Chapter 78

Brother, I was wrong; from now on I won't scold you anymore.

Holy shit, if you had told me you were doing a good deed, I would have already helped you curse them back.

I just couldn't figure out how a perfectly fine professional athlete would run off to the mountains. If he doesn't want to compete anymore, why not become a gaming companion? Isn't that nice? And if a rich woman takes a liking to him, he could straight away reach the pinnacle of life.

To be fair, he must have earned quite a bit from his professional career. I remember he made a name for himself in LDL, and when he moved up to LPL, several teams were vying for him. Moreover, that was during LPL's salary boom, so his contract that year was probably worth five or six million yuan.

He's quite honest—let alone five or six million, even one million is more than most ordinary people earn in a lifetime, yet he casually says he'll just quit if he doesn't want to play.

Actually, looking back, his choice wasn't wrong. The Myth version has too many trolls, especially in bot lane and mid lane. Even if I'm worse than you, it doesn't matter; as long as I can pull out a Mythic item, I can compensate for any disadvantage.

He's still too young, logically speaking. Just stay around and easily rake in a ten-million-yuan annual salary. Someone like Left Hand, who is useless at Worlds, only needs to go wild in the league to earn twenty or thirty million a year.

Hey, who hasn't been young? As long as you have no regrets, that's fine.

Damn it, who's spreading rumors? I'm about to fire back.

It's you again, kid. This afternoon in the Douyin comment section, your ID was the most vicious.

Just like that, the few videos Huya released instantly turned Su Xing's reputation from rock bottom to peak. Within just a few hours, Douyin, Weibo, Tieba, and even Huopu forums were all frenziedly discussing Su Xing.

At the same time, those marketing accounts that had previously smeared and spread rumors about Su Xing, seeing the situation turn bad, directly cancelled and fled. Some self-media accounts that had blindly reposted the criticism, unwilling to lose their accounts, could only hold their noses and issue an apology statement.

Because Huya had previously stated they would use legal means to protect Su Xing's personal interests, if they didn't apologize immediately, they would be dealt with one by one by Huya's legal department.

The fallout of this incident also caught the attention of Tencent Esports' upper management. At first, when they learned about it during the day, they didn't take it seriously, after all, no matter what, Su Xing is a retired player; they couldn't manage him and wouldn't even try.

But as Su Xing's reputation reversed, Tencent Esports' management felt this was an excellent opportunity to boost the LPL's overall image, so they hastily convened a meeting to study it.

The purpose of this meeting was simple: how to persuade Su Xing to return to the LPL stage.

As for which team he joins, that wasn't in their consideration; even if Su Xing didn't play in matches, just being a mascot backstage would be fine—all they wanted was a name.

For Tencent Esports, the LPL league has been gradually losing popularity following the retirement of traffic players like TheShy and Uzi.

Just for the spring split, each match's viewership has dropped 50% compared to the same period last year—an extremely exaggerated decline. If they don't find a way to introduce a player capable of carrying the LPL's traffic, the league faces a slow death.

They haven't lacked attempts to make someone else the new traffic pillar of the LPL, but each attempt was worse than the last—failing to attract any viewers, and even making casual fans dislike them.

Especially Tes's AD, Shui Zi Ge. Tencent Esports had considered making him the LPL's flagship figure, but this kid always likes to suddenly pull off something big.

Never mind how many championships the league has awarded; last year's Asian Games were supposed to be his crowning moment, but the Texas Hold'em incident forced him to withdraw. This year, it's even worse—just now at MSI, G2 shaved his head, unlocking the 'grand slam defeat' achievement.

As the saying goes, to forge iron you must be strong yourself—not every pro player is TheShy, but Su Xing is different. When he retired, his angry fist-pumping rant on Weibo already made many players remember his name. After years of absence, returning to the public eye, he has had considerable interaction with Uzi and TheShy.

Furthermore, after this uproar, Su Xing's name will surely be known household-wide; in self-media terms, his fame has broken out of its niche. If we can successfully persuade him to return to the stage, it will bring massive traffic and attention to the LPL.

For the LPL region, which desperately needs hype, this opportunity is priceless—no amount of money can measure it.

Tencent Esports' upper-management meeting didn't last long, and their decision immediately appeared on the phones of the management of the LPL's 17 clubs.

The official's meaning is simple: among your seventeen teams, whoever it is, however you do it, as long as you can persuade Su Xing to join a team and return to the stage, the year-end league profit share will increase by 50% on top of the baseline.

Besides that, the league officials will spare no expense to cooperate with him on promotion.

