C16 Part2

Parsed with an automated reader. The content accuracy is not guranteed.

Chapter 16: A Brothers’ Game (Part 2)

The first game, Phoenix encountered the strongest of the ten teams, Chaos.

In the MVP area of the front rows, Qiu Ying watched with incomparable anxiety. They’d only ever played small fries before the tryout competitions, so the team seriously lacked any actual combat experience against first-string teams. Just by encountering strong enemies, the issues of players in their transitional and breaking-in phases would be completely exposed.

In the current Best-of-3 round, Phoenix lost one set right from the beginning. Ji Xiangkong hadn’t prevented Chaos’s best nucleus-rushing setup. Instead, he left every one of the heroes they were good at free, while on his own side he chose several heroes whose current winning percentages were 0.

A booing came from all around the stadium. The commentator couldn’t help but laugh. “Void’s acrobatics time is starting again.”

When the second round got to its mid-stage, while the battle was tense, their five enemy players disappeared from the map at the same time. No one knew where they ended up!

On the large screen, the hero Ji Xiangkong was controlling went toward the perilous forest, as if exploring the path. He cautiously went out some distance. Not far away, Chaos was already in formation and ready to ambush, right here and now!

Chaos’s vanguard had also discovered Ji Xiangkong. He was preparing to come out, but the teammates hiding behind him spread out on both flanks, exposing themselves within their enemies’ range of sight.

Just as a teamfight was on the verge of breaking out, sharp rocks pierced through the ground in a straight line. The four Phoenix members were struck at the same time on the middle of the narrow road, stunned on the spot. After enduring a round of attacks, they were forced to flee with low HP.

The situation was considerably unfavorable for Phoenix!

Seeing an ice-cold iron hook stretch out from afar toward Sun Zeyi, who had the highest output in the team, Ji Xiangkong turned back with no hesitation and moved in front of Sun Zeyi. The iron hook pierced his chest, drew him in, and pulled him into the den of the tiger. He was surrounded by all members of Chaos!

At the juncture of this crisis, Qiu Ying watched Ji Xiangkong say a few unknown words within the glass competition room. The Phoenix members, who were originally preparing to save him, suddenly turned and ran.

Within the game scene, Ji Xiangkong’s hero was thrown into the air. A machine gun strafed, ignited flames burst, and in the end he was chopped down to the ground.

The cheers of the Chaos fans rang out, as if enough to move mountains and seas, within the site.

Qiu Ying held her breath in concentration, gaze fixed unmoving on the large screen. As they saw Chaos in hot pursuit, support Lin Yixuan stopped, resolutely stood up, and covered his teammates as they retreated.

The rousing voice of the system prompt rang out once more: “Double Kill!”

In the glass room, Ji Xiangkong’s expression was calm as he made his next command.

At this critical moment of distress, Pei Xi turned back to rush into the group of enemies. While as everyone was thinking that he was going to perform a hero-saves-the-world script again, everyone’s hands were sweating because he wasn’t the core right now, unlike before when he had the best equipment. His actions shocked everyone — he didn’t ask for kills at all, he just contained the opponents to let his teammates smoothly escape!

The audience nearly felt as if they were hallucinating.

Oh, my God! What had they seen?

Summit flashed to the front row of enemies to use his ult, pushed away his teammates when his HP was in critical danger, initiated the wild state that would make his HP loss even quicker, and fatally bit the opponent’s core underneath everyone’s fire!

That Summit who had always ever been alone, not caring whether others lived or died, that Emperor Pei who had always been “one person carrying four backup dancers”, was now willing to be cannon fodder!

Not only had his position changed, but his temperament changed a lot, as well!

It was at the moment that Pei Xi was killed in action that the two Phoenix players that they’d originally thought to be long gone turned back. Xia Ling silenced the group by himself, while Sun Zeyi found the perfect position to fire an ice arrow, destroying their enemies and reaping the entire field!

Exquisite cooperation!

An explosion of applause!

From the very beginning, this was all the script written by Ji Xiangkong!

Phoenix completely went on the path of counterattack. Ten minutes later, an army approached the city gates and Chaos was forced to give up a GG.

