It was currently the off season, so Yi Xingran simply stepped over the two people, one crying and the other furious, his long legs carrying him past them without another glance. He did not linger. He strode straight out of the team’s base.
The coach’s furious roar of “Stop!” was left far behind him.
The gentle warmth of the spring sunshine spilled over his body, illuminating his pink and gold hair until it shimmered brilliantly beneath the light.
The gloomy rain had finally cleared and even the narrow alley no longer seemed quite so cramped and oppressive.
This long, secluded alley had witnessed far too many moments, both good and bad.
And now, when Yi Xingran pushed open the old wooden door, the first thing that greeted him was the familiar fragrance of home cooked food.
On the stove, red bean porridge was simmering gently, bubbling and steaming in the pot.
“Xiaoxing? Why are you back at this hour?”
For a moment, Yi Xingran’s consciousness seemed somewhat hazy.
He stood there in silence for half a beat before finally calling out softly,
“Mom.”
Yi Yueying had not grown much yet. The baby fat on her cheeks had not even faded and she was as carefree and foolishly cheerful as a little idiot.
Yi Xingran pressed down on her head and gave her a push.
The middle school girl, who had only just entered junior high, immediately slapped his arm in retaliation, her expression lively and full of spirit.
“You’re the idiot!”
Yi Xingran laughed.
His arm hurt a little.
The sensation was unbelievably real.
This wasn’t a dream.
It wasn’t an illusion.
It wasn’t the final hallucination of a dying man.
He had really been reborn.
At that moment, Yi Xingran finally felt a small measure of peace.
He curled up on the sofa and idly played with his phone while messages continued arriving one after another, a wronged and tearful Hu Yu, the stern coach and that sanctimonious smiling tiger who used the guise of concern while constantly bringing up contracts and business matters, the team’s manager, Sun Sheng.
Yi Xingran didn’t reply to a single one of them.
Instead, he simply stirred the fragrant, thick, sweet red bean porridge and slowly ate it spoonful by spoonful.
After dinner, he calmly set down his spoon and said,
“I’ll take you for a physical examination in a couple of days.”
Madam Li Lan immediately rejected the idea three times in a row.
“It’s too expensive.”
“It’s a waste of money.”
“There’s no need.”
“You don’t earn money easily either. Hospitals are all scams. You can be perfectly healthy when you walk in and they’ll still manage to find some illness wrong with you……”
Yi Xingran wore an expression that clearly said he had expected exactly this.
He immediately entrusted the important mission to Yi Yueying.
“You wanted to buy a tablet, didn’t you?”
Yi Yueying froze where she stood.
“Bro, how did you know?”
She hadn’t even asked him yet!
Yi Xingran poked her forehead.
“The only time you call me ‘Bro’ is when you’re thinking about getting money out of me.”
“Do a good job. I’m counting on you. If nothing unexpected happens, I might even be able to get you a new phone next month.”
Yi Yueying stared at him with a wrinkled expression.
“Bro, did you rob a bank?”
Yi Xingran suddenly felt an urge to smack her.
But the moment he thought of those blaring sirens, the ear piercing screech of brakes and the screams of the crowd……
The violent impact had brought excruciating pain.
There had been thick blood staining everything in front of his eyes.
As his consciousness faded, he could still vaguely remember the sensation of cold wind rushing into the fracture in his shattered skull.
He had collapsed into a pool of blood.
The accident had happened right outside the entrance to Yi Yueying’s school.
Their father had died years ago.
After their mother died, the two siblings would be each other’s only remaining family.
Yi Xingran couldn’t bear to imagine how a seventeen year old high school student would survive after losing both her mother and her older brother one after another.
Thinking of this, Yi Xingran curled his knuckles and tapped them against that round head of hers, which was supposedly “brilliant beyond compare.”
Yi Yueying winced and immediately grabbed her head with both hands.
“Yi Xingran!”
Yi Xingran, however, only laughed in an unusually good mood.
“Where are your manners?”
Still, with Yi Yueying around, he could at least worry a little less about things at home.
Back then, shortly before the World Championship, his mother had suddenly been diagnosed with a malignant tumor.
Her condition had deteriorated far too quickly.
Not long after the surgery, the cancer had already spread throughout her entire body.
On the day she passed away, Yi Xingran had been pushed down the second floor and taken into surgery himself.
He hadn’t even been able to see her one last time.
Now that he had returned to three years earlier, Yi Xingran thought that there were many things he could do over again.
He could prepare for them before disaster struck.
His mother’s illness.
His hand.
And the team that had ruined his entire professional career, a rotten organization where everyone from the highest ranking executives down to the players had been corrupted beyond saving………………
He would settle every single account.
One.
By.
One.
The Spring Finals had only just ended and there were still plenty of related posts floating around online.
Yi Xingran quickly went through the match footage again. Watching the bottom lane duo’s painfully poor acting, he found the explanations they had given afterward riddled with holes.
Much like the World Championship Finals, there had been a play in this match where he had circled around from behind to cut off the enemy’s main damage dealer.
