Chapter 10

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Having just settled in the Yiyou Building, the members of Noah’s Ark’s were still in the phase of adjusting their states and familiarizing themselves with the new environment. The Yiyou Building’s environment was indeed much better than their previous club. Moreover, Shao Han was extremely moved when the person in charge of their move actually prepared left-handed gaming equipment for him especially.

When Shao Han booted up the game to get ready for training this afternoon, he found that one side of his headphones wasn’t working. He could only pause the game to take the training room’s spare headphones, but since he wasn’t used to the model, it ended up affecting his gameplay with how uncomfortable it was.

Good headphones were naturally not cheap. Shao Han would generally use a pair of headphones for as long as possible. When he asked his teammates, none of them had any extra pairs. He could go out and buy one at the e-sports town tomorrow, but tonight’s training arrangements would then have to be held up.

Shao Han somehow thought of Yao Sen.

In the end, Shao Han still sent a message to Yao Sen, asking him if he had any extra headphones. The latter quickly replied that he did, and that he could go get it now.

When Shao Han got there, the four members of Titans’s main team were in Yao Sen’s dorm room watching a gaming competition broadcast together. Shao Han, who had come to Yao Sen’s room for the first time, somewhat couldn’t help but look around curiously.

There were two beds in the dorm, and the shelves near the one with the blue-gray bed sheets had some of Yao Sen’s personal peripherals and books. Everything was neat and tidy, the sheets without a single wrinkle. In contrast, Wang Yuxi’s bed was a tragic sight to see–various charging cables and snacks piled up on his shelf.

Shao Han couldn’t help saying to Yao Sen, “Your bed is so tidy.”

Wang Yuxi: “It was messy, but when he heard you were coming…”

Yao Sen let out a cough. Wang Yuxi changed his tune amiably and grabbed him by the shoulder. He was beaming with the smile of a professional bullshitter with twenty years of experience under his belt, “No, I mean our boss lives a refined life. Every day he takes daily baths in Icelandic mineral water and drinks ’82 Lafite. Ey, being a male god is so damn sweet.”

Yao Sen: “Lao-Wang, if you want me to snipe you, just say so, no need to beat around the bush.”

Shao Han couldn’t resist raising the corners of his mouth, his whole being carrying a rare softness. He smiled as if there was a light in his eyes, and it illuminated Yao Sen’s heart, causing a scalding hotness to spread.

For the sake of Shao Han’s smile, Yao Sen stopped bickering with Wang Yuxi. Instead, he set aside his pork trotters and stood up to go get headphones for Shao Han.

Yao Sen pulled open a drawer. “Take your pick.”

There were six or seven different pairs of headphones in the cupboard, and Shao Han was astonished. “Why do you have so many?”

“Some of them are ones I bought, some are from sponsors, some are from brands that sent them to PR. I’ve never used most of them.”

Shao Han picked a pair at random and said, “Thanks, I’ll return it to you tomorrow after I go to the esports town and buy a new one.”

“Sure. Are you guys still training this late?”

“Mm, I haven’t adjusted my form lately, so I need to train a bit more.”

Not long after Shao Han left, Yao Sen received a message from Coach Gou saying that there would be a short meeting with the four of them tomorrow at 2 pm to discuss the WCAD.

Yao Sen: “There’s a meeting with Lao-Gou tomorrow at two.”

Wang Yuxi: “Huh? Bai Yue and I are going to walk around and find something to eat at noon tomorrow.”

“When are you not going out for a walk?”

At 2 pm the next day, Coach Gou took the four members of the Titans’ main team to the conference room and gave each of them a document with the Alarm Dawn World Championships logo on the cover.

Yao Sen: “What’s this?”

“The results of WCAD’s newest competition format changes,” Coach Gou replied. “You guys take a good look, some of the competition formats are being used for the first time next year. We still haven’t trained yet, so remember them well.”

