PUBG Online Romance of the Century

Chapter 31 - Very ordinary online neighbors.

Edited by Divetus and Noks

Yu Yan had originally planned to go back to sleep, but what actually ended up happening was that he replayed the video several times and didn’t feel sleepy at all anymore.

He simply decided to just turn over and get out of bed. Yu Yan went downstairs, ate a nice breakfast, and then turned his computer on.

As soon as he turned QQ on, he heard a system notification.

[Tuantuan has invited you to join the StarTV Family]

With just a glance at the group chat name, he already knew what kind of group this was. Yu Yan didn’t think much about it and just directly accepted the invitation before he opened the next QQ message notification.

Tuantuan: I invited you into the wrong group chat. Don’t enter that group!

Yu Yan: …

Yu Yan: I’ve already joined.

He sent the reply, but it seemed like the other party hadn’t seen the message yet, because she didn’t respond.

The new group chat immediately flashed at the lower right-hand corner of the QQ app. Yu Yan moved his mouse and saw that there were 99+ notifications. He opened it, wanting to block the group, but found that the last message had been sent by an acquaintance. The message’s timestamp was a minute before he had joined the group.

It was unknown why QQ had done this crazy thing, but when a person joined a new group, they could actually see the group’s previous chat history.

laoshu: This is just the kind of route that other people take bei. In this situation, it’s quite possible that they could debut in the leading position tomorrow.

Yu Yan had an inexplicable intuitive feeling. He slid his mouse and scrolled up to read the chat history.

laoshu: What’s with this common practice now ah? It’s whatever if female anchors flirt with their viewers every day, but now even male anchors have started selling rot to attract viewers? What, do they not want us old guys to live ah?

laoshu: What other male anchor could it be? It’s the new one that fawns over his male boss every day ah.

laoshu: His stream is like a cult gathering of a bunch of women, all of whom are just shouting about some love. Disgusting.

Not many people livestreamed in the morning, so everyone was very free. Many anchors who were lurking on the group chat also suddenly responded. Although their words weren’t obviously as aggressive as laoshu’s, they all took part in the discussion, with the mentality of just joining in on the fun.

After all, a new anchor suddenly pumping out astonishing initial numbers made everyone feel an impending sense of crisis. To put it frankly, it was like having a common enemy.

As Yu Yan read to the end, laoshu sent another message.

laoshu: Tuantuan, are you deliberately trying to annoy us ah?

Although Yu Yan never tried to cause trouble, he wasn’t a fool who would just stand by while being ridiculed.

yanxyan: There’s nothing great about your game ability, but your ability to privately gossip is quite ferocious.

laoshu: What do you mean?

yanxyan: Literally what I said.

laoshu: The fuck? Do you think that you’ve become a big anchor after relying on selling rot to gain followers? Do you think that winning against me once by sheer luck means that you’re completely unrivaled now?

yanxyyan: Completely unrivaled just because I won against you? You think too highly of yourself.

Lulu ya: Stop quarreling. Why do you keep trying to find faults within others? Do you have nothing else to do?

banana: laoshu, we’re all colleagues, don’t be aggressive. Yanxiaoyan, welcome to our group.

As soon as banana appeared, laoshu immediately shut up, and no one else in the group said anything.

Yu Yan scanned through the group’s member list. This group had 500 people and more than 400 people were currently online. From the group notes, it could be seen that almost all of them were StarTV anchors.

And impressively, the group leader’s name was: Administrator 03.

There were several group moderators. All of them seemed to be popular anchors from each StarTV category. The PUBG category moderator was banana and the entertainment category moderator was Tuantuan.

A chat box popped up.

[Tuantuan nudged you once]

Tuantuan: … Fuck. I meant to invite you into a smaller, private group. I didn’t expect to invite you to the wrong one.

Tuantuan: There are a lot of people in this group but they’re a mix of fishes and dragons. They don’t usually talk much, but when they do, it’s usually shit-talking about someone. If you don’t like it, just quit it.

Yu Yan: It’s okay.

Tuantuan: Don’t worry though, anchors who have been ridiculed in this group chat all end up popular later. You can just consider it as popular people attracting criticism ba.

Yu Yan: It’s really okay. You don’t need to comfort me, I just want to ask&#k2026;

Tuantuan: What?

Yu Yan: What does selling rot mean?

Tuantuan: … You’re already this gay but you’re asking me this? That’s just not right ba.

Yu Yan didn’t understand, so he ran to Baidu.

[Selling rot refers to creating ambiguous circumstances between men to hype up and cater to the audience.]

“&#k2026;”

Him? Sell rot? With whom??