Under Yi Xingran’s aggressive invasion, TheX’s mid laner, Cross, had nearly died on the spot. He had escaped with practically nothing left of his health bar and even then, it was only because the enemy top laner and support had both rushed over to help him that he had barely managed to escape Yi Xingran’s clutches.
Cross.
Pei Du.
He was the FMVP of the World Championship three years ago and currently TheX’s most commercially valuable star player.
He had won the highest honor in the S Championship after only one year as a professional player. In the years that followed, however, the team had also faced the awkward situation of veteran players retiring while younger players failed to fill the gaps left behind.
Rumor had it that Pei Du came from a highly educated family and carried an unusual sense of dignity and character in everything he did.
He was widely known throughout the esports scene as a true gentleman of competitive gaming, as well as the untouchable flower blooming high on a mountain peak that countless people could only admire from afar.
The video happened to reach the post match interview.
Pei Du’s cool, indifferent face suddenly appeared on the screen, his expression so restrained and ascetic that he practically looked like someone who had no interest in romance whatsoever.
Yi Xingran watched for a couple of seconds before unconsciously feeling his teeth ache.
What esports gentleman?
He was just an invincible mid lane show off who loved pretending to be cool.
Yi Xingran secretly cursed under his breath.
Pei Du’s low, indifferent voice traveled through his earphones and straight into his ears.
“A worthy opponent to respect. There were some minor flaws in his execution. After all, he’s still new to professional esports………………There is still room for improvement.”
A string of comments immediately floated across the screen.
[AAAAAAAH, THAT CLASS!]
[This is what a true gentleman is!]
[My husband’s grace!]
Yi Xingran’s thin lips pressed tightly together and the corner of his mouth twitched twice before he could stop it.
What “class”?!
Put into plain language, wasn’t he simply saying:
“You suck. Practice more.”
Who sucked?!
With a face like that, even his insults were irritating enough to make someone’s teeth ache.
Yi Xingran suddenly remembered something from when he had participated in the youth training selection.
He had once played a 3v3 match against someone.
They had all been using anonymous accounts at the time, so he hadn’t known that the mage on the opposing side was Pei Du.
Several times, his intentions to invade the enemy jungle had been predicted by the other player.
Yi Xingran’s killing instinct had immediately flared up.
Even if it meant diving beneath two towers in succession, he was determined to kill the man.
The champion LeBlanc was simply too agile.
With multiple dashes at her disposal, she had an exceptionally powerful ability to escape dangerous situations.
Yi Xingran controlled Nocturne, concealing his movements before descending from the sky. He had predicted the opponent’s movement in advance and calculated the damage precisely before executing an astonishing play.
But he hadn’t expected that a tiny error of merely a fraction of a second would make all the difference.
Pei Du’s Summoner Spell cooldown had happened to finish at exactly that moment.
With nothing more than a casually cast Ignite,
He killed Yi Xingran.
What should have been an incredible tower dive and solo kill had instead become an extreme life or death one for one exchange.
Quite a few spectators had been cheering wildly over the seemingly impossible play from LeBlanc, who had been destined to die but had forcibly dragged Nocturne down with her in her final moments.
Yi Xingran grabbed a handful of his hair, feeling increasingly irritated.
But later, when he happened to pass by the training room, he heard Pei Du’s cool voice carrying a faint trace of laughter.
With his eyelids half lowered, Pei Du gave his unbearably pretentious assessment.
“Sometimes, luck is also part of one’s strength.”
What the hell did that mean?!
Pei Du pulled open the door.
And immediately found himself face to face with Yi Xingran’s blazing, deeply displeased stare.
“So you’re saying that because my luck was bad, I should just consider myself unlucky?”
Three solo kills.
Three one for one trades!
And the last one had been even more ridiculous.
Right before Pei Du died, he had casually landed a basic attack on the dragon.
Yi Xingran had then been blasted to death by that evil giant dragon!
Damn!
Why couldn’t his skill cooldown have been ready just a fraction of a second earlier?!
Pei Du lowered his eyelids and looked him over.
“You’re that rookie jungler who likes circling around from behind to cut off the enemy carries?”
At the time, Yi Xingran had only recently bleached his hair and hadn’t dyed it yet. His head was covered in messy white hair and his peach shaped eyes were wide open.
His tone was vicious, his arrogance completely unrestrained.
“Just wait. There isn’t a single player in either carry position who’ll be able to walk away alive after falling into my hands.”
Just look at how arrogant he was.
Apparently, having only one mid laner to kill wasn’t enough.
Worried that the poor man might be lonely, he was considerate enough to make sure the AD carry could accompany him to the grave as well.
Not yet eighteen years old, the boy had acted with reckless freedom, fearless and carefree. It was as though a blazing fire lived within those eyes, determined to burn away every demon and monster blocking his path forward, carrying a blood hot passion that could never be extinguished as he climbed toward the summit.
Yet three years later, that solitary figure walking alone looked so desolate.
Yi Xingran dragged the progress bar back and watched the Spring Finals again.
He really hadn’t noticed any particularly strange plays from TheX’s jungler during that match.
