Chapter 40: Abnormal State, I Won’t Easily Replace a Starter
The puppet doll displayed on camera had eyelashes as thick as fly legs and a tanghulu stick that looked like it had been splattered with two globs of bird droppings.
As soon as Fugui finished speaking, a burst of good-natured laughter erupted in the Penguin Meeting.
“Ning-shen, can you really allow Coach Zuo to crown this ugly doll with your name?”
“Is it ugly?” Ning Luzhao carefully placed the doll in the most conspicuous spot at the edge of his desk. “I think it looks quite nice.”
“The one Land painted is the one that actually looks good.” Zuo Chi quickly picked up the wooden puppet Ning Luzhao had given him. Unsurprisingly, it received unanimous praise, and the several cubs scrambled to ask Ning Luzhao to help them paint theirs as well.
“The knockout stages are about to start; where’s the time to paint?” Ning Luzhao opened a game room and added just as Fugui was about to speak again, “And no playing foul by asking the Coach to help you paint either.”
“We don’t want Coach Zuo to paint ours anyway, it’s too ugly—”
Zuo Chi was very self-aware: “Rest assured, I won’t touch your wooden puppets at all. Hurry up and enter the room for training.”
During the Spring Festival, every team gave their players a few days off. During the holiday, it was impossible to schedule scrims, so they could only practice coordination through five-man queues.
Naturally, starting tomorrow, a session would be added for the whole team to watch WIN’s match videos together to study the opponents’ playstyles, habits, and BP (Ban/Pick) compositions.
The cubs all had high ranks, so it took nearly three minutes of queuing before they entered a game.
Zuo Chi watched Beyond’s first-person perspective through the “Spectate” mode. During the first wave of minions, he focused on clearing the backline minions, looking for opportunities to poke the opponent’s health, dodging skills, and getting last hits… His movement appeared a bit stiffer than usual. Moreover, even without any interference, he missed a last hit on a minion.
Zuo Chi looked up at Beyond’s face in the Penguin Meeting.
The little marksman also realized he had missed a minion. A trace of annoyance flashed across his face, and he adjusted his glasses.
The young man’s right hand was wrapped in thick bandages, one layer more than what he usually wore at the team base.
Zuo Chi frowned. Once this five-man game was over, he had to find a chance to ask Beyond what was going on with his hand.
A few minutes later, Ning Luzhao finished clearing his jungle and rotated to the bottom lane for a gank. Beyond stepped forward to bait the enemy, using his Q-dash followed by an E-swap. Given Beyond’s past mechanics, he should have easily dodged the enemy support’s crowd control.
Today, he was half a second slow. In that half-second, Beyond was CC’d in place and gave up First Blood. By the time Ning Luzhao arrived, he could only manage to kill the enemy support to mitigate the loss.
“Sorry, that wave was on me.”
“It’s fine, it’s the first game of the day, your hands are probably still a bit stiff.” Fugui laughed boisterously. “Beyond, just wait and watch your Brother Fugui slaughter the enemy marksman until not a single piece of armor remains!”
“The enemy is coming to gank you, don’t be the one slaughtered instead.” Ning Luzhao pinged a signal. “Beyond, take the Red Buff yourself.”
“…Okay.”
The Drake spawned, and both sides were posturing around the pit. Wall was clearing brush in the jungle, trying to locate the enemy jungler whose vision had vanished.
“Beyond, be careful. The enemy jungler is behind you, in the Red Buff bush!”
“Okay, I have Flash, I have Flash.”
Ning Luzhao: “Beyond, move toward Wu Yang. Watch out for the enemy top and support Flashing onto you.”
Just as he finished speaking, the enemy support used a Flash-Ultimate combo toward Beyond’s position. Beyond’s positioning was actually decent; he was hugging the wall and only needed to Flash over it to kite the enemy support. With Wall blocking the enemy jungler behind him, it was an excellent output position.
Beyond pressed Flash in time, but the direction was reversed. He jumped right into the middle of the enemy team.
Zuo Chi’s sharp eyes caught a violent, momentary tremor in Beyond’s hand. He wasn’t a medical student and didn’t understand the severity of hand injury symptoms, but having accompanied Beyond to the hospital several times, he knew a thing or two.
“Beyond, what’s wrong with your hand?”
“No, it’s nothing…”
Zuo Chi didn’t say anything, which seemed to make Beyond anxious.
“Coach Zuo, there’s really nothing wrong with my hand. Didn’t we just go to the hospital two days ago? The doctor also said I’m recovering well. I just, just now… it was a mechanical error. It definitely won’t happen in the next wave. When we get back from the holiday, I’ll take over all the cleaning duties at the base—”
The marksman was dead, making the team fight difficult to take. The cubs retreated from the drake pit while using skills to protect each other, offering words of comfort: “It’s fine, we’ll take it back in the next wave.”
