A pleasant surprise.
She hadn’t expected Xie Linchuan to be here too.
She said, "The monitor called me over."
Xie Linchuan: "The monitor? Little Fatty? …"
The next second.
He was kicked out of the room by the host.
Chu Xubai was on the phone with Xie Linchuan—or rather, enduring a one-sided bombardment.
"Didn’t I tell you not to call me Little Fatty! How many times do I have to say it? Are we still bros or not?"
"Xie Linchuan, you wait. This summer break, I’m buying a plane ticket to fly back and strangle you!"
"No, strangling isn’t enough. Before I kill you, I’ll cut out your tongue first."
Brutal.
Xie Linchuan, still bearing the brunt of his good friend’s furious words, sucked in a sharp breath of cold air.
His tone turned ingratiating.
"Don’t be like that, buddy! I messed up. Next time, I swear, I’ll never call you by that nickname again."
"But how did you bring Qiao Liuyue in?"
"How do you two know each other?"
Chu Xubai really didn’t want to answer, but he replied honestly anyway:
"We’re classmates. She’s really good at gaming. We teamed up for a while. The studio’s short on people, so I invited her."
Xie Linchuan got excited: "What?! You’re classmates? Then that means you…"
Chu Xubai: "Dong Jiaoyan, yeah, she’s in our class."
He had already vaguely guessed it when Xie Linchuan kept calling her Jiaojiao.
He hadn’t expected the world to be this small—and this coincidental.
Xie Linchuan couldn’t wait to ask: "Is Jiaojiao really cute and pretty? Popular in class?"
Chu Xubai fell silent: "…"
Xie Linchuan: "Why aren’t you talking? Jiaojiao might be a bit headstrong sometimes, but she’s still naïve. Not like that best friend of hers—Qiao Liuyue is obviously full of tricks."
Chu Xubai: "You’re blind."
Xie Linchuan: "…!!! Bro, if we’re talking, we’re talking. No need for personal attacks!"
…
Ten minutes later.
Xie Linchuan re-entered the voice room.
Chu Xubai cleared his throat and introduced everyone to each other.
Xie Linchuan was also a game companion in the studio, but he treated it more as a side gig.
He only stepped in when the team couldn’t handle the workload.
In the voice channel, a companion with the ID Lan Lengyu, who had a lively personality, spoke up first:
"Brother Chu, how about we do a team-building event for the studio?"
"What kind of team building? We’re not all in the same city."
"Team building in the canyon," Lan Lengyu said, pointing out the few people on the mic. "There are exactly five of us. Let’s do a five-person queue and see everyone’s skills?"
Chu Xubai had no issue with it.
He privately asked Qiao Liuyue.
She said, "No problem."
Xie Linchuan suddenly spoke up: "I’ve already promised my girlfriend I won’t game with other girls."
Among the five on the mic—including him—there were four guys, with Qiao Liuyue being the only girl.
The targeting couldn’t have been more obvious.
Chu Xubai felt awkward and was about to smooth things over when Qiao Liuyue’s private message had already been sent.
Little Qiao Loves Jungle: [A dog should know its place.]
Little Qiao Loves Jungle: [I usually don’t game with my best friend’s boyfriend either, unless he’s a dog.]
Thanks, Goodbye: [Don’t go too far, you vicious woman!]
Little Qiao Loves Jungle: [How is this vicious? You have no idea what I’m capable of.]
Little Qiao Loves Jungle: [Stop your nonsense. If you keep whining, I’ll make sure Dong Jiaoyan watches how her boyfriend, who’s supposedly great at gaming, loses to me. I have the screen recording.]
Xie Linchuan immediately shut up.
In the voice channel, he chuckled dryly and said, "Well, since Little Qiao Loves Jungle is on our team, let’s do the five-person queue."
That should have been the end of it.
But Lan Lengyu had to make things worse by asking, "Little Xie, aren’t you afraid your girlfriend will get mad if she finds out?"
Before he could respond, Qiao Liuyue answered calmly, "No need to worry. His girlfriend is my best friend."
Lan Lengyu felt like his brain CPU was about to fry.
"… Huh?"
