Chapter 212: Untitled
Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
Was he dreaming about something good?
Mo Huaifeng was puzzled at heart as he gingerly sat up and got out of bed, as he was scared of making noise, he directly walked barefoot to Ji Zhiyao’s bedside.
Then moved as lightly as possible to tug at the blanket and cover him.
Ji Zhiyao was in very deep sleep, not moving at all throughout everything.
Was he a pig?
Mo Huaifeng raised the corner of his lips for a second.
Then tiptoed on light steps out of the room.
...
Unsure of how long after, Ji Zhiyao sat up in his bed with a confused expression.
Turning his head, he saw Mo Huaifeng seated on the bed, holding his laptop, seemingly watching videos.
Ji Zhiyao rubbed his eyes. “Captain, when did I fall asleep?”
Mo Huaifeng lifted his eyes to glance at him. “I don’t know.”
“Okay.”
Since they did not have a match, what time he slept and what time he woke up didn’t matter at all.
He got out and went to the bathroom to wash his face, when he came out, he saw the lunch box on his bedside and asked, “What’s that?”
“Lunch we brought for you?”
“What the f*ck?”
He glanced at his watch and realized that it was already 3 PM in the afternoon.
He f*cking... slept through lunch?
Was he so sleep deprived recently?
Ji Zhiyao touched his stomach that felt a little empty, and decided to not think about the question, opening the plastic bag, he saw a box of curry rice.
He opened the box and ate it scoop by scoop.
It didn’t taste too bad.
Ji Zhiyao finished the whole box of rice, and sighed contentedly, then asked, “It’s quite delicious Captain, where did you get this from?”
“A place not too far from the hotel, I’ll take you there next time.”
Ji Zhiyao nodded. “Sure.”
He stole a glance at Mo Huaifeng’s laptop and found that Mo Huaifeng was watching a video of a match between two battleteams, he sat back on his own bed after a few glances, and also picked up his laptop, casually selecting a video that the stats analyzer had sent him to watch.
The two spent the entire afternoon with videos. Untll K knocked loudly on their door. “Captain, NoHomo, what are you two doing inside? Quickly come out for dinner!”
Ji Zhiyao did not think further and replied with a holler, “We’re doing bashful things right now, don’t disturb us.”
After several seconds of silence, K’s voice came through the door. “Okay...”
What had he just said?
Under Mo Huaifeng’s gaze with a shadow of a smile, Ji Zhiyao dashed to the door and opened it. “We didn’t do anything K, I was joking.”
“It’s fine if you did too, anyway I’m long used to it already.”
“A film about three people, I appeared before you, but I wasn’t worthy of having a name [1. Famous lines from Chinese TV series: Chinese Paladin].”
“What are you saying... Sober up!”
K finally drew out of his drama queen state and returned to normal as he smiled with squinted eyes. “I’m just an innocent sacrifice sent to get both of you to come down for dinner, I didn’t see anything at all, don’t silence me! Quickly come downstairs, we decided to have the hotel buffet for tonight, everyone is waiting.”
K sneaked away after saying his fill.
Ji Zhiyao turned back and covertly stared at Mo Huaifeng, realizing that he was still looking at him. Hence he coughed once, becoming so frightened that he did not even dare to close the door, feigning poise as he said, “Let’s go Captain, your children are inviting you to go for dinner.”
“Tsk. Alright.”
He put his laptop down and changed his shoes.
Upon seeing that, it hit Ji Zhiyao that he needed to change his shoes too and quickly followed.
The two of them took the elevator downstairs.
In the restaurant, all of Mix was seated in a most conspicuous spot, seeing Mo Huaifeng and Ji Zhiyao appear, Heng waved fervently. “Captain, NoHomo we’re over here!”
The two of them walked over and pulled back the only empty seats next to each other and sat down.
Sincere concern was written all over Yuan Wei’s face. “NoHomo, is your butt okay? Do you need me to prepare a cushion for you?”
Ji Zhiyao was shocked and angry, he first glanced at K who would look everywhere else but at him, then stole at glance at Mo Huaifeng who seemed to be waiting for a reply and forced a few words out through his gritted teeth. “Since you’re so curious, do you want to help me rub it?”
“That’s not appropriate, I shall not, shall not.”
“Heh, trash.”