Yao Sen was stunned, “It’s out so early? Didn’t you have to wait until the beginning of the year in the past?”

“The format has changed so much this time, it makes sense to tell us months in advance,” Coach Gou looked serious, “and the change from the previous two-round format to a three-round format is honestly not good for us, it’s not good for us to get a place next year.”

In previous years, WCAD’s qualifiers and finals implemented a two-round format. With the increasing number of teams applying, the organizers had revealed their intention to change the competition format as early as half a year ago, and now it was finally being put into effect.

Yao Sen opened the file and perused it. The qualifiers and finals in previous years had been changed to include a group stage following the qualifiers, with the winning teams of the group stage advancing to the finals.

The three rounds of the competition also adopted different formats. The qualifiers and finals used the points and double elimination[1] system as usual, while the crucial group stage adopted the Swiss system[2] for the first time.

The Titans’s style of play was a one-off strength suppression, which was not at all suitable for long-term play. The Swiss-system increased the playing time and reduced the previous 32 teams to 16, undoubtedly making it much more difficult to advance to the next round.

The Titans’s best finish in WCAD was seventh place when Yao Sen was still a minor, before he became captain. That had been several years ago. The WCAD was a biennial competition, and Titans had not been in the top 10 since then.

The previous Asian champion had finished fifth in the WCAD, and that team was defeated by Titans in the Asia quarterfinals last year after Yao Sen became Titans’s captain.

Coach Gou: “Your minimum goal for this WCAD is fifth place. If you don’t make it into the top five, I’m going to kick the four of you off the top floor of the Yiyou Building. If you fall to your death, then it’s on me.”

“Don’t do that, Gou ge,” Wang Yuxi said. “It’s still more than half a year away and you’re already threatening us with these words. Our goal has to either be the first, second and third place anyway, right Chief Sen?”

Yao Sen: “We’re settled as long as you don’t make waves.”

“Of course it’s great that you’re confident,” Coach Gou said, “but don’t lower your guard either. In those days, the Asian champions were able to rank fifth because the strong Swiss team OD didn’t participate since their original players were injured. Otherwise they wouldn’t even make it into the top five.”

“The best ranking a domestic team has gotten at the WCAD was Cobra’s second place, and that was when the strongest player in the Asian esports scene, Lu Kaizhi, hadn’t yet retired,” Bai Yue sighed. “To be honest, it’s really not easy for us to grab a ranking.”

Lu Kaizhi, the former Cobra captain who retired five years ago, had the game ID Caesar. In the years when he was captain, Cobra won consecutive Asia Championships, and he also led Cobra to beat the perennial champion of the North American Regionals to finish as a runner-up in the WCAD, and that year, they became the only Chinese team to ever make it into the top three.

Coach Gou snorted, “We need sensible people like Bai Yue to pour more cold water on all of you.”

Wang Yuxi: “What’s there to be afraid of, hasn’t Yao Sen been called Little Caesar before?”

Upon hearing this, Song Mingzhe, who had been sitting on the side seriously reading the rules of the competition, couldn’t help but pipe up, “Our captain is stronger than Caesar.”

Out of Song Mingzhe’s ten sentences, nine of them boasted about Yao Sen, and one was a particularly unusual one.

“I’ve fought with Caesar before. He’s strong,” Coach Gou stared at Yao Sen and said slowly, “but Yao Sen will definitely be stronger than him, I’m sure of this.”

The four of them were stunned. Coach Gou usually criticized them—sometimes scolding them to the point where they wondered if they even knew how to play the game or not, and rarely did he praise them so bluntly.

When Yao Sen first became famous in the e-sports scene, he was indeed called “Little Caesar” because of the similarities between his and Lu Kaizhi’s playing styles. To be honest though, Yao Sen wasn’t from the same era as Lu Kaizhi, and no one liked being labeled as someone else for their own efforts, so although Yao Sen didn’t mention it explicitly, his heart was somewhat conflicted. He also regretted that he wasn’t active in the same period as Caesar—otherwise, he might’ve had a chance to fight him openly to find out who was stronger.