Isn’t he a skills-based anchor??

Yu Yan: … But, I didn’t sell rot ah.

Tuantuan replied with a profoundly mysterious and unintelligible sentence: I understand. You aren’t selling rot; you guys are sincere.

Yu Yan felt that their brainwaves weren’t on the same wavelength, so he simply gave up communicating with her. He sent a reply stating that he was about to start livestreaming and ran away in defeat.

As it actually wasn’t time for him to start livestreaming yet, he couldn’t help leaning his gaming chair back and grabbing his cellphone to click on WeChat.

To make it more convenient for him to listen to 1’s voice messages, Yu Yan had stickied 1’s chat to the top.

Yu Yan hadn’t felt anything special when he had stickied 1’s chat, and he also hadn’t thought too much of it when he had repeatedly listened to 1’s voice messages, but after what Tuantuan had just said… He now felt like there was something.

Exiting the chat box, Yu Yan casually opened his Moments.

He hadn’t used this feature in over a week. Since he had started treating gaming as a job, he rarely went out. During the holidays, he traveled around the world by relying on his Moments.

He didn’t expect to see an update posted by 1.

Yu Yan had peeped at 1’s Moments when they had just added each other as friends. It was completely clean and had nothing in it, as if it was just a side account.

Yu Yan internally told himself that he would just casually take a look and then hungrily clicked to open the posted picture.

The picture only had a cat. It looked like a stray cat on the side of the road. It was thin, small, had dark eyes and dirt smeared all over its white fur. It was obediently looking at the camera.

And below the picture was Yi Ran’s comment.

Yi Ran: Ge, if you have any fire, just blast it at me. The kitten is innocent!

Finally, Yu Yan understood why this brotherhood was so fragile.

Yu Yan wavered as he repeatedly opened and closed the picture, but in the end, he clicked to like it.

After looking at the picture for long enough, he shifted his chair back up and started the livestream. While checking his livestream details, he didn’t turn on the camera.

Recently, his follower count had already reached 17,000. Although there were some fake accounts within that count, a large proportion of the followers were real. So when his stream started, many people immediately poured in.

[Where’s the camera!! Cam! Er! A! I want to see my son!!]

[What server are you playing in today? I’m going to snipe you.]

[Are you still going to draw some stream followers today?]

“Let’s wait for the competition to start before I turn on the camera ba. I’m afraid that it’ll affect your stream viewing experience.” Yu Yan said, “Playing in the Asian server, solo.”

With that, he ignored the barrage’s wailing and directly launched PUBG.

Yu Yan had always been fond of playing solo. With no teammates, he could rest easy and boldly attack enemies without worries.

He queued into Miramar and jumped directly to Hacienda Del Patron.

In Solo, players who landed at this villa basically came in with the mentality of ‘you die or I die’. Players who could kill their way out of here were the chosen ones. They needed both strength and luck.

“If you land on the villa’s second floor, you’ll have a high chance of looting good things. You can also kill people who are downstairs by blocking the staircase,” Yu Yan said as he shifted his perspective around, finding a person floating next to him.

The two people were extremely close and their speed of descent was almost the same. If they kept diving like this, they would land together.

Yu Yan turned on the all voice channel and said, “Ge, I’m a hacker. It’s not too late for you to fly further out.”

There was a crackling noise, and the person beside him also turned on his mic.

“Coincidentally, me too, bro. I bought mine for 60 yuan a day. How about you?”

“…” Yu Yan controlled his parachute and flew away. “Forget it, mine is 8 yuan a day. I can’t afford to provoke you, I’m running away a bit.”

[???]

[The anchor is so open about everything now lololol]

[The notice is hanging there after all. He’s completely unafraid.]

After landing, Yu Yan immediately picked up a gun. He had just reloaded it and ran two steps forward when he heard the sound of thumping footsteps come from the side.

He ducked behind the wall and was ready to open fire on the enemy.

But he hadn’t expected that person to talk again. “Hey bro, are you the one who was parachuting with me ah?”

“…”

“I remember you. Yep, with the red scarf.”

Didn’t this hacker land on the right side of the villa’s second floor? How did he get here so fast??

With a few bangs, that person easily headshotted the player who was running outside, near the gate.

Yu Yan pursed his lips and said, “It’s me. So now what? Just kill each other off?”

The person laughed, “Hey, how about we cooperate and clear out the other people first?”

“Alright.” Yu Yan finished speaking and then turned off the all voice channel. “I’ll fool him first and then kill him when he’s not expecting it.”

