C2 Part3

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

Chapter 2: The Social Flower of Esports (Part 3)

After coming home from a restless day at school, she couldn’t help but give Ji Xiangkong a call.

“Hello?” A lazy voice sounded over the phone.

Qiu Ying said in a rush, “Why are you acting like this?”

“Hm?” Ji Xiangkong drew out the word. “What are you talking about?”

“When you played double queue with me yesterday.” Qiu Ying bit her lip, feeling more and more aggrieved. “There were so many watching, and you didn’t care about me at all…”

Ji Xiangkong’s response was extremely calm. “You said you wanted to double up with me but didn’t tell me I should protect you. I thought that you were a master and that you wanted to play with me to try a higher difficulty.”

Qiu Ying stopped. “I…”

She still wanted to say something, but Ji Xiangkong suddenly lowered his voice, using an extremely tender and accommodating tone to say slowly, “Don’t be sad, just blame me.”

In an instant, all her previous anger, grievances, unwillingness, and agitation were all blown away to the vast, boundless, horizon with this one sentence.

After hanging up, Qiu Ying suddenly froze.

It seemed like she… had been easily duped.

She was really a good-for-nothing!

**

After eating, Qiu Ying logged on to her Weibo and discovered that the comments under her newest post had long since become a mess.

One comment had risen to the top due to its popularity. “Goddess, don’t get involved with that Ji Xiangkong! If you don’t believe me, go look at the forums!”

Qiu Ying didn’t like to make posts or visit forums, which indirectly led to her lack of knowledge about the esports circle. Curious, she entered the gaming forum “Huke,” which was specifically for Conquer, and quickly saw a post with a bold red title on the homepage.

[Detailed breakdown of the Legend vs Titan fight, the reason why China lost the championship!]

“Void Ji Xiangkong fought against American genius Disaster as well as their team’s support and jungler. In a one vs three situation he still didn’t have the brains to die. Fifteen minutes after starting, he got killed 7 times, raising their ace into a monster!

“Ji Xiangkong, Legend’s weak point! The shame of Chinese Conquer! Trash!”

Qiu Ying knew that Ji Xiangkong played Position 3, offlaner, which gave the impression of a role of the martyr.

She scrolled down the page to the comments section.

“The professional circle has become foul now. The teams don’t look at your strength but they look at your network when selecting members. Ji Xiangkong’s a noob, even I can take his place! I really don’t know how many people he’s got by depending on his little white face.”

“Before, this guy was in the Korean esports circle. Not even the secondary teams wanted him, so after he was kicked out he ran over to China to hug thighs. What do you say, don’t the club managements that accepted him have sh*t-loaded minds?”

“Ji Xiangkong’s female fans are really disgusting. They don’t understand sh*t about esports, they only know how to shout that Void is so handsome!! Void is handsome so everything he does is right! You’re only saying that he’s a noob because you’re jealous that he’s handsome! I bet that they’re all boy-crazy maniacs who’ve never had a real relationship!”

“Last year there weren’t any teams that wanted him, so he went to a secondary team with the excuse of ‘guiding the newcomers.’ Now that I look at them, those four newcomers are just big thighs!”

Dozens of pages of replies were flooded with criticisms of Ji Xiangkong, and there were even personal attacks that she couldn’t bear to read. Although before, during the livestream, the audience’s attitude toward Ji Xiangkong on the chat made her a little surprised, she didn’t think that his criticisms were this bad.

Qiu Ying blinked hard and felt like something cold was climbing up her spine.

[Legend’s Ji Xiangkong and VPG’s female CEO meet1 at a hotel late at night, the social flower of esports deserves his reputation!]

[The statistics of the Seattle Global Finals are released, Legend’s Position 3, Ji Xiangkong, is at the bottom!]

The situation was more serious than she imagined. Legend had lost the competition this year, and the widely-recognized weak link of the team, Ji Xiangkong, had actually dared to abuse single dogs by playing games with a girl for everyone to see. Each of the major platforms were once more flooded with waves of criticism against him. Qiu Ying was also dragged into it as a result, and the black posts regarding her all became trending.

The post titled “818 Youxing streaming platform’s four great green tea b*tches, No. 1 Qiu Ying” was extremely popular. The beginning of the post was nothing more than cliches, but then it said that while she was obviously scum at gaming, she was on the platform’s National Stars channel before. Once she didn’t have any more popularity, she shamelessly went over to the more-popular Conquer, since gaming channels had a huge otaku fanbase. However, it turned out that she didn’t prepare anything and didn’t know anything going on inside the circle. When she hugged thighs, she actually found Ji Xiangkong.

