Chapter 26 – When It Rains, It Pours
The next day was the second midweek match of the Summer Split. Ji Wei and his team didn’t go to the event; instead, they dove into intensive training.
The club planned to have them participate in the Aurora TV Open Tournament, while the second team members also had to prepare for the upcoming minor league tournament.
He had thought Yin Sijue’s promise of “I’ll call you next time” would come true soon, but when Ji Wei logged into the game over the next few days, Solve was either offline or scrimmaging with his teammates. He hadn’t even started a live stream.
At first, Ji Wei worried about it for a few days, but as the Open Tournament approached, he became busier.
For days, the second team had been completely absorbed in endless training, playing games from the moment they opened their eyes to the moment they closed them.
Aside from a two-hour live stream on weekends, Ji Wei rarely even checked Weibo.
He took a leave of absence amidst the complaints of his fans. So consumed by gaming, he didn’t notice that Xu Shaoqiu hadn’t been at the second team’s base for weeks.
Actually, as AVG’s head coach, Xu Shaoqiu primarily coached the starting lineup, but he was also diligent and placed great importance on the club’s developmental system. The second team’s performance mattered a great deal to him, and he would occasionally visit their base to check in or watch their scrimmages.
Dragon was the first to notice his absence.
…
Two weeks later.
Dragon scrolled through his phone. “Captain, do you have any UGC second team game recordings saved? I don’t know why all the videos in my favorites disappeared.”
Jerry checked his phone. “No. I’ll ask the coach later; they should have backups.”
Dragon sighed. “Okay… Speaking of which, Brother Qiu hasn’t been here in a while. Is he finally disappointed with us after our recent scrims?!”
Jerry was startled. “Damn, it really does feel like he hasn’t been here in ages. The last time was when Uniqu—uh, E got injured. But we haven’t been doing that badly in scrims lately!”
Ji Wei’s eyes went blank. “Actually, we just lost to NS’s second team yesterday.”
Jerry groaned. “I’m suicidal.”
Ban looked at the two men’s despairing faces, puzzled. “That shouldn’t be the case. He must just be busy lately.”
“Haven’t you guys been on Weibo? Team One’s results in the past two weeks of weekly finals haven’t been great. If they keep this up in the playoffs, they’ll miss out on a PGC spot.”
The three of them were stunned, and Ji Wei’s half-peeled egg slipped from his hand and fell to the floor.
Jerry was the first to react. He opened Weibo and searched for the latest Summer Split standings. AVG had dropped to sixth place, and was even in danger of being overtaken by the seventh.
Ban sighed. “The Summer Split points carry more weight. Based on the six PGC spots announced by the PCL, their current ranking is already very precarious.”
Ji Wei leaned forward to take a look. Every post related to AVG online was flooded with insults.
[“Others are just declining, but AVG looks like they’re straight-up jumping off a building, right?”]
[“Are these four even compatible? How can they play like this when all of them have such high solo rankings?”]
[“Please give me a transfer guide for Solve. Husband, you’ve really suffered.”]
[“Solve has gotten worse too. As captain, isn’t it his responsibility to lead the team?”]
[“Fans still dare to call them the “Gods of Duel”? They can’t even carry one match like this.”]
[“AVG’s been declining for a long time. How many years have they been bragging about those two consecutive PGC titles? They’re falling apart without even winning a third. Even Zhongyong wasn’t this bad.”]
There were also nastier comments, some escalating into personal attacks against family members. Jerry quickly scrolled past them, but they still caught glimpses.
Seeing his team being scolded like this, everyone’s expressions darkened. Ji Wei fixed his eyes on the comments aimed at Solve, clenching his fists until his knuckles turned white.
Ban came over and patted Ji Wei’s shoulder. “Hey, stop looking. I didn’t say anything earlier because I knew you’d react like this. Brother Qiu’s probably already figuring out how to adjust. There’s nothing we can do to help.”
“But, but…” Ji Wei, who had never been part of the esports scene, was confused. “Rankings are supposed to go up and down. No one can stay in first place forever. Why praise them when they win but tear them apart when they lose? And why is Solve the one getting blamed the most?”
“Because he’s the captain,” Jerry said angrily. “Solve is the most-watched player in the league, so of course expectations for him are the highest. If Jueshen’s team isn’t doing well, everyone immediately points the finger at him.”
Dragon sighed, frustrated. “That’s just how esports is. The moment you lose, nobody remembers what you achieved before.”
