Chapter 88
As if to prove that everything was indeed just an oversight, the rest of the journey was steady and very smooth. Driving into the Duan residence, inside the wide courtyard, the fountain statues gurgled with clear water, and the ornate rose windows on the mansion sparkled in the sunlight.
A middle-aged man dressed casually was holding pruning shears, fussing over some peonies that were drooping from the cold. Seeing Duan Mingyue get out of such a luxurious supercar, he was stunned. “You… where did you get that car? Where’s the person picking you up?”
Duan Mingyue called out first, “Dad.” Then he smiled lukewarmly. “A gift from Auntie.”
Father Duan understood. As a fox who had been immersed in the business world for many years, he no longer wore his emotions on his face. He smiled faintly, made no comment, and looked behind him. “And the little friend?”
After speaking to him, Duan Mingyue had already hurriedly turned to the other side of the car to open the door for someone, completely missing the question.
Seeing this, Father Duan shook his head. Indeed, once he had a wife, he forgot his father.
Shen Yanjin struggled with the seatbelt for a moment before getting out of the car a step later.
Duan Mingyue naturally took the backpack from his hand, led him to Father Duan, and introduced, “This is my dad.” Then he said to his father, “This is my boyfriend, Shen Yanjin.”
Unlike Duan Mingyueās composure, Shen Yanjin was extremely nervous right now, stammering, “Hello, Uncle.”
Father Duan looked him over. This cramped, nervous, and shy appearance was completely different from the gloomy young man who didn’t like to smile or talk seen online. So he smiled with satisfaction and nodded. “Mingyueās mother is cooking inside. She heard you were coming today and insisted on cooking herself; we couldn’t dissuade her no matter what. Come in.”
His attitude was unexpectedly kind.
Shen Yanjin looked up at the man beside him. Duan Mingyue smiled at him, held his hand, and led him through the gates of the mansion.
Duan Mingyue kept his word. During the two days at the Duan house, apart from daily training, it was basically pure enjoyment without any disturbance. Father Duan and Mother Duan were both busy people; even during the New Year, they were rarely at home. Most of the time, only he and Duan Mingyue were in this mansion.
Later, Duan Mingyue told him that, in fact, this house was under his name. Father Duan and Mother Duan only came back to stay during the New Year; they had their own houses elsewhere usually.
This made Shen Yanjin understand once again what “hateful rich people” meant.
After being thoroughly immersed in capitalism, the New Year holiday ended in the blink of an eye. The final preseason match, which would determine their top-four spot, was right in front of them.
On the last day, Duan Mingyue was in the study making up for the last two hours of his streaming quota, while Shen Yanjin stayed by his side doing his own training as usual.
Tapping the keyboard lightly, he controlled the little mermaid on the screen to cover the low-health Jungler’s escape across a wall, while he silently slipped into the blind spot of vision. Shen Yanjin was recalling to base to browse the shop equipment when he heard Duan Mingyue replying to bullet comments with a smile, intermittently.
“Where am I now? At home.”
“Yes, turned on the camera today. Good mood.”
“Was the person driving the supercar at Cloud City Airport that day me? Yes, but the supercar isn’t mine.”
“Is the trending search about you and Sliver spending the New Year holiday together true or false…” Duan Mingyue paused, intentionally or unintentionally. In the camera lens, the handsome man suddenly looked past the screen toward the opposite side. “Is it true or false?”
He seemed to be asking someone else.
There was someone else in Moon God’s house?
So juicy?
Duan Mingyue dating someone wasn’t a secret, so the livestream chat started spamming question marks, clamoring to see who this mysterious person was.
Shen Yanjin was caught off guard meeting his gaze and jumped. Seeing Duan Mingyueās teasing smile, he knew he was being made fun of again. He glared at him lightly, then spoke slowly, “…It’s true.”
[The one speaking is Sliver?]
[Sigh, I thought it was UOOW.]
[Same as above.]
[Is the point not that these two really went on vacation together?]
[Moon God confessed to Sliver before, right?]
[So what? They are a Jungle-Support duo anyway. Being a bit closer doesn’t mean anything.]
[Besides, to be honest, rather than Moon God being with some random woman, I can accept him being with Sliver more.]
[I ship it, fam.]
[Shipping every day, just forcefully going for ‘Nan Tong’ (gay romance), huh?]
[Going gay is fine too. Focus on competition. A world without women is more exciting.]
[True actually. Since the precedent of Lu Yuan, might as well go gay.]
[Go for it, go for it.]
Duan Mingyue glanced at the comments, smiled, and didn’t speak. He continued to say to Shen Yanjin, “Done playing? Duo queue?”
Facing the livestream, Shen Yanjin was no longer as overwhelmed as before. He looked at the screen, and while typing away furiously with operations, said, “Already pushing the high ground.”
Duan Mingyue opened a mini-game to play. “I’ll wait for you.”
Facts proved that when given a sudden long vacation, there were many bored people.
During this group queue, they repeatedly crashed into people from several major teams, forcefully turning the Rank match into a pro-player battle royale. They even matched against the convoy formed by Kai and Tans several times. Teammates fighting each otherāthe plot was very exciting.
Mid-ADC vs Jungle-Support battling wits and courage. But most of the time, the Jungle-Support duo camped the Mid-ADC pair until they exploded.