These two conditions are like dropping a stone into a calm lake—seemingly trivial, yet they create ripple after ripple.

Well, it looks like we now have a reason we can't avoid signing Su Xing.

In Tes's office, Guo Hao looked at his phone and saw the message, feeling a headache. He had been following the situation's development; Huya's involvement, while unexpected, was acceptable, but he never imagined that the officials would also decide to intervene.

Nevertheless, this also strengthened his resolve to join the effort to win over Su Xing. Others may not realize it, but if he could get a one-on-one meeting with Su Xing, he is completely confident he could persuade him to join Tes.

But we still need to tell the other investors—getting them to pony up more money is really tough.

Guo Hao muttered to himself while picking up the desk phone, asking his secretary to come into his office.

Help me contact those big bosses, say I want to start a video conference, and also have Mao Kai come over. Right, have the driver get ready—in ten minutes I'm heading to Tencent Esports.

At the same time, in Huya's office, Gao Wen's phone started ringing nonstop—just as she hung up one call, another came in. Some people couldn't get through, so they even used connections to call their colleagues, who then called her.

All of them were LPL club managers, calling to try once more to contact Su Xing: 'I've said it many times—he personally has no intention.'

Gao Wen could no longer remember how many times she had repeated that line, but the calls kept coming one after another, and finally she couldn't take it anymore and just turned off her phone.

However, she underestimated their determination—if the phone wouldn't work, they'd just show up in person!

Within an hour, people began showing up at the Huya branch in Hai Cheng, while Su Xing, still unaware of anything, was leisurely preparing dinner in the kitchen, only receiving Gao Wen's call again when he sat down to eat.

Can you come out for a bit and come to my office?

Gao Wen's tone sounded weary; on the other end of the line, it seemed like many people were talking, as noisy as a market.

What's up?

Su Xing chuckled and said, 'I'm having dinner; after I finish, I still have to stream.'

「. 」 No.

After a brief silence, Gao Wen's tone took on a coquettish feel: 'Don't stream tonight, okay? Come take a taxi to my office right now.'

「. 」 No.

Su Xing thought for a moment and said, 'Not really—I made plans with them last night to play a practice match tonight.'

To prepare for last night's match against Tes, he's been playing with TheShy and Ning these past few days; as for AJ, Xiao Duan, and Bei Shang, they have no choice but to solo queue every day.

They had already agreed last night that no matter what, they would return tonight to play the Old Man Cup practice match, and the opponent had also been set—supposedly, after succeeding in posture reforging and heart purification, they boasted they would give themselves a proper lesson tonight.

Can't we postpone it?

Gao Wen's tone was somewhat resigned; Su Xing doesn't want to come, and she can't do anything about it—she can't exactly bring him home, can she? 'No.'

Su Xing burst out laughing and asked, 'What's going on?'

It's like this.

Gao Wen sighed, then laid out everything she had done in detail, and also told Su Xing about her current situation.

The LPL league has seventeen teams in total, and now seventeen club managers are blocking the door of Huya's office, demanding to see Su Xing once; some even said that if they don't see him today, they'll camp out at the entrance.

Uh.

Su Xing momentarily didn't know what to say.

He never expected Gao Wen to have done so much just to help him clear his name; after all, sometimes even he forgets that he'd once accepted interviews from local TV stations, yet Gao Wen managed to dig it up and make it public in such a short time.

Thank you.

These are all trivial matters.

Gao Wen's tone softened considerably, she asked: "Now people are blocking the company entrance demanding to see you; if they can't see you, they won't leave; I really had no choice but to come find you."

Su Xing was somewhat speechless, after thinking a moment he said: "This way, tell them I've promised someone else to stream tonight and really can't get away; if they really want to talk to me, they can only wait; if they're willing to wait, then just wait until I finish the stream, then rush to your office right away."

Okay.

Gao Wen nodded and hung up the phone, turned to look at the crowded meeting room and spoke indifferently: "Su Xing said he promised someone else to stream tonight and can't get away; after he finishes streaming tonight he'll come here; if you're willing to wait, then wait."

She knew today Su Xing's turmoil was definitely being stirred up behind the scenes by the management of one or even several clubs present; as for who exactly, she still doesn't know, so she gave none of them a good look.

Everyone:. Good grief, when have these LPL club managers ever suffered this kind of treatment? Even if Theshy came, they couldn't possibly get this kind of treatment, right?

But right now they really have no other option, because they are the ones seeking Su Xing, not Su Xing seeking them; and if they could successfully persuade Su Xing to return to the stage, the benefits would be enough to let them lower their posture and swallow their anger now.

(End of chapter)