Chapter 2, Chapter 2: Yux's answer at the time was no...
Rumors about "internal conflicts within the CG team" and "disagreements between Yux and his teammates" are not new.
CG, as a popular team on roeCN, once had a world championship and runner-up finish, but those were four or five years ago, and all the members who won the championship back then have long since left the team.
Yux, whose real name is You Xin, is the core player and main carry of the CG team. He recently celebrated his 20th birthday.
He joined CG's youth training program at the age of 16, was officially promoted to the first team as a substitute at the age of 17, and by the age of 19, he had already won both the spring and summer championships and won both the FMVP award.
As a newcomer who has only been in the industry for two years, Yux's popularity in the league is already soaring.
Despite his young age and numerous accolades, Yux's immense popularity has brought him considerable trouble.
The controversy surrounding him mainly revolves around two points.
First, there's a lack of international tournament achievements. Many people, especially fans of former world champions, are unhappy with Yux's fans' boasting about his achievements—after all that bragging, he still hasn't won a world championship or has his own weapon skin.
Secondly, there's the issue of his own personality.
In summary—it's too arrogant.
In countless interviews, post-match voice recordings, and documentaries, his presence is overwhelmingly strong. Arguing with coaches about draft picks and bluntly criticizing teammates' poor performance in scrims are commonplace for him.
Some people think his personality is too sharp and difficult to get along with. Others strongly agree: "Can't we even say we're bad at the game? Professional players need people like him who can speak the truth."
However, if it affects the team atmosphere or even the performance during the game, that's another matter entirely.
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[Pigeon: Sigh, it's said that Yux and the head coach had a big conflict. Apparently, Yux wanted to make his own decisions when it came to picking, but the head coach felt that since he was Yux's coach, why should Yux dictate his picks? So you see, CG's picks in the semifinals were a mess, and they almost got swept 3-0.]
[Pigeon: It seems like they have other problems within their team, it's a miracle they've gotten this far [shrug]]
The next day, Nan Zhiyi got up early to add water and feed his birds.
The bird wasn't in its cage. As soon as he opened the door and came in, it spread its brightly colored wings, turned its pigeon-toed feet, and flew over to him, affectionately nibbling at his fingers.
He played with the birds for a while, then heard someone calling him from downstairs:
"Xiaoyi? Your takeout has arrived, I brought it in for you."
"Thanks, I'm coming right away!" Nan Zhiyi called out as she turned around.
He stood up and walked out, the large orange-blue parrot chasing after him, biting at his trouser leg, trying to keep him there. Nan Zhiyi struggled with all her might to free the trousers from the bird's beak.
He went downstairs and saw Qiu Cheng, with a buzz cut, standing by the dining table, carrying his breakfast.
Qiu Cheng, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, asked, "Up so early?"
"Feed the bird, or it'll start chirping later." Nan Zhiyi said helplessly, "Why are you up so early too? Didn't you broadcast last night?"
"It aired, but not for long. Tangyuan and I watched the game and then logged off," Qiu Cheng shrugged.
"It's a shame you didn't come with us to watch the match yesterday," he added. "CG's comeback from 2-0 down was absolutely phenomenal, it drew massive viewership. I bet after watching that match, they weren't really interested in watching the rest of the live stream, so they just logged off."
Qiu Cheng is Nan Zhiyi's current roommate and childhood friend. He also streams on Stars, but has slightly fewer followers, only about half of Nan Zhiyi's.
Live streaming is one of the reasons the two are sharing an apartment. The other reason is because Nan Zhiyi wants to keep his birds.
The large parrots' territory demands were demanding, and their loud calls disturbed the neighbors. Despite the extremely high rents in the city, Nan Zhiyi rented a detached villa and reserved a room specifically for keeping the birds. Qiu Cheng's bedroom and workspace were on the first floor, while he lived on the second floor, with the two of them each paying half the rent.
Nan Zhiyi sat down to eat breakfast, when Qiu Cheng asked again, "They're going to organize a viewing group for the finals next week, offline, at Tangyuan's house—are you coming?"
"I can't come." Nan Zhiyi poked a soup dumpling in her bowl. "I have to go out."
"Oh, right, I almost forgot. You were just saying you had to make up for the lost time in the next couple of days." Qiu Cheng slapped his forehead.
He sat down at the table, took a drag of his cigarette, and suddenly sighed, "I wonder if Yux can pull through in the finals. If he underperforms again this year, I feel like the game's viewership is going to drop even further. We streamers really have to live off his reputation. Yesterday at the beginning, I mentioned that I'd met him before he became a pro, and we'd played a few games together, and then a bunch of jerks, as soon as they saw he was 0-2, started cursing me—"
Nan Zhiyi nearly choked on the bun in her mouth.