The first game of the five-man queue was exceptionally grueling.
Beyond’s death count was unnervingly high. If Zuo Chi hadn’t seen the boy sitting in front of the camera, he would have suspected someone else was playing on his account.
3-8-3. Beyond hadn’t died this many times in a single game even during the group stages, let alone in a ranked match.
After thinking for a moment, Zuo Chi logged into his own game account and checked Beyond’s profile. Today’s online playtime: 5 hours.
This meant that the boy had been playing ranked matches all afternoon without any rest.
He coughed lightly, stood up to step away from the computer camera, and lowered his voice: “Land?”
Ning Luzhao nodded, gesturing toward his phone with his eyes.
[Zuo Chi: After this game is over, find an excuse to pause for a bit.]
[Land: Okay.]
[Zuo Chi: Tell me, if we go to the Haishi Youth Training Camp tomorrow and ask to see the surveillance footage from a year ago, is it possible they’ll agree?]
[Land: Is it about Beyond?]
[Zuo Chi: Beyond’s state today is far too off. And I just checked his playtime; he’s already played for five hours. Those mistakes definitely aren’t just a matter of being out of practice.]
They narrowly won the first game. Ning Luzhao spoke up: “I’m going to the restroom, everyone wait for me.”
“OK!”
Zuo Chi opened his chat with Beyond and sent over the screenshot of the online playtime.
[Zuo Chi: Beyond?]
[Beyond: I was playing this afternoon and didn’t realize I’d been playing for so long…]
[Zuo Chi: I’m not asking about that.]
[Beyond: I’m sorry, Coach Zuo. My performance in that game just now was bad.]
[Zuo Chi: I’m not asking about that either.]
Beyond looked up at the camera in a daze. Zuo Chi saw the “The other party is typing…” notification appearing and disappearing at the top of his phone screen, but after a long while, not a single word was sent.
Fugui: “Did Ning-shen fall into the toilet? Three minutes have passed.”
Zuo Chi: “Oh, he probably ate too many tanghulu and got diarrhea.”
[Beyond: Coach Zuo, if… if my state is still like this in two days, let the players from the second team sub in for me. With my current state, I’ll affect the whole team in the match against WIN.]
The second team still had two players who hadn’t successfully transferred during the transfer period and usually trained with them, though their mechanics and synergy with the first team were certainly lacking.
[Zuo Chi: If your hand hurts, come back to the base. I’ll pick you up.]
[Beyond: It really doesn’t hurt. I don’t know why either… it’s just, when I’m playing, my hand suddenly shakes uncontrollably.]
[Zuo Chi: Forget about the substitute thing. I won’t easily replace the starters I’ve chosen.]
Fugui: “Coach Zuo, are you sure Ning-shen just has regular diarrhea? Five minutes have passed. Why don’t you buy him some anti-diarrheal medicine?”
Zuo Chi: “No need. He usually likes to squat on the toilet at the dorm too.”
[Beyond: But my current mechanics might not even be as good as a sub’s. If we lose to WIN because of me…]
[Zuo Chi: You’ve had enough training hours for today. Don’t join the five-man queue for now. Is it convenient to take a call?]
[Beyond: It is.]
Zuo Chi: “Land, the four of you train on your own. Duo or solo queue as you like.”
Ning Luzhao walked back into the frame: “Okay.”
Fugui: “Ning-shen, did you wash your hands after using the bathroom before touching the keyboard? You—”
“…Shut up.”
Zuo Chi dialed Beyond’s number. Beyond greeted him obediently.
He suddenly remembered the first time he went to the airport to pick up the marksman-support duo. At that time, when Beyond greeted him, he felt that this little marksman was a thoroughly well-behaved child.
Ning Luzhao was also very obedient, but “obedient” (tinghua) didn’t equate to “well-behaved” (guaiqiao).
Well-behaved and sensible children are always the ones who find it easiest to suffer in silence.
“Don’t be in a rush to talk about starters and subs. First, tell me… what do you think of your teammates?”
“They are all very amazing,” Beyond said without hesitation. “…And, they take great care of me.”
“Then do you think that since I brought four amazing players to VEX, I would choose a mediocre marksman to play the Spring Split with them?”
Beyond seemed stunned and didn’t speak for a long time.
“You said just now that your hand doesn’t hurt. You weren’t lying to me?”
“No, Coach Zuo, I didn’t lie to you. My hand really isn’t uncomfortable—”
Zuo Chi hummed in response and asked gently, “When did the hand tremors start?”
“Today… on the plane.”
“On the plane?”
“…Before entering the airport, when I ran into the players from WIN.”
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