"Threatening to bench someone... If you're going to intervene, does it have to be like this?" Tong Yao lifted her hand to push the man's face away. "Go tell them yourself if you want. I'm not delivering such an unpopular message."
"Then how should I say it?"
"With the education of love, show some affection."
"They're not you," Lu Sicheng said matter-of-factly. "Who has time for that much affection? It'd be wasted on them."
"You haven't shown me any affection either. If standing behind me during Ranked Games, nitpicking everything from my builds to my positioning like I'm some disabled player counts as your 'affection,' then I seriously doubt you understand the meaning of the word." Tong Yao pinched Lu Sicheng's high nose bridge. "Sometimes you even drag Ming Shen into your critiques, forming a tag team. Ming Shen doesn’t even want to deal with you, okay?"
Lu Sicheng thought seriously for a moment, then parted his thin lips and said with utmost sincerity, "Slander. I never did that."
Tong Yao pushed him away and sat up.
Only to be pressed back onto the bed.
"What are you doing?"
"Giving you affection."
With that, he lowered his head and bit her neck like a dog. He always bit the same spot, leaving a mark that faded after a few days, only for him to bite her there again... Unable to stand him nuzzling against her, Tong Yao threw off the covers, pushed him away, and got up, tossing the blanket over his face. "Don’t casually threaten to bench people. Those two are just edgy teenagers—what if provoking them makes them act out even more?"
"I won’t say it if they behave," Lu Sicheng mumbled from under the blanket. "Move your hand, I can’t breathe."
Tong Yao let go, and as Lu Sicheng threw off the covers, she wiped her face with her sleeve and walked out of the room. The moment she opened the door, she heard the team headquarters' front door open downstairs. Leaning over the railing, she saw Old Cat returning, but instead of heading to his room, he tossed his keys onto the table and immediately collapsed onto the sofa, closing his eyes. The two cats scrambled onto his stomach, kneading away...
"Old Cat," Tong Yao called from upstairs. "Go sleep in your room."
As soon as she said it, she felt like some nosy Auntie Tong from the village, cautiously coaxing a resentful young wife to go home and rest. Her tone was dripping with awkward meddling.
Old Cat opened his eyes, rolled over, and curled up pitifully on the sofa, petting the cats' heads. "No need. I’ll sleep here tonight."
True to form, Old Cat embodied the image of a resentful young wife.
Tong Yao: "..."
This is exhausting.
...
The next afternoon, during the scrims against Team K.
Old K had gone back to his room early last night but only emerged just before the scrims were about to start. Old Cat, on the other hand, stubbornly refused to return to his room, forcing him to use the disposable toothbrushes the team headquarters kept for overnight staff...
Only after Old K left his room did Old Cat finally go back to change. When the two crossed paths on the stairs, Tong Yao felt the entire headquarters was suffocatingly silent...
In the end, Old Cat strode past Old K with his head held high, not even glancing at him.
—Seeing this, Tong Yao knew today’s scrims were doomed.
And sure enough.
The scrims began, and everyone settled into their seats in the second-floor training room.Old K was accustomed to starting in the upper jungle area. In such cases, the Top Laner would usually help the Jungler secure the Blue Buff as the opening move before returning to their lane to farm minions. But today, as soon as the five Champions spawned in the fountain with a series of "thuds," Old K didn’t wait for the others and directly called Tong Yao to assist him, while Old Cat gloomily headed straight for his lane...
The atmosphere instantly turned awkward.
Little Fatty, pretending nothing was wrong, rambled in an attempt to salvage the awkwardness: "Zyra support is really strong this patch—hard counters Thresh. Before Thresh throws his hook, there's a winding animation. A sharp-eyed Zyra can just toss out her plants, and the hook won’t land! Cheng Ge, as the God of Thresh, I think this is unacceptable. We need to develop a bot lane combo to counter Zyra..."
Lu Sicheng ignored him. Instead, he turned his head expressionlessly to glance at Old Cat and Old K—his gaze didn’t provoke the two of them, but it successfully shut Little Fatty up. Clearing his throat, Little Fatty pretended nothing had happened.
"Next time, try using long-range Champions against Zyra. Don’t limit yourself to traditional supports; experiment with other Champions."
With that remark to prove he wasn’t deaf, Lu Sicheng turned his attention back to last-hitting minions. The others felt the pressure and fell silent, but no one expected this was just the beginning...
What followed was Old Cat and Old K demonstrating what it meant to be a "Jungler who ignores Top Lane" and a "Top Laner with a missing Teleport key, oblivious to the concept of support."