His mood was incredibly depressed because of his own foolishness and K’s overindulgence in creating trouble, and bowed his head as he dug into his food, not wanting to talk.
After dinner, everyone dispersed on the spot, all returning to their respective rooms to rest, in preparation for tomorrow’s match.
Ji Zhiyao dejectedly followed Mo Huaifeng back to their room.
Once the door was shut, a not too pleasant feeling suddenly grew in Ji Zhiyao’s heart, he laughed dryly and said to Mo Huaifeng, “Captain, I’ll go ahead and study the videos, please do as you like.”
Mo Huaifeng replied unhurriedly, “Why so anxious?”
He moved to stand beside the trembling Ji Zhiyao and revealed what could be known as a kind smile. Ji Zhiyao shivered even more, “Captain, about that before dinner... It was purely a slip of the tongue, slip of the tongue.”
“Really?” Mo Huaifeng closed in on him with each step. “Then do you need me to rub it for you?”
Turns out he was intentionally finding fault because of this sentence!
Ji Zhiyao wished he could give himself a slap and almost burst into tears as he said, “No, it’s fine, thanks Captain.”
He became fearful real quick.
Mo Huaifeng made a “tsk” sound, then turned the conversation. “You’re going on for tomorrow’s match, any problems?”
Ji Zhiyao sighed in relief, then patted his chest, declaring, “Of course I can, what problems could I have? Sit tight, wait for daddy to soar with you tomorrow.”
...
The next morning.
Today Mix battleteam drew a Korean battleteam as their opponent, BUI Battleteam.
It was said that BUI was a fairly famous battleteam internationally. It was one of the final eight battleteams in the previous international league; within Korea, it could be at least one of the top six teams. For some unknown reason, they did not even manage to get a spot in the set quota this time and had to humble themselves to come participate in the qualifiers.
Ji Zhiyao was very curious and so asked Mo Huaifeng, “Captain, why didn’t BUI get a spot within the set quota?”
“Something cropped up for them during their preliminaries, they did not get too good a placing.”
Ji Zhiyao nodded.
He knew it.
There were another three minutes before the match began, with the announcement of the zone C judges, players from both teams greeted each other, then went on stage.
Ji Zhiyao stretched his limbs, feeling totally excited.
This was his first time participating in the qualifiers and he was already meeting such a strong opponent, how could he not be delighted?
Everyone selected their champions, the match officially began.
In the early laning phase, Heng was in the middle lane. Though he did not create any advantage, Heng was more slick and managed to block the opponent from taking any advantage several times; in the top lane, K was suffering relatively more from being pressured by the opposing ADC and support, but there wasn’t much threat to their turrets. In the bottom lane, Mo Huaifeng with Nuo was in a situation that was the exact opposite of K, they were very aggressive, but because the opposing top-laner was too tanky, they couldn’t kill him even when they wanted to... Such a situation lasted until the middle of the game, when Ji Zhiyao initiated a fight for the little dragon, but instead drew in a gank attack by the opposing jungler and mid-laner.
At this moment all three of their HP were very full and their ultimate ability were available, just as BUI thought that it was a sure win for them, Ji Zhiyao let reality deal them a harsh hit in the next moment. Before he engaged them, Ji Zhiyao coolly sold his Ruby Crystal [1. Basic item that adds 150 health.] and added a pair of accelerated boots to his equipment. Then BUI’s jungler and mid-laner arrived and directly threw out their ultimate abilities, Ji Zhiyao made use of his second ability to change his position, as his speed was extremely fast, to and fro, he stunned them from behind, then used his third, second, and first ability in a combined attack, completing a 1v2 counter-kill.
Perfect play!
Ji Zhiyao chuckled victoriously as he went towards the little dragon with half HP left and leisurely took down the little dragon, successfully bringing their gold stats to 800 gold more than the opponent.
In the situation of the top lane turning over slowly and the players in the middle and bottom lanes containing each other, Ji Zhiyao became the big boss of the match after successfully earning two kills and a dragon at the dragon’s cave.
BUI battleteam was even unable to do anything with him, and did not dare to provoke him either, they ended up simply staying away from his jungle, only carelessly running around the three lanes, a proper match became a lane-only match.
Yet even for a lane-only match, BUI’s mentality was weaker than Mix, the outcome was evidently something that they were reluctant to bear.
Mix Battleteam, victorious!
