Chapter 26 – Playing with Leopards, Zebras, and Riding Elephants
Inside the strategy room, the tall and skinny guy—who never missed a chance to study mysterious Chinese cultivation techniques—bounced over to the chubby little black-haired kid.
“White, you’re looking different today!”
Little Black was holding his swollen cheek. “Did I lose weight?”
The guy who could probably lead a national morning exercise routine gave him a serious once-over.
“No, your ring lost weight.”
Little Black immediately looked ready to throw hands, but was trapped in his standard-size chair. He pointed at the jumping bean next to him and complained to the person beside him.
“Sa, Black’s bullying me! Aren’t you gonna do something?”
“Where’s your ring?” Yang Sa asked, though he already had a guess in mind.
ID White (a.k.a. Little Black) rubbed the ring on his finger, which was clearly a size too small now.
“Gave it away,” he said.
Yang Sa replied, “I already took care of it. You didn’t need to spend that money.”
“Sa,” Little Black said, with deep, unshakable wisdom in his voice, “any problem that money can solve isn’t a real problem. Besides, the person you arranged still has value—we can’t blow their cover too early.”
Yang Sa didn’t tell him that the person he had arranged was actually someone about to resign—a scapegoat, with severance pay and future job arrangements already taken care of.
He was already deeply grateful that his friends had come to help. By a rough estimate, just this round trip had cost them business worth tens of millions.
Originally, his plan had been to crush the Silver Emperor team right when they were full of hope.
But extinguishing that hope from the very start wasn’t a bad outcome either—this way, he could focus all his attention on that person.
“Ready?” he asked his teammates over voice chat.
The three friends of various skin tones replied in unison with a loud, synchronized: “Tch.”
In the first match, LAP dropped in the center of the map—School. After looting up and taking out another team that landed with them, they immediately grabbed a vehicle and rotated across the map.
Abandoning their usual habit of stopping to third-party fights, they bypassed all the small compounds nearby and headed straight for Rozhok (R City).
There, they cleared out the defending team and upgraded their gear, then pushed directly toward the Shooting Range, like a blade slicing through the map.
According to the latest battle reports, the shooting range had been where Silver Emperor GE had last engaged and eliminated an enemy squad.
Not wanting to risk letting their target escape, LAP didn’t even stop for an airdrop on the way.
Finally, on the outskirts of the Shooting Range, they successfully intercepted the Silver Emperor team—right in the middle of their desperate vehicle rotation to escape the shrinking zone.
Three minutes later…
[LAP—Killer knocked out GE—007 with a Kar98K]
[LAP—Killer killed GE—007 with a Kar98K]
[LAP—Blue killed GE—Green with an SKS]
[LAP—Black killed GE—Desert with a SCAR-L]
[LAP—Killer killed GE—M416 with a Kar98K]
Lined up neatly on the ground were the loot boxes, perfectly matching the kill feed.
Little Black, who had missed the last kill due to a misclick, stared at the “0 Kills” next to his in-game name IDWhite with such frustration that even his round face went pale.
He turned to the person on his left, counting on his fingers:
“Sa, I—Lao White—put in the effort, the time, even the money for your cause. You couldn’t have just left that last kill for me?”
Under his oversized headset, Yang Sa’s small, palm-sized face wore a sheepish smile.
“Sorry, really. I meant to give it to you, but… my aim slipped—straight into a headshot.”
Little Black turned silently back to his computer, pulled his custom XL headset over his face… and still found it painfully tight.
He was utterly defeated. This world is cruel—so unfriendly to chubby people.
Fueled by righteous anger at the world, Little Black snagged the first kill in the next match.
[LAP—White killed Qingyang District Gou God with a UZI]
He tilted his head, mouth twitching. “What kinda name is that?”
Scholar Black, who had dedicated himself to studying Chinese culture since landing in the game, lifted his eyes from the kill feed and smacked his lips.