After clearing the upper jungle, the Jungler immediately turned and left. Even if he bumped into the enemy Jungler in the upper jungle, he didn’t ping a warning for his Top Laner. All vision wards were used to light up Mid and Bot Lane, with not a single support ward placed for Top.
During a Mid Lane teamfight, the Top Laner watched as their Jungler got engaged on and refused to Teleport in to help—normally, if he had reacted as usual, their Jungler might not have died. But this time, he did nothing, passively watching as the enemy Top Laner, slightly slower to react, Teleported Bot to join his team. The enemy gathered all five members and easily took down their Jungler... then capitalized on their numbers advantage to pick off the Mid Laner and support. Lu Sicheng reacted quickly and decisively abandoned his teammates, narrowly escaping, but that didn’t stop K Team from securing the First Tower bonus in Bot Lane and the first Mountain Drake.
While Lu Sicheng recalled in a bush, Old Cat finally lumbered toward Mid to help Tong Yao defend the first outer Turret—
But it was too little, too late.
At twelve minutes, the enemy forced this disastrous teamfight, taking down the first Bot Lane Turret along with its bonus gold, the most valuable Mountain Drake of the current patch, and three kills. ZGD suffered a crushing loss this round...
It all started with Old K’s absent-mindedness, charging in like a headless fly despite the enemy’s numbers. It ended with Old Cat turning a blind eye in Top Lane, stubbornly refusing to use Teleport to assist.Team K was a powerhouse in the league, especially adept at snowballing advantages. Once they seized this opportunity, both Tong Yao and Lu Sicheng's lanes, which had been evenly matched or even slightly favorable, suddenly became extremely difficult to hold.
Adding to that, Jian Yang was in top form today. He quickly noticed the absence of "top-jungle synergy" from ZGDX and began relentlessly camping the top lane, completely shutting down Old Cat...
By the 25-minute mark, Old Cat, playing Trundle in the top lane, was getting melted in seconds by the enemy AD carry, Hu Die. With no frontline left, the team couldn't even dream of stalling for late-game scaling.
By the 35-minute mark, Team K pushed straight to the high ground and demolished ZGDX's base. The final scoreboard for all five players looked utterly dismal—
Ming Shen let out a disapproving "Tch" and promptly smacked both Old Cat and Old K on the back of their heads with his clipboard, adding, "That was ugly!"
Lu Sicheng remained seated, expressionless. He pulled up the post-game stats, glanced at them, then shut down his computer and said coolly, "If you don’t want to scrim, just say so. No need to waste everyone else’s time."
His voice wasn’t loud—low and measured—but it carried clearly across the entire second-floor headquarters.
Tong Yao and Little Fatty instinctively stiffened in their seats, sitting up straight. Even though they knew the criticism wasn’t directed at them, they couldn’t help but feel a surge of guilt and cold sweat. Meanwhile, Old Cat and Old K reacted with rare synchronization: staying calm, indifferent, expressionless, and utterly unresponsive.
Tong Yao pulled out her phone—
[ZGDX、iLing: Do you guys have scrims today? Mind if I drop by for a visit?]
[High School Bully: Huh? What’s up?]
[ZGDX、iLing: …Requesting emergency shelter.]
[High School Bully: LMAOOOOO did you get wrecked in scrims against Team K?]
[ZGDX、iLing: Worse than that.]
[High School Bully: How bad?]
[ZGDX、iLing: Top and jungle have severed ties. Cheng Ge is furious.]
[High School Bully: …………………………🕯️🕯️🕯️ Damn, that’s rough.]
…
Turns out, the neighboring team also had scrims scheduled. Tong Yao’s shelter request was denied.
To escape the suffocating tension in the small second-floor training room, Tong Yao decided to lose herself in her own world—she fired up a livestream and queued for some Ranked Games.
At first, everything was normal. But then Lu Sicheng walked out of the meeting room, his dark mood instantly engulfing the entire training space. As he approached, he glanced down at Tong Yao’s stream and ordered flatly, "Mute your mic."
Tong Yao had just finished a match and was waiting for the next queue. Not daring to delay, she immediately tabbed out and muted her mic, ignoring the barrage of live comments:
[Don’t mute!]
[Unsubscribed!]
[AHHHHH secrets we can’t hear?! So mad!!]
[…Cheng Ge seems pissed today. Did you guys fight?]
The moment she muted, before she could even type to reassure her viewers ("Just for a bit!"), she heard Lu Sicheng address the troublesome top-jungle duo sitting further inside:
"Explain."
His tone left no room for negotiation.Old Cat ran a hand through his fiery red hair, his face full of impatience: "What's there to explain? I got camped so hard in the top lane, how else was I supposed to farm if I didn't take the minions? I was locked in the top lane, couldn't roam to help other lanes. The gold lost in other lanes could be made up in the top lane. If you don't believe me, just check the real-time gold distribution chart."