[Hahahahaha, how miserable ba. Just playing a match and you still have to fight a battle of wits and courage against a hacker.]

[Daily cursing, trash game. Not being concerned about hackers, sooner or later the game will die!]

Yu Yan was merely just planning to kill him, but unexpectedly, this person seemed to sense something. While they worked together to clear Hacienda del Patron, the other party’s gun muzzle was always facing him.

“Bro. If you’re just going to be like this it’s boring ba.” Yu Yan said, “We’re partners, we should trust each other.”

“You’re a hacker, I can’t trust you.” The person said, “If you feel uncomfortable, you can also point your gun at me, I don’t mind.”

At this moment, Yu Yan became a bit absent-minded—exactly who was the hacker here??

The two of them inexplicably entered the semi-final circle just in this manner.

Looking at the other side’s gun muzzle, Yu Yan said, “Not good. I have to finish him off before he enters the finals.”

As he finished saying that, he turned on the all voice channel mic and said, “I’ll go upstairs to search.”

“Oh, go ahead ba.”

Yu Yan went upstairs, reloading as he walked. He thought, you can’t blame me for this; hacking disturbs the fairness of the game, not killing him wouldn’t be good.

He went to the window and clearly saw the position of the person downstairs.

Suddenly, the other party stepped forward and entered the blindspot in his field of view. Yu Yan calculated the position in his mind, switched the game to first-person perspective, and directly jumped down from the window!

At the same time, a grenade was thrown through the window—the other party wanted to kill him!

Yu Yan didn’t hesitate any longer. He cleanly fired the gun and the other person immediately took out his gun and fired back. However, it took time to change back to a gun. After a few shots, Yu Yan had already taken his health bar down to zero.

“Fuck…” That person turned on his mic and said, “Your 8 yuan aimbot is pretty strong.”

“I’m not aimbotting.” Yu Yan said, “Bro, turn over a new leaf. Don’t run a cheat software anymore. You’ll be banned sooner or later. I see that your clothes are worth, if not 10,000 yuan, then at least thousands of yuan. Why bother?”

“… You’re not aimbotting?”

“En.”

“Then, I’m also not hacking.”

“…”

“…”

The two of them foolishly stared at each other for a very long time.

[Holy shit, did you guys see the kill notification that just appeared??]

[I thought that I read the ID wrong so I didn’t dare to make a peep this entire time.]

[How could you possibly mistake the name of such a big team??]

Yu Yan glanced at the barrage and recalled the other party’s ID.

It seemed to be… QM_qixian?

QM?

“Hey bro, why aren’t you talking now?” Before the person left the match, he asked Yu Yan, “Are you really not aimbotting? So strong? How about we add each other as friends and play duos?”

“… Okay.”

QM Gaming was one of the top three PUBG teams in China.

After finishing the match, they added each other as friends. Sure enough, the other party was one of QM Gaming’s starters, someone who had just participated in the international competition two months ago; he was quite famous. Now, like Yu Yan, he also livestreamed, but not on StarTV.

However, Yu Yan had stopped following PUBG competitions a long time ago. No matter how famous this person was, Yu Yan wouldn’t recognize him. He just regarded it as having a strong teammate. The two of them played duos until the afternoon and managed to win several matches in a row.

[What kind of luck does this anchor have? Drawing the side account of StarTV’s top female entertainment anchor during a lottery and also matching with a pro player in solos??]

[Hey, I’d rather see Boss 1. When will Boss 1 come today?]

[Is the person from before new? Boss 1 usually only comes to tryst with the anchor in the evenings.]

Tryst? What the hell?

Thinking of the new vocabulary that he had just learned before noon today, Yu Yan couldn’t help saying, “Don’t talk nonsense. 1 and I are not in the kind of relationship that you think we are.”

[Not in that kind of relationship? Then, what kind of relationship do you guys have?]

[Strong Big Boss x Pale and Tender Little Anchor. I can visualize a livestream play.]

[… Livestream play? I’ve been enlightened.]

“We are…” Yu Yan paused and then earnestly said, “Very ordinary online neighbors.”

—

The author has something to say:

Giving myself an escape route

I don’t know if you can talk in all voice channel after turning into a lootbox. Let’s take it as you can ba.

—

Juurensha: Ah, Yanyan learning so much new vocab hahaha

Divi: LMAO Yanyan is also being enlightened. Now he’s becoming more aware of his feelings huh? Coming into contact with pro players when your rank is high is quite normal in competitive games! Most of the time, they don’t offer to queue with you unless they’re bored I guess.

Noks: Yanyan finally knows about the ‘rot’ we all spread. Hahahhaha.

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