Chapter 8

“Is our team cursed??? Another three-orange-weapon team! Have orange weapons become common as dirt?? Damn it!!” Little Beggar’s bitter and indignant roar pulled Zhu Huai’s attention back. Then came Hua Rouya’s startled cry. “It’s Meng Xingyu!! It’s Meng Xingyu’s account! Oh my god, I wonder if it’s really him playing! Ahhh screenshot, screenshot, I’m fainting!”

The enemy Shu Sect’s ID—Xingyu.

When Meng Xingyu first took the endorsement, he streamed often, plus there was official promotion. Almost all mobile game players knew his account. Though people on every server deliberately took identical IDs, this Shu Sect’s avatar had an official verification V in the lower-right corner. It was undoubtedly the real account.

Zhu Huai stared at that ID for a good long while, his expression unreadable.

This time he had queued as the healer. He said calmly, “Ten-second countdown to enter. Hua, coordinate with Little Beggar to hit the Shu Sect. When they use their burst, you two remember to get out of his attack range.”

Hua Rouya let out an “ah” of reluctance. “Why do we have to attack Meng Xingyu? I’d like to spend more time with him. Can’t we attack the longsword?”

Girls all had a bit of star-chasing brain. Zhu Huai understood. “Fine.”

Before Hua Rouya could cheer, the male voice in the earphones continued. “Attack the Shu Sect, the Shu Sect dies. Attack the longsword, you die.”

Remembering the orange weapon special effect the longsword had triggered last time, Hua Rouya fell silent.

If the longsword survived even one second, the healer could top him up. And after the longsword’s orange weapon effect ended, there was a damage buff, extremely high damage. One-shotting her garbage-geared character would be effortless.

One-second kill. Even if a game developer logged in to play her healer, they couldn’t save her.

Hua Rouya’s tone was resolute. “The game can be lost, but the Shu Sect must die!”

Zhu Huai smiled. “Starting.”

Once the battle began, Meng Xingyu, a melee fighter, didn’t rush over. Instead, he stuck tightly to his healer, like conjoined twins. Meanwhile, the longsword, holding a gleaming silver blade, charged straight at Zhu Huai.

Zhu Huai was prepared. He dodged left to avoid the longsword’s crowd control, put a damage reduction on himself, and turned to run toward his teammates. But halfway there, he abruptly stopped. In that instant, the longsword seized the chance to entangle him, disrupting the rhythm of his healing. Zhu Huai had no choice but to stop and trade blows with the longsword.

Zhu Huai wasn’t flustered, because this was exactly the plan he’d just changed on the fly.

He’d originally meant to support his teammates, worried that the orange-weapon Shu Sect’s damage would be too much for them. But they’d given him a pleasant surprise—

Hua Rouya was actually pretty good at playing Hundred Flowers DPS, coordinating quite smoothly with Little Beggar. Clearly, in the time he’d been offline, she and Little Beggar had partied plenty. They had the Shu Sect’s health pinned down completely.

And Meng Xingyu’s Shu Sect was even worse than imagined. He didn’t know how to dodge skills at all, eating a full Beggars ultimate. But with the orange weapon boost and an orange-weapon healer guarding him, the two couldn’t kill him for the moment. Just as the Shu Sect’s health was pressed down, the Hundred Flowers healer brought it right back up.

The Shu Sect watched his health bar dance repeatedly on the edge of life and death, about to break down.

In contrast, Hua Rouya and Little Beggar’s health was still quite safe. So Zhu Huai changed his plan on the spot—hold the longsword and keep him from supporting his teammates.

But after harassing Zhu Huai for a while, the longsword seemed to see through his plan. Not lingering, he tossed a skill to scare Zhu Huai back, then turned toward the Beggars.

“Little Beggar, dodge!”

The Beggars moved on the command, but he was half a step too late. The longsword sliced his health down by more than half in an instant. Zhu Huai hurried over and threw out his ultimate heal, barely filling the bar.

“The Shu Sect doesn’t know how to play. Keep pressing. He’s about to break!”

Sure enough, not long after Zhu Huai’s words, the Shu Sect became a corpse lying flat on the cold floor. Even when the longsword rushed back, he couldn’t save him.

“Hit the longsword, hit the longsword!”