His decisions when taking objectives, initiating team fights and rotating between lanes had all been fairly normal. His overall style had been steady and conventional.
He might not have produced anything especially dazzling but at the very least, he had genuinely destroyed the bottom lane, turning Wang Tianhao and Hu Yu into nothing more than walking sources of gold.
Yi Xingran couldn’t help wondering whether someone had given him advance information and told him to use the bottom lane as their breakthrough point.
Thinking back to the memories from his previous life, after the World Championship semifinals ended, Pei Du had once sat there alone for a long time, his expression desolate and his body almost motionless.
The bright stage lights had been unable to penetrate the emotion written across his face.
Had he cried?
Yi Xingran had taken another look at him.
After years of being rivals, he had finally defeated TheX and made it onto the World Championship Finals stage.
Yet his mood hadn’t been nearly as exhilarated as he had imagined.
The opposing jungler had suddenly seemed to lose his mind during the game, causing the team’s entire rhythm to collapse.
Because of the jungler’s mistakes, both the top and bottom lanes had actually fallen further and further behind despite his attempts to help them.
Meanwhile, Cross had been forced to roam and push across all three lanes, desperately carrying the burden of four teammates almost by himself and dragging the game into a fifth and final match.
But even he had been powerless to change the outcome.
The jungler was an extremely expensive Korean import whom TheX had signed for a high salary.
He had plenty of experience in major tournaments and an impressive historical record. He had produced countless outstanding plays throughout his career and for the past several years, he had practically guaranteed TheX a place at the World Championship every single year.
Yi Xingran had watched his previous matches.
A performance like this truly shouldn’t have happened.
But sometimes, a player’s mentality could collapse and their mechanics could fall apart under pressure. It was a bottleneck that any professional player could potentially encounter.
There was nothing for Yi Xingran to criticize.
Except, If he hadn’t happened to witness that man’s private transaction with Manager Sun after the World Championship Finals.
After discovering that Manager Sun and the team’s management had deliberately orchestrated the circumstances behind their failure at the World Championship, Yi Xingran had been consumed by fury.
He had even wondered:
If TheX had made it into the Finals, would the outcome for the LPL region have been different this year?
But there were no ifs.
Everyone from the top of the organization to the bottom was rotten to the core.
Even the matches he had won were victories that could no longer be considered honorable, match fixing, manipulation, controlling public opinion, manufacturing heroes and destroying reputations.
After an entire campaign of carefully engineered operations, LCK had suddenly transformed into a highly celebrated star team.
“Hey, this is the team that supposedly lost their chance at the World Championship because someone else fixed matches! The uncrowned kings! The shining hope of the LPL’s future!”
And Yi Xingran?
He was the only sacrifice beneath this enormous hidden scheme.
Everyone else had made an absolute fortune.
But his dignity, his dreams, his future and even his life,
Who cared?
“Fuck you!”
Yi Xingran’s fist slammed into the jungler’s face.
The hard plaster cast cracked under the impact and the white bandages loosened, dangling around his wrist and becoming stained with scattered specks of blood.
“And you!”
Sun Sheng didn’t dare call the police.
The moment he caught sight of Yi Xingran, he had already fled in advance.
The despicable schemer who was full of calculations disappeared into the starless, moonless night, like a filthy rat that could only hide in a sewer where no light could reach.
A merchant only cared about profit.
Yi Xingran went to the hospital to have his wrist bandaged again.
On his phone was a video he had just recorded, though the footage wasn’t particularly clear.
“Is this the official league office? I have new evidence I’d like to submit.”
But in the end, he didn’t make it in time.
Yi Xingran let out a mocking laugh.
Perhaps his luck had always been terrible.
He could only consider himself unlucky.
He opened his email.
Relying on his memories, he found the trial invitation that he had long ago thrown into his read folder, where it had been left gathering digital dust.
He moved his finger and opened the email.
TheX.
Pei Du.
Yi Xingran smiled softly.
Bro, don’t cry.
“Wait for me. I’m coming to save you~”
✦ ✧ ✦
Fleurveil
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
Coffee is technically a form of emotional support.
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
← PreviousNext →
ChaptersChapter 1 · Fire the hole!Chapter 2 · Dude, I’m here to save youChapter 3 · Plaster HeadChapter 4 · I’m well behaved, I don’t talk muchChapter 5 · It’s what Cross needsChapter 6 · What are you barking like a dog?Chapter 7 · “Ah! It’s so… so damn cold~”Chapter 8 · What are you looking at, you pervert!Chapter 9 · The cat I bought for free got dirty.Chapter 10 · Oh no! I forgot to switch to a smaller account!Chapter 11 · It’s my turn to performChapter 12 · Insults? That’s slander! This is slander!Chapter 13 · He’s a very nice personChapter 14 · Hunting TimeChapter 15 · A straight man sells himselfChapter 16 · The number one person who doesn’t eat stressChapter 17 · He is so vividChapter 18 · War! War! War! Kill! Kill!Chapter 19 Part 1 · What’s wrong with guys rubbing against each other?Chapter 19 Part 2 · What’s wrong with guys rubbing against each other?