Rise

Coach Lin Feng was ready! But he wouldn’t just be training a few people in the club who also happened to be his friends. Absolutely not! The esports club had to become stronger. That was the only way to fight through the Shanghai 16 School Tournament. There’d be a lot more people grumbling in Coach Lin Feng’s Legends Bootcamp. Not just Ouyang, Yang Fan, and Ren Rou. For starters, Tang Bingyao needed to show up too. She was the main ad-carry of the esports club and as ad-carry she needed to be strong enough to carry. She’d already played a ton with Lin Feng, and had fought her way to Diamond 1. But that was far from enough. Odds were that they would face far stronger opponents in the upcoming 16 School Tournament, and it was up to Coach Lin Feng to make sure she’d be ready. There was no way he’d be letting her slack off!

“That’s why you need to train too!” Lin Feng stated. 

Tang Bingyao nodded. She’d been a part of ‘Coach Lin Feng’s Legends Bootcamp’ for a while now, before it was even called that. She knew the drill.

Beyond Tang Bingyao, the other members of the main team would be attending the Legends Bootcamp. Including the substitute players. There was, however, one minor issue with that plan. The list of players. Ren Rou hadn’t had time to finalize the list with all the new people from the tryouts the esports club had just held. That would take her another day or two.

“Just leave it to me!” Ren Rou said, reassuring them that it would be handled as quickly as possible.

“I can help!” Ouyang exclaimed. He was riding the wave of euphoria now that it looked like things would turn around for his esports club, and wanted to volunteer and help out as much as possible.

Ren Rou shot Ouyang a mean glare. “You, help? Please. Actually? You can help. How about you help me by not starting any more problems or causing trouble? Oh! And you’d better be taking training seriously! If I so much as hear a whisper about you slacking or goofing off, I swear...”

Ouyang scratched his hair, looking sheepish at her response. He did have a minor gift for making any situation bad or taking a bad situation and making it worse, he knew that. But he couldn’t help himself right now! He hadn’t felt this good in a long time, he was all fired up! “Don’t you worry, dearest Rou Rou! I’m not just going to give it everything that I’ve got! NO WAY! You just keep-on-keepin’ and watch me! I’m going to surpass my limits! I’m gonna stake a claim on my spot on the team!”

There was another minor issue that Ren Rou, Yang Fan, and Ouyang needed to consider. Lin Feng had dubbed himself “Coach” Lin Feng once he decided that he’d be training them. The three of them were more than willing to let Lin Feng help them get better. But they knew Lin Feng. The other members of the main team and their substitutes, they did not know him. So the three had to consider if they’d even accept Lin Feng as their coach and train with him. Then they dismissed the concern completely from their minds. When the list was finalized in two days, they would inform the team of Lin Feng’s true skill level. Between the godly LeBlanc plays that Lin Feng had shown off the other day and the title of Challenger, there shouldn’t be anyone who objected to him. Even Diamond and Master would fall in line.

✹

These days, Lin Feng’s normally chill schedule had become way more packed. School started early in the morning and that took up most of his day. The afternoons were dedicated to his bootcamp, where he was training the esports club team. Then he’d rush home for dinner, and quickly finish up his homework after that. The next thing was helping Su Xue out by filling in for her on her stream while she napped. That’s when he’d finally be done with everything and go to bed.

“EAT! Come on, come on–Hurry it up! Stop taking such dainty bites. Girls eat like that when they’re on a date cause they want to look cute. I know you can eat faster!” Su Xue urged Lin Feng. “Finish already! You need to take over my stream for a bit!”

When Lin Feng shoveled the last spoonful of food into his mouth, Su Xue grabbed him by the arm and started dragging him into her bedroom. “Alright! Good enough! Let’s go!”

“Hrey! I hafunt frinishud!” Lin Feng protested.

“Eat eat eat! Is that all you can think of? Do you dream of food too? You’re going to explode if you keep eating so much!” Su Xue raved while struggling to drag Lin Feng into her bedroom. “Please, help me stream. You can always finish the leftovers later!”

“But I want to eat chicken cutlet later.”

“Fine! You’ll have your chicken cutlet. I promise! I’ll get it for you when I wake up, alright? But first you have to help me with my stream!” Su Xue persuaded. She finally managed to get Lin Feng inside her bedroom and shoved him down into her gaming chair. “Hahhh, finally.” She let out a deep sigh and clapped her hands. “Alright, stream is all you for the next couple of hours. Mama’s finally going to get some sleep!”

Lin Feng was sitting in the chair and someone would be entertaining her viewers. The only thing on Su Xue’s mind now was sleep. Nothing mattered more than sinking into her soft cloud of a mattress. She completely forgot that Lin Feng was now in her bedroom and whipped off her clothes. She sorta pulled on some pajamas and leapt into her bed. The soft and comfortable mattress bounced a little, gently rocking her to sleep. She burrowed her head into her pillow. Pure bliss. “Ahhhh, how I missed you!”

Lin Feng heard Su Xue mumble something and turned around to ask her what she said. Then he froze. He stared at Su Xue sprawled out on her bed practically naked without a care in the world. It took him a couple of seconds to figure out what to do in this awkward situation. Then he yelled at her, “Hey!”

“Phwaat!?” Su Xue’s muffled voice came from behind her pillow.