Zhu Huai’s side was 3v2, in an advantageous state. But Li River’s longsword was far more skilled than the Beggars or the Hundred Flowers girl—predictions, positioning, distance control, damage, plus the orange weapon boost. No matter how hard Zhu Huai tried with all his might, he couldn’t heal back the Beggars’ thin little health bar. The Beggars quickly fell under the sword.

“I’m so scared!” Hua Rouya’s voice was almost sobbing. “Handsome guy, what do we do?!”

The two sides were now evenly matched—if you didn’t count the equipment.

Zhu Huai had skill; the longsword couldn’t kill him. Now it came down to whether Hua Rouya could kill the enemy healer.

Zhu Huai moved as he spoke. “Focus the Hundred Flowers. The longsword can’t kill me.”

Hua Rouya answered softly, chasing the enemy healer across the field. But the enemy healer was about as skilled as she was. On the field were four players, three of them Hundred Flowers, leaving a trail of pink, delicate skill effects.

Midway, the longsword tried switching to attack Hua Rouya, but Zhu Huai had no trouble healing just her. In a 2v2, this was the drawback of one healer and one DPS.

DPS: can’t kill anyone.

Healer: can’t kill anyone either.

Zhu Huai kept wanting to find an opportunity to exchange a few words with Li River, but his hands were busy. Li River’s damage was too high; one misstep and Hua Rouya would be in danger.

【Hua Rouya defeated Bai Xiaomeng】

The sudden system notification made Zhu Huai pause. The enemy healer had died?

How?

[Map] Hua Rouya: ? Sis, are you lagging?

Zhu Huai asked over voice, “What happened?”

Hua Rouya: “No idea. She suddenly stood still, stopped healing, and just stood there letting me hit her.”

Little Beggar: “Ping spike?”

“Can’t be. Her character didn’t do the wave treading steps, so it shouldn’t be a network issue, right?”

In 《Sword Shadow: Martial World (Mobile Game)》, if a character suddenly disconnected or pinged too high, the character would slide straight forward until hitting an obstacle. Players called it the wave treading steps.

Such things weren’t rare in games, but deliberately feeding in an arena was far too uncommon.

The surprise made everyone in the arena stop. Even Li River didn’t raise his sword to continue fighting. He stood there graceful and still, not moving.

Hua Rouya asked uncertainly, “Should I go kill the longsword?”

Zhu Huai stopped her. “Wait.”

[Map] Zhi Huai: Li River, are you there?

After a long wait, there was no response. Perhaps something had come up and he’d gone AFK. Just as Zhu Huai was about to type again, the map channel refreshed.

[Map] Bai Xiaomeng: When things go wrong, “healer, love me once more!” When things go right, “healer, how did you even play?”—come out and take the blame! Heh!

[Map] Bai Xiaomeng: I accept being a noob. But if you’re a noob, can you fcking listen to commands?

Little Beggar was dumbfounded. “Holy sht, is this an internal dispute?”

Zhu Huai frowned at the messages. “The healer’s daily routine: when you win, DPS gets the 666; when you lose, the healer gets the blame.”

Little Beggar muttered, “How can you blame the healer for this? Meng Xingyu is visibly bad.”

The match had no more suspense from here. Unless the longsword instantly deleted one of their two, they’d be slowly ground to death.

But neither Hua Rouya nor Li River moved.

Zhu Huai and Little Beggar called Hua Rouya a few times; she didn’t respond, though the party showed her voice chat was on.

[Map] Li River: Here.

A new message suddenly appeared on the map channel. Zhu Huai took a second to realize it was answering him.

[Map] Zhi Huai: Which server are you on, big shot?

[Map] Li River: Server 6.

Zhu Huai was on Server 8.

[Map] Zhi Huai: Big shot, have you registered for the Hero Cup?

[Map] Li River: No.

Suppressing his excitement, Zhu Huai suddenly had a bold idea.

He called out on voice. “Little Beggar.”

“What?”

“Want to go to Server 6?”

“Huh?”

“To team up with Li River.”

“Wait.” Little Beggar was puzzled. “Transferring servers is fine—a few dozen yuan for the transfer fee is affordable. But what if the big shot doesn’t even want to join the tournament?”

Zhu Huai took a deep breath and typed: Want to register together?

But before he could send it, a big “VICTORY” popped up on his phone screen.

Li River had already exited the game. The system ruled his team the winner.

