FOG [e-sports]

Chapter 21

Ji Yanhan flew back to Shanghai the next day. Yu Sui was left by himself to accompany Shi Luo to take the day’s examination. He was in high spirits as he opened a day long live broadcast.

Shi Luo had already gone through a full day of testing yesterday and so his mood had gradually stabilized. He no longer displayed any intense resistance. When Yu Sui asked him to say hello to the fans in the live room, Shi Luo even forced his lips to stretch, baring a fierce and sinister perfunctory smile.

Yu Sui was quite satisfied. Regardless whether Shi Luo himself was happy or not, he was very happy anyway.

After Shi Luo’s last English test, Yu Sui wanted to take him to dinner. Yu Sui’s plan was to let Shi Luo rest for a day, and the two of them would return to Shanghai the next day. Who could have expected that as soon as Shi Luo got out of the exam site, he urged, “Call the hotel, we’ll check out now and go directly to the airport. Let’s hurry back to the base.”

Yu Sui didn’t understand, “What’s wrong?”

Shi Luo was burning with impatience, “I haven’t touched my account in two days! I might have fallen out of the top 50 already!!!”

Yu Sui: “…”

Yu Sui was astounded. “Substitute player Luo Luo, this is the first time I have seen such conscientiousness and dedication. This intense fighting spirit of yours might make me think that you’re trying to usurp my spot in the starting lineup.”

Shi Luo urged again, “I don’t have time to joke around with you. Hurry up! Let’s go back already.”

Yu Sui could only nod his head. He left the car with Ji Yanhan’s local staff, and booked a plane ticket back to Shanghai for him and Shi Luo.

The two went directly to the airport. After eating whatever was convenient at the airport, they boarded the plane. Throughout the entire thing, neither of them talked. When the plane was about to land, Shi Luo finally couldn’t hold back. He took off his eye mask and hesitantly asked, “You … you’re not going to ask how the exam went?”

Yu Sui didn’t open his eyes. He asked back in a low voice, “Can I ask?”

It’s been two days. Yu Sui hasn’t asked if the test was difficult or not, if he did well or not. He hasn’t asked anything about the exam. Shi Luo wanted to act like a pretentious prick but wasn’t given any chance to do so. He’d been holding back for so long, he was almost suffocating from it. Shi Luo pretended to be very relaxed and casual. He said, aloof, “You can.”

Yu Sui opened his eyes and thought about it. He asked, “Was math … difficult?”

Shi Luo tried his best to make himself seem indifferent. He shook his head, “It wasn’t difficult.”

Yu Sui nodded his head. He felt relieved. “The questions weren’t difficult. That’s good.”

Shi Luo’s brows furrowed slightly. A moment later, he corrected him uneasily, “… It wasn’t difficult…for me.”

Shi Luo stressed the last two words — ‘for me’.

Yu Sui raised his eyes and looked at Shi Luo. The corner of his lips rose bit by bit, until finally, he couldn’t help but snort out a laugh.

Shi Luo’s face turned red from holding himself back. “What are you laughing …”

Yu Sui tried his best to restrain his laughter, “What score do you think you’ll get?”

Shi Luo tried his best to remain aloof, “About one hundred and three points.”

“Awesome.”

Yu Sui asked about each subjects one by one. Shi Luo indirectly tooted his own horn, his face was flushed with happiness.

“Hey &#k2026;” Yu Yong sat up. “You did so well on the exam, you’re probably not afraid of checking your score, right? How about you open a live broadcast when you check your score?”

Shi Luo didn’t even think about it. “No, it’s stupid.”

Without giving Yu Sui a chance to speak again, Shi Luo said, “Unless you get Chen Huo to make a live broadcast of him answering this year’s math exam.”

Yu Sui had no choice but to give up, “Just kill him, why don’t you? He’d even believe it if you give him the general sciences test and say it’s the math exam.”

The plane landed smoothly and the two of them took a taxi back to base.

Once they got back to the base, Yu Sui was no longer Shi Luo’s captain alone.

Since the day they returned, Shi Luo hardly ever saw Yu Sui.