Ji Wei sat back down at his computer and pulled up replays of the past few weeks’ matches on a video site. He picked a recent one and started fast-forwarding through it.
In the footage, during the third stage of the match, the four AVG players were in a prime position on the island map, holding a high-rise building in the southern part of Y City. They were well-equipped and well-informed.
Anyone with a discerning eye could see that AVG only needed to hold out one more round to secure a top-five finish.
Then, the camera cut to Wolf’s perspective—perched alone at a third-floor window, his gaze fixed on the distant backs of Team NS.
Ji Wei’s brow furrowed. A bad feeling welled up inside him.
Bang—gunfire erupted. The man fired again.
Team NS, preparing to engage another squad, instantly turned back at the sound. At the same time, another team began advancing southward, clearly having pinpointed AVG’s location from the shots.
Ji Wei could already imagine how Yin Sijue and the others were about to be surrounded.
Soon, Da Shu spotted someone approaching and tried to throw a smoke to cover Wolf’s retreat, but was cut down from the side and reduced to critical health. A grenade then exploded in the hallway. Thirty seconds later, AVG was wiped out.
Ji Wei: …
After years of gaming, he had run into all kinds of eccentric teammates. Some would stay in the lobby after dying and bark orders for the entire round. Others would panic and accidentally shoot him while he was hiding, exposing everyone and getting the squad killed.
Despite experiencing situations like these, Ji Wei had never cursed in-game. He just wanted to enjoy himself, and he couldn’t expect everyone to play like pros.
But at this moment, Ji Wei truly wanted to crack open Wolf’s head and see what was inside.
Was this something a human being could do?
He had attacked the first thing he saw and ended up throwing away the entire team’s advantage. It would have been one thing if he’d actually secured a kill, but he didn’t. Instead, he turned on all the microphones and shouted, “Come and attack me! AVG is in City Y!”
And this wasn’t the first time. If Ji Wei remembered correctly, Wolf had made a similar blunder in the very first game of the regular season—recklessly ignoring orders and charging into a fight that immediately put the team at a disadvantage.
“Can we listen to the game recording?” Ji Wei asked Jerry with a frown.
He really wanted to know how Wolf had explained that shot.
Jerry shook his head. “They usually don’t make it public. Aside from a few clips of comms during live broadcasts, the league rarely releases full in-game audio.”
Ji Wei nodded, closed the page, and stopped watching the replays.
Seeing Wolf pull off another outrageous stunt like that would’ve given him a heart attack.
Even so, he stayed alert. For the next week, Ji Wei kept a close eye on AVG’s standings.
Unfortunately, even after the final weekly finals, they were still stuck in a precarious sixth place.
It was truly despair-inducing.
There was a four-day offseason after the regular season, followed by a three-day playoff. During that stretch, the summer champion would be crowned, and the teams advancing to PGC would be decided—usually the top six by combined points from both the spring and summer splits.
A tense atmosphere had gripped the base for the past few days. No one dared to speak out, each secretly praying that nothing would go wrong in the playoffs four days later. Based on past performance, AVG would be utterly humiliated if they failed to finish in the top three.
However, something completely unexpected happened during those four days.
On the very first day after the weekly finals, a buzzword that shook the esports world shot up the trending charts:
#WolfSleepingWithFans
When the topic first appeared, Ji Wei and the others were busy training. They hadn’t checked Weibo and missed the moment the hashtag climbed from the bottom of the entertainment rankings to the very top of trending searches.
By the time they caught wind of it, the scandal had already spread across every platform.
As the Open Tournament approached, the assistant coach came by to explain the format of this year’s Aurora Cup and introduce the major teams that had participated in previous years.
After the meeting, he glanced around and said sternly: “Shao Qiu asked me to remind you: don’t post anything on Weibo for the next two days. And if you have friends outside the scene, don’t mention anything about the team.”
Everyone in Team Two froze in shock.
Seeing their reactions, the assistant coach sighed helplessly.
“You… forget it. You’ll find out sooner or later. Just check the trending searches on Weibo. Remember—use a burner account, don’t like, and don’t comment. The club is already handling it.”
With that, he hurried away as if something urgent was waiting for him.
The moment he left, everyone in the meeting room pulled out their phones in perfect sync and began scrolling through Weibo.