The replies were as exceptional as the writing of a novel.

“Beauty on screen, ugly off screen.”

“Look at her P figure, the electric poles behind her are all bent.”

“I went to the same high school as her. Her life is really uninhibited.”

“Before she came to Conquer she was in the Hearthstone circle, at that time she pretended that she was X god’s girlfriend.”

“Whatever the audience loves watching, she does. Once they toss some money, she’s just like a mutt.”

The imagination of the masses was rich. The caricatures within their descriptions forcefully created an image of her as a scheming b*tch. After all, behind the barrier of a screen, there was no responsibility for throwing dirty water.

The most recent reply paired both Qiu Ying and Ji Xiangkong to criticize them together.

“Both of them don’t have any skill and can only rely on their faces to eat. Scum man and b*tch, a perfect match.”

“However, Qiu Ying’s position isn’t guaranteed. Qiao Xin is already going up with Pei Xi.”

Qiu Ying looked at the malicious comments one by one, head buzzing, hands clenched into fists, her nails cutting deep into her palms. She tried to persuade herself to be indifferent.

From the start, she had only walked on one clear road. Earnestly arranging each night’s content, practicing the piano and dance. When she had just begun livestreaming, she only had a dozen watchers. Because of her outstanding appearance and her witty words and actions, she gradually gained a regular audience. But at that time, a lot of people suddenly uploaded crazy posts on the forums which vigorously praised her while hating on other female streamers. When Qiu Ying streamed, they went to other major streamers’ rooms to advertise her, spamming her room number on the chat. It was like propaganda, but in fact blackened her name, leading everyone to go with the flow and criticize her for hiring a navy to promote herself. Qiu Ying posted a clarification with multiple pages of screenshots that were enough to prove she had nothing to do with it, but most believed she had a collaborator and worked even harder to make their curses more and more unpleasant.

Afterward, Qiu Ying found out through various ways that this was likely due to her competitor, Qiao Xin. She and Qiu Ying’s livestreams were both during evening prime time, and after Qiu Ying’s streaming room gained popularity, her own popularity dropped in response. Qiu Ying was a solo streamer without any background, so Qiao Xin used her agency’s power to crowd her out.

During that period of time, Qiu Ying was exhausted and depressed. But people who lived in the cold winter would not fear the cold, and a body that stumbled repeatedly would only become stronger. She had never been a spoiled golden canary. Since the essence of all that profanity and attacks wanted to defeat her and force her to leave, she wouldn’t give into them and flinch, nor would she easily follow their wishes.

Nowadays, online streaming was growing in full swing, but each new industry had its own problems before it reached maturity. Female streamers on the livestream platforms exposed themselves and stripteased to attract attention, unintentionally leading to the “earn more if you take off more” trend. So the news and media constantly negatively reported on it, causing many people to generalize that this was what the streaming industry was like.

Qiu Ying didn’t want to be affected by them, so she switched to the Conquer gaming niche. When she just began her contact with Conquer, she didn’t have many viewers watching her play, but she still had a contract with the streaming platform with strict ratings requirements. In order to earn money, she could only keep singing and dancing before she streamed games, and chat with the audience.

Qiu Ying lifted her head, took a deep breath, and slowly closed her eyes.

Yes, earn money, earn money by working hard.

Things such as pride and self-esteem were already cruelly trampled by reality when she crawled on the ground in despair and begged humbly in autumn of that year.

**

These days, it was almost impossible for Qiu Ying to stream. As soon as she showed up, the audience threw ridicule and sarcasm at her and Ji Xiangkong like a typhoon, heavy rain pouring. If saliva could condense into an arrow, they could shoot her into a sieve within minutes.

A peer in the game streaming circle told her that a person who was alone, without connections, would have an extremely difficult time with no one to block the high winds and waves. Just like the public liked to pay close attention to celebrities’ Weibos to look for something fishy, in the eyes of her audience who spoke based on rumors, an esports player and female streamer playing double queue together meant they were having an affair. Within the streaming circle, it was impossible to stay unless you had a high pressure resistance.

In spite of it being like this, most female streamers still tried to generate gossip, since they could get even more people to watch them by being relevant.

The peer even suggested that Qiu Ying make up a story about Ji Xiangkong’s love and abandonment to initiate an online war and gain attention.