He coughed twice, interrupting, "Wait, you didn't mention me, did you?"
"—You're just trying to ride my coattails." Qiu Cheng looked up at him. "Don't worry, I didn't mention you."
Nan Zhiyi breathed a sigh of relief.
He continued eating, while Qiu Cheng looked at him thoughtfully: "Actually, if I were you, I would definitely just lay it all out and say that I used to know Yux. Not only did I know him, but he was also your junior from high school—even if we had conflicts in the past, so many years have passed. What deep-seated hatred could there be between men that they can't get over?"
Nan Zhiyi thought silently, that was no ordinary conflict between men.
“That makes sense. You don’t really need that much traffic.” Qiu Cheng said, then suddenly changed the subject, “It’s better to be an entertainment streamer. Your fans are more loyal and willing to give you gifts. Someone like me who makes a living with technical skills works hard every day but gets no credit, and the chat is full of nitpicking trolls.”
"I had such bad luck the past two days, I lost over 200 points, and all my teammates were trolls. There are no matches these days, so I have to fight back. Otherwise, they'll criticize me for not even making the top 100."
These words, when they reached Nan Zhiyi's ears, somehow made him feel subtly uncomfortable.
But he didn't say anything, he just asked, "What's your ranking now?"
"More than six hundred."
"Top 100? No problem at all." Nan Zhiyi smiled. "Haven't you been on it many times before?"
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At 8 PM, Nan Zhiyi started her broadcast again on time.
Normally, he would never stream so frequently, instead devoting more time to video production. But lately, Nan Zhiyi has felt his inspiration has dried up. Adding to this, Pigeon told him he could get a ticket to the finals, and the two of them would be flying to Country X next week to watch the match in person, and he, unusually for him, started to perfunctorily stream.
[ROE/Ranking Climb]
Nan Zhiyi borrowed the inspiration he got from Qiu Cheng that morning. Today, he turned on his webcam and logged into his alternate account, which he doesn't usually use for live streaming—his main account is notorious for its malicious behavior. The ID "AngelYi" has a built-in damage-attracting buff, and he is often chased and killed by the opposing team throughout the game, making his gaming experience very unpleasant.
[Trying to improve scores? That's an unfamiliar term.]
[The streamer got carried away with five consecutive wins yesterday and is now aiming to become a professional streamer.]
[Ahhh, Xiaoyi's mom is here! Did she just wake up? She's still in her pajamas, and she looks so fluffy lol]
...Actually, his clothes were torn by birds again this morning, and there was a hole right at his navel, so he could be photographed as soon as he stood up.
"My account has a pretty high ranking. I won't look at your chat when I get into the game, otherwise I'll drag my teammates down." Nan Zhiyi revealed her account's ranking.
9000 people on the ladder.
The chat was flooded with comments like "Redefining high scores," "That's pretty high for him," "Platinum streamer regains his glory," and "Confess honestly, who let you play on their account?"
Nan Zhiyi ignored the barrage of criticism in the live chat and started playing a game.
The general rules of ROE matches are as follows: characters who die during a match will respawn at a new spawn point. This spawn point can be moved during the match. The side that first destroys the opponent's spawn point and eliminates all of the opponent's characters wins.
Once in a match, players can choose the class they want to use in that match. Different classes will have different special skills.
After entering the game, Nan Zhiyi was assigned to the 4th floor and was successfully assigned the command position she wanted to play.
He had just pre-selected the class he wanted to play, the Bard, when someone on the first floor suddenly typed: "Can the third floor let me have it?"
Nan Zhiyi looked at the positions on the first floor. This person was assigned to the tank position, while the third floor was the main DPS position.
The person on the third floor immediately replied: "I can't give way to you, brother, I can't give way to you."
Nan Zhiyi exclaimed "Eh!"
[That voice sounds so familiar, is that the city lord?]
[That's the city lord! I just came from the city lord's live stream, haha!]
[How could we run into each other like this? The first game tonight is between a married couple!]
The "City Lord" mentioned in the comments refers to Qiu Cheng, based on his livestream ID: [秋城主].
Nan Zhiyi was initially a little uncomfortable with their calling her "Lady of the City Lord" and shipping them in the comments, but she has now become indifferent to it.
One day, he accidentally discovered that not only Qiu Cheng, but also many of his friends, from professional players to small streamers, had been paired up by fans with a huge number of couples.
...Outnumbered, Nan Zhiyi had no choice but to give up on her fans' little hobby.
