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This stream, which had everyone thinking “is this even allowed,” concluded with Road entering the practice room, his team jacket draped around him, and taking Soft away.
That afternoon, the topic “#when will Soft play on the Korean server#” was replaced by “#Soft’s stream was arrested by Road#”; the topic following closely underneath it was “#Savior assimilates into China e-sports#”.
Oblivious bystanders clicked on the topics with the mindset of “your e-sports circle is so full of bullshit, any damn incident can make it onto the hot search.” After they finished watching the video clips, they then started begging for this blue-haired teacher’s streaming platform in the comment section.
Ding-ge had been in this industry for six years, but he had never encountered something as excessive as this before.
During their midnight snack, Ding-ge stood on the balcony, one hand on his hip as he held his phone and furiously laned against PUD’s manager. His voice was so loud that even the second team next door could hear him—
“What do you mean, my mid laner led your mid laner astray? Yes, Soft was the one who brought it up first, but is Savior a three-year-old child? He has his own opinions, he wanted to do that himself, understand!
“I’m twisting your words? To me, it looks like you’re forcefully shifting the blame! Such a big team can’t even protect its own members, just look at how awfully Savior was flamed on the Korean server and Ventbar, what are you doing as a manager? If Soft hadn’t helped him release his anger, I bet Savior would’ve become depressed on the spot!
“Thinking of it like that, you should be thanking me! When will you be sending over the tuition fee for Soft?!
“Oh right, let’s settle the hot search fee too—your team’s new mid laner hasn’t gotten on the hot search yet since joining the LPL, has he?
“I didn’t keep an eye on our team’s mid laner? Soft hasn’t publicly insulted anyone for two weeks now! Do you know how difficult that is to accomplish?! But then your mid laner approached him and immediately threw out five consecutive party invites, forcefully bringing that negative energy into our base! I’m telling you, if anything goes wrong with Soft’s performance in the upcoming matches, it’s all your mid laner’s freaking fault!!”
Everyone else was sitting on the couch. Xiao Bai wanted to laugh, but didn’t dare to. He grabbed Pine’s jacket and covered his face with it, choking back his laughter to the point that his shoulders were shaking.
Pine: “Don’t you dare wipe your snot onto it.”
Yuan Qian couldn’t take it any longer either. He cupped a hand over his mouth and whispered, “He won’t be insulting and insulting and then end up challenging him to a fight, right?”
“Probably not.” Xiao Bai said, “Jian Rong has argued with so many people before, yet you’ve never seen him actually challenge anyone to a fight in real life over it.”
Jian Rong crunched down on his chips. “Don’t bring me into this.”
Lu Boyuan’s phone kept vibrating and buzzing. XIU had been texting him nonstop.
[XIU: Savior was just lectured by our coach, this is actually his first time being scolded since he joined the team.]
[XIU: But he isn’t sad at all, fuck, he’s in an even better mood than he was the day he joined. He was even humming a Korean song a moment ago.]
[XIU: That song is fairly well known, I forget the name, have you ever seen My Girl? It’s the theme song from that drama, I can do the rap from it.]
Lu Boyuan was afraid that XIU would end up sending a voice message over, so he quickly stopped him.
[R: Why are you telling me about your team’s mid laner?]
[XIU: I just think that your mid laner is pretty amazing. With Savior’s situation a few days ago, I was about to ask the coach to find a psychologist.]
[XIU: Is Soft going to be scolded too? He wasn’t affected too badly, was he.]
Lu Boyuan glanced at the person next to him.
Jian Rong was in the middle of playing Fight the Landlord on his phone, with one of his legs propped up high over the other as he ate potato chips.
Jian Rong was the landlord. The other two peasants were frantically giving boosts to each other, pissing Jian Rong off so much that he directly threw down a king bomb. Ultimately, the two peasants worked together to get rid of all their cards, and the free Happy Beans that he could receive that day vanished in one game.
“Dammit…” Jian Rong swore lowly. Then, as if he had sensed something, he turned his head and looked over.
A second later, his eyebrows, which had been tightly knitted together due to those 2,000 Happy Beans, instantly unfurrowed.
The others were still eavesdropping on Ding-ge’s call.
Jian Rong subconsciously lowered his gaze and stared briefly at Lu Boyuan’s lips. Although the injury wasn’t obvious, it was still there.
Jian Rong cursed at himself in his mind before he shifted a tiny bit closer to Lu Boyuan and asked softly, “Does it hurt?”
It took Lu Boyuan a second to realize what Jian Rong was talking about.
It actually didn’t hurt at all. If Ding-ge hadn’t brought it up, he wouldn’t have even noticed.
Lu Boyuan locked eyes with Jian Rong for a moment and said, “A little.”
Jian Rong reached into his pocket and rummaged around, fishing out three tubes of ointment.
He stuffed the tubes into Lu Boyuan’s hand. “Then put some of this on.”
Lu Boyuan looked at the three differently packaged tubes, amused. “Which one?”
“They’re all effective.” Jian Rong contemplated before recommending, “How about you apply a different one every day?”
If Lu Boyuan did that, the injury would most likely recover completely before he could even have a chance to try them all.
Lu Boyuan laughed. “…sure.”
Jian Rong unlocked his phone again and used his hard-earned money to buy 12 yuan worth of Happy Beans.
Lu Boyuan’s head drooped forward lazily as he calmly watched Jian Rong play. They were sitting quite close to each other.
Jian Rong was fierce regardless of what game he was playing. With a rotten hand of cards, he seized the landlord position and even super-doubled the stake.
Lu Boyuan saw that he was taking a long time to play a card, so he said quietly, “First play the pair…”
Jian Rong: “I’ll be more gentle in the future.”
“…”
Lu Boyuan stared at the flushed tips of Jian Rong’s ears. Some time passed before he finally said, “It doesn’t matter.”
He lowered his voice and said mildly, “I still have three tubes of ointment, do as you like.”
Jian Rong was caught off guard, and he accidentally pressed the ‘show cards’ button.
Two minutes later, the Happy Beans that he had just purchased for 12 yuan flew away with the wind.
The official penalty for Savior’s trolling was swiftly handed down. He would be fined 1,000 USD, but wouldn’t be banned from competing.
When Jian Rong learned of that, he had just finished a practice match.
“Damn, at least it was only a fine.” Ding-ge let out a breath of relief.
Jian Rong unplugged his peripherals and was about to go back to play ranked when he suddenly felt like something wasn’t quite right. He took out his phone and calculated the exchange rate before he questioned, “How come he was only fined a thousand USD, but when it comes to me, the starting fine is ten thousand RMB?”
“It’s because he was reported on the Korean server, so it was settled according to Korea’s rules… you still have the nerve to ask that?!” Ding-ge raged, “Tell me, why did you feel the need to carry out some live learning session for no reason? And you didn’t teach him anything good either! Thankfully it was only a fine this time, if Savior was given a competition ban instead, then this incident would be spread as TTC’s conspiracy! I wouldn’t be able to clear things up even if I had ten freaking mouths!!!”
Jian Rong chewed on his gum. “Well, how was I supposed to know his acting skill was so trash?”
Ding-ge: “?”
“When I told him to betray his teammate, I meant for him to pretend to disconnect halfway through a team fight, or purposefully miss his attacks… he turned tail and ran at full health all on his own, what could I have done about that.”
Ding-ge felt both mentally and physically exhausted. “Just shut your mouth. Although they aren’t penalizing you this time, the upper management still verbally criticized you a bit. Don’t bother streaming today, in case Savior’s fans come to get their revenge and you guys end up fighting again.”