Chapter 17

Chapter 17: Son, don’t be a bootlicker again in the next life, okay?

Jian Rong had duo queued with Lu Boyuan before, so it was fine even if he played with him on his main account, as long as he didn’t reveal the fact that he was at TTC’s base.

Lu Boyuan invited him to party and asked, “Do you want to let your fans know? When your livestream was suddenly stopped before, quite a few people came to ask about it on my Weibo.”

Jian Rong instantly remembered that top comment he had seen before.

At that time, he had reported the comment using two different accounts, but up until now he still hadn’t managed to successfully get that comment taken down.

But, did Road also look at Weibo comments?

Didn’t they say that these professional players didn’t really go to their own comment sections and discussion forums to seek out abuse??

“No need. It’s been so long since I last streamed, they should’ve all moved on to other people’s streams.” Jian Rong swiftly chose the roles that he wanted to play, wanting to quickly move on from this topic. “I’m ready.”

Lu Boyuan gave an “en” and started the livestream before entering matchmaking.

Their in-game voice chat was on, so Jian Rong turned off his mic.

Upon entering the game, Jian Rong saw that he was fourth to choose.

He had just finished banning when he heard Lu Boyuan say, “Your fans are all AFKing here in my livestream room.”

There was a trace of laughter in his voice, and it sounded like he didn’t actually mind it.

Usually, Jian Rong always wore his headphones crookedly; he didn’t like to wear them properly, disliking the stuffy feeling.

He tugged his headphones up a bit, thoroughly concealing his burning ears.

[Just Watch My Gameplay: I don’t have any fans, even if I do they’re all anti-fans.]

After sending that line, Jian Rong still couldn’t resist pulling up StarTV’s website. He created a new side account in half a minute, and he saw Lu Boyuan’s livestream the moment he entered the recommendation page.

Normally, Lu Boyuan was too lazy to come up with a stream name, so it was always the system’s default “TTC Road’s Livestream Room”.

But today—

[TTC Road: Duo Q, with Soft.]

Jian Rong: “…”

His heart thumped wildly, and he stared blankly at it for a few seconds before clicking on it.

The club’s equipment was much better than his outdated computer at home. Even as the barrage flew across like an army ten thousand strong, his interface performed as crisply and smoothly as before, no lag whatsoever.

[??? Why are these two people duo Q’ing together again?]

[Damn, this unfilial son. In order to help him hold on to Road, Dad camped out in God Lu’s livestream room every day, specifically targeting that crowd of girlfriend fans. And then he calls Dad an anti-fan??]

[Who is Soft ah. Where did all these people called “Soft’s Dear Dad¹”, “Soft’s Ancestor” come from? Tieba? Why do they speak so unpleasantly? Can the room mod do something?]

[Little swallow, dressed cheerfully, coming here every spring. You ask the swallow why it comes, the swallow says, mind your own business².]

[The swallow says, never you mind where your dad comes from.]

[The little dumbass definitely created a new side account and is spying on us in Road’s livestream. Let me dig him out.]

Who the hell is spying on you all!

Jian Rong’s side account was originally called “Jian Er³”. After he saw that comment, he silently opened his profile and randomly changed the ID to a string of nonsense characters.

After switching back to the game, he saw that Road had picked Rengar.

Rengar, also known as “Lion Dog,” could cause explosive damage by staying in the brush; it was equally reliant on snowballing. As players put it, Rengar was “a lion during a tailwind, a dog during a headwind.” Whenever this champion killed someone, the enemy mid laner and ADC would feel their hearts tremble.

Because this champion couldn’t engage or run away easily, he rarely made an appearance in competitions.

[Really playing Lion Dog!!!]

[I’m not exaggerating, this is the first time I’ve seen a pro player pick Lion Dog this year. I even thought that this champ was about to be removed.]

[Road actually also knows how to play this kind of brainless champion?]

Lu Boyuan finished adjusting his runes and said lazily, “It’s been a long time.”

Usually, Lu Boyuan didn’t talk a lot, and it was the same when he was streaming. If he was in a good mood, he would answer a few comments in the barrage that he happened to see; if he was in a bad mood, he might not say a single word during an entire game.

But that didn’t affect his livestream’s popularity at all. After only streaming for a few minutes, he effortlessly shot up to the top of the popularity ranking.

