Rise

More and more people were entering Su Xue’s stream, and a good 80% of them were trolls sent by LovelyRose. They blanketed the chat with insults and general vulgar language. Just one such message was enough to make someone’s blood boil and anger well up inside of them. Let alone thousands. A thousand trolls all hurling the most vile abuse at once. No one could endure this kind of attack.

Su Xue was on the verge of bursting into tears. Her face flushed with anger as she bit down on her lips and continued to manually ban the trolls one by one. But they would quickly come back with new accounts and bring more with them. It was like trying to put out a forest fire with a cup of water. It was truly a heartbreaking sight to see this young woman fighting back to no avail.

Don’t cry. You can’t cry! You must not cry! Su Xue kept repeating in her head. It was only this mantra that allowed her to persevere in the face of this relentless barrage.

Even the hundred-plus viewers from Ol’ Black’s stream couldn’t bear to see this any longer and spoke out.

「Hey hey. Enough already!」

「Is that your goal? Bully a new streamer into crying live on stream? You guys are despicable!」

「this is ridiculous… she never even mentioned this lovelyrose before」

Needless to say, if even these new viewers were speaking out for Su Xue, her loyal viewers were beyond incensed. After consulting with each other in the special group chat, the several dozen of them decided to storm into LovelyRose’s stream and spam her chat.

But LovelyRose wasn’t the slightest bit perturbed. She banned them all from her stream, then chuckled derisively in her usual alluring tone. “You think you can spam my chat with your little group? Very funny.”

✹

“Damn! Some juicy drama is happening on Huya right now!”

“A catfight broke out between two female streamers!”

Back in the NetCow Cafe, Lin Feng and Tang Bingyao were about to queue up for their next match when they overheard the conversation of the patrons nearby.

Lin Feng’s eyes lit up. “Oh, a cat fight? I wanna take a look!”

“What’s so interesting about that?” Tang Bingyao remarked.

“I love watching juicy drama!” Lin Feng said in high spirits. He quickly tabbed out of the game client and opened up Huya on his browser. However, when he got onto the main page, he paused. “Eh, where’s the drama?” He shot up from his seat and shouted at the patrons a row over, “Hey! Where’s the juicy drama?”

Tang Bingyao quickly turned her head, pretending she didn’t know him.

The patrons a row over replied, “Go on Huya, and search for Evening Snowfall!”

“H-huh?” Lin Feng was stunned.

Tang Bingyao turned to Lin Feng curiously. “Are you alright?”

But Lin Feng didn’t appear to hear her. He hurriedly typed ‘Evening Snowfall’ in the search bar and clicked on the only result that popped up. After the stream loaded up, he was greeted by the sight of Su Xue on the verge of breaking into tears with a blanket of abusive messages scrolling over her stream. He scanned the messages one by one, the blood slowly draining from his face. His eyes trembled as the mouse he was gripping started making cracking noises. “Despicable… Despicable!” His expression became incomparably scary. “Completely despicable! These people are too much!”

All the nearby patrons in the internet cafe turned their attention to Lin Feng.

“Hey! What’s wrong? Tell me!” Tang Bingyao asked, alarmed by Lin Feng’s sudden outburst.

Lin Feng shot up from his seat. “Tang Tang, I’m going home. We’ll play tomorrow!”

“But the match is already about to start…” Tang Bingyao said.

But Lin Feng didn’t listen to her. He’d already grabbed his schoolbag and ran out of the internet cafe.

✹

A certain apartment complex in central Shanghai. In a lavishly furnished room, Ah Mei sat at her desk dressed in her typical low-cut tank top. She was the streamer known online as LovelyRose, and this was how she attracted viewers to her stream. Right now, she opened Evening Snowfall’s stream and was looking at the barrage of messages scrolling across the screen with a disdainful smile on the corner of her lips. They were all from her viewers standing up for her!

Ah Mei was quite satisfied. She didn’t care about where this started from or who was right. Or wrong. This hundred viewer Andy who started streaming yesterday had the audacity to pick a fight with her? What a joke! But after switching back to her own stream, she saw a few messages here and there in her chat cursing her out. She couldn’t help but knit her brows. This newbie managed to gather a few loyal viewers, an irritating bunch of simps trying to turn into knights for their Queen.

She mulled on it for a bit, then opened up her QQ and found ‘Evening Snowfall’ in the Huya section. Then she hammered out a message, her fingers flying over the keyboard with elegant grace and fury, a deadly viper about to unleash venom.

LovelyRose:「Evening Snowfall, right? Can’t you control your viewers better? They’re running over to my stream and causing trouble for no reason.」

Su Xue saw a QQ notification pop up on her phone. After opening it up, she couldn’t believe what she saw. LovelyRose actually had the gall to criticize how she controlled her viewers? This kind of shameless person actually existed! She furiously typed out a response.

EveningSnowfall:「It’s your viewers who came over to my stream first! How could you have not noticed!?? All they’re doing is spamming my chat! Please do something about them! How can you have so little control over you viewers!」

LovelyRose:「Oh, really? Then how come I’ve heard that it was you who provoked me first?」

EveningSnowfall:「I never said anything! Don’t make baseless accusations!」

LovelyRose:「I’m making baseless accusations? I don’t think my viewers would go to other streams for no reason, let alone your tiny little stream. Plus, why would I waste my time caring about a little stream like yours?」

EveningSnowfall:「Fine. Let’s just say this is a misunderstanding. Then, can you please call your viewers off? They’ve already disturbed my stream enough.」

Su Xue was about to explode, but she took a deep breath and calmed down. She couldn’t handle the chaos in her stream. It had gone on for far too long. Her loyal viewers were becoming anxious and a bunch of them had started crusading for her sake. Perhaps compromise was the smart solution here. 

LovelyRose:「Want me to call them off? Sure… Apologize. To me. So both your viewers and mine see it. 」