Chapter 1  

It was two o’clock in the morning and the lights in the IAC eSports Club FOG division in Shanghai were still bright.

The practice match just ended, and it was free time now. The players in the base were washing up and ordering takeaway. There was only one person left in the training room — Shi Luo who was in his seat playing the game.

It wasn’t that Shi Luo was diligent, but it was the end of the month and he still owed more than 20 hours of live broadcast time to fulfil the terms of his contract.

Shi Luo, account name: Evil, 19 years old, young, skilled, unfortunately quite handsome. Two years after his debut, he was one of the domestic league’s top tier gaming celebrities. He was the poster boy for the IAC team, their cash cow and their pillar.

The celebrity himself, though, didn’t like doing live broadcasts. But according to his contract, he had to do at least 30 hours of live broadcasts a month. So, barring any incident, at least 29 hours of those would be broadcasted at the end of the month.

Just after the practice match ended, the club manager called again. Shi Luo couldn’t put it off any longer and he finally started to make up work.

Only two or three minutes after the live broadcast started, Shi Luo’s live broadcast room had more than 3 million viewers. The barrage was densely packed, and they had overlapped over one another until it was almost impossible to make them out.

[I’d been expecting this broadcast, hhhhhhhhh ...]

[Ha ha ha ha ha It’s that beautiful time of the month when Shi Shen is forced to open business.]

[It’s the 29th already, there’s not much time left for Shi Luo Xuanshou.]

[It’s the 29th already, there’s not much time left for Shi Luo Xuanshou. +1]

[The end of each month is when my husband accompanies me day and night. Just as I thought! Husband, you’ll keep me company for the next 25 hours, right? Are you happy? Are you?]

[Look here. Look here. Look here. After the preseason matches next month, it’s going to be the transfer period. Is my husband still going to be at IAC next season? Will you be transferring this year?]

[Yes, it’s time for the annual transfer again. They said all the teams would be making some pretty big moves this year. I’m waiting for that big shake up in the league.]

[IAC’s boss’s heart isn’t on the game at all. He only wants to make money. He’ll only hold back the team. My husband, the earlier you transfer, the earlier we can rest assured. Asking for a transfer!]

[Stop with the speculations. Every year, everyone goes crazy during the transfer period. Just calm down, alright?]

Near the transfer period, the e-sports fans would all be in an unstable mood, and an argument inexplicably broke out in the barrage. However, Shi Luo wasn’t the single bit affected. After all, he hadn’t opened the barrage interface.

Shi Luo opened the FOG game client, logged in to his side account and waited. After a short while, he entered the game.

FOG, the domestic translation for “Within the Fog”; it has been six years since its public beta, and its popularity has only increased year by year. It was now ranked top 3 among the world’s most popular games.

FOG is a four-on-four confrontation game. In each game, the player and his teammates would be placed on one end of a map covered in dense fog. At the other end of the map would be their four opponents. Players have different abilities and tasks depending on their jobs. The ultimate goal is to clear away the fog on the other side of the map, leaving your opponents nowhere to hide. Then the team that kills all their opponents and destroys the opponents’ resurrection stone first, wins.

Each team of players consists of three jobs &#k2014; two strikers, one sniper, and one medic. Shi Luo played as a striker. As the name suggests, his role was to charge to the front and attack.

Shi Luo was used to playing a side account whenever he did live broadcasts. He hadn’t played this side account much this season and its rank was very low. Naturally, the level of his teammates that the system matched with him was average. Shi Luo was completely indifferent. Run of the mill players could rarely keep up with his rhythm and he was used to solo-ing matches. So long as his teammates weren’t completely terrible, they’d win. And if they were &#k2026; then he’ll just take it as training.

Such as this match.

The other striker in the team opened the match by letting the other team take his head. He had completely no awareness of his movements, and he shot haphazardly, exposing his position. Less than ten minutes into the game and hadn’t contributed even half a point; what’s more, he gave up three heads to their opponents.

In low level matches, he would often be matched with some endearingly silly teammates. Shi Luo didn’t care. In this match, he had already gotten two heads from their opponents. He had upgraded and he could do this 1V4.

But his pig teammate who’d handed over his head, clearly didn’t have such a good mentality. After dying for the fourth time, he started to idle and type out curses in the team chat.