“That opponent suits your skill level perfectly.”
“I feel like you’re roasting me. And I have proof.”
Just as Little Black was about to keep flexing with his gun to dominate the field, Yang Sa’s voice came through the headset: “They’re here.”
In the previous match, LAP had chased down GE (Silver Emperor), wiped them, and then all four of them popped grenades and offed themselves on the spot.
They didn’t eat the chicken (win), didn’t farm rank points—just threw a brutal slap in Silver Emperor’s face.
So this time, they weren’t chasing or rotating—they dropped into the ruins beneath the Ruins area and waited for Silver Emperor to come looking for revenge.
In the meantime, they amused themselves by shooting at bots and the unlucky randoms who wandered by, trash-talking and roasting each other to pass the first ten minutes of the game.
Just then, the Silver Emperor team arrived—radiating bloodlust and dragging a haul of freshly looted gear behind them.
Their captain, 007, came in hot, not even slowing down. He rammed the car straight into a wall before jumping out and leading his team into a small house.
“Two on my side.” Blue reported enthusiastically.
“Two over here too.” Black chimed in.
White, who had just been gleefully farming AI bots, whipped around and sprinted frantically toward the team.
“Wait! Wait—leave one for me—”
He didn’t even finish the sentence.
A burst of gunfire rang out, and he collapsed on the ground mid-run, cursing in a wild mix of Arabic, English, and German: “%#*&… Which bast*rd had the guts to mess with your daddy?!”
The rest of LAP had absolutely no intention of saving him—not even a comforting word.
“Don’t know who shot you?” Black asked, sounding genuinely puzzled.
“Just check the kill feed. Or were you crouched too low to see it?”
“Hehehe…” Blue was busy playing cat-and-mouse with an enemy inside the house, casually chucking grenades back and forth.
“Fatty, listen to your brother—if this gaming path doesn’t work out, we’ll just go back home and dig for oil. We’ve got mines. No big deal.”
“Nah, if we’re going back, we’re going to Africa. Gotta play with leopards, zebras, and ride elephants.” Black said with a wicked grin, his pale face glowing with mischief.
“Are you guys going to help me or what—Sa…”
Lying there in loneliness and despair, White eventually turned into a glowing green loot box.
“You cold-blooded men… so heartless… so disloyal…”
His pitiful complaints were cut off by a fresh round of gunfire.
[LAP—Killer killed ZhouZhouNoLeftovers with an M24]
[LAP—Killer killed OrangesAreNotTheOnlyFruit with an M24]
[LAP—Killer used…]
“More people are third-partying,” Yang Sa, keeping guard on the perimeter, gave the order over comms.
“Clean it up. Fast.”
Blue and another teammate got the signal and each pulled a grenade. Blue’s exploded first, taking one down, and he followed up with a quick spray to finish the job.
[LAP—Blue eliminated GE—Green with a frag grenade]
[LAP—Blue killed GE—M416 with an M16A4]
Black’s side lagged slightly behind, but he also wrapped up his task within seconds.
The moment the match report popped up, the three players each pulled a grenade and exited the game.
The audience in the seating area was already used to LAP’s antics. Under the best-of-five format, this ragtag team—dismissed at the start—had repeatedly schooled professional teams with overwhelming skill.
Their clean, decisive plays and unpredictable strategies had a raw flair that somehow always caught opponents off guard.
In just a few short matches, LAP’s reputation as wild and unruly troublemakers had started to shift in the minds of spectators. More and more fans were quietly registering on Weibo and joining their fan forums to show support.
That’s the magic of esports—if you work hard enough, if you’re strong enough, people will see you. People will accept you.
“In this industry, being bad is the original sin,” muttered the Weiguang team captain, leaning his head back. The Jie Ao team captain next to him nodded in agreement.
But the Xinghai captain sitting to their right asked a more practical, off-topic question: “Are you two planning to sit here until the end of the tournament?”