Chapter 28

UNEDITED

As mentioned before, when Gu Zixing first entered the professional league, his original position was ADC. But because he was way too picky about the lineup, he transferred to being a midlaner on the team. From then on he turned into a not picky or unruly individual who whole heartedly only wanted to murder the opposing well-behaved baby.

Actually there was a really important reason why Gu Zixing chose midlane, it was because his right hand suffered from a severe tenosynovitis. This was an illness that the majority of ADC players had.

The role of ADC was not the same as the other roles. For example in mid lane, most of the champions are mages so you only need to be accurate with your aim. Top lane requires you to have a stable development and the ability to tank damage in the later stages of the game. As for the jungler, they had to pay attention to all three lanes and find when was a good time to gank.

Compared to the other lanes, the requirements for an ADC was much more.

From the early game csing, to auto attacking, to micromanipulation, the moment you enter the game until the game finished requires your right hand to operate with a heavy burden.

The professional career of an ADC is shorter than the normal career span, this was already a widely known fact within the community.  

During the short period that Gu Zixing was playing ADC, because of the high intensity training and the humongous pressure from the team, it wasn’t even a full year before he contracted this popular disease.

Later, because the team leaders were afraid of a good seed being ruined, and also because Gu Zixing was messing up in the bottom lane, they had no choice but to transfer him to the mid lane.

As for the news that Gu Zixing’s right hand had tenosynovitis, although it was well known within the circle, it was not leaked out too much to the rest of the world.

Actually when Gu Zixing started, he was not the kind of person who wanted to prove his strength as an ADC who would act rashly to carry every match. At the time in order not to overstrain his right hand, he deliberately became lazy and risked being chewed out by the coach during training, and every day after coming back from practice he would seriously and carefully care for his right hand.

But perhaps because heaven is jealous of heroic geniuses, or maybe it could also be that Gu Zixing’s hand was a precious young master, so in the end he never managed to get past the tenosynovitis.

After Gu Zixing went to the middle lane, his condition improved a lot. After all, mid laners used a completely different kind of training. Not to mention with AOE skills, it lessened the burden on Gu Zixing’s right hand by a lot so it slowly became better again.

And this time, the club once again obliterated their humanity and handed this important task to Gu Zixing.

Although Gu Zixing didn’t say anything and his face of indifference had a  ‘you tell me to go where and I’ll go’ appearance, but anyone with a discerning eye could tell that this undoubtedly was gambling with his remaining years of professional play.

Look at Tang Xuan, normally a professional player would retire around 25, but Tang Xuan was not even 24 yet and chose to retire.

Gu Zixing was also clear in his mind that perhaps with this move he would also turn into Tang Xuan.

Regarding this topic that a pro esports player’s professional career was short, don’t even say one year, even if it was one day, to them it was like a precious golden opportunity. Especially for Gu Zixing who experienced lots of media and spectators similar to that of a celebrity athlete. To shift the retirement earlier by a year was like cutting off ten years from your life.

Seeing Gu Zixing’s indifferent appearance, they weren't sure if it was real or fake.

"You had some idea in your own mind anyways.”

Coach Chen sighed.

The extra training at night took place in a smaller training room next to the main one. Coach Chen randomly chose two people as their sparring partners. Yao Le had also switched to the mid lane.

Actually, Gu Zixing felt that this arrangement was actually very reasonable for EG at the moment. As for what Yao Le was really thinking, Gu Zixing didn’t care. Perhaps he was genuinely angry or perhaps he actually was thinking about the situation.

Gu Zixing didn’t feel like thinking about it much, still continued to give Yao Le commands just like before. And Yao Le, besides the regular communications during the game, didn’t say anything else through the whole training process.

Until the end of  training, Gu Zixing didn’t even know when Yao Le left.

“Ai, Boss Gu.” Leaving the training room, Qi Chen grabbed onto his shoulder and mysteriously asked something, “What exactly is going on between you and Yao Le?”

“Nothing ah.” Gu Zixing unscrewed the cap and drank some water, turned his head around to expressionlessly look at Qi Chen, “Why?”