In the midst of the cheers from Xiao, Yuan Wei and the stats analyzer below the stage, everyone walked off stage with huge grins, Ji Zhiyao was right in the middle, clustered around by everyone else, even taking away Mo Huaifeng’s center position, like a great general who had returned home in triumph... Because even a match against one of the final eight teams from the previous international league wasn’t even considered tough for them, everyone was in a rather good mood, feeling free and easy like huskies that were allowed to run as they wished on the field.
They just needed to win another match, with their combined score, they would be able to enter the official competition of the international league.
Mo Huaifeng smiled as he announced that he would be treating them to lunch. The entire team instantly cheered even louder.
Yuan Wei joined in for a while, only reacting when he sensed that there were some odd gazes from their surroundings, stopping his bunch of little ancestors, he said, “Let’s return to the hotel first, there are still a few teams that are not done with their competition here.”
Everyone agreed, hence the whole group trudged on, preparing to return to the hotel for a short rest before lunch. But they did not expect that just as they arrived at the entrance of the eSports Hall, a team of very familiar people came into sight. Yellow skin and black eyes, the leader of the group was staring at that with great astonishment... Ji Zhiyao’s brain suddenly cramped and could not recall which battleteam this was that he had met previously, only seeing Mo Huaifeng step forward. “Xiaoye.”
Xiaoye!
Tall Boots Battleteam!
Ji Zhiyao blinked, the memory swiftly coming back to him.
That’s right, it was the few of them.
Xiaoye’s expression wasn’t any much better than Ji Zhiyao, also looking like a fool. “Damn, Fi-god!”
“It’s me. Long time no see.”
Xiaoye rushed forward at once. “Of course it’s long time no see! Ever since the national qualifiers announced the set quota I started to go to your base to wait to see if I could find anyone, in the end I did that for almost a month and still no one came back...”
“We were preparing for training then so we were away.”
At the mention of the word “training”, Xiaoye’s initial excited expression turned slightly passive.
After all their spot in the international league had been dug out of Mix’s hands, it saved a lot of time for them, but also added some guilt... He cleared his throat then secretly peeked at Mo Huaifeng and Ji Zhiyao behind him, who wasn’t speaking and said, “Have you guys just ended your match? How was it, smooth going?”
Yet contrary to his expectations, after his question was voiced, everyone in Mix did not turn hostile but remained perfectly calm. Mo Huaifeng nodded, “Not bad, very smooth sailing. How about you guys, how’s your preparation going?”
Xiaoye glanced at his own teammates before replying, “We’ve been training for some time in Korea too, though we have not found any battleteams for training tournaments, but the training still has a certain effect.”
Yuan Wei frowned. “Didn’t manage to arrange any training tournaments?”
That shouldn’t be.
Training tournaments were something that was beneficial for both teams, it mainly allowed battleteam members to understand the playing style and tactics of other countries. Korea might not only have one China battleteam as their opponent, so they shouldn’t be too calculative about who was losing out more. Back when Mix first arrived in Korea to train with Vita battleteam, the process was totally without a hitch. Though a part of the reason might be that Kang Kyung Chwa was Vita’s ex-coach and had also coached Mix for a period of time and had formed a friendship with them, that shouldn’t be the main reason. Why was Tall Boots unable to invite any teams for training tournaments as the runner-up in China’s qualifiers?
Besides, during the national qualifiers, there wasn’t much difference in the capabilities between Tall Boots and themselves.
Xiaoye looked very helpless. “Yeah, we initially wanted to invite TILI Battleteam. In the end, things wouldn’t work out no matter how the club negotiated with them... we had no way out in the end and only did the training camp, doing away with even the training tournaments.”
Mo Huaifeng also frowned, after some time, he asked, “What are you guys off to do now?”
“Doesn’t the official competition begin next week. We wanted to come spectate the qualifiers, to find the feeling of competing beforehand. How about you guys? Returning to the hotel?”
“We’re going to lunch, join us.”
In the barbecue restaurant.
Their large table allowed 15 to 16 people to sit together, looking especially lively.
Yet it was merely the appearance, in reality, whether it was Mix or Tall Boots, no one felt more joyful eating like this as compared to eating with their own battleteam only.
Utterly suffocating.
