Chapter 27 – The Hope of the Whole Village
The two slightly awkward captains quickly changed the subject, pointing at the chubby Tangyuan who was secretly fiddling with his phone.
“You—what are you doing?”
Caught red-handed, the snack-addicted Tangyuan calmly slipped his phone away and pretended nothing had happened.
However, Jiang Ranan, feeling implicated, took the initiative to admit, “I was registering for LAP’s fan club on Weibo.”
There was no turning back now. At this point, even if Tangyuan and Zhuang Bo wanted to stop him, it was too late. All they could do was slap their own thighs in regret. How had they ended up with such a clueless pig of a teammate? They seriously wanted to knock him out with a club.
In the Xinghai team, the most emotionally intelligent member, Tangyuan, glanced at the captain’s expression and subtly shifted in his seat. Then he turned sideways, gave a calming hand gesture to the other two teammates—put your heart back in your chest, all is good—and pulled out his phone again to continue supporting LAP.
Shao Zhan’s eyes twitched slightly. Sitting facing the big screen, his gaze subtly drifted toward Tangyuan’s diagonally held phone screen.
Afterward, Team Xinghai played two matches and, unsurprisingly, advanced to the semifinals.
When Shao Zhan led the team out from the war room to the stage for their post-match interview, the originally empty Xinghai seats were now occupied by the tall captains of Team Weiguang and Team Jie Ao, waving Mars cheering signs. The crowd erupted in thunderous applause.
Meanwhile, the team manager Qin Chuan, who should’ve been waiting in the seats, had long since disappeared, hiding somewhere and pretending not to know these lunatics.
Tangyuan covered his mouth and ducked behind Shao Zhan.
“Captain, can you please make those two nutcases leave? I’m dying of embarrassment.”
Jiang Ranan also covered his forehead, unable to watch.
“This is so humiliating.”
Yet the hope of the whole village, Shao Zhan, remained calm and unshaken. With a few concise answers, he wrapped up the interview and led the team off-stage under the dazzling lights.
The west section of the audience seats felt like a different dimension, completely out of sync with the buzzing atmosphere of the venue.
Two people were slouched over, seemingly asleep. Another one stood in the aisle bouncing around, practicing jumping exercises.
The last figure sat quietly, slightly leaning back in his chair. His cold, fair complexion was hidden in the shadows, blending into a blurry silhouette from a distance.
But Shao Zhan knew—he was watching the stage. Watching him.
…
“Ah—ow!” The little Blue held up his phone to block Yang Sa’s view. “Sa, what does ‘passing emotions through the eyes’ mean?”
Influenced by his teammates, Blue had become completely enamored with Chinese culture—he wished he could spend all 24 hours of the day studying it.
But he had recently discovered something even more efficient and fun—
A Chengyu Chain Game app.
Ever since leaving the war room, he’d been completely hooked and couldn’t tear himself away.
“It means expressing affection,” Yang Sa replied patiently, clearly used to being bombarded with questions from these foreigners.
The little Blue furrowed his brows—his slightly glowing navy eyebrows—and hesitantly poked at his large, bell-like eyes. “But… how do you pass emotions through these?”
“That idiom comes from Romance of the Western Chamber,” Yang Sa explained. “The ancients were more reserved. Men and women often conveyed affection through eye contact.”
When he noticed the group still looked confused, he added helpfully, “It’s like how the Japanese writer Natsume Sōseki once used ‘The moonlight is beautiful tonight’ to mean ‘I love you.’”
In retrospect, Yang Sa probably shouldn’t have explained so much—because now the foreigners were stuck on a loop, repeating keywords like moon, I love you, eyebrows, and talking.
Yang Sa silently pushed Little Blue’s phone back to him and tried to refocus—but just then, a pair of eyes, bright as stars, fell straight into his line of sight.
From the edge of the lights, those eyes looked quietly back at him. The colors were faint and blurry from this distance, but he could clearly make out the small beauty mark under the corner of the person’s eye.
Across the darkness, across the crowd, under the stage lights where all eyes were watching—a heart suddenly skipped out of rhythm, for no apparent reason.
“Alright! Now let’s give a warm round of applause as we welcome the rising team that also advanced from the semifinals—LAP!”
After thoroughly hyping up Team Xinghai, the host smoothly transitioned to inviting the long-forgotten team onto the stage.
The crowd responded with a chorus of boos—but some audience members holding light signs for other teams couldn’t help quietly looking forward to what LAP might bring.
Across the whole venue, the calmest group was none other than the members of LAP themselves. The tall white guy, Black, was diligently doing stretching exercises with laser focus. Little Blue was still completely absorbed in his Chengyu game. And Little Black, White, was hunched over, video-calling his wives while rotating the camera 360 degrees—making sure there wasn’t a single female within a 20-meter radius around him.
The moment he ended the video call, still frozen in a flying kiss pose, he collapsed into his chair like minced meat run over by thirty trucks—his whole face radiating pathetic, weak, and helpless.
“So blissful,” Little Blue murmured dreamily, still fully immersed in focus.
Little Black’s pudgy face twitched. “Just wait until you have more than ten wives. You won’t even be a person anymore—you’re just a dog they take out for a walk when they’re in a good mood…” Mid-sentence, he suddenly caught a flicker of a shadow in the aisle. “Hey, what are you doing?”
Yang Sa didn’t look back. He simply curled his finger in a beckoning motion. “Time to go on stage, puppy.”
As the host led the crowd in their fifth round of cheers, LAP’s members slowly made their way onto the stage.
The entire team still looked as weird and chaotic as ever, each one doing their own thing. Little Blue, painted head to toe like some lost Avatar who wandered onto Earth, sat cross-legged on the floor, completely absorbed in his own world. From his phone, the occasional chime of crisp Chinese idioms rang out.
The host tactfully ignored the overwhelming absurdity on stage and passed the mic to Yang Sa.
“With all eyes on you, Team LAP has delivered some absolutely jaw-dropping plays—truly standing out from the crowd. But now, we’re entering the battle for the Silver Empire Cup championship.”
Pausing slightly with a mischievous tilt of her head, the host added playfully, “You once publicly declared you were going to rewrite the PUBG rankings. Now, standing against Team Xinghai—led by the league’s number one player—how are you feeling in this moment?”
To accommodate the host’s height, Yang Sa bent down slightly. Ignoring the underlying meaning in her words, he replied in his usual calm tone, “Xinghai is strong. They’re a worthy opponent for LAP.”
“Woooow,” the host exaggerated, widening her already large eyes before shifting the mic toward the Xinghai captain.
Shao Zhan drew his gaze back from the curve of a certain someone’s waist and responded with a bright, refreshing smile: “It’s an honor to be your opponent.”
The exchange between the two captains sent the atmosphere in the arena soaring. The crowd erupted in synchronized chants: “Xinghai! Mars! Mars! Mars!”
Yet the man they hailed as a god never took his eyes off the slender, firm back standing just half a step ahead of him.
Once they stepped off the brightly lit stage and parted ways into separate corridors, Tangyuan Sweet began scratching his head anxiously.
Even the usually steady Zhuang Bai pressed his lips together in silence.
In the end, it was Jiang Ranan who cracked first. He timidly raised a trembling hand. “C-Captain… how are we even supposed to play this match?”
Shao Zhan paused just before stepping through the door. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” Tangyuan scooted over, nervously tapping his chubby index fingers together while awkwardly twisting his legs, “I mean… exactly what he said.”