Chapter 10 – Battle Insulator
Over time, teasing this outwardly cold yet inwardly warm little lion had become Max’s daily amusement.
Three years ago, Yang Sa had traveled alone to China in search of his roots, only to be dragged back to Germany. In the years that followed, he lay low, completing one near-impossible mission after another.
Today, he had finally set foot on his homeland again. Though his plan had encountered some minor setbacks, it was still progressing steadily.
Growing up together, Max had seen Yang Sa as cold as ice, witnessed his rage and hysteria, and even the rare moments when he drank with abandon.
But never before had he seen him like this—so silent that his emotions were unreadable.
Since returning, Yang Sa had been huddled on the hotel balcony, close enough to touch, yet for some reason, he felt impossibly distant, as if his soul had been pulled into another realm.
Under the moonlight, the boy had shed his usual armor, and the vulnerability in his features was heartbreakingly apparent.
Max didn’t know what Yang Sa was going through. He only knew that his father had once told him to always stand behind Yang Sa and protect him as best as he could.
In the game, however, there was no trace of the melancholy from his moon-gazing. Yang Sa wielded an M49 sniper rifle, running recklessly across the map, slaughtering enemies in an artistic display of violence.
If only he weren’t being followed like a ghost by that teammate in a yellow dress, it would have been perfect.
Armed with a weapon powerful enough to pierce a Level 2 helmet with ease, Yang Sa had been roaming the entire map, yet had only managed to secure two kills—both from bots that had practically dropped from the sky.
The more he ran, the more something felt off. More than half of the players had already been eliminated, and the battle was intense—but strangely, the chaos never seemed to reach him.
It was as if the battlefield was avoiding him altogether.
The sheer absurdity of it nearly made him want to pull the pin on a grenade and blow himself up.
But giving up had never been in his nature.
For years, Yang Sa had been like a lone wolf, surviving in a foreign land through sheer will and determination.
No matter what the challenge, once he set a goal, he would see it through to perfection—even if it was just an inconsequential game match.
And so, with his deadly weapon in hand, he charged toward the sound of gunfire…
…
“Hey, how’s it going on your side?” Tangyuan asked while struggling to suck up the last pearl from his bubble tea through a straw.
Shao Zhan, who had just cleared out enemies on the hill and was reloading, didn’t even look up as he reported his kill count: “32.”
“Cool,” Tangyuan pulled out an unopened cup of milk tea. “I only got 16 kills. My hands are off today, messing up my performance.”
Shao Zhan couldn’t be bothered to expose him, so he just played along. “Keep blowing hot air, will you? Maybe if you try harder, our base’s air conditioning can finally take a break.”
“I’m telling you, Captain, don’t provoke me,” Tangyuan warned. “The fortune teller said my birth chart is valuable and full of deadly energy. If I get really pissed off and stomp my foot, it’s gonna cause a disaster.”
“Yeah, if they cut any corners when building this place, your weight alone could turn that disaster into reality,” Shao Zhan quipped, casually raising his M14 and firing in his old teammate’s direction.
Tangyuan, still wrestling with his straw, looked up just in time to see his in-game character getting showered with bullets.
“What the hell?!” He panicked, quickly making his character crouch and squeeze into the narrow gap between two loot crates.
“Two guys climbed up from the shade while you were busy drinking your milk tea,” Shao Zhan explained in the time it took to reload. Before he even finished speaking, the fight was over. He strolled over to the green loot boxes, didn’t stop, and walked right past them.
Tangyuan, having used every trick in the book to wriggle out of the gap, grabbed an S12K and complained that the S686 in the loot was too weak. He then reluctantly followed Shao Zhan, stealing multiple backward glances at the loot, clearly pained to leave it behind.
At the end of the day, they were professional players. Even though they’d been asked to play in this low-rank match, they still had their principles. To make sure every unfortunate player who landed on this map felt true despair, they agreed to abandon large-scale destructive weapons. Shao Zhan settled for a common M14.
Even with this self-imposed handicap, they still slaughtered their way across the map with ease.
Tangyuan glanced at the remaining player count. “Only about thirty left before the match ends. What are you having for breakfast?”
“Breakfast?” Shao Zhan was so surprised that his finger slipped, accidentally firing a shot and forcing a sneaky camper in the grass to scurry behind a rock.
“You eat breakfast?” His voice was filled with disbelief—whether at the camper’s reaction speed or Tangyuan’s seemingly endless appetite, he wasn’t sure.
“Of course! I never skip breakfast,” Tangyuan scoffed. “We’ve been teammates for two years, and you still don’t know that? Seriously, what a cold, indifferent world we live in.”
While pretending to stand guard with his gun, he casually pulled out his phone and placed an order at his go-to breakfast shop through a delivery app.
During this time, Shao Zhan had already taken care of the camper. He also firmly rejected his teammate’s breakfast invitation, stating that “Esports players don’t need breakfast.”
“So outdated,” Tangyuan criticized, switching to the tone of a health guru. “You might be young now, but if you don’t take care of yourself, it’ll be too late when you’re older. You know what they say—’Breakfast is like a king’s feast,’ meaning a good breakfast sets you up for the day…”
Just as he was rambling on, he suddenly collapsed in-game, knocked out.
Still torn between choosing soup dumplings or a crab roe bun, Tangyuan furiously ordered both out of spite.
He didn’t bother dodging or wasting health to escape because he knew Shao Zhan, standing behind him, would definitely avenge him.
Sure enough, the battle feed updated with two notifications almost simultaneously:
[I Am Your Daddy used M49 to knock down Round Round Fat Fat Glutinous Round.]
[Little Red Riding Hood’s Wolf Grandma used M14 to knock down I Am Your Daddy.]