Chapter 412: Interview Killer

Post-match interview stage. Sima Laozei stood beside Yu Shuang, who was wearing high heels, making her a little shorter than Ma Ge by half a head.

Fans offstage screamed "Ma Ge, Ma Ge!" Sima Laozei stood there like a deaf person, like a wooden puppet, expressionless.

Yu Shuang beamed, raising the microphone toward the camera:

"Welcome to the post-match interview segment. Congratulations again to VG for winning this match, and thank you very much to player Sima Laozei for joining our post-match interview stage. Please have Ma Ge greet everyone."

"Hello everyone."

"Just three words."

Sima Laozei rarely does post-match interviews; Yu Shuang had only recently become a full-time host and wasn't yet used to his style, so she waited for him to continue. After half a day, seeing he had no intention to speak further, she realized he had already finished.

Her smile instantly turned awkward.

The offstage fans, however, kept screaming.

Fortunately, Yu Shuang reacted quickly on the spot, her smile soon returning to normal; although her thoughts stalled due to Sima Laozei's 'enthusiastic' reply, she had brought cue cards with her.

Yu Shuang glanced down, not daring to improvise, and quickly moved on to the main topic:

"Alright, first question. Starting from week four of the regular season, our cross-group confrontation segment begins. Winning today's match also means VG got off to a winning start in the cross-group phase. So I want to ask Ma Ge, how do you feel right now?"

After Yu Shuang finished asking, she looked nervously at Sima Laozei, who performed his classic three-stage microphone lift: first raising it slightly after hearing the question, pausing slightly as he thought, raising it again, pausing again, then after finishing his thought, lifting the mic to his mouth.

Then he uttered three words:

"Not bad."

"...... Okay. Second question. In this match, Ma Ge, you also finally got your first pentakill of the season—what are your feelings right now?"

"Just the regular season."

"......"

Yu Shuang opened her mouth, but facing Sima Laozei's 'imperial coldness,' she lacked the courage to follow up, glanced silently at her cue card, and continued asking:

"Alright. Since the season started, Ma Ge's every performance has been remarkably outstanding; compared to last year, his condition has greatly improved, and his coordination with the support has become much more seamless. So I want to ask Ma Ge, how do you communicate with the support in daily training and matches?"

"Telepathic communication."

Offstage audience: hahahahahahahahaha……

Yu Shuang could barely hold on either, just wanting to end this hell‑difficulty interview quickly, forcing a stiff smile:

"So we can see from the schedule that VG's next match will be against Ma Ge's former team OMG. Does Ma Ge have anything to say?"

"Nothing to say."

"...... Well, from a personal perspective, could Ma Ge evaluate..."

"That's passed."

"Passed... okay, okay..."

Yu Shuang's forehead began to sweat; fortunately her foundation was thick enough that it wasn't too noticeable. Her hand holding the microphone trembled slightly.

"So in this cross‑group round, which team or player would Ma Ge most like to face?"

"None."

Laughter filled the venue, with some audience members nearly laughing themselves to exhaustion.

The bullet comments were also having a blast:

{hahaha}

{Yu Shuang: I'm just a newcomer, why are you torturing me like this! }

{Interviewing Ma Ge is really too difficult……}

{Putting it another way, Ma Ge means: the A Group are all trash, no match for me at all}

Yu Shuang's face turned pale, she swayed on the verge of collapsing, and asked her final question weakly:

"Well... okay, regarding the upcoming schedule, does Ma Ge have anything to say?"

"Nothing to say."

Hmm, that was the expected answer.

Yu Shuang put down the microphone, preparing to escape this despair‑inducing interview opponent.

As a result, she suddenly heard Ma Ge add a sentence:

"Just wait for Jiao Shen C and it'll be over."

Yu Shuang fell silent for a moment, then hurriedly wrapped up and fled, not even asking the question she had spontaneously added—she simply lacked the courage.

Then the interview was edited into a montage, turned into a meme video that spread wildly online; in that meme video, every instance of Yu Shuang's 'stall' was played in slow motion frame by frame.

And Sima Laozei earned a new nickname:

"Interview Killer."

……

Sima Laozei's interview‑meme craze was just a small side note; netizens watching the meme videos were just having fun, but the real spark that ignited a network‑wide discussion frenzy was the suddenly exploded group‑topic.

Since the Spring Season began, any match featuring VG has drawn relatively high heat; today's match against IM, judged purely by strength, is actually average, mainstream predictions also favor VG to win, the heat is present but not particularly high. However, a few commentators' offhand remarks inadvertently ignited the topic of the two groups' imbalance in strength.

After the VG versus IM match ended, public opinion suddenly erupted, bringing a wave of unprecedented heat. In the internet age, the emergence of hot topics is completely unpredictable; nobody could have imagined this topic would explode at this moment.

Weibo, Tieba, Zhihu, Hupu…… on all mainstream forums and even video sites, the LPL group topic was pushed to the top of the heat charts.

Someone complained on Weibo that the grouping had dark machinations.

A video creator lumped all teams from both groups together, re‑ranked their strength, and overnight the video garnered millions of views, with comment counts exceeding ten thousand.

Furthermore, fans of B‑group teams formed groups to discuss using public opinion to pressure officials into the possibility of a re‑grouping.

Of course, there was also no shortage of hype for VG.

One prediction endorsed by the vast majority of netizens and professional commentators is that VG could maintain an all‑win record in the B‑group internal struggle at Primordial difficulty; having now entered the A‑group instance at normal difficulty, the only theoretical outcome is a massacre.

The topic of the two groups' strength imbalance had actually been raised before the Spring Season began, but it had never sparked such massive discussion. Today, borrowing a few remarks from the commentators, it was like a fuse that finally detonated the topic completely.

Netizens' complaints are not without basis; looking at the records since the cross‑group confrontation opened on March 2, the B‑group's overall strength is indeed far superior to that of the A‑group.

From March 2 to now, in the three match days they played a total of 7 cross-group Bo3 matches; out of those 7 matches, Team A only won 2. With a 2-5 record, if this were a Bo7 team confrontation, Team A would already be utterly defeated.

Now, the pressure has come to the LPL official side.