“It’s fishy. In the past you two were like one person. Now that you switched to bot lane then the person who doesn’t want to switch positions the most should be Yao Le.”

“Did you exchange words with Coach Chen first before coming over?”

Perhaps because the two people were too close, Gu Zixing could already see Qi Chen’s desire for gossip burning. It was similar to Coach Chen this morning in the office.

“If Yao Le doesn’t switch, then you're going to switch ma?” Gu Zixing shook off Qi Chen’s hand on his shoulder and smiled, “You DO want to change.”

“If you’re going to speak then just speak, why are you belittling me ma!” Qi Chen used his elbow to jab at Gu Zixing. “I’ll stay in the jungle, there's no need for me to switch. I am the undisputed jungle overlord!”

“The whole team relies on you to mess up all three lanes. Others really don’t have this kind of ability.”  Gu Zixing nodded his head to show his acknowledgement of Qi Chen, “Cheering for you Jungle Overlord!”

“...”

Qi Chen knew that he could never take advantage of Gu Zixing’s face slap, but he still kept trying for a chance.

“Go ba, go downstairs to run two laps.” Qi Chen spoke as he took out his phone to check the time. “Don’t know if this gym is still open or not.”

“No thanks, still got things to do ne.” Gu Zixing didn’t even think about it and declined.

“It's so late, what do you even need to do? You also don’t even have a girlfriend to stay up with you through the night to do things.” Qi Chen looked at Gu Zixing with disdain.

“How do you know I don’t have one.” Gu Zixing smiled, “Otherwise why do you think I was late today.”

“WTF real or fake ah?” Qi Chen’s eyes were wide open. He randomly nodded his head and said, “Ah! No wonder you were dispirited all day today!”

Gu Zixing resisted a smile. He admired Qi Chen. This person and him unexpectedly knew each other for so long but managed to maintain this kind of honest and simple thoughts. Sometimes Gu Zixing couldn’t bear to tease him.  

“Then you hurry back ba. Don’t come back and say I’ve disturbed your happy occasion.”

Till the end, Qi Chen didn't detect that Gu Zixing was just teasing him.

---

After coming back to his room, Gu Zixing turned on his computer. Qiao Yanzhou was still streaming. Today his viewers were not small, every so often someone would send over a gift.

Gu Zixing poured himself a cup of water then sat in his seat and stared at the screen.

“Do you see the enemy Cassiopeia? As long as she just turns around to stare at me it’s GG.” The sound of Qiao Yanzhou came from the computer. “Wait for me to get my items and this game is over.”

Qiao Yanzhou spoke as he pressed Tab to look at the scoreboard. In the first ten minutes he was already ahead of the enemy mid laner by two small items. Although it looked as though Qiao Yanzhou fought fiercely, Gu Zixing could feel that he had some concerns in his mind.

During late game, Cassiopeia’s damage was higher than Anivia’s, but Anivia gained an advantage from her crowd control.  

Gu Zixing was a bit curious on how Qiao Yanzhou would handle it.

Time passed very quickly. Although Cassiopeia’s gold was a bit behind Qiao Yanzhou’s, but the advantages of being ahead from mid to late game began to show.

And because one of the skills is a directional skill, even if Qiao Yanzhou wanted to rely on good positioning, it was still very difficult.

“Annoying.” Feeling his advantage slowly passing, Qiao Yanzhou couldn’t help but repeat, “Jungler is bot lane, Cassioepia shouldn’t have Flash back up yet. But the R skill should be almost up, this is difficult to bear.”

“Ok, the last time. If I can kill Cassiopeia one more time then I can delay her gold income for a few more minutes.” Qiao Yanzhou bit his lip, “This is a bit difficult. There are four skills and 3 of them are AOEs and one is a hard cc…”

Qiao Yanzhou didn’t finish talking, when suddenly Cassiopeia sent out a Noxious Blast, but it didn’t hit Qiao Yanzhou.

Upon seeing this Qiao Yanzhou made a prompt decision and flashed in her face. Throwing an E attack he also raised an icewall behind her, then immediately hit her with a Q followed with an auto attack.

