# Chapter 85
Zhou Huo stared at Chen Huo and Puppy in disbelief. "I can hardly believe that just came out of you two."
Chen Huo rolled his eyes. "Then pretend I never said it."
"When did this friendship even develop?" Zhou Huo was puzzled. "Didn't you two spend every day bickering?"
"We bicker every day, but he's still two years younger than me." Chen Huo turned to face Zhou Huo. "But have you ever seen Shi Luo hold a grudge?"
Zhou Huo froze, then thought carefully. "Now that you mention it... you two always seem fine after every argument."
"I don't hold grudges either. Neither of us does, so what counts as a real fight?" Chen Huo turned back, his tone unusually serious. "I didn't really feel much about it before—whether we were on the same team or not. But later... sigh, at that club that time, I thought he was going to mess with Yu Sui and took Yu Sui to the hospital. I was pretty annoyed, thinking the kid couldn't tell good from bad and didn't cherish old friendships. Later I realized it was a misunderstanding—I was being petty."
Chen Huo lowered his voice. "After thinking it over, I realized he's really the type who values old bonds the most. Back then we'd only been teammates for a few months, but two years later he still couldn't let it go. Someone like that... sigh, seriously, after you've seen plenty of those profit-driven people in this industry, you can't help but like someone this stubborn."
Puppy sprawled in his gaming chair. "At first I wasn't teammates with anyone, had no feelings for anyone. Then after being teammates for a few months... he and I were teammates during the most turbulent months, building the team together, getting blown apart together, getting flamed together... Nobody has an actual steel heart, right? Eating in the same room every day—how could there not be feelings? For my part, I hate it most when flamers say he has no experience. I said two years ago he shouldn't have joined FS. If he hadn't been unlucky enough to join that trash team, he should've had major tournament experience by now."
"You don't feel the pain until the knife cuts your own flesh... it was fine before, but now when people are actually cursing your teammate to his face, how could you not get angry? Shi Luo's pretty much the same—he doesn't just have eyes for Yu Sui and nobody else..." Puppy adjusted his posture, scratching his chin. "When someone in his stream was saying I was trash and freeloading, he saw it and immediately banned them. Can you say he treats me like a tool teammate? No matter how much we rip into each other or bicker normally, that's our own business behind closed doors. Can outsiders come and make a show?"
Zhou Huo looked at the two of them, deeply regretful. "What I regret now is not bringing a camera to record this rare moment of team warmth."
Chen Huo made a face. "Are you crazy? If you recorded it, Shi Luo would find out!"
Puppy felt a chill run through him too. "Won't the fans know too? Please, we all know what's going on without saying it out loud. Don't do this."
"What even is our team's situation?" Zhou Huo's heart ached. "Other teams badmouth people when they're not around, but it's the complete opposite for us—everyone's away means everyone says nice things. This is really hard on me. During streams you two are either selling teammate practice time to boost your own viewer counts or attacking each other nonstop, making our club's corporate culture incredibly weird."
"During Chen Huo and Shi Luo's duo streams, you're either not talking to each other or flaming each other's mistakes. Fans are on pins and needles, always worried you two hotheads will actually come to blows and the club will collapse again. And Puppy? Wants nothing but to be the top streamer. No matter who he duos with, every ten minutes he's dropping hints about how many more cameras he has in his stream, trying to lure viewers from the other person's chat."
Zhou Huo's head ached every time he thought about the苦苦支撑的官博. "Do you know how envious I am when I see other teams吹自己队友情深?! Do you know how much I resent it when I see fans of other teams crying from emotion?! We have this too! Just show it a little!"
"The entire club! A whole club's worth of teammate love!" Zhou Huo got more worked up as he spoke, resentfully saying, "We're barely holding together on the hard-won feelings between Yu Sui and Shi Luo!"
Lao Qiao, who'd just learned that Yu Sui and Shi Luo were together, was unexpectedly tickled by this. He sprayed a mouthful of water, leaning on the arm of his gaming chair and laughing so hard he was breathless.
Yu Sui, Chen Huo, and Puppy all nimbly dodged the spray. Only Zhou Huo, being a non-pro player, had slower reflexes and got splashed in the face.
"I—" Zhou Huo was fuming, quickly grabbing the tissue box to wipe his head, his frustration boiling over. "Can't you just reverse the whole thing?! Being one way in front of people and another behind their backs—can't you just do it the other way around?!"
Yu Sui, who'd been wondering why Shi Luo hadn't come back yet, was distracted as he absently tried to comfort him. "Don't worry—for you it's actually the reverse."
Zhou Huo愣了一下, then realized what he meant. Covered in water, he stammered, "Now you're not just messing with your teammate's mentality—you're going for the manager's too?!"
Shi Luo, who was outside the door, couldn't help but laugh. He walked into the training room and joined the others in teasing Zhou Huo. Zhou Huo was so angry steam seemed to rise from his head. In the end, he was barely soothed by Lao Qiao's words: "Think about it carefully—are we only messing with the mental state of the people we're closest to?"
The second game between Saint and IAC began. Everyone stopped chatting and went back to watching the match.
IAC didn't have many tricks either—just about the same strategy over and over. The second game was almost a repeat of the first. Forty minutes later, Saint took the game, winning the regular season match 2-0 as expected.
Zhou Huo scrolled through the forums and clicked his tongue. "Saint prepared so thoroughly today, the forums are all praising them...，顺便又鞭尸了咱们一波, saying we were under-prepared, had a bad attitude, no strategic depth."