It was Jian Rong’s turn to pick a champion. Since it was still his probationary period, he subconsciously treated this ranked game as a part of the tryouts.

[Just Watch My Gameplay: What should I play?]

A sea of question marks floated across the barrage.

[Soft can’t be the one on his account right??]

[You need me to teach you how to play this game?]

[You need me to teach you how to play this game?]

“Anything works.” Lu Boyuan glanced at the barrage and saw what they were spamming. “What does ‘you need me to teach you how to play this game’ mean.”

Jian Rong: “…”

A few months ago, an unthinking accompanying player platform had sought Jian Rong out for an advertisement.

For the publicity, the platform had arranged for a girl to duo queue with Jian Rong. The girl’s voice was sweet and tender, and she was good at acting spoiled; she could coax her boss until they obeyed her every word. She had hesitated on the champion pick phase for a few dozen seconds before she had asked, “Gege, what champion should I play?”

At the time, Jian Rong had been eating noodles, and he had frowned, puzzled, when he heard that. He had blurted out— “You need me to teach you how to play this game?”

Jian Rong locked in LeBlanc, the Deceiver, and was about to say “I don’t know” when he saw that crowd of “Soft Ancestors,” bearing his livestream room’s icon, flood the barrage with the entire sequence of events in a few short seconds.

Lu Boyuan chuckled ambiguously. “So it’s like that…”

He heard the person sitting behind him type furiously away on his keyboard.

[Just Watch My Gameplay: No need to gank mid during early game.]

Lu Boyuan said, “I’ll come after level 6.”

[Who’s that typing behind God Lu? APM so fast.]

[The ID of the enemy mid laner is a little familiar?]

[Oh damn God Lu and Kongkong crashed cars!!]

Lu Boyuan hadn’t paid attention to the other side’s IDs when loading into the game, and he had just finished killing a monster when someone from the other team spoke in the all chat. 

[[All] Empty Without You⁴: Ge, are you solo Q? Want to team up after this game ends? Let’s climb together QAQ]

Kongkong, MFG’s mid laner, was just under twenty years old and was one of the LPL’s fairly popular new mid laners in the past few years. He had pulled off quite a few outstanding performances in his recent competitions, successfully attracting much attention from the fans.

[[All] Road: Double Q]

Kongkong looked at the enemy’s IDs and, after confirming that no TTC members were present, he asked doubtfully: [With who?]

 [[All] Road: Our mid laner]

Jian Rong hadn’t expected Road to use “our mid laner” as his introduction.

It was definitely just something typed without much thought, with no extra meaning to it.

As he thought that, he lowered his eyes and read that line one more time.

[[All] Kongkong⁵: This mid’s ID is a bit familiar ah.]

Half a minute later, Kongkong finally recalled who the other person was.

[[All] Kongkong: Ge……. blink twice if you’ve been kidnapped.]

Right after Kongkong sent that message, the enemy mid laner’s LeBlanc suddenly used W to dash forward and land a combo on him. He quickly retreated and consumed a health potion to recover; he was about to say something else when that person spoke first

—

[[All] Just Watch My Gameplay: ?]

Amidst Kongkong’s confusion, Soft’s anti-fan army dropped out of the sky.

[Allow me to translate the meaning of my son’s question mark: Shut up dumbass.]

[A little clearer: You talking about your mom?]

“…eh, I’m going to play properly, so I won’t interact with the barrage for now.” Kongkong coughed lightly. “I definitely have to win God Lu’s points this game.”

Kongkong felt a bit gloomy after being attacked by the other person’s fans for no reason whatsoever, and he secretly wanted to recover some face from the enemy mid laner.

He had heard things about this streamer before, and their team’s jungler had once praised this person. But no matter what his level of strength was, it could only be at a streamer’s level. If he was really all that powerful, he definitely would’ve been scooped up by some professional club a long time ago.

In addition, he was currently playing Lissandra, who had CC, self-defense abilities, and was very good at restraining assassin-type champions like LeBlanc. The teammates that he had matched with this game also had decent win rates, and their team composition was pretty good, so if he played seriously it should be fairly easy to win.

But that thought of his was annihilated in less than fifteen minutes.

After the third time his team’s jungler was jointly stealth-killed by LeBlanc and Lion Dog, the jungler finally couldn’t take it anymore and started to swear out loud.

