Chapter 7

The world sure progresses quickly.

Rong Yi suddenly found himself with a new team and a partner.

His teammates were quick to catch on to the situation: “So you and Yin are really a couple?? Damn!!! We actually witnessed a real-life couple?”

“Best wishes to these two gentlemen. May you always be happy and rank up every night.”

Before Rong Yi could say anything, Xiao Yin was already typing in the public chat.

[(All) Yin: Thank you.]

“Gentlemen, do you need a son? One who’s just a hundred points away from S+?”

“Do you need a daughter? A top laner grandmaster orphan at your service.”

Rong Yi: “………”

Xiao Yin flew into the jungle to steal a dragon and still had time to type.

[(All) Yin: We’ll let you know when we need one.]

“Thank you, Yin! Yin, add me as a friend!”

“This Yin is cool, has a sense of humor.”

……

“Yin, listen to me, make sure to wear a couple badge at the start. You two didn’t even have a couple badge when you entered. If it weren’t for playing Li and Yin, we wouldn’t have noticed.”

[(All) Yin: Got it, thanks.]

Rong Yi: “……”

In the official lore, Li and Yin aren’t actually a couple but rivals. They once spent some time together without knowing each other’s true allegiance and then parted ways. However, because of this storyline, most players believe they are extremely close.

Back then, he and Xiao Yin just happened to love playing these two champions.

During the time he was with Xiao Yin, he secretly shipped these two characters, knew their voice interactions better than anyone, and had saved tons of fan edits.

His favorite voice interaction was the one triggered when Yin encountered Li.

In that brief moment when they passed by each other, Yin would say, “like Now.”

And Li would respond, “like the past.”

In the CN server version, it was translated to “close yet distant” .

The teammates kept chatting, and the game soon headed towards victory amidst all the laughter.

Rong Yi closed the pop-up results screen, leaned back, and stretched.

The summer night was slightly chilly. Rong Yi was wearing a white long-sleeved shirt. When he stretched out his hand, the sleeves slipped down his slender, fair wrists, revealing the clear lines of his shoulder blades. He looked very thin, just a small figure.

“Are you tired?” Xiao Yin’s voice came from behind, calm and indifferent. “If you’re tired, we can stop for now.”

“Okay.”

Rong Yi rubbed his shoulders and was about to click the mouse to exit the game when a relationship request suddenly popped up on the screen.

[VIT.Yin] has sent you a couple relationship request. Do you accept?

It was sent from his main account.

Seeing Rong Yi still in a daze, Xiao Yin paused and asked, “Shall we bind our accounts?”

“This… might not be a good idea,” Rong Yi thought for a moment.

Given Xiao Yin’s enormous fanbase, wearing a couple badge would cause a huge uproar the next day. Though esports fans mostly cared about skill and match results, there were also a significant number who were very sensitive about this kind of thing.

With VIT team newly established, he wanted to avoid causing any unnecessary trouble.

Xiao Yin didn’t insist. Rong Yi exited the game, then stood up and wished him goodnight.

After spending a few days at the VIT base, Rong Yi quickly got familiar with Hydralisk, Grey Cat, and Wu Daogu. As the transfer window approached its end, the daily activities of the players gradually returned to normal.

Just as Rong Yi had anticipated, RS set a high price for his listing, eventually deterring several interested clubs and officially announcing that Easy was now a free agent.

This move by RS didn’t bring them any real benefit—they wouldn’t get a transfer fee—but it perfectly played to Rong Yi’s personality. Without a suitable position, he would rather retire. Thus, the final step against him was completed.

Now, the internet was flooded with gossip and articles claiming that Easy’s performance had severely declined and that he might be saying goodbye to the professional league. RS, as his old team, gave him a final send-off.

RS’s veteran players, seemingly just learning about this, all messaged him with concern: “Captain, we just found out about this. How did it come to this?”

That morning, Rong Yi saw the articles and couldn’t eat much due to the disgust. The hypocritical statements from the veteran players almost made him vomit.

After finishing his meal, he went back to obliterating the S+ rank. His ranking climbed to second in the entire server, and with a few more days, he could reach first.

Hydralisk unfortunately ended up matched against him again. If last time was a probing test, today was pure innocent suffering. He was mercilessly slaughtered three games in a row, losing a chunk of his professional points, and he clutched his pillow in agony.