Wang Yuxi: “Coach Gou, who do you think would win a match between the current Yao Sen and the Caesar in his prime?”

“The five-match score would probably be three to two.”

“Yao Sen three?”

“Yao Sen two.”

The atmosphere in the training room was a bit grave for a moment.

“But don’t forget, just now I didn’t say that Yao Sen is definitely stronger than him. I said that Yao Sen will be better than him. If Yao Sen and Caesar fought each other next year, I believe that the five-match score will be four to one—Yao Sen four,” Coach Hook said seriously. “I’m saying all this so you can bear in mind that you four aren’t at your best right now, and there are still plenty of other guys who can beat you. But these last six months are crucial, and then it’ll be the time for you all to beat others into crying for their moms and dads.”

There was only one norm in e-sports, and that was winning or losing. It was just another industry where there was a constant turnover of young blood. No one knew how long it would be before the current legends would be surpassed by new talent—but as long as their names would one day be remembered, they would pour their every last passion into it.

These were the thoughts that were running through his head on the way back from that night’s night run. In his heyday, Caesar had led Cobra to achieve the same Asia champion title as the Titans’s now, setting his sights on a longer-term WCAD champion title.

Cobra were still regretful of missing out on the title that year, and it wasn’t long after that that Caesar announced his retirement. In the final of the WCAD double-elimination tournament, Cobra continuously won, but was finally defeated by the winner of the losers bracket, which became one of the biggest regrets in the history of domestic gaming.

At that time, Cobra was defeated by the strong Odin, a Swiss team that had won several championships. The industry had expected that Cobra would lose to Odin because Odin only fell to the losers bracket in the first place due to making a serious mistake in the first round of the double elimination matches. Cobra was really no match for Odin at all.

The two teams, Team Odin and Team Lincoln of the United States, would always appear in the final round, with Odin winning this competition then Lincoln winning the next, and both teams have never fallen out of the top three.

In the next competition, Team Odin and Team Lincoln were also bound to be Titans’s biggest challenge.

After Yao Sen entered the elevator, the elevator stopped at the 9th floor. When the door opened, Shao Han was standing outside.

Shao Han was startled, “I came to return your headphones.”

“Thank you,” Yao Sen took the headphones from Shao Han. “Which ones did you buy?”

“Steelseries’s new model,” Shao Han replied. “Then you go back, I won’t bother you.”

Yao Sen thought over it for a moment, then suddenly grabbed the elevator door that was about to close and stepped out, “I want to talk to you, do you have a minute?”

Shao Han’s heart was inexplicably tight, “What is it?”

When they arrived at the lounge on the communal floor of the building, Yao Sen sat down on the couch and tilted his head against the back of the couch, taking a deep breath. Shao Han sat down next to him, separated from Yao Sen by a dozen centimeters.

Yao Sen suddenly asked, “Do you know Lu Kaizhi?”

“I know ah, he was the captain of Cobra’s main team five years ago, WCAD’s runner-up, game ID Caesar.” Shao Han paused, “What’s up?”

“Do you think I’m a lot like him?”

Seeing that Shao Han looked slightly surprised, Yao Sen laughed again, “It’s okay if you also think we’re alike, it’s true that a lot of people think that way anyway.”

Shao Han shook his head, “You’re not alike.”

☆ ☆ ☆

t/n – i’ve realized that the AD in WCAD probably stood for the game’s name so I’ve changed the translation to ‘Alarm Dawn’ (prev: ‘Daybreak Alarm’)

[1] basically: there are two brackets, the winners bracket and the losers bracket. if you’re eliminated from the winners bracket you fall to the losers bracket, and then if you’re eliminated (again) from the losers bracket then you’re done for good. wikipedia page here

[2] swiss-system wikipedia

⟵ Chapter 9 | TOC | Chapter 11 ⟶

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