The playoffs were just around the corner. Yu Sui was determined to win the championship and they couldn’t afford to waste any more time. He added for himself two full hours of training time every day and spent all day in the training room. Substitute player Shi Luo didn’t have any practice games he could play in and he didn’t feel like going to the training room to watch his four other teammates practice their tacit gameplay. He shut himself in the dorm and focused on improving his score on the national server.

For a long time, Shi Luo has been very satisfied with his national server ranking. When he wasn’t yet a professional player, he could already step on a lot of professional players to score points. Now that he has been trained by a professional team, his rank had risen steadily. He was now in the top fifty, occasionally entering into the top forty when he played particularly well.

For medics, this could basically be considered as the peak of what can be achieved.

Of course, that didn’t include Yu Sui.

Shi Luo clicked on the national server rankings and looked at Whisper’s name firmly rooted in first place. He was quiet for a long while.

What was an occupational ceiling? Yu Sui was.

The most terrifying thing was Yu Sui’s numbers. Shi Luo gave a glance at Yu Sui’s KDA; a medic with an average kills per game of 3.2.

It meant on average, he would get 3.2 heads per game.

Just how terrifying was this number? Chen Huo, who was ranked 27th on the national server, as a striker, only averaged 6.8 kills per game.

As a striker, Chen Huo would had more heavy duty firearms than Yu Sui. Medics like Yu Sui only had a close-range pistol and a military-use long dagger.

In order to leave as much of the public resources to his teammates as he could, Yu Sui also rarely used the pistol, Yu Sui preferred to use the dagger, this cold weapon that didn’t consume any resources.

FOG was different from the other games where players obtain tactical resources while fighting. Most other games let players obtain resources as the players confronted the enemy and captured more of the map. FOG was just the opposite. From the onset of the game, a total of 10,000 points will be directly allocated to the players.

10,000 points. 1,000 to the sniper, 1,000 to the medic, 2,000 each to the two strikers, and 4,000 in public economy for the team to share.

Of course, players can’t just use the public economy. Strikers and snipers can only upgrade their equipment and use public economy after they’ve scored a kill. Medics can only upgrade their equipment and use the public economy after they get auxiliary points or perhaps take a head.

Regardless of whether it’s the personal economy or the public economy that can only be used after killing the enemy, there was 10,000 points in total; not a single point more and there was no means to get any more.

After you’ve used it up, it was gone.

Therefore, players would be very mindful about how to use the economy. If a team already wasted their entire economy while they still haven’t dealt with the enemy, the situation could turn very dire.

All their weapons would turn into fancy lighters. Without a way to buy bullets, what use was an upgraded firearm?

At that time, only weapons like daggers could be used. You could just imagine what the result would be if a team tried to match their daggers against their enemy’s bullets.

Of course, occasionally, there would be times when both sides would have used up their resources. They would then enter into a bitter struggle and the game would become even more interesting.

In an instant, everyone would be transported back to the era of cold weapons.

Yu Sui was the one who was most fond of this kind of hard battle.

In the early and middle stages of the game, both sides would have abundant resources. Despite Yu Sui’s order-defying skills it was difficult for him to bridge the gap between the enemy’s firearm advantage and the inherent weakness of a medic. Once all the economy has been exhausted though, the medic’s inherent weakness became void.

Once everyone can only use cold weapons, who was afraid of whom?

Yu Sui loved to score his kills during this bitter situation. Since he usually only used a dagger, he practiced this the most. In this kind of situation, few people could win against him.

As a medic, with a blade he became a striker.

Shi Luo had seen Yu Sui’s kill highlights and had to admit that this was something that couldn’t be acquired with mere practice.

Shi Luo didn’t feel like getting points anymore.

Even if he occasionally wormed up a few more ranks this was all just luck. He would just immediately fall back down. He rocked back and forth between these spots; this was his current level.

Shi Luo’s current level was about 50 in the national server.

Shi Luo pushed the keyboard forward and looked at the time …

23:35.

The four were still in playing in the training room.

Shi Luo was a little annoyed. For the past several days in a row, he ordered for himself, ate his meal by himself and listened to himself speak. He was quickly turning into an invisible person.