In a moment of desperation Cassiopeia used Cleanse, afterwards hurried to use her R ability in hopes of petrifying Qiao Yanzhou’s bird in place. But she didn’t expect that Qiao Yanzhou actually avoided the range of the R ability.

“I knew that you would respond with R.” Qiao Yanzhou's entire face was full of pride with a mischievous smile.

In fact, this was what Gu Zixing just told him last night.

Most Cassiopeia players when they were cc’ed would subconsciously think to use R to retaliate. Because this was the only crowd control skill of the champion, if you wanted to escape, besides flash you only had R. The skill cooldown of R was shorter than flash, so most people would pick the former.

But this action most of the time was incorrect, as long as the opponent immediately turned around when Cassiopeia hit R, it could be avoided. But all these things Gu Zixing said depended on the circumstances during a competition. In normal games like these, it was not necessarily the case. And there were Cassiopeias who would get a pentakill from one R.  

At this moment seeing that her R hit nothing, Cassiopeia hurried to retreat backwards. Her speed during mid game was already very fast. It was very difficult for Qiao Yanzhou’s bird to overtake her, but calculating the length of time on his W, he used it again to keep the snake lady in place.

Followed closely by an R, he brought the snake lady into the highest damage area of the snowstorm.

Cassiopeia at this point still had a bit of health left, but she used her Twin Fangs with a 0.5 second cooldown ferociously on Qiao Yanzhou. Seeing that Qiao Yanzhou’s health was very quickly depleting, it felt that both parties were now relying on luck. Both big and small eyes were wide open, seeing who would die first, the atmosphere incomparably tense.

Contrarily, Gu Zixing didn’t feel nervous.

Solely seeing how the two manipulated their champions, he knew that Qiao Yanzhou had won. He had a two small item advantage and besides, the snake lady missed two abilities.

The reason why both their health bars were very similar was because Cassiopeia’s skills had a very short cooldown, but with this solo kill on her, this advantage she had was no longer an advantage.

An enemy has been slain!

“Goodbye~” Qiao Yanzhou laughed.

Afterward, this game ended with a dominant victory for them with a score of 20:12. Qiao Yanzhou received MVP for this game.

Leaving the lobby, Qiao Yanzhou lowered his head to look at the time on his phone.

“Ok my viewers, today’s stream ends here ba.” Qiao Yanzhou and Gu Zixing made an appointment to suffer abuse tonight. He didn’t dare to let go of this dove named Gu Zixing.

He hurried to close the stream and not even 30 seconds later Gu Zixing received a wechat message from Qiao Yanzhou.

YZ: Teacher Gu, I’m done streaming.

Star: En, I saw.

Gu Zixing entered the game, Qiao Yanzhou also called over on voice chat.

Gu Zixing also didn’t know why he didn’t want to let go of Qiao Yanzhou. He met many other mid laners in the game before that had better awareness and technique than Qiao Yanzhou, but never wanted to treat any of them with care like how he treated Qiao Yanzhou.

Perhaps it's because Tang Yuan’s retirement created a lot of pressure in the team, or perhaps because Qiao Yanzhou’s character suited the professional league. Or maybe it was because his actions and awareness were very similar to his own, or it could also just be fate.

Gu Zixing did not mention to Qiao Yanzhou his intention to bring him into the professional league. He wanted Qiao Yanzhou to face everything coming towards him with a natural attitude.

As for if he could enter the team or not, that will depend on his own good luck.

“God Gu.” Qiao Yanzhou’s voice came from the headset, dragging Gu Zixing out of his train of thought.

“En?”

“How long do you want to torture me ah.” Qiao Yanzhou asked as he invited Gu Zixing into a custom lobby, “Is it because I’m too weak that you can’t stand it anymore?”

It seems that Gu Zixing’s thought that Qiao Yanzhou would eventually figure out he wanted to bring him into the professional league was a bit far-fetched, but this was also good.

“Torture you until the day before GML ba.” Gu Zixing smiled. He leaned onto his computer desk.

“When the moment comes, I’ll let you experience the taste of a tyrannical professional team, are you willing?”

***

JADE: Happy Lunar New Year everyone! Guess who meets GZX in the next chapter ;)