These words sounded all too familiar.
Old K glanced at Old Cat but said nothing.
Tong Yao and Little Fatty stole a look at Lu Sicheng's expression and didn't dare speak.
At this point, Lu Sicheng walked straight over to Tong Yao, gently moved her aside, and directly used her computer to pull up the data analysis software from the previous game: "Thirty-five minutes into the match. As the top laner, your teamfight participation rate was 11.7%. Total damage dealt to enemy champions was twelve thousand—only two thousand more than the support. From the 12:18 mark onward, there were seven teamfights, big and small. You only showed up for one—the one where God K wasn't present. That was also the only 4v4 teamfight we won. Based on your stats of 0 kills, 6 deaths, and 2 assists, your total contribution to the entire game was two assists."
Tong Yao looked up at Lu Sicheng in bewilderment, utterly terrified. Aside from the teamfight participation rate and kill stats, none of the other details—like how many teamfights there were, who was present when Old Cat showed up, or when the first teamfight happened—were recorded in the data.
In other words, Lu Sicheng had memorized all of it.
……………………………………Is this guy a Scorpio or something? So vindictive?
Old Cat still wanted to argue: "By the time I reacted to the first teamfight, the enemy top laner had already teleported down. Even if I followed—"
"During the first teamfight, when Old K mindlessly walked into the enemy mid laner and jungler, your screen was already focused on the bot lane. The enemy top laner teleported down two seconds after that. If you had really wanted to come down immediately, you would've been a full two seconds faster than the enemy top laner. At that point, God K wouldn't have died yet, and the two of you could've stalled long enough for Tong Yao to follow up and secure the kill on the enemy mid laner, their main damage dealer. Instead, you didn't come down."
"I didn't see a good teleport spot..."
"Today, God K prioritized vision control in the mid and bot lanes. There was so much vision that Little Fatty could've saved money on Sightstone. The enemy only had one sweeper on their support. Our vision was everywhere in the bot and mid lanes—the river bush, their Blue buff area. Whether you wanted to engage head-on or flank, what better teleport spot could you possibly need?"
Lu Sicheng didn't even look at Old Cat, keeping his eyes fixed on Tong Yao's computer screen.
When Tong Yao glanced at him sideways, his entire face was frozen in icy coldness. His deep brown eyes reflected the data on the screen, as if a storm was about to erupt at any moment.
Old Cat didn't dare say another word.
Old K, who had just been mocked for wasting vision control on the bot lane, also kept his mouth shut.
The live comments in Tong Yao's stream were flooded with:
[Scrims going badly?]
[Cheng Ge's expression could kill someone.]
[What happened……………… Cheng Ge looks like he's about to throw hands next second.]
[Did Tong Yao piss you off?]
[Mom, I'm scared!]
……
Lu Sicheng ignored them entirely, minimizing the stream window without a second thought."It's normal to have wins and losses in a match, and it's not unacceptable. Did anyone say anything when we lost to K in the Spring Finals? But if you don't want to play, or think it's perfectly reasonable to drag your teammates along to waste time and sulk, then I think tomorrow's match—"
Before Lu Sicheng could finish speaking.
He suddenly felt the tense corner of his lips touched by something soft and warm.
His words halted as he froze slightly, turning his head to meet the gaze of the person who had been pushed aside, now hugging their knees—the other person looked up at him with bright, dark eyes.
Lu Sicheng: "……What are you doing?"
Tong Yao: "………………………………Speak properly, don’t rush."
Lu Sicheng fell silent for three seconds.
Finally, he dropped a "Think it over yourselves," and just like that, turned and left.
The training room instantly fell into complete silence.
Everyone wore expressions of confusion, as if thinking, "Somehow, I seem to have survived."
Tong Yao sat back in front of her computer and opened her livestream, only to find it flooded with endless "666666666" comments—
[ZGD Mid Laner solo duels the big boss of Summoner's Rift and wins]
[One person carries the entire team through peril]
[LMAO I thought Cheng Ge was about to smash the team headquarters but he just left like that HAHAHAHAHAHAHA]
[Alright, alright, I believe you're true love now]
[I'm convinced.]
[ZGD captain succumbs to feminine charms, loses focus on coaching. Where has the former ice mountain gone? Let’s explore today’s esports science…]
[This move is brilliant! Kissing not only shuts up nagging women but also nagging men!!!!]
[Damn, sis, you’re amazing]
[This tactic, honestly, is unbeatable.]
...
OpenNovel