“You should probably get underneath your comforter, or pull up your blanket. Basically, uh, cover yourself up a bit more before I turn the webcam on,” Lin Feng advised.

“Hm? What? Oh my god! HEY! You little pervert! Turn around! Don’t look!” Su Xue screamed while she scrambled to dive under her blanket.

The exhaustion from the past couple of weeks finally caught up to Su Xue. She relaxed again once she was under her blanket and the comfort of her bed lulled her to sleep in seconds. Locks of her long hair fell over her face, some swaying rhythmically and peacefully from her breaths. In sleep, she was relaxed and untroubled. Even without her make-up on, she was beautiful. Her eyelashes were long and gracefully arced up, and they fluttered every now and then. Even asleep, Su Xue was just as captivating as she was on stream.

Lin Feng turned around to look at Su Xue one more time, just to make sure it was safe to start the stream. Then he turned back around to face the computer. He opened up the browser and used the information Su Xue had written down to log into her Huya account. After he clicked on the button to go live, viewers immediately started flooding the stream. A good 70 within seconds, and more than 200 a few minutes later.

Su Xue’s stream had grown quite a bit recently. There were many more viewers than before, and a portion of them had never heard of or seen Lin Feng before. So it was easy to imagine their surprise when they opened the stream and saw a young man in the webcam feed. A young man who looked nothing like their beautiful host!

「who r u!? HACKER??」

「what did you do with our xue xue!」

「why’s it a guy!?」

In stark contrast to the angry and confused messages from the viewers who didn’t recognize Lin Feng, there were many more who did know him and were happy and excited to see him.

「lil bro! you’re back!」

「we missed you! where’d you goooo???」

「We were getting tired of watching the maid play! Thank god you’re back!」

Lin Feng chuckled and waved at the camera. “Hey, guys! Long time no see. How you guys been? Everything good?”

「who dat? I thought xue xue was the streamer?」

「He the nephew of xue xue’s landlady! our respected lil bro streamer!」

「xue xue is just the maid. he’s the real streamer!」

「he’s really fcking good at the game!!」 

「this kid is better than snowfall?? Really?」

「he a qtpie… but he’s got the look of a feeder」

「STFU BISH!!! HES NOT MORE CUTE THAN SU XUE!!!」

「Defo not cuter than xue xue」

「Probably sucks at the game too. Su Xue keeps him around for eye candy!」

「just wait, you’ll understand when you see him play」

“Oh, right. Let me explain. Su Xue needed a small nap, so I’m filling in for her until she wakes up. She’s sleeping right now,” Lin Feng explained. Then he pointed the webcam towards Su Xue’s bed and added, “Can you guys see? She’s fast asleep.”

「woah is that our xue xue!???」

「sleeping so early! Is she deranged>?????」

「haha she’s become a sleep streamer! I wish I could make money by pointing a camera at my bed!!!!」

「ahaha! Screenshotted!」

「this is brilliant! we’ll never let her live this down!!」

「this pic of sleeping beauty will go up above my bed!」

Su Xue was most definitely not one of those streamers. She never did ‘sleeping streams’ or any other stream of that sort. In fact, if she’d known that her viewers had taken screenshots of her sleeping, she would have flipped out on them! She’d find every nasty word she could in the dictionary and give the perverted scumbags who did that something way more spicy to remember! But she wasn’t awake. She was peacefully asleep, unaware of what Lin Feng had just done.

Lin Feng turned the webcam away from Su Xue and back to himself. He then looked through it at his viewers and declared, “Alright! Enough of that! Let’s play some League!”

Lin Feng logged into Su Xue’s League account. She’d managed to climb all the way to Platinum. He queued up for a ranked game. The first game popped up, and he decided to go with Yasuo. Even at Platinum, the game was too easy for him. There just wasn’t any challenge to it at all. Lin Feng’s Yasuo toyed around with the opposing team. He managed to intimidate them so much that they surrendered in 20 minutes. It was short, easy, and carrying that hard made things a little boring for Lin Feng. So when the second game popped up, he decided to change it up. Instead of Yasuo, he locked in on Lee Sin. Even with the change, the same thing happened in the second game too. 20 minute surrender. Two short games where he carried his team. Hard.

The new viewers watched in shock as Lin Feng outplayed his opponents and picked up kills and assists left and right. Finally, they couldn’t hold it in anymore and erupted in excitement.

「woah dude! you’re friggin amazing!!!」

「screw the maid! I only wanna see you play now」

「Seee? What did we say? Is our lil bro a god or what!」

「the other day he wrecked a master」

「our lil bro here is definitely at the challenger level!!!!!!!! he’s also funny as hell, and he’s like way better than most of the streamers out there. you guys really lucked out popping into the stream today!!!!!」

The new viewers were sold. They completely forgot all about the hot girl they’d come to see. Now they’d given themselves heart and soul to the Cult of Lin Feng. Watching a pretty girl try her hand at gaming was fun. Watching a pretty girl who was actually decent at playing a game was even better, that’s the kinda girl they fantasized about wifing up. But watching someone play the game at a god-like level? That was an entirely different electrifying experience!

Over the next two games, the number of viewers kept climbing until 1,500 people were watching Lin Feng stomp all over Platinum players. The chat was frenzied from all the excited viewers trying to talk to Lin Feng, each other, and sometimes just trying to say something to be part of the fun. It eventually turned into walls of 666 spam every time Lin Feng did