Zhu Huai was regretfully sent out of the arena.

The party chat lit up with Hua Rouya’s excited voice. “I just went to Meng Xingyu’s livestream room! It really was him playing!”

Little Beggar followed. “And he had a fight with his healer.”

Hua Rouya: “It wasn’t Meng Xingyu fighting. It was his fans going too far. Seeing their gege fall and not get up got them emotional, and they said some unpleasant things.”

“Too bad they didn’t expect that healer to be watching the stream too, hahaha!”

“The healer was probably angry about being cursed, so she asked right in the party how Meng Xingyu even plays, and whether he’d hired a booster to reach such a high tier rank. It was on party voice—the whole livestream heard it.” Hua Rouya still felt the lingering fear at the memory. “And then it got completely out of hand. Were Meng Xingyu’s mom fans and girlfriend fans even human? They fired back immediately. The comments flooded so fast you couldn’t read anything—almost crashed the stream.”

Little Beggar laughed. “Bai Xiaomeng is a real character, daring to provoke a traffic star. Think about it—back then, Zhu Huai’s fans and Movie Emperor Jiang’s fans fought to a near draw. These traffic stars are all ruthless.”

Hua Rouya’s voice shot up eight octaves. “Don’t mention that little bitch Zhu Huai! He harmed my sons Liu Qi and Wei Feng! He’s washed up but still clings to my husband for hype! Whoever brings him up to me, I’ll kill them!”

Zhu Huai: “…???”

Little Beggar was startled. “Okay, okay, no mentioning. Women are truly irrational when chasing stars—a bunch of sons and husbands left and right. So did Meng Xingyu just let his fans curse out the healer?”

“Not really.” Hua Rouya said, “Actually, it’s not really Meng Xingyu’s fault. Fans’ actions are paid for by the idol. He did try to persuade them in the livestream.”

Zhu·Bitch·Huai, who hadn’t spoken all along, asked, “How did he persuade them?”

Hua Rouya didn’t understand why he was asking, but answered honestly. “Mm, he explained that the healer wasn’t being malicious, said ‘to err is human,’ told everyone to stop cursing, something like that.”

Zhu Huai sneered inwardly.

Little Beggar had been fighting Meng Xingyu at close range, so he knew the situation best. He was completely appalled. “Holy sht! Bai Xiaomeng almost flung her bra off trying to heal him! He just stood there doing stationary DPS and ate several of my ultimates! Is it really that hard to admit you’re bad?!”

He concluded with, “What a btch!”

Hua Rouya gave a cold “hmph” and suddenly called out, “Compared to Zhu Huai, that’s nothing! He posts some ambiguous ginger-soup photo on Weibo, then gets my husband to comment for him, putting on that white lotus act of ‘oh, I didn’t name Jiang Sheli as the sender, he admitted it himself,’ milking the whole thing for maximum hype!”

?

So this was how melon eaters saw him?

Remembering how the people on set had looked at him today, he finally understood the extra meaning in their eyes.

Little Beggar, as an innocent gamer otaku, was shocked by the star-chasing girl’s unvarnished likes and dislikes. After a long pause, he muttered, “You hate Zhu Huai that much? I’ve seen that kid’s performance videos. He seems like a pretty pure boy.”

“What do you know!” Hua Rouya wished she could stuff Zhu Huai’s entire history of scandals into Little Beggar’s head. “That’s all a persona! A scheming boy at heart! He’d better never appear in front of me, or I’m afraid I can’t control the primordial power in my body and will tear him apart on the spot!”

Alright.

Today, he was Zhu·Bitch·White Lotus·Scheming·Huai.

Little Beggar was utterly convinced. Noticing the other teammate had been quiet for a long time, he called, “God Huai?”

Hua Rouya realized she’d overreacted and said apologetically, “Sorry, did I scare you guys? Now you all know how much I hate Zhu Huai. Don’t mention him in front of me from now on!”

Little Beggar said, “Alright, alright, got it.” Remembering the main matter, he said to Hua Rouya, “Our team is still missing someone, right? God Huai plans to go to Server 6 to ask Li River. Are you going?”

Then he added, none too surely, “Right, God Huai?”

Zhu Huai stammered, “…Let’s see.”

Hua Rouya: “Why? I’m fine going to Server 6 too!”

Because I’m afraid of getting torn apart on the spot by you.