FOG [e-sports]

Chapter 118:

The following day, before the second round for Group A began, that video of the interview with Sacred Sword’s captain was finally discovered by the domestic players.

After Shi Luo watched that interview, he still couldn’t swallow down his anger despite having Slag man Yu fooling around to try and tease him.

You can just imagine how domestic players, Free’s fans and especially those iron fans of Yu Sui’s felt after watching that interview.

That old matter of Whisper leading his team to play in the European division had originally been the shame of their division. When they were still ignorant of the truth, everyone had brainlessly piled on the hate on Yu Sui for two whole years. Later, Team Free was established and the truth was revealed. Everyone turned their anger to Ji Yanhan, completely expelling Ji Yanhan, this former e-sports player, from the e-sports circle. They made him completely cut all ties from industry insiders. For nearly a year, he did not dare to show his face and everyone’s anger began to die down.

Now that Sacred Sword’s captain brought up this old case, it reminded everyone that this team wasn’t anything good either. They were willing to overlook that Sacred Sword had basically looted a burning house. It was also normal for wealthy commercial teams to do things like divide up outstanding players. Everyone was willing to consider these things rationally and they wouldn’t look into it further. But these were all things from the past season. What did they intend by forcibly prattling on about this matter that the Chinese division hated most to be mentioned right before this major competition?

“There will always be those two years in his professional record that will have our team’s name engraved on it. He can never wash it away.”

This sentence stabbed right into the hearts of the Chinese players.

During the time when the truth was still unknown, the players worked together for two full years to ruin Yu Sui. They already felt very guilty about this matter and now it was brought up once again. Old hatreds were hard to put to rest. If no one leads then no one would answer the call. The players on the Chinese server immediately scaled the Great Firewall of China and blasted Sacred Sword’s Twitter account. After cursing at Sacred Sword from start to finish, they demanded Sacred Sword’s captain apologize to Yu Sui.

Of course, Sacred Sword was no vegetarian. When they had nothing to do, they would look for quarrels and bully people for fun. Now Free’s fans have come knocking on their front door. They were even more excited. Within two hours, they first tweeted: [Is a certain region now quaking in their boots? ]

Within half an hour, they sent another tweet: [We miss the handsome Whisper very much. ]

Attached was a photo of Yu Sui wearing a Sacred Sword uniform.

Team Sacred Sword officially joined the fray and the conflict escalated instantly.

The national server players couldn’t wait to tear into this damn team. The number of national server players who were storming Twitter instantly rose another notch.

As the host of this year’s competition, the European server players were naturally unwilling to be cursed at. Fans of the Sacred Sword, as fans of last year’s championship team, were proud and arrogant. They were even more unwilling to look upon the Chinese division that had been in a decline for two years. The championship team couldn’t stand all the provocations of these stinky fishes and rotten shrimps. Their counterattack also came very fast. The two sides were busy tearing into each other online. In just a few hours, the relatives of both sides had been exploded and their ashes, scattered. After reaching a stalemate for less than an hour, the victor of this battle between to two sides was beginning to show. Naturally, there was no need to wonder about who won and who lost&#k2014;&#k2014;

When it came to overwhelming a matter by sheer number of people, since the advent of the Internet, the players of the Chinese division have yet to experience a defeat.

While banding together to lay siege outwardly at Sacred Sword, the players of the Chinese national server did not forget to appease internally as well. They created slogans and copied them, flooding both Chinese teams’ Weibo accounts: [To Free and NSN’s players, please disconnect from the Internet and play with peace of mind. We will handle this online b*tch fight. ]

With the players tearing into Sacred Sword, NSN managed to get free from their siege. NSN lost a game in the previous round of the group stage and now their chances of making it past the group stage wasn’t particularly stable. There had originally been sprayers in the country who were criticizing them for playing terribly; for wasting their spot to the World Championships. Now, no one had the energy or the intention to scold NSN anymore. Everyone’s firepower was directed outwards. Anyone who dared to talk sh*t about or blame NSN would have their entire family greeted by the domestic players.

During this special period, so long as NSN wasn’t eliminated, NSN had a free card against being sprayed. During the World Championships, there was an all-around domestic truce. At this time, anyone who dared to mess with the mentality of their own players would all be choked to death without exception.

The owner of the NSN Club saw that the domestic players have stopped spraying his team and was very happy. The wind has stopped and the rain has stopped. He felt that he too was in the clear and given the go signal. He was still bearing a grudge about what Sacred Sword did to his team’s medic before. He suddenly went on Twitter and started spraying as well. He took advantage of them not being in the same group during this stage to let out a torrent of abuse on Sacred Sword. Sacred Sword was completely caught by surprise.

Sacred Sword had already committed many evils and at first, they didn’t understand why NSN was raining down insults on them. But if they were sprayed then they would spray back. At this point, NSN has also joined the fray.

Inside Team Free’s lounge in the stadium, Zhou Huo was dumbfounded as he watched the scuffles all over the Internet.

The fourth best of one matches for his own team was about to start in less than an hour. Zhou Huo didn’t dare tell the players. However, Puppy unwittingly glanced at his phone and found out about it when he read a push notification.

Chen Huo was seated closest to Puppy, so naturally, he saw it too. Now, there really wasn’t any way to conceal it.

Zhou Huo was afraid that they would be affected by this. He let out a ‘ha-ha’ and said, “That…That’s nothing. Just the fans being all excited. Just forget that you even saw it. It’s nothing. Don’t look at your phones anymore. Just rest. Rest. You’ll be going up on stage in a while.”