He couldn’t even quarrel with Chen Huo, let alone Yu Sui … Shi Luo basically couldn’t see anyone.

A week ago, the two of them had obviously eaten and lived together.

But now, it seemed like it had happened in some other parallel universe.

Shi Luo couldn’t make head or tails of it. He suddenly remembered something he had unintentionally read when he had been searching for Yu Sui’s ID.

To be Whisper’s fan, you must endure deep chasms of suffering and dizzying heights of happiness.

Yu Sui didn’t treat his fans badly. During the offseason, even if Yu Sui has already fulfilled the requisite number of live broadcast hours, as long as the fans clamored on Weibo, he would open a live broadcast, directing a huge amount of traffic to the live broadcast platform for free.

During the live broadcast, if the fans wanted him to sing, he’d sing; if they wanted him to open the webcam, he would open the webcam. When he was in a good mood, he would even use his mobile phone to do a live broadcast giving the fans a look of the plants and flowers around the base. If a fan says it’s their birthday, Yu Sui would even smile and hum out a few bars of the happy birthday song.

But this was only during the short offseason.

Once the season starts in full swing, Yu Sui would rather incur the heavy penalties imposed by the live broadcast platform for months on end rather than open a live broadcast. As long as he doesn’t want to be disturbed, the fans could scream and clamor until their voices went hoarse and he still wouldn’t do anything other than practice. His Weibo account was like a perennial plant, it could be left without a single post for half a year. It was as if he had completely evaporated into thin air, disappearing entirely from all social media platforms.

During the season, Yu Sui focused solely on training and he wouldn’t even give the time of day to anyone. This has been the case since his debut.

During his early years, there was one time after they had finished a game that a host had jokingly laughed at Yu Sui, saying that he hasn’t done a live broadcast live for 172 consecutive days. The fans are very worried that he wasn’t eating well and smoking too much. Maybe he should say more than a few words to them now? He jokingly asked for the fans if Yu Sui had forgotten his account name and password for the live broadcast account. Wasn’t he working too hard during this time?

Yu Sui’s answer in that video left a deep impression on Shi Luo.

Yu Sui said, “Of course I have to work hard. If I don’t, wouldn’t it be an embarrassment to all the people who support me? Wouldn’t I be putting them in a difficult position?”

When he had watched this video, Shi Luo couldn’t help but sigh. How could anyone sidestep this loaded kind of broadcast and give an answer so awe-inspiringly bold and righteous?

The result was obvious. The fans who criticized Yu Sui for disappearing instantly burst into tears and forgave this jerk.

Yu Sui had answered it sincerely. He had delivered a truth and he had done so tactfully.

After all, this wasn’t a fan club. What would you do if you managed the fans but had no results to speak of? In E-sports, results speak.

The e-sport circle had a special kind of culture, they never blew smoke but were straightforward and simple instead. There was only one ironclad law, and that was success.

Yu Sui’s unspoken words were that if you don’t work hard and don’t produce results, the fans won’t have any confidence to match up against the haters and they can only shut up as the haters stepped all over their faces.

Gossip and ridicule never cared whether something was true or not. If you can only accept other’s insults, then you would truly be in a difficult position.

The only thing Yu Sui can truly give his fans was this piece was confidence.

Since then, every time Yu Sui disappeared, the fans would stay calm and just comfort each other. Yu Shen is working hard for us. After watching the match videos, everyone would watch his videos from last year to satisfy their craving. What? You’ve already memorized every little detail of his videos last year? Then what about the year before? What about three years before? Brother, are you a new fan? Do you need a link?

The playoffs were coming soon, the fans were still this chill. Shi Luo didn’t have the slightest expectation that Yu Sui would spare some time for him. He clicked the link on the forum he followed, preparing to watch the video of Yu Sui’s debut while eating a midnight snack. He’ll be able to study how he plays. He’ll be killing two birds with one stone.

Shi Luo picked up his mobile phone to order a midnight snack. Before he could choose something to eat, his phone buzzed. He had a WeChat message.

[Whisper]: Have you had your midnight snack yet? Want to grab something?