Puppy pushed his gaming chair back to its original position and shrugged dismissively. "They've been flaming us about this since we lost to Saint. Haven't they had enough?"
"I've been trained by you guys now—seeing these things doesn't affect me anymore. But what I'm more worried about now is Saint." Zhou Huo's brow slightly furrowed. "If you guys are right and Saint does stumble someday, the flamers who are吹 them now will have their faces slapped so hard they'll flame even worse."
"Then let's hope you're wrong." Chen Huo rubbed his ear, not confident in his own words. "Maybe we're overthinking it. We don't know what the other teams are really planning, don't know what's going on with Lao A's health. It's all just speculation, you know..."
Everyone ate dinner together. After dinner, Yu Sui and Puppy had free training while Shi Luo and Chen Huo were required to duo by the data analyst.
Shi Luo had been a little moved by what Chen Huo had unintentionally said before dinner.
When he'd gone to FS, and later joined Free, it had definitely all been because of Yu Sui.
"One glance at Yu Sui and a lifetime is lost." Since encountering Yu Sui at seventeen, this person had been influencing Shi Luo—never forgetting, never letting go, all because of him.
Before, his eyes and heart were filled only with Yu Sui. But after joining Free, just as Puppy had said, after spending so much time together day and night, even the most closed-off heart couldn't help but add a few more people.
The more people you carry in your heart, the more you gradually understand why Yu Sui made the decisions he did back then.
Putting himself in that position, Shi Luo couldn't let go of his other teammates either—not even for Yu Sui.
Shi Luo couldn't help but think again about what Puppy had said before dinner: How long have flamers been attacking him for lacking world tournament experience? We'll拖也要给他拖去...
It wasn't just Shi Luo who'd changed.
He'd just taken his relationship with Yu Sui to a new level that day, and now he'd discovered this unspoken teammate bond that everyone was too embarrassed to talk about. Shi Luo was in a great mood.
So great that he was even willing when the data analyst told him to duo with Chen Huo.
They were brothers who fought without holding grudges—duoing? What harm could come from practicing coordination?
But unfortunately, this thin thread of warmth barely held for two games. By the third game, Shi Luo couldn't take it anymore.
"Are you f—" Shi Luo swallowed the curse words before they left his mouth, holding back. "Don't push so far forward, okay? I don't need you to take bullets for me."
"Who's trying to take bullets for you?!" Chen Huo shouted in anger. "If I don't get in close, this kill would've been yours again. Have you been infected by always duo-ing with Yu Sui?! Your kill-stealing skills are getting better and better!"
"The kill was always mine to begin with. From the moment I fired to landing the killing blow, all the damage was mine. Am I stealing? Who's been收割ing all the low-health targets I've been setting up?" Shi Luo's fingers flew across the keyboard as he played, which didn't stop him from opening social media. He pulled up the in-game statistics panel and screenshot-copied-pasted the data directly to Chen Huo. "Look at your收益比! Is it higher than mine? You emptied a whole clip and didn't secure a single kill. If I didn't land the last shot, wouldn't they have just run?"
"I would've grabbed that kill long ago if I wasn't worried about affecting your gameplay!" Chen Huo slammed his keyboard, irritated. "Did you not hear what the analyst said earlier? Coordination! Work on your coordination."
Shi Luo nimbly grabbed another kill. "I've been coordinating for two games already. I've reached my limit. If I let you have more kills in this situation, I'm worried the two random teammates will report me for消极比赛."
"What the—" Chen Huo tore at his hair in frustration. "Are you starting to trash talk now? Here we go again? You agreed so sweetly not even an hour ago and now your true colors are showing? Little brat..."
Shi Luo ignored Chen Huo, playing at full capacity. The two of them chased each other, getting more aggressive by the minute, and won the game in under twenty minutes.
"Look, let's not fight about this." Chen Huo took a step back first. "How about this—you switch to your medic account and queue with me. You watch properly and see exactly how I play."
"You heal me?" Shi Luo stared at the monitor blankly. "You don't deserve the surname Zhao."
The heated argument instantly died. Chen Huo,吃亏没文化, hesitated and asked carefully, "What... what does that mean?"
Yu Sui had been looking forward to a happy duo session with Shi Luo that evening, but his little boyfriend had been临时sent to Chen Huo's side. Yu Sui had been枯燥单排 all night. During a queue wait to get hot water, he'd caught this line and said calmly, "It's a compliment. It means 'you're worthy of all the splendor.'"
Chen Huo was suspicious. "Is it a good thing? Who said that?"
"Sima Qian, from the Records of the Grand Historian." Puppy tried to soothe his stream viewers. "Can we not have such tense vibes? This isn't fighting—there's such a nice atmosphere... Oh, it wasn't Sima Qian? My bad, fans are correcting me. It was Li Bai. From an acrostic poem by Li Bai."
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**Translator's Notes:**
- "Puppy瘫在电竞椅上" / "靠着自己直播间的粉丝安抚道" - These details show Puppy is also streaming while having this conversation, which adds to the humor of them all being publicly filmed without realizing
- "你不配姓赵" (literally "you don't deserve the surname Zhao") is a famous meme from Chinese internet culture, originally from a TV drama where a peasant claims to be a descendant of Zhao, implying someone is being arrogant or doesn't deserve their status. Shi Luo is essentially saying "you wish" or "you don't deserve that" in a memey way
- The gaming terminology (人头/kills, 残血/low health, 医疗师/medic, 双排/duo queue, etc.) has been kept natural while remaining understandable