Not a single one of the four players in their team listened to Zhou Huo. They all took out their phones.

Zhou Huo wanted to hack Sacred Sword to pieces. He watched the players closely, especially Shi Luo. He was afraid Shi Luo would see Sacred Sword’s last tweet and would be affected.

Not to mention Shi Luo, even Zhou Huo himself got so angry he felt his chest ache for half an hour when he saw that picture of Yu Sui wearing Sacred Sword’s uniform.

But to Zhou Huo’s surprise, Shi Luo’s expression remained unchanged.

Zhou Huo looked at Shi Luo cautiously and asked softly, “Are you… okay?”

“I’m fine.” Shi Luo scanned the comments under Sacred Sword’s Twitter and gave an objective evaluation. “They really tore into them. We have a large number of people but unfortunately, there’s a lot of made-up English. A lot of our brothers even just chose to curse in pinyin…There’s enough comments but they’re a little lacking in content.”

When Zhou Huo saw that Shi Luo was unaffected, he finally felt relieved. He hurriedly laughed and coaxed, “It’s fine. It’s okay. Those devils don’t need to understand. All they have to know is that we’re cursing at them.”

But Old Qiao looked dissatisfied and sneered, “In previous years, the two sides wait until the finals before starting on the talk trash to mess with each other. This year is really interesting. We aren’t even done with the lousy group stage and they over in group D are already turning towards us in group A. What do they think they’re doing? Do we even have anything to do with them? It’s hard to say if we’re even going to run into them. Who are they trying to embarrass?”

“It’s been a long time…since I’ve played in a competition where the smell of gunpowder is already this dense even in the group stage.” Puppy was stupefied. “F*cking each and every one of them…no one has even made it past the group stage yet and they’re acting like they’ve got a guaranteed spot in the finals. The thing I don’t understand the most is NSN. What are they doing suddenly coming out and shouting abuses?”

“What are they doing? They were afraid we wouldn’t be able to scold them to death so they’re helping us gather their heads!” Chen Huo was chatting with Angel Sword on WeChat. Anyway, everyone already knew and they were up against a weak team they couldn’t possibly lose against to next. Even if it was before a match, he didn’t bother covering it up. Chen Huo was unable to hold himself back and he couldn’t help but say, “Guys, search for Saint. Their official Twitter joined in on the insults last night but they have few fans and haven’t been noticed yet. F*ck! This time, Laozi will bear in mind Saint’s mutual affection!”

“Angel Sword and the others have joined in too?” Zhou Huo’s scalp was going numb. He was finding it hard to breathe. “Can this year’s World Championships get any better? It’s messed up, it’s all messed up…Really, the Vietnamese team was already unlucky enough to be playing against us. If the trembling Vietnamese team finds out that we’re having a catfight on Twitter, they’re going to die from anger. You don’t have any respect for your opponents. You have no heart.”

No one paid attention to Zhou Huo. Everyone searched just as Chen Huo told them to——

Saint’s official account on Twitter really did fervently make their statements last night. They made several posts in a row; all of them in Chinese, English, and German.

Shi Luo was not used to using Twitter and he still hadn’t found Saint’s page. After Yu Sui took a look to confirm that there wasn’t any detrimental content, he directly handed his phone to Shi Luo instead of letting him continue to search.

Shi Luo took the phone.

Saint’s whole club has always given Shi Luo the impression of being angels. From top to bottom, from inside out, all of them were little angels.

After Saint’s withdrawal from the World Championships, they had taken the initiative to serve as free training partners for his team and NSN. They would put up with the time difference to be always on call.

Whoever wins the championship has nothing to do with them, but Saint was still willing to help. Saint’s manager has always had a good temper. He was very kind and he even brought up to Zhou Huo before their willingness help with analyzing the videos of their practice matches if Free was too busy. This was all to help Free save time on their game reviews.

For such a gentle manager, it really was a rare thing that he would run to Twitter and use their official account that didn’t have that many fans to solemnly and formally scold Sacred Sword.

Saint’s first official tweet was a retelling of the details of how Sacred Sword cycled Angel Sword through the resurrection stone during the practice match Sacred Sword requested for at the beginning of the season. They censured Sacred Sword for not following the rules of the practice match, for playing malicious games and attempting to destroy the mentality of their players.

The second tweet posted the detailed data of the hits and kills during that practice match to serve as irrefutable evidence.

In their third tweet, they no longer sprayed Sacred Sword and instead, directly raised the other teams in their division.

“At the beginning of the season, Sacred Sword selected our team, as last season’s champion, for their first practice match. After a very unpleasant practice match, in the spirit of safeguarding the morale of other teams within our region, we gave honest information about Sacred Sword’s dishonorable manner during said practice match. It was our opinion that given the circumstances, it would be best if they were to reject Sacred Sword’s invitation.”

“Despite the circumstances, all eleven of our brother teams still chose without exception to accept Sacred Sword’s invitation.”

“Unbeknownst to the majority of the players, all of our brother teams have tried their best to uphold the honor of the competition. The dozens of players in all twelve teams were honorable even in defeat.”

“This division has never been afraid Sacred Sword; not before, not now and even less so in the future.”

“I hope that all players in this region can unanimously accept all the results. Let us trust our two strongest teams this season and let us face it calmly whether they win or lose.”

“Let us all wait for good news from our two brother teams.”