[Thief fierce thief strong]: [Medic, what’s going on? Are you sleepwalking? You’re not providing cover with that photon shield and you’re not adding blood. Then why are you even here? ]

[Thief fierce thief strong]: [You can see I’m taking hits here, why aren’t you helping? What are you playing? If you can’t play then leave! Just f*ck off! ]

[Thief fierce thief strong]: [Why are all these stupid c*nts who can’t get points playing medics now? What? You’re just gonna leech off some points? ]

Shi Luo was in a 1v2 face off, after killing the opposing team, he glanced at the team chat.

Even his spraying was subpar.

Although the team’s medic wasn’t all that sharp, he was a lot stronger than this piss-poor shit of a striker, “Thief Fierce Thief Strong.” The shield cover he’d given Shi Luo just now was very timely. There weren’t any problems.

The medic was probably young or good-tempered, and he’d been insulted for a long time before typing to say: [I’m not just muddling along, I was helping the other striker just now.]

One stone set off a thousand waves. The piss-poor striker was provoked and the team chat started beeping nonstop.

[Thief fierce thief strong]: [You can only assist one striker? Do you only have one hand? Are you handicapped? ]

[Thief fierce thief strong]: [Do you know how to play or not? If you can’t play, can’t you just stop digging pits for your teammates? ]

[Thief fierce thief strong]: [You’re a f*cking c*nt! If you think I’m going to give you free points then think again! ]

This guy was shit at playing the game but he typed pretty fast. The medic didn’t seem like the type to scold people and after typing out a few sentences to explain himself, didn’t type again.

Shi Luo looked at the team chat interface, paused his movements, and in the end, typed nothing.

That’s why he didn’t like doing live broadcasts.

Opening a live broadcast would take up network speed and it would influence his operation, that’s a given. But the most annoying thing about doing live broadcasts was that the league had regulations that stated that active professional players mustn’t display any negative behavior in the game, including but not limited to trash talking or spraying other players.

So many people watched during the live broadcasts and the chat records served as irrefutable evidence; getting penalized was a matter of course.

It wasn’t worth being penalized for something like this.

Shi Luo upgraded his equipment and continued to charge forward alone.

This “thief fierce thief strong” saw that no one was paying him any attention and threw in angrily: [Damn it, I met three useless medics in one night and lost three matches in a row. All these medic players are stupid-ass b*tches!! Stupid-ass b*tches! ]

The chat notification beeped, and Shi Luo narrowed his eyes at the chat interface. After a second, he pushed the mouse aside and started typing.

Beginning with Shi Luo’s first sentence, “Don’t insult the medic. Come on, let us two have a contest”, the barrage in the live broadcast room went crazy.

[Pfft, I knew he wouldn’t be able to help it.]

[You think the no. 1 sprayer in the country in those days is playing a joke on you? After playing professionally for a few years, you think he’s forgotten how to insult people?]

[A spraying contest with Evil? Is he looking to die? No one can out trash talk him ha ha ha ha ...]

[This person’s ability to set off mines is amazing. Don’t you know that Shi Shen’s first in-game occupation was a medic? How can he tolerate insults to medics?]

[Ha ha ha Shi Luo’s using a side account, and this guy has no idea that this is Shi Luo.]

[It’s been a long time since I saw the Little Master’s artful spraying, I’ve missed it a lot. Look at that pro-gamer hand speed, look at this huge vocabulary, and look at his flexible use of obscenities! Ah...feels so good.]

[Aren’t professional players not allowed to trash talk other players? Isn’t he afraid of being penalized?]

[There’ll definitely be a penalty. Just wait for the announcement on the club’s official blog. That’s 10,000 yuan down the drain.]

[My God, he’s still raining down abuse? What’s with this hand speed hhhhhh ...]

Shi Luo was expressionless as his fingers flew across the keyboard.

The penalty wasn’t based on the number of insults. One insult had a fine of 10,000. A hundred insults also had a fine of 10,000. In any case, this 10,000 yuan was as good as gone, so why not curse this little sh*t some more?

This “thief fierce thief strong” obviously couldn’t keep up with Shi Luo’s hand speed. After a few minutes, he was scolded and trash talked blind. Once Shi Luo insulted him enough, he picked up his mouse and continue the game.