After hearing this, Qiu Ying shook her head firmly. She only wanted to play a double queue game with Ji Xiangkong and borrow a little bit of a great god’s light. She didn’t intend to fall into the news feeding frenzy because of it. She was forced to stop streaming for a while and her popularity kept on falling.

Reason told Qiu Ying that she had invested in the wrong stock and she would have to go through crisis PR as soon as possible, clearing up her relationship with Ji Xiangkong. Moreover, now that she had allowed him to corrupt her youthful springtime, she currently knew that her opponent was the expert social flower of esports and love. Of course she couldn’t tarnish herself by association! The so-called knife drew through water and made it flow even more,2 but if you closed the floodgate in time to protect from the flood, you were sure to strangle this slightly budding seedling in the cradle!

Qiu Ying sat cross-legged in her chair with her eyebrows drawn together, like she was trying to squeeze out water. She gritted her teeth and prepared to put Ji Xiangkong on her blacklist. The phone suddenly rang, making her abruptly fall on the ground in shock, like a dog falling into mud.

She climbed back up from the ground in embarrassment, looking herself in the mirror to reassure that nothing had happened to her front teeth. The new message on her phone made her freeze immediately: the game TV station STV was about to host a new variety show, inviting professional Conquer players and female streamers to participate together. Qiu Ying was on the list of female streamers.

Along with the maturation of the esports industry, top professional players gradually tended to become idolized. In addition to appearing in ads and receiving sponsors, they also showed their faces in various programs from time to time.

The hand holding the mirror shook. God had answered her recent worries about not livestreaming and her popularity falling!

She nodded like a chick pecking rice. Adjusting her tone to livestream mode, she sweetly and aloofly replied, “Oh, I see. Please wait a minute, I need to go see if I have any other appointments that day.”

When she finished talking, she happily spun around a few times, silently yelling “yes!” several times. After that, she put airs back on and calmly sent, “I’m free that day, I will attend.”

After smoothly communicating with the director’s team, Qiu Ying entered an exciting period of preparation. She was a frugal person and usually bought very few things. This time, she spared no expense for appearing on TV and bought a set of Alice+Olivia clothes.

**

It wasn’t until the day she went to the TV station to record the show that Qiu Ying was finally enlightened as to why many gaming fans used the term “HP collapse.”3

The staff member handed her a list of the groups while they were in the lounge. She looked at the first two lines and nearly fainted.

Group A: Ji Xiangkong (LegendVoid), Qiu Ying

Group B: Pei Xi (VPGSummit), Qiao Xin

……

At that time, she was immersed in the joy of being able to participate in a show and actually chose to ignore the list of participating guests!

Qiu Ying had no words, almost choking. She had a hunch that history was about to repeat itself.

The door of the lounge was pushed open and a boy came in. Qiu Ying raised her head to look at him. He was wearing a white shirt and dark pencil pants, his entire body filled with an indifferent temperament and no expression on his face.

The staff member spotted him and greeted him. “Summit, you’ve come.”

Qiu Ying’s ears twitched. This person was… Summit… Pei Xi?

In her mind emerged the image of him that evening, chasing her around the entire map to bite like a mad dog with rabies. Her temple started to tic once more. When enemies came face to face, their eyes blazed with hatred.4

She glared at Pei Xi fiercely, but he suddenly turned his head around. He had clear eyes and beautiful eyebrows.

Qiu Ying looked like she was choking on rice. Honestly, she wasn’t able to connect this fine and handsome face with that day’s dog-man at all. Realizing that she’d forgotten herself, she quickly pasted on a face and pretended to be looking around her.

Pei Xi went with the staff member to leave the lounge. When he passed by Qiu Ying, he didn’t look at her again.

Qiu Ying was still dazed. The program’s assistant manager next to her lightly patted her shoulder. “Let’s go, all the guests are gathering backstage.”

She echoed a reply and checked her makeup in the mirror. Her right eyelid was jumping uncontrollably…

Was this… jumping into wealth, or jumping into disaster?

previous chapter | contents page | next chapter

Footnotes:

1 a word used to specifically describe a secret meeting between lovers

2 抽刀断水水更流, the first part of a Chinese poem, meaning it’s pointless to solve problems using violence

3 血崩, “blood collapse.” Probably refers the instant death of a hero.

4 仇人相见，分外眼红, a Chinese saying

Like this:Like Loading...

Related