Tall Boots felt like they had stolen Mix’s spot, and were uncomfortable at heart, whereas while Mix battleteam had gone from their initial indignation to unperturbed acceptance now, they still weren’t very willing to talk to Tall Boots... But the capability of the battleteam were all sensitive topics right now, they could not find any topics to talk about for a moment and the atmosphere just became silent like this.
Yet Ji Zhiyao was more big-hearted, and did not feel that Tall Boots had let them down in any way, hence he was very undisturbed as he ate, almost half of every meat grilled each time went into his stomach.
This led to Heng finding nothing when he was looking for the prawn that he had placed on the grill earlier, but instantly flared up when he found a prawn head beside Ji Zhiyao’s plate and muttered, “Eat and eat and eat all you know is to eat! Sooner or later you will become overweight.”
“Louder, the wind is too strong I can’t hear you!”
“You...”
Mo Huaifeng glared expressionlessly in Yuan Wei’s direction, Heng’s face was completely flushed was holding back and he squeezed out the rest of his sentence. “...’re my precious darling, my honey!”
Ji Zhiyao was about to die laughing.
Yuan Wei only found it an unbearable sight. “Boys, at least restrain yourselves a little, we still have other friends at the table, can’t you guys take note of your image!”
Xiaoye waved his hand. “It’s fine. Isn’t it just PDA that the eSports scene doesn’t even see once in 800 years? We can tolerate it.”
All the Tall Boots members nodded their heads like little chicks pecking at rice in unison, at the same time revealing a 45 degree admiring gaze, looking towards Mo Huaifeng and Ji Zhiyao.
The scene livened as a result.
Mo Huaifeng asked, “Are we the only two battleteams representing China this year?”
Xiaoye smiled, yet his smile did not look that good. “Yes. Originally Bug battleteam could also register to participate in the qualifiers for a fight, yet Qiang retired, I don’t think you guys know about this yet.”
Ji Zhiyao was stunned for a moment. “Qiang retired?”
Wasn’t Qiang still in a seesaw battle with the executives of his club before Mix left for overseas training? Did he not win?
Xiaoye nodded. “Mm. At the bottom of everything, he was forced by the executives to leave, the club only paid hundreds of thousands in compensation... Qiang seemed quite disappointed and did not really want to continue in eSports anymore so he chose to retire. At the moment only a few clubs back home know about it, I guessed that since you guys were away, you probably didn’t hear about it.”
A moment of silence.
China was a group of people who were the very first to start playing eSports, now it seemed like there weren’t many people left.
Many were either at the age to retire, or had their professional lives messed up by foul incidents... If Mo Huaifeng wasn’t Mix’s biggest shareholder, they might have been forced to leave eSports because of their previous incidents.
Ji Zhiyao was also slightly down, the piece of meat that he was chewing in his mouth seemed to have lost its taste. Ever since the time Qiang had gotten into a dispute without the slightest hesitation, he already had a favorable impression of him, only he did not expect such an outcome for Qiang... If this went on, China eSports was about to crumble internally.
What the hell was this?
Xiaoye seemed to sensed that there was something amiss with everyone’s mood and quickly changed the topic cheerily. “Let’s leave that at that, that’s the current situation now, no point talking about it. The most important task now is to quickly bring a good placing at the international league home. This way, China’s tendency and determination to develop eSports will grow, by then players will have a greater say and everything will become better.”
Mo Huaifeng nodded. “That’s the case.”
Xiaoye was right.
When players prove that they are able to achieve good results, only then will they gain more space to grow.
Xiaoye downed a glass of beer, then said, “If we are looking for a good result this year, we’ll still have to depend on you guys. Though I don’t want to admit it, I must say that Mix’s situation is much better than ours at present. If we say that China has the hope of being seen by the world, then that hope is on all of you.”
Ji Zhiyao bit into a piece of meat and suddenly smiled. “Don’t speak so surely, Ye-god. Our battleteam cannot listen to such things, once we do, we become arrogant.”
Yuan Wei nodded in firm agreement. “He’s right. Everyone in Mix has always stood by being upright and steadfast, not pleased by external gains nor saddened by personal losses as our outlook in life, we don’t get fooled by flattery!”
“That’s enough, do I not know how good all of you are at frivolous talks, why pretend to be so reserved in front of us.” Xiaoye rolled his eyes. “Do you think I’m willing to praise you guys? I’m not really that cheap to want to shake your hands all the way till I retire. I only felt that you guys are more suitable for now. Bow your heads and take a look at your spirit and energy, one look and we know it’s “I know I will win for sure’, how joyous.”