For low level games like these, it didn’t matter if they were missing a teammate. Shi Luo and the two other team members quickly and accurately destroyed the enemy’s resurrection stone and a big “win” popped up on screen.

In the chat interface, the other two teammates thanked Shi Luo, and Shi Luo did not reply. When he was about to withdraw, the “thief fierce thief strong” who had been idling for nearly 20 minutes, mystifyingly sent out a sour statement: [So what if you won? It’s just because your opponents were also sh*t! They better not team me up with this kind of medic anymore. ]

[Thief fierce thief strong]: [If you can’t play a medic then study more. Watch how pro-players operate, like Whisper. ]

[Thief fierce thief strong]: [Look at how other medics play. You can only help one teammate? Stop making me laugh. ]

[Thief fierce thief strong]: [Good thing Whisper’s going to return to China. When the time comes, you can watch his live broadcasts. Hehe, I hope I never see you again! ]

This “thief fierce thief strong” quit the game after finding a venue for his sour grape-ing. The other two teammates immediately comforted each other and ignored him. Shi Luo looked at the chat record and was shocked.

A few minutes later, Shi Luo canceled his next match, got up and went downstairs.

In the lounge on the first floor, team manager Zhao Feng was looking at WeChat. When he saw Shi Luo coming, he sighed. “I’ve been getting all these complaints. Did you just trash talk a random player? I told you, you can spray as much as you want when you play in private. But if it’s a live broadcast then bear with it as much as you can. When you do it this publicly, when people ask me, what can I say? I can’t cover it for you even if I want to, you ... ”

Zhao Feng was looking at WeChat as he babbled, when he finally looked up and saw Shi Luo, he was startled. “What’s wrong with you? What’s with that look? I-I didn’t say anything about you ...”

Shi Luo’s looked gloomy. Without saying a word, he turned around to head back upstairs. Halfway there, he turned and went back.

Manager Zhao stared at Shi Luo in shock, “What the hell are you doing?!”

Shi Luo stood still and asked coldly, “Yu Sui is coming back to China?”

Zhao Feng was unable to utter a word.

Zhao Feng nodded cautiously. “Yes, he may even possibly be back already.”

Shi Luo’s lips moved without a sound, and it took a while to slowly say, “No one told me.”

“Who would dare to tell you? Everyone knows you two ... Sigh, I was going to tell you! It’s just that we’ve been busy lately and the transfer period’s coming up soon. There’s so many things I haven’t gotten ’round to yet.” The more he spoke the more he seemed inadequate. He smiled apologetically and said, “For your sake, we didn’t consider signing him. That’s all there was to it.”

Several of his other teammates came into the lounge. His teammates felt that there was something off and they were baffled as they looked at Zhao Feng and Shi Luo.

Shi Luo also realized his loss of composure. After a moment, his lips remained flat as he said, “It’s nothing. So he’s back. I just wanted to ask.”

He headed back upstairs to continue his live broadcast. It was as if nothing happened just now.

In the lounge on the first floor, Shi Luo’s teammates were quite puzzled. Bewildered, they asked, “What happened? Who’s back?”

Zhao Feng pursed his lips. “Whisper, Yu Sui. He came back from the European league.”

The medic on the team was startled. “Whisper!!!”

Zhao Feng shot him a look, telling the medic not to be so loud. The medic hastily covered his mouth, and then whispered, “Whisper’s back in our region?! Which team is he going to? F*ck, this year’s transfer period is really going to be earth-shattering.”

Zhao Feng shook his head: “No one knows yet where he’s going.”

The youngest in the team, their sniper, entered the pro-scene late and so he wasn’t familiar with the situation. He said, “Yu Shen, the former no. 1 medic in the domestic league, currently the European region’s no. 1 medic, three consecutive World Championships ... who doesn’t know of him? So? What’s wrong with him coming back? What does it have to do with Shi Ge? ”

Zhao Feng sighed. “It has a lot to do with Shi Luo.”

“Two years ago, Yu Sui was still the strongest player in our region, and Shi Luo was just an unknown ordinary high school student.”

“Shi Luo originally didn’t want to join this industry. It was Yu Sui who personally signed him into his own club, promising a lifetime contract. Afterwards, he personally ...”

“Packed up Shi Luo and sold his contract to another club for a high price.”