The third round, Phoenix was even more changed from their previous decline. In twenty minutes, they finished against Chaos with no one dead and a shutout game, winning their first excellent victory in a major offline competition.

In the interview after the game, when the reporter asked Ji Xiangkong about the failure of the first round, he smiled and said with casual calmness, “It’s been a very long time since we competed with first-string teams. I wanted to try out a new tactical setup to fight against their unique skills, but in the end, they weren’t successful.”

In short, We’ll give you one round.

Qiu Ying stood beneath the stage placating Chaos’s manager who was thinking of rushing up there and smacking him, but she couldn’t conceal the smile in her eyes.

She knew that this wasn’t a knockout match right now; if they lost this round, they could still come back to fight. This move of Ji Xiangkong’s was undoubtedly a heavy blow to Chaos’s confidence, but he only dared to do such a thing because he had absolute confidence in their victory.

After the first round of the competition, there were two days of rest. In the evening, everyone ate a late-night meal in the hotel suite as they watched TV, briefly celebrating their current record of complete victories. Although all of them were in tacit silence with each other, ever since the team was established every person was bearing enormous pressure — doubts and ridicules from the outside world, crowding-out from first-string teams, as well as the dilemmas and setbacks that ordinarily made them unable to relax for a moment during their nervous and boring trainings. And now, they had finally taken the first step toward an ultimate victory.

Lin Yixuan sprawled back on the sofa. “At this moment, there’ll be nothing more satisfying for the soul than Ying meimei’s dance.”

Xia Ling glared at him. “You’ve got some guts to say something that in front of Ji ge.”

“He’s not wrong.” Ji Xiangkong put one leg on top of the other, computer on his knee, without raising his head. “But that’s a solo dance for me to see.”

Lin Yixuan snatched up a paper towel to wipe his mouth and bitterly sang, “Such cold dog food thrown onto my face…”

Qiu Ying was giving Ji Xiangkong a shoulder massage. When she heard them say this, the strength of her hands increased, squeezing him so that he took in a breath.

As several people were talking and laughing, Lin Yixuan suddenly discovered that the lamb skewers were nearly all gone. He turned and slapped his thigh. “Oh my God! Pei Xi, you took advantage of us talking to eat so fast! You’re making a fortune off of a quiet voice!”

Ji Xiangkong was browing the largest online Conquer portal. Qiu Ying remembered that there was still an enormous tag of Qiao Xin there on the homepage: Pei Xi’s rumored girlfriend; so she teased: “Ay, Pei Xi, she’s hyped you up for so long, if you really don’t take some advantage of it, even I’d feel you weren’t worth her while.”

Lin Yixuan covered the top of his face. “Don’t, don’t, don’t! If you let that Film Empress bump into him and touch him, our Peipei will suffer a lot, alright?”

Everyone burst out in laughter.

Pei Xi put all the sticks from the lamb skewers neatly into the recycling bin, eyes lowered at Lin Yixuan’s paw rubbing back and forth on the back of his arm. The latter’s entire body shivered from the cold, and he took back his hand with a forced smile.

When their bedtimes were nearing, Ji Xiangkong opened his door to discover Sun Zeyi had been alone on the balcony for a very long time. He went next to him and asked with a smile, “Sun ge, what are you thinking?”

Sun Zeyi’s head was still lifted to look at the stars. “I’m thinking of back at the beginning when I first decided to return. I was afraid that after so many years away from the battlefield and being so old, I wouldn’t be strong enough to do what I desired. Before, I mixed around in second-string teams for a very long time, but from start to finish we couldn’t advance during the qualifiers of big competitions. If you hadn’t come to find me at that time, maybe I would’ve been like that for this entire life. But for these few days, when I stood on the stage and heard the audience below cheering, every single cell in my body as been so wholly inspired.”

Sun Zeyi let out a deep breath, doing his utmost to repress the trembling in his voice. “That moment was when I realized how much I cannot bear to part with this arena, how much I thirst to be able to keep fighting.”

From when he’d decided to return up until now, it wasn’t Sun Zeyi hadn’t felt the mark of the years, his ability to react, concentration, and even his physical strength declining. The only thing supporting him to keep going was that strong unwillingness to admit defeat.