On this weekday, with no celebrity gossip to dominate the rankings, the term had already taken the #1 spot in trending searches—complete with the “爆” (explosive) tag.
Ji Wei tapped on #WolfSleepingWithFans. The very first post was a collection of eighteen PDF screenshots uploaded by a burner account named “You won’t have a good outcome.”
The evidence was concise and damning—screenshots, photos, and detailed records. The post alleged Wolf’s private contact with fans, his involvement with multiple women, and his trash-talking of teammates behind their backs—each scandal more outrageous than the last.
“Holy crap…” someone in the conference room muttered.
Ji Wei zoomed in on one of the screenshots. The woman described in detail how Wolf had added her on WeChat, asked her to meet at a hotel, and was later caught flirting with other fans. At the end, she attached several high-definition photos of Wolf asleep.
The blogger also revealed chat logs in which Wolf complained about the team, his teammates, the coach, and even the hostess at the base.
Solve was the one targeted most viciously. The posts accused him of being “pretentious,” “arrogant,” “selfish,” “hogging resources,” “bullying rookies,” “a poor leader,” and “relying on looks to get ahead.”
Ji Wei rolled his eyes at these obviously fabricated accusations.
Even more shocking revelations followed. To prove his claims, Wolf had shared numerous personal stories with the blogger:
[Beating everyone in scrimmages.]
[Being isolated after joining the starting lineup because his skill was too high.]
[Teammates withholding in-game supplies to stop him from stealing the spotlight.]
The dramatic twists and turns painted the picture of an underappreciated esports prodigy, tragic enough to move one to tears.
Ji Wei found the story almost captivating—if only it hadn’t been about his own team.
Who said there weren’t good writers in the Chinese entertainment industry?
If Ji Wei hadn’t known Wolf’s actual skill level, he might have believed such blatant lies.
Of course, the second-team players, who had spent years as his teammates, knew far better what Wolf was really capable of.
Ji Wei looked up at the other three members, all of whom wore expressions of undisguised shock.
None of them had expected their former captain to turn out to be this kind of person.
After a moment, Ban came to his senses, turned to Jerry, and asked: “Is this true?”
Jerry had been Wolf’s teammate since the youth training camp, making him the one who knew Wolf the longest.
But now, he shook his head in bewilderment. “I don’t know.”
After a pause, he added, “I hardly ever chatted with him privately. He didn’t talk much and rarely spent time with the team during holidays. I really don’t know.”
Dragon spoke quietly: “This profile picture really is Wolf’s WeChat.”
Ban flipped through the screenshots again, his face tightening with anger. “How could he say that about Solve? When we played in the internal scrims before, the brothers always gave us airdrops. When I played poorly and got scolded by the coach, they were the ones who came to comfort me. How could Wolf say things like this…”
Ji Wei asked, “He also said that in scrims he always had the highest personal rating, and that his performance only dropped after joining Team One because he was bullied. Is that true?”
“It’s not. The top rating is never fixed on one person. Sometimes he did well and got first, but the three of us have all been first before too. Even though the second team’s scrim results aren’t public, that kind of lie can be exposed so easily. Why would he even say something like that?”
Dragon added, “Maybe he never thought those chat logs would be leaked. Jerry… I saw you mentioned later on.”
Jerry’s eyes reddened. “Yeah, I saw it too. He just called me trash. Honestly, if he wants to talk about me, I don’t care. But the way he talked about Brother Sijue—that’s really going too far. And on top of that, lying to his fans… what the hell is that supposed to be?”
After saying that, he realized it wasn’t true that he “didn’t care.” His voice caught slightly. “Damn it, I never did anything to him. Why would he talk about me like that?”
Ban stood up, ran over to Jerry, and patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. He insulted me and Dragon too, haha—fair treatment all around.”
“Is that supposed to be comforting?”
Then Ban suddenly remembered. “But hey, Unique wasn’t insulted! Guess that means your popularity is the real deal.”
Ji Wei was unimpressed. “The chat log shows those messages were from June, when I’d just joined for a trial. The later stuff he cursed about was during the Summer Split. I probably just hadn’t gotten my turn yet.”
“…Fair point,” Ban admitted.
That hot afternoon, a chill spread through everyone’s hearts. The more they scrolled on their phones, the more unbearable it became.
Ji Wei glanced at the trending topic, which was still climbing, and felt a growing sense of unease.
The playoffs were just around the corner—after something like this, how were they supposed to compete?