Ding-ge’s texts came in like an avalanche. Finally, when he truly couldn’t convey his emotions through his messages anymore, he directly called Lu Boyuan.
Lu Boyuan cleared some monsters and recalled to base before he answered the call.
“Mn.
“I’m marketing the merch. The water friends are reacting pretty well.
“We crashed cars, so I was just chatting a bit… coming back this afternoon? Weren’t you going to stay overnight? Up to you, safe travels.”
His voice was calm, as if the person on the other end was telling him “there’s a clear and boundless sky in Beijing today I kind of miss you.” However, in reality, each one of Ding-ge’s sentences contained up to three “fucks.”
[Hahahahahaha Ding-ge’s so loud I can hear him even without speaker mode]
[Thankfully Ding-ge wasn’t watching Soft’s stream, or else he could’ve taken flight on the spot and flown back to Shanghai with how pissed off he would’ve been by the words typed in the chat box.]
[Damn, I never expected that God Lu would speak up… I’ve never seen God Lu insult someone in a public setting before.]
[That host from last time…?]
[At the most, he was just calling him out, it can’t be considered an insult. But… the reason he called out the host last time was because the host was stirring up drama about Soft, while this time, it’s because Rish mocked Soft. This…]
[Is it not because that dumbass was mocking the LPL this time?]
[Stop talking stop talking, it’s my dumbass son’s fault, femme fatale!]
[Someone just told me to my face that HT was amazing. I beat him up to the point he had to go to the hospital, did I do it right, my bros?]
[It’s true that internally, HT looks down on the LPL, including the team’s staff. Even Master frequently ridicules the LPL publicly in interviews. There’s probably something really wrong with the heads of the people who are still fans of this kind of team.]
Ever since Lu Boyuan joined the LPL, he had never once openly mocked another pro player before. When he was in the prime of his youth, he had felt like it was beneath him to do such a thing, while now, there was no need for him to.
Which was why after XIU heard Savior’s translation, he asked two consecutive questions—“did he really say that?” and “did you just blindly translate for me do you know what trash means?”—before he stopped next to the second tower in shock and typed—
[XIUXIUXIU: Bro?]
Naturally, when XIU heard what Rish had said, he was also angry. But perhaps since he had been in a team made up of Korean import players for a long time and had been extensively flamed as a “Korean team” before, he was already immune to it. What’s more, speaking rudely for the sake of a dumbass, giving antis more material for no good reason, and perhaps even having to eat a penalty—no matter how you looked at it, there was nothing to gain.
Lu Boyuan glanced at XIU’s message. He was about to say something when Rish started going at it again.
[Rish: Ge, good afternoon, no need to insult someone.]
In all the other competitive leagues, Lu Boyuan was the most popular pro player from the LPL. When he went to Korea to compete before, mass amounts of Lu Boyuan’s support banners could be found in the audience, even in the home stadiums of those top tier Korean teams.
On top of that, he had received Best Jungler for several consecutive years, easily making him a senior figure in the LCK.
But last year, Rish had just become a starter for the LCK’s strongest team, HT, and he was only a bit older than Savior, so he was still quite full of himself.
[Rish: Ge, has your team’s previous mid laner already been fired?]
[Rish: The team still didn’t search well for a mid laner, it’s truly such a waste of your team’s configuration ah ge. The new mid laner on ge’s team seems also to be no good.]
[Rish: If my words made ge unhappy, I’m very sorry, but can ge make it into the MSI this year? I want to apologize to ge in person.]
[Savior: Damn brat, interacting with your seniors even in the middle of a game, did your team’s management not teach you how to respect your seniors?—XIU-ge told me to send that, ge.]
Who knows if XIU’s message had gotten through to Rish or if he had been ganked by his manager. Either way, he stopped talking.
“Whatcha doing?” Lu Boyuan’s voice dragged Jian Rong out of his thoughts. “Camping me?”
In order to read the barrage’s translations, Jian Rong had idled for a short while in the bushes next to the raptor camp.
At that current moment, Lu Boyuan’s Nocturne was standing right in front of him.
“No, I was reading the translations.” Jian Rong deleted his message from the chat box and wiggled his mouse. “You know Korean?”
Lu Boyuan said, “I know a little.”
“You hardly just ‘know a little’…” Yuan Qian remembered something. “That year we won the championships, we were in Korea for the competition. At the time, there was pressure on Fu-ge from our sister-in-law, so we were a bit short on funds. Over in Korea, every translator was in charge of at least six freaking teams, so they all had their hands full. Xiao Bai and I had already come up with gestures for ‘let’s eat,’ ‘you’re so amazing’ and ‘are you a dumbass.’ Then Captain spoke, and good grief, his Korean was level 100.”