The five-person queue started.
Qiao Liuyue took the assassin hero Akali, Xie Linchuan went with the sniper hero Eileen, and Chu Xubai stuck with the solo-lane hero Cheng Yaojin.
Lan Lengyu picked the mid-lane hero Milady, and the silent Ruying took the support hero Sang Qi.
During the loading screen, Lan Lengyu’s howling came through the mic.
"Oh no! My archrival is in this match."
On the opposing team, the solo-lane hero Montgomery, played by 'Qingshan Dugu Yuan,' was a small-time game streamer with a modest but loyal audience.
Lan Lengyu, meanwhile, had made a name for himself in the companion circle, with a few regular clients who were fans of Qingshan Dugu Yuan.
One of those clients once formed a five-person queue team, bringing in Lan Lengyu and Qingshan Dugu Yuan, along with two other companions.
It looked like a strong lineup—there was no way they’d lose ranked matches.
But Qingshan Dugu Yuan was just too cocky.
He picked Montgomery, and Lan Lengyu took the jungler hero, the Tiger Hero.
The match started smoothly. The enemy solo-lane hero barely escaped under their tower, and the situation looked promising.
The enemy jungler tried to make a play, but instead of retreating, Qingshan Dugu Yuan decided to show off in front of his stream audience.
He chased the enemy jungler all the way, shredding their health bar to nearly nothing.
As he pursued, he shouted into the voice chat for Lan Lengyu to come and finish the kill.
But Lan Lengyu was only level three at the time, and hadn't even unlocked his ult. Playing it safe, he decided not to go, continuing to clear his own jungle.
Since no one came, Qingshan Dugu Yuan started grumbling.
His tone was dripping with sarcasm.
"Nice."
"You're the number one jungler."
"See that K'ah with his health in the red?"
Qingshan Dugu Yuan could only watch helplessly as the enemy jungler slipped away. When he tried to head back to his own river, he ran into the enemy midlaner, who was roaming to gank in the jungle.
He was killed almost before he could react.
Qingshan Dugu Yuan started cussing.
"If you're this bad, why are you playing ranked? Ruining the game for others?"
"If you're too old for this, just don't play ranked."
"Too old? Then... retire from the internet, you know?"
In the end, they lost that ranked match.
The funny thing was, the guy who got flamed—Lan Lengyu—finished with the MVP, while Qingshan Dugu Yuan himself was rated fifth.
From then on, a grudge was born between them.
Lan Lengyu warned the team, "Qingshan Dugu Yuan holds grudges. He's definitely going to mess with me this match. Watch yourselves."
Less than two minutes into the game, Lan Lengyu's Milady was laning against the enemy midlaner, Angela, trading minion waves.
The two mages threw a skill here and a fireball there across the minion line. The situation was still relatively peaceful.
But Qiao Liuyue's peripheral vision caught the minimap, and she frowned slightly.
The enemy’s top-laner, Montagne, was moving toward the bottom lane, and not slowly—clearly on a mission.
"Montagne's heading bottom. Watch out, mid," she warned in the voice chat.
Lan Lengyu was already prepared. He collected his minions and retreated toward the tower, positioning carefully, determined not to give Montagne any chance to ambush him.
But Qingshan Dugu Yuan didn't play by the rules.
Seeing that Lan Lengyu was stuck under the tower and ungankable, he abruptly changed direction and charged straight for the bottom lane instead.
Chu Xubai had just finished clearing his top-lane wave and was about to cut through the river to rotate and help.
Xie Linchuan's voice chimed in over the chat, oozing confidence.
"No need to come, bro. I got this. Easy!"
He piloted his ADC, Irene, with flashy footwork, as if completely unbothered by the menacing Montagne charging in.
One second, he was full of swagger.
The next second—
His screen went gray.
Irene's corpse lay by the tower, perfectly peaceful in death.
When Xie Linchuan's voice crackled through the microphone, it was dripping with embarrassment and panic.
He practically yelled, "Ruying, why did you AFK!"
The voice channel went silent for a beat. No one answered him.
Only Qiao Liuyue failed to hold back a soft, airy laugh.