In the game, post #1: [My main account is in the top 10, can I let it pass?]
Upon seeing this, Qiu Cheng sneered, "Hey brother, anyone can brag. I could just say I'm number one on the ladder."
Seeing this, the player on the first floor didn't ask for another spot and quietly pre-selected a tank role, the Knight.
Qiu Cheng didn't give up his position. He clicked around among the suitable main DPS classes and finally chose the [Witch].
Nan Zhiyi subtly raised her eyebrows.
Witch is not a profession that Qiu Cheng is good at, nor is it a suitable profession in this [Jungle Map].
The jungle map is a long-range map, while the witch is a short-range class. Although she is positioned as a mage, her function is more like an assassin.
It was probably the comments on the screen that reminded Qiu Cheng, because after making his selection, he suddenly asked, "Is Xiao Yi on the 4th floor? Really?"
Nan Zhiyi didn't want to speak on his microphone. He could only type: "[It's me]"
"What a coincidence, we just happened to run into each other. Well then, you choose the cat, you can hang on me and protect me in a bit." Qiu Cheng immediately said, "Don't worry about choosing, I can easily carry you through this segment."
He was referring to a professional "cat person".
In ranked matches, the Catman is often paired with the Witch. Its special skill is the ability to transform from human form to cat form, hiding on teammates to protect them, making it a good match for high-attack, low-defense, high-risk, high-reward classes like the Witch.
Nan Zhiyi doesn't really like playing with cats; he prefers support characters like bards who are fast and agile.
But not changing professions at this point would seem like a lack of trust in teammates.
Nan Zhiyi switched to the cat-like figure, and then Qiu Cheng spoke up again: "Isn't this first floor a youth training camp? He said he's in the top ten?"
After the game loads, you can see your teammates' IDs. Nan Zhiyi glanced at the ID on the first floor, which was CG.Y.letter.
CG.Y is CG's second youth training team. Nan Zhiyi remembers this letter; it seems she usually plays a secondary DPS role. Why would she suddenly ask Qiu Cheng for the main DPS position?
"He's not in the top ten? That's just bragging." Qiu Cheng was still chatting with the live chat, his tone somewhat disdainful.
He turned on his game microphone, as if afraid his teammates wouldn't hear him.
The receiver on the first floor was still on, but there was no response.
After entering the game, Nan Zhiyi hid the bullet comments section.
As the commander, he habitually checked the movements of his teammates and found that the other two were starting normally, while the tank, Letter, in the team had walked to the flower bed, stopped, picked the third blue rose from the left and put it in his backpack.
Nan Zhiyi still remembers the first time Yux stood on the league stage and was interviewed. The host asked him a question: Why did you pick a flower and put it in your backpack at the beginning of the jungle map? Was there any special meaning?
Yux's answer at the time was no, because he liked it. And it turned out he really did like it, because he did it in every subsequent jungle map game, making it his signature move.
Nan Zhiyi blinked involuntarily. This time, this server—it seemed unlikely, right? They should be training and preparing for the finals, shouldn't they? Besides, why use someone else's account?
It's highly likely that it's just a junior trainee in the team imitating his favorite senior.
Nan Zhiyi convinced himself. He manipulated his character to transform into human form and quickly caught up with his teammates.
A note from the author:
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Some settings that I'm too lazy to include in the main text (you can skip this if you're too lazy to read them):
1. Eternal is a 3D action-adventure game with a third-person perspective. Currently, it has four maps: [Jungle], [Sky City], [Ruins], and [Castle]. The maps are quite large and complex, but my description isn't very detailed; it's just a rough draft.
2. Each player needs to create their character's face, which can be changed afterward (for a fee). However, the character designs submitted by professional players to the official team cannot be altered, which is why Pigeon always regretted his "emo" look... Characters can also change outfits and customize their appearance; overall, the style is Western fantasy.
3. A specific way to distinguish between different classes is by looking at the weapons they are holding: [Witch] carries potions, [Catman] carries a small staff, [Knight] carries a shield, sword, and horse, and so on. The champion skins after winning the championship are all weapon skins.
4. The Pick screen displays player character images, with symbols representing different classes highlighted below each image. Professional matches typically use a 2-ban, 4-pick system, with the ban/pick phase completely separate. In regular games, there are no ban slots, but you cannot choose the same class as your teammates or opponents.
5. Different classes in the game have different skills, such as stealing, archery, and crafting equipment. They also share some common movement abilities, like running and jumping. The game features gravity and inertia (we have the most realistic physics engine.jpg), as well as friendly fire, so there will be quite a few hilarious mishaps…
6. I'll stop here for now and add more later if needed!
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