“Wah, back then I thought that my ge had walked out of a k-drama.” Xiao Bai instantly interjected, “None of those Park or Seok-something actors could compare to my ge.”
Jian Rong thought back briefly. The year they won Worlds, it seemed like Lu Boyuan was only eighteen?
“Don’t listen to their nonsense.” Lu Boyuan said mildly, “Let’s go.”
Jian Rong followed after him. “Where are we going?”
“The blue buff first.” Lu Boyuan checked the minimap and entered the enemy’s jungle like he was returning to his old home. “Then the bot lane.”
Meanwhile, Doufu felt as if he had been going against the current this entire spring season.
During the very first match of the season, he had brought out his signature champion only for it to be utterly slaughtered. From that point on, he hadn’t been able to recover, and something had felt off every time he played. In the end, they only won one match in the spring season and had to directly bid farewell to the playoffs.
Now, he couldn’t even rest easy in a ranked game!
First, he didn’t get ADC, and the system automatically filled him into the support role. Then to add to that, his ADC partner was a moronic Korean pro player who hadn’t said a single decent thing since the start of the game until now—if Doufu hadn’t been given a red warning by his team’s manager, he would’ve long since freaking AFKed and left!
But all of that aside.
Doufu lifted his head and glanced at his score: 0/4/4.
Then he opened the scoreboard to check Rish’s score—Draven’s 1/8/3.
Right off the bat, Rish had offended the other team’s mid laner and jungler, and the opposing bot lane had immediately set up a Summoner’s Rift-edition mahjong tournament1. The moment they entered the lane, the other four people were waiting for them. The jungler on Doufu’s team was also an unimpressive random player, so the enemy team succeeded in their ganks almost every single time. Finally, Doufu’s team had no choice but to abandon the towers and run away.
It vaguely felt as if he had returned to this spring season’s first match. His entire brain was filled with the scene of Zed chasing him, out for blood.
After being brutally murdered in another mini team fight, Doufu stared at the person dancing on top of his corpse. At last, he couldn’t hold back any longer. He clicked on the chat and furiously typed out in pinyin—
[doufugg: You’re dancing on the wrong fucking person! The one on the right is that dumbass Rish! Motherfucker!!!]
Jian Rong, who was dancing on Doufu’s dead body and flashing his icon, paused for a split second.
[softsndd: Oh, sorry.]
One of Doufu’s teammates kept refusing to surrender. With great difficulty, Doufu managed to last until the opposing side pushed their base, and he sucked in a deep breath before he fished out his cigarettes with a shaking hand.
In the game, Jian Rong spoke again and sent out several long messages in a row. Doufu didn’t even need to guess to know that he was flaming Rish.
The cigarette dangled from Doufu’s mouth as he waited for the water friends in the barrage to translate.
[softsndd: Just wait for MSI, dumbass]
Doufu drew in a mouthful of smoke. Suddenly, he felt like the points that he lost this game didn’t really matter that much anymore.
[softsndd: Wait for Dad to knock you down from your starting position]
Doufu smiled slightly, feeling good.
He exhaled smoke and said to the audience in the stream, “You know, this bastard does occasionally say some reasonable things…”
[softsndd: Your Draven is even more trash than the support next to you, who’re you trying to show off to?]
Doufu: “…”
Doufu spat out his cigarette. He had long since stopped caring about what color warning he was on, and his voice reverberated through the entire base. “………Soft you fucker!!!!”
Ding-ge rushed back from Beijing that night and returned to the base with milk tea and the intent to murder his team members.
When he arrived at the base, the team was sitting in front of the living room TV watching a match. The playoffs had already started, and the lower-ranking teams had to compete for the opportunity to play against TTC or PUD in the semifinals.
“Thanks to you all, PUD’s manager said that he’s going to work with the other teams to send me a brocade banner, expressing their gratitude for you two venting this grievance on behalf of the LPL.” There were tears accompanying Ding-ge’s smile and resentment hidden in his tears. “None of you were there, so I have no way of describing to you guys just how shady that dog bastard’s voice was. On my way back, I wanted to change my route to PUD’s base so many times, but I resisted in the end.”
Xiao Bai said considerately, “It’s okay, even if you really had gone, we still would’ve thought of a way to rescue you.”
Ding-ge fumed. “Much appreciated.”
Before Ding-ge left, he was actually feeling pretty reassured. He felt like Jian Rong couldn’t make too much of a mess with Lu Boyuan here.