When Rong Yi opened the high rank group chat, he saw complaints right away.

“Seems like a Li went berserk today, yeah, the one now ranked second. He’s massacring everyone, ganking at level one, level two, level three. He’s not human!”

“Who pissed him off?”

“I don’t recognize the ID. Whose smurf account is that? Who’s playing Li?”

Several play Li streamers came forward to say it wasn’t them.

Hydralisk screenshot the chat and forwarded it to Xiao Yin.

“E-God has gone mad. He’s been slaughtering in the canyon since early morning.”

Xiao Yin had been doing a post match analysis with Wu Daogu that morning and only checked his phone at noon.

Hydralisk had sent his solo queue results: three consecutive games with scores like 1-4 and 2-8, with the enemy MVP always being a mid laner Li.

“Your performance is a bit poor.”

Hydralisk: “？Is that what I wanted you to see?”

Seeing Xiao Yin focus on KDA, Hydralisk couldn’t hold back: “Look at the damage output. I out-damaged three others combined. He single-handedly ruined our entire rhythm. What could I do?”

Xiao Yin seemed unconcerned: “Then I can’t help you either. Practice your laning and anti-gank strategies more. Send me a report later.”

Hydralisk pounded the table: “Xiao Yin, are you even human? Can someone control this guy?”

Wu Daogu, who had been observing from the side, opened his own group chats to take a look.

Wu Daogu, one of the more mature and calm members of the team, was the same age as Xiao Yin. He had previously been the top laner for a famous domestic streamer but gradually faded from public view after turning pro.

Both the streamer and high rank groups were full of complaints.

Pro players typically don’t grind for rank—they don’t have the time. Under a professional training regime, achieving high ranks would be easy for them.

However, because they usually don’t compete for ranks, this part of the scene falls to streamers and boosters. The top spots on the server and CN server rankings are fiercely contested, with a lot of people’s interests at stake.

Rong Yi was playing on his smurf account, and he didn’t play support. His rank was already very close to first in the national region.

Unbeknownst to him, the top ten ranks were all top-tier streamers, with the number one spot held by a highly renowned technical streamer in the country. During his rank-up journey, the streaming community had already started buzzing, with countless eyes fixed on him.

In a boosting group, someone had openly declared that they were forming a five-man queue to stream snipe him.

Stream sniping, a common term in the esports scene, means intentionally queuing up in ranked games to specifically target someone to prevent them from ranking up.

If they could end up on the opposing team against Rong Yi, with five players coordinating on voice chat and employing tactical strategies, it would be easy to target one person.

And if they ended up as Rong Yi’s teammates…

They might AFK at the start, intentionally feed, anything was possible. Regardless of the methods used, their goal was to make Rong Yi lose points. It’s hard for one person to carry a team game, but it’s very easy for one person to ruin it.

These people, hidden behind their screens, served someone’s ranking interests.

When encountering such situations, most people could only consider themselves unlucky. Especially for pro players, who didn’t have the time to deal with such issues and would just let it go, often ending up in a bad mood.

Wu Daogu remarked, “Hey, it looks like they’re planning to stream snipe E-God. Who’s going to tell him? We don’t want him to get trolled and end up even more pissed.”

Hydralisk immediately shifted his tone: “What? Can someone do something about this?”

Xiao Yin looked up Rong Yi’s match history.

He had been winning all day, but ten minutes ago, there was a loss. Just a glance at his teammates’ stats showed something was off everyone was playing like Old Six1.

“I’ll tell him,” Xiao Yin said.

Hydralisk started to doubt his ears: “You think Yi-God will listen to you?”

Xiao Yin replied nonchalantly, “I can’t do anything about him.”

Hydralisk: “?”

Xiao Yin: “I’ll just have to play with him.”

Footnote:

1. Old Six(老六): In Chinese gaming culture, the term “老六” (lǎo liù), which literally means “old six,” is a slang term used to describe players who use cunning or underhanded tactics to gain an advantage in the game. These players are often seen as being particularly sneaky, clever, or deceitful. For example, a player who hides and ambushes others, betrays teammates, or uses unexpected strategies that catch others off guard might be called “老六.” It implies a mix of respect for their cleverness and disapproval of their unsportsmanlike conduct.