“Everyone said ‘You can’t’ and ‘Give up’, but I wasn’t willing to. My soul still draws breath!” Sun Zeyi covered his face with his hand, the helplessness and depression of many years seeming to break through the dam of his soul. “I want to win. I want to get the trophy at the Global Finals. Later on, I was afraid of saying this desire aloud for fear that people would laugh, so I could only first tell it as a joke to myself.”

The cold night wind rustled against his clothes, as if hot blood was cooling down with a whimper.

Ji Xiangkong’s eyes deepened. He patted him on the shoulder. “Sun ge, we’ll go there together. Step by step, returning to the top.”

The tryout competitions continued for a full two weeks, ten teams entering a Best-of-3 round-robin to accumulate points. After several rotations and twenty-seven rounds of intense battle, they finally reached the moment that seemed comparable to a milestone—

“GG! Congratulations to Team Phoenix for standing out from the rest in the tryout competitions, successfully gaining the entrance ticket to the CPL Spring Competitions as first in the rankings for total points! Let’s wait and see how they do in the seasonal competition to come!”

When the “Conquer” representing victory shot onto the large screen, Qiu Ying leapt up from her seat, rushing toward the stage like a gust of wind. The Phoenix members had just gone down the steps when she nearly broke their formation by crashing into them.

“We won! We won!” Qiu Ying’s face flushed, both hands clenched into fists. It was obviously such a happy occasion, but she opened her mouth, tears catching her off guard and spilling down. She nearly sobbed and cried aloud.

Countless people smelled the scent of gossip and cameras swept over to this corner one after another. Lin Yixuan and the others tacitly lined up to create a human wall, and after blocking off their beautiful leader behind them, Ji Xiangkong rubbed Qiu Ying’s head and lowered his voice to whisper into her ear, “Don’t be so cute. There are so many people watching, I’ll kiss you when we go back.”

Qiu Ying sniffed, using the back of her hands to wipe at her tears. The corners of her mouth twitched. “I just felt… so many things happened before… it was really… really… hard for us…”

Lin Yixuan was amused by this. “Ying meimei, winning the tryout competitions was in the bag, these ges are top players anyway. The Spring Competition to come is what’ll be a tough battle.”

At this Qiu Ying controlled her emotions. Her large eyes blinked, long eyelashes lowered, moistened with water droplets, making them even darker and thicker. The tip of her small nose was red, indescribably affecting… if it weren’t for that her crying had made her makeup bloom, leaving two dark tracks of tears.

Seeing her with a panda face, vividly describing the unstable ups and downs of her emotions as she watched the game from the stands just now, Ji Xiangkong finally couldn’t keep himself from laughing aloud. “Wipe your face.”

When they left the stadium, the corridors were crowded full with people. After going through this competition, Team Phoenix gradually gained “team fans”, and the cheer cards also changed from those a single player’s name to the team logo. What made Qiu Ying even more pleased was that while it wasn’t like she’d become an internet celebrity, there was always a part of the fans’ cheers that were for her.

“Qiu goddess, when will you come back to the commentating stage?”

“It’s such a pity that you retreated to the backstage!”

“Is it okay if you start streaming again? Everyone really misses you!”

Qiu Ying’s heart warmed, her nose soured, and she nearly cried aloud again.

After the tryout competition finished, Team Phoenix went onsite to watch the CPL Fall Playoffs in order to prepare for the upcoming Spring Competition. STV invited Qiu Ying to return to the commentating platform, but they were rejected by Qiu Ying again. Now she hope to throw all of her energy into the team’s affairs, and only in her free time would she stream on Tanuki, playing entertaining games with the team’s fans, chatting with the audience, conducting an emotion-type program of “Soul Arsenic” at night…

The more unavailable something is, the more noticeably valuable it becomes. Recordings from long ago when Qiu Ying commentated games were often featured on the homepage, and after retreating backstage her popularity only increased, rather than decreased. Lin Yixuan looked at the number of people online in her streaming room and said with a face full of envy, jealousy, and hatred, “I’ll bet that if Ying meimei streamed herself sleeping, she’d still get millions of watchers.”

previous chapter | contents page | next chapter

fyi Spring Festival/New Year refers to Chinese (Lunar) New Year here

Like this:Like Loading...

Related