Every time he got caught, Kai would spam crying emotes in the chat channel, and his game character would also non-stop pop emotes above its head. After the New Year, this personās ability to be annoying had become even more profound.
The New Year holiday passed, and it was time to return to the base.
Because there were dedicated cleaners, even though no one had been at the base for a while, it was still as tidy as new.
What surprised Shen Yanjin a bit was that after the New Year, Song Yuan, who had always been very thin, gained some weight, while the round and chubby Kai had lost a lot of weightāeven his double chin was almost gone.
Not to mention him, even when Tans arrived at the base and saw Kai, he was visibly stunned.
But stunned was stunned; Tans ultimately didn’t say anything and went back to his room.
Kai watched Tansā back, also looking like he wanted to say something but stopped. Finally, he shook his head and dragged his luggage back to his own room.
Their rooms were adjacent.
Shen Yanjin remembered what Duan Mingyue said before about Kai always pestering Tans. Seeing this posture, he brainstormed a big drama in his heart. To use Kai’s own words, it was four words: Deep Masochistic Love.
Unexpectedly, Kai saw his gossipy look and immediately vowed solemnly, “Don’t blindly brainstorm. Bro is straight. Iron straight.”
Shen Yanjin looked at him with an understanding gaze. “Say no more. I understand, I understand everything.”
It angered Kai half to death, causing him to pull out a pile of photos of girls he allegedly used to have crushes on to prove his innocence.
Fortunately, KW had a fine tradition: whatever happened outside the game was never brought into the game. During training matches, the communication and cooperation between the dual carries were just as they should be, perhaps even a bit more tacit than before.
Another wave of small patches before and after the New Year gave some characters who had exited the scene due to the meta a chance to appear again. The match was in three days. While cursing the developers for pitting them, everyone practiced the characters hard.
The opponent for the last preseason match was Team OI. Like SYG, it was also a new team, but SYG had already relied on strength to rank in the middle, even having hope of charging into the playoffs. However, Team OI was purely a “points-gift boy.” Currently, they had only won one game, a dismal record, and looked like they were about to fall back to the secondary league.
To anyone watching, this match was in the bag. Some people even started discussing who would meet KW in the semi-finals.
But the KW members didn’t let their guard down at all. They held analysis meetings as usual and put great effort into tactical preparations.
Only one step left.
So, they absolutely could not relax their vigilance.
Shen Yanjin went on a video site to check OI Team’s match recordings, but on the homepage recommendations, he saw a video with a cover reading: “TWG Jungle-Support New Tactic Exposed?! Too ‘Disgusting’!”
…
Shen Yanjin couldn’t suppress his curiosity and clicked in.
The video content showed a famous streamer meeting TWG’s Mid-Jungle duo in Rank. Aiai uncommonly picked a support character like Bell Spirit to play Mid. Seeing this, the streamer didn’t hesitate to snatch an assassin mage. Originally full of confidence, he was ganked into oblivion ten minutes into the opening.
In the video, Aiai calmly shielded Shi Feng, who was on a sliver of health, covering his retreat out of the turret. Immediately after, he threw a slow at the enemy Jungler arriving for backup, switched bells, shook bells, and controlledāall in one smooth motion.
After all, being a Mid laner, he built damage items. The output was just enough to cooperate with Shi Feng to burst the person down within the control duration, helping Shi Feng take another head.
Finally, the two recalled together in the streamer’s grey vision.
This playstyle was indeed a headache.
Logically speaking, picking a support or utility character in the mid lane would drastically reduce damage capability, which was unfavorable for team fights. But Aiai’s protection details were just too perfect. And Shi Feng himself was a brute who, like SeeD, liked to forego defensive items and play himself like a nuclear bomb. Putting aside everything else, the damage was certainly sufficient.
When Shen Yanjin duo-queued with him before, he used to go bald from stress because this guy was too reckless and often charged too far forward to feed kills. But looking at it now, paired with a protective Mid like Aiai pushing the lane and roaming, it was just right.
Plus, there was TWG’s control-type support. Roaming to catch people was comfortable, and in team fights, it was equivalent to having two people protecting Shi Fengāemperor treatment.
And because Aiai had good game sense, almost every time someone tried to catch Shi Feng to break his rhythm, Aiai could arrive in time.
Shen Yanjin felt it would be difficult to deal with just by imagining such an opponent.
He exited the video and clicked on OI’s match, but for the first time in his heart, he felt it would be best not to draw TWG in the playoffs.
The last game of the preseason ended perfectly. KW won a complete victory, obtaining the first ticket to enter the playoffs and entering the top four directly as the number one on the leaderboard.
However, the match determining the next semi-final spot upset everyone’s expectations.
FTK vs SYG, Best of 5. SYG performed a reverse sweep after being down two games to win three. In the final game, they turned the tables despite trailing by nearly ten thousand gold, sending FTK to the resurrection bracket.
At the same time, it confirmed KW’s next opponent: the momentum-filled SYG, ready to counterattack from desperate straits at any moment.
š Advance Access: Complete Novel
- Option 1: Note your email on PayPal/Ko-fi.
- Option 2: Email proof to beezzzreads@gmail.com.
- Option 3: Comment below.
Recommended Reads
