn't come up.
Shi Luo had his stream running with no queue, just wasting time. His fans in the stream didn't know what was going on, and the comments were full of question marks. Shi Luo waited a bit more, Yu Sui still wasn't there, comments still spamming question marks. Shi Luo opened voice chat and, while playing his mobile game, explained to the comments: "Whisper has something to do. I'm waiting for him, maybe we'll duo queue."
The fans hadn't seen him in days, so of course they were excited.
【TAT, did the team finally emerge from闭关?】
【What do you mean "maybe"? You MUST duo queue.】
【Mysterious smile, Shi Babe, why do you sound so familiar when calling Yu God's name? When did your relationship get so good after making up?】
【So excited, so I can see Yu God again from Shi Babe's stream? Cry... Playoffs haven't even arrived yet and Yu God's disappeared again.】
【What have you guys been doing these days? Why did you all disappear? Doing secret training?】
【Waiting for Shi Shen with Whisper! Whisper, hurry up!】
【Waiting for Whisper +1, hurry hurry hurry...】
Of course, where there are harmonious comments, there are always unharmonious ones. After the team lost the match a few days ago, the entire Free club had gone silent and into闭关 training. The haters had nowhere to direct their anger. Now that Shi Luo was the first to stream, the haters had finally found an outlet. They came uninvited and spammed the comments relentlessly.
【Finally streaming again after避ing the limelight for a few days?】
【Next time you lose, can you not tilt? Next time you lose, can you not tilt? Next time you lose, can you not tilt?】
【Impressive, can't do anything without Yu God. Lose a match with a丧着 face asking Yu God for comfort, now playing ranked and needing Yu God to accompany you. Team短板 confirmed.】
【Young Master Shi is so nb, Young Master Shi is so厉害, when will Young Master Shi fix his玻璃心?】
【Easily tilted, bad attitude in game, bad temper, hogging teammate's time...】
【Can you stop wasting Whisper's time? Can you? He's a champion medic—what are you?】
In truth, Shi Luo didn't have this many anti-fans. It was just that all the club's haters had聚d together in Shi Luo's stream now, plus a few of Yu Sui's toxic solo stans. For a moment, it seemed like chaos.
Shi Luo's stream mods were working hard to ban users, and Shi Luo's fans were fighting back in the comments. But haters kept appearing. Even Shi Luo's own stream mod sent him a private message, advising Shi Luo to just solo queue instead, not to call Yu Sui, to avoid giving the haters more ammunition.
Shi Luo set his phone aside and looked at the comments. His expression didn't change.
He didn't fight back, nor did the haters' words provoke him into going solo.
About ten more minutes passed. Yu Sui came upstairs.
"Captain." Shi Luo turned to look at Yu Sui, his face expressionless. "Last time I bought you as a practice partner... can you come now?"
Yu Sui froze. He closed the training room door, walked behind Shi Luo, and looked at the stream comments. He understood instantly.
Yu Sui smiled. "Of course."
The little flame of anger in Shi Luo's heart vanished in an instant. He wasn't going to let the haters' rhetoric steer him. The haters told him not to duo queue with Yu Sui—so he absolutely would duo queue with him on stream. Let them see who could come out on top.
Shi Luo sat up properly, about to pull over his keyboard. Yu Sui said, "Wait."
Shi Luo愣了一下. Yu Sui instructed, "Turn on the camera."
Shi Luo turned on the camera without understanding why.
"A proper practice partner should have some self-awareness..." Once Yu Sui confirmed he was in frame, he rolled up his sleeves, rubbed his wrists, looked at Shi Luo's gaming desk, and whistled. "Come, I'll get you set up."
Yu Sui bent down slightly and arranged Shi Luo's keyboard for him. Then he picked up the headset with one hand. "What are you hiding for? Come here..."
Shi Luo hadn't expected Yu Sui to even help with this. He froze, and Yu Sui put the headset on him.
Yu Sui, whether intentionally or not, after putting the headset on Shi Luo, gently brushed aside a strand of his messy hair. The stream comments immediately erupted into another round of screaming.
"Mouse..." Yu Sui picked up Shi Luo's mouse and positioned it, then took Shi Luo's hand and placed it on the mouse. He seriously said, "Do you want me to adjust your DPI for you?"
The comments in the stream were going insane. Shi Luo忍笑, shook his head, and didn't speak.
Between all these gestures, Yu Sui brushed against Shi Luo's arm. Yu Sui lowered his voice. "Cold? Your arm is freezing..."
Yu Sui then took off the team jacket draped over his own shoulders and draped it over Shi Luo's shoulders. "If you're still cold, let me know. I'll go get you something thicker."
Once he'd settled Shi Luo, Yu Sui went to his own station. Shi Luo glanced at the comments again. 【Who can lend me 100w so I can experience this kind of service from Whisper】—this comment was copied and layered, spamming the screen so thickly it covered the haters' comments completely, hiding them without a trace.