He hadn’t expected for Lu Boyuan to ult in and start the team fight first all on his own.
Currently, the implicated party didn’t seem to have any regrets.
Lu Boyuan leaned back against the sofa and asked, “Does HT have some sort of initiation ceremony? For example, before they can join the team, they have to be subjected to Master’s brainwashing or something like that…”
The other party involved ducked his head and took a sip of the milk tea that Ding-ge had brought over. “What do you mean?”
“Master often ridicules Korean imports who come to compete in the LPL… which is why those Korean trolls all worship him a lot.” Yuan Qian explained, “Now that you mention it, it is kind of weird. Every pro player who joins HT really does like to look down on the LPL, the other Korean teams aren’t like this.”
Pine: “Even with that being the case, some LPL teams still tried to lure over Master this year.”
“Ss… after what we did today, the trolls on the Korean and Chinese servers are definitely going to surge up again.” Xiao Bai wrinkled his face. “What happens if we don’t win MSI?”
“There’s no ‘if.’” Jian Rong interrupted coldly. “We can win.”
Lu Boyuan glanced at him. The teenager’s brows were furrowed, his lips pressed tightly together. Clearly, he was still submerged in the urge to crush Rish’s dog head.
Jian Rong always acted very imposing whenever he said something like this, so it was easy for someone to forget—
“MSI… have you guys won the spring season yet, to talk about MSI?!” Ding-ge came back to himself. “The freaking semifinals haven’t even happened!”
Yuan Qian burst out laughing before he suddenly recalled something else. “Then what about their streams, the two of them won’t be fined again, right?”
Xiao Bai: “They were just fined not too long ago, it’ll be a second strike if they’re penalized again…”
“Fined my ass.” Ding-ge’s emotions were influenced by theirs. “Someone else started it first, if they’re gonna be penalized, then Rish has to be too. If they’re all fined together, then I’ll concede. But if only the LPL is punished and not the LCK, I swear I’ll find a water army to drown the management at Riot…”
The TV was broadcasting the match between MFG and UUG. The female mid laner from MFG continued to work hard and successfully carried her entire team again this game, helping MFG win the second round of a BO3 match.
The young woman picked up her water bottle and stood up, expressionless, before she went backstage to prepare for the next game.
Yuan Qian sighed. “This female mid laner is improving so quickly. We won’t be playing in the semifinals against MFG, will we?”
Ding-ge’s attention was instantly diverted. “It’s possible. I feel like if it’s not them, then it’ll be Fighting Tiger. MFG played very well in their last match of the regular season.”
Lu Boyuan asked, “Did you download the match recording?”
The team’s staff would always download every single match, so that the coaches could browse through them whenever they wanted to.
Ding-ge: “I did, but it’s on my laptop, which is in the car…”
“I have it on my tablet.” Jian Rong asked without thinking much of it, “Do you want to watch it?”
Lu Boyuan lifted an eyebrow in surprise and said, “Sure.”
Xiao Bai looked amazed, and he wore a ‘my son has grown’ expression on his face. “You watch game recordings?!”
Jian Rong ignored him.
Actually, he didn’t watch them too frequently, but whenever he came across a brilliant game or an opponent he wanted to research more about, he would still go to specifically download the recording of that match or ranked game.
The female mid laner from MFG was on his recent research list, but since he was too busy climbing to rank one on the Korean server lately, he didn’t have time to watch the recording yet.
Jian Rong came downstairs with his tablet and handed it to Lu Boyuan. “It’s in cloud storage, the very first video.”
Lu Boyuan tapped on the screen. A photo of Little Orange with his butt sticking out lit up.
The corners of his lips twitched and he asked, “What’s the password?”
Jian Rong, who usually used his fingerprint to unlock the tablet, paused. He chewed on the straw for his milk tea and sprawled back against the couch before he leaned towards Lu Boyuan. “Four ones or four eights? Try both.”
Lu Boyuan typed in four eights, and the tablet successfully unlocked.
Lying peacefully on the screen was the app interface that the tablet’s owner had forgotten to close out of after looking at it last night.
Jian Rong stared at the “TTC mid/jungler 18+ fanart” that he had “accidentally” opened yesterday night. With a crack, he bit down and completely broke through the plastic milk tea straw.
The commentators’ voices coming from the TV drew far away from him.
The sound of his teammates chatting nearby also drew far away from him.
When Lu Boyuan’s index finger pressed against the screen and scrolled downwards on the drawing, Jian Rong felt like he was about to leave the earth.
Wei: Omg… Jian Rong…. Why do these things always happen to you my son adfhalh why don’t you learn from your past mistakes
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