“Didn’t their mid laner just go back to base?” Kongkong frowned. “When did he invade our jungle?”

Once that happened a few times, Kongkong no longer sat around and waited for death. With his support, he slipped into the underbrush next to the enemy’s raptor camp, wanting to stealth-kill LeBlanc.

Not long after, Soft leisurely entered the jungle. Kongkong immediately used his E skill to teleport to Soft while simultaneously tossing out his ult, wanting to stun him.

Unexpectedly, the moment that his ice was about to freeze on the enemy’s body, Soft instantly used his Stopwatch⁶. After the 2.5 second period passed, he turned around and instakilled the glass cannon support next to Kongkong, so fast that Kongkong didn’t even have time to react.

Lastly, Lu Boyuan promptly arrived and coordinated with Soft to take Kongkong’s head.

[[All] Just Watch My Gameplay: ?]

[Allow me to translate the meaning of my son’s question mark: Just who are you trying to stealth-kill here?]

[A little clearer: Does someone like you even deserve to enter my family’s jungle?]

Kongkong: “…”

Can you crowd of Soft fans quickly leave.

When the game ended, Kongkong’s score was 3/7/9, and he was the team’s SVP⁷.

Their ADC was even more tragic. Because of God Lu and Soft, he ended up with a 1/13/2 score, and he had already gone into seclusion on the spot.

Lu Boyuan returned to the lobby and was about to re-enter matchmaking, when he saw that Kongkong had joined his livestream at some unknown point in time and had sent him gifts too.

Lu Boyuan almost never expressed thanks for gifts—he received way too many of them, so he would never finish thanking people if he did.

When he saw the familiar ID, Lu Boyuan said mildly, “Thank you for the gift. Don’t send any more, waste of money.”

[MFG-Kongkong: Ge QAQ I lost 16 points]

Lu Boyuan didn’t respond. His eyes were lowered as he read a few comments that floated across the bottom of the screen—

[You start reciting a thank you speech just because Kongkong sent two Sea of Stars? Then what about those dozen or so Sea of Stars my son sent before??]

[My poor, lowly son. Can’t bear to switch out a computer that he’s been using for several years already, yet after smashing out the gift money that he diligently and frugally scraped together, he can’t even hear a single echo in return.]

[My heart hurts for that little dumbass.]

[Son, don’t be a bootlicker again in the next life, okay?]

After the game still didn’t start, Jian Rong saw those comments, and he pressed his head against his arms, his face burning fiercely.

In the future, he was definitely going to hold a fan meet and greet.

Go carrying a knife.

Slaughter as many as he could.

“Thank you, Soft, for the eleven Sea of Stars.”

The man’s low and deep voice interrupted the swearing in Jian Rong’s mind.

“I didn’t look too closely before,” Lu Boyuan laughed, “I wasn’t ignoring it deliberately, don’t hold it against me.”

Clang.

The spectators all heard the sound of a heavy object falling to the ground. Following close after, a cup slowly rolled out behind Lu Boyuan.

Ten seconds later, a slender arm appeared in the background of the video.

Jian Rong was afraid of entering the shot, so he strenuously covered his face and flailed his arm around energetically before finally managing to snatch his water cup back.

......

Besides ‘Dear Dad’ there isn’t really a good English translation for this that I could think of. Literally in Chinese it’s 亲爹 (qin die) which is supposed to mean ‘blood-related father’, as in they’re saying they’re Soft’s actual dad, but it sounds really odd any way you translate it. Qin also means ‘dear’, though, so I just left it at that .

I cannot do this line justice in English but I promise you it is so funny in Chinese. The original base is a children’s song called Little Swallow, but the fan alters the ending of the rhyme into a very abrupt “GTFO” kind of thing. The original line: 小燕子，穿花衣，年年春天来这里，你问燕子为啥来，燕子说，管好你自己。

Rong 茸 without the 艹 becomes 耳 (er). He uses a different character for Jian too (简 became 间) but same pronunciation (different tone)

Play on words with Kongkong’s name, the ‘kong’ can mean ‘empty’.

I also don’t know why Kongkong’s ID suddenly changed to this

LoL equipment: renders the user invulnerable to all damage for 2.5 seconds; the user is also unable to move or use spells/abilities during the period

MVP of the losing team 

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