The table roared with laughter.
Ji Zhiyao and Mo Huaifeng met eyes.
Ever since the training ended, everyone’s mental attitude had been in a pretty good state. It could be because everything since then up till now had been very smooth sailing, they did not meet with any troublesome opponents so they were overflowing confidence... But no matter what, before the official competition began, it wasn’t a bad thing to have confidence in themselves.
...
Zone C, Mix battleteam’s last match.
Mix vs UU.
UU battleteam was from North America, yet they didn’t have much of a name. With the exception of the stats analyzer knowing that they were a battleteam formed last year, they knew nothing about them.
But it was fine, they just had to fight them head-on, they weren’t afraid at all.
For this match it was still Ji Zhiyao staying behind to spectate, Xiao going on.
Ji Zhiyao stared fixedly at the mini map on the upper right corner of the LED screen, the jungle belonged to the little head portrait of Xiao.
At level two, Heng imposingly engaged with the opponent, fortunately it was merely a close call, UU’s mid-laner was held down and ruffled by Xiao who came rushing over after and directly became first blood.
After that Heng stayed in the middle lane, not daring to be frivolous anymore and with that, their team seemed to have built another turret in the lane. Xiao saw that there was nothing worth collecting there and decided to head to the top lane after jungling, then played a top-laner ADC team up, blurring the eyes of UU’s ADC, not knowing who to attack.
Ji Zhiyao was completely focused on the screen when his phone in his pocket suddenly vibrated, pulling it out he realized it was Ji Qingge’s call. Ji Zhiyao started nagging “God knows what this little ancestor is calling for again so annoying”, while his finger slid across the screen. “Hello, what’s up?”
“Brother, I’ve arrived in Korea, are you coming to fetch me?”
Ji Zhiyao stood up with a “whoosh”, and yelled in voice an octave higher than usual, “What? In Korea?”
Yuan Wei grabbed the bottom of his shirt and tugged. “NoHomo, there are others around here, sit down!”
Ji Zhiyao dropped on his butt, yet he looked more and more upset, cupping his hand around the receiver he started to nag, “Who told you to come to Korea? Do you not have any idea yourself whether you know the way or whether you can speak Korean?”
The other end continued to speak, Ji Zhiyao listened on for a few seconds, the fire was virtually about to burn till the top of his head. “You can stay wherever you like! I’m not going to fetch you!”
With that, he hung up.
Because of this call, Ji Zhiyao wasn’t even in the mood to watch the match anymore. But what slightly coincidental was that the match had already came to an end, following the few arrows that Mo Huaifeng had consecutively shot towards the opponent’s crystal.
Mo Huaifeng walked off the stage, when he saw Ji Zhiyao’s bitter face, he almost tripped over his own feet.
He walked over and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“My f*cking troublesome trashy sister is in Korea, she came by herself.
“So Captain, are you going to fetch your little sister-in-law?”
Mo Huaifeng was speechless and nodded, saying, “I’ll go with you.”
With that, as if recalling something, he pulled out his own phone.
[fairlycomplicatedlittlelovesong: I’m in Korea, Fi-god. But I think my brother seems to be a little angry with me.]
[fairlycomplicatedlittlelovesong: So are you willing to come fetch your little sister-in-law?]
Why were the siblings equally shameless?
...
Hotel.
Ji Qingge lifted her eyes to secretly peep at Ji Zhiyao who was pulling a super long face, then gestured to Mo Huaifeng to save her, totally busying about.
He could not reject his sister-in-law’s request, otherwise Ji Zhiyao would go after him later on either way. Mo Huaifeng had no choice, and tugged at Ji Zhiyao’s sleeve, saying in a very amiable tone, “Let’s go eat first. Are you hungry?”
Ji Zhiyao laughed coldly. “Hungry my ass. I’m full from being filled with anger.”
Ji Qingge instantly bowed her head so low that she couldn’t go any lower.
“There’s still three days to the start of the official competition, if I get gastric pains from being too hungry...”
Ji Zhiyao stood up at once. “Go, we’ll eat.”
Ji Qingge grinned, then stealthily gave Mo Huaifeng a look of approval.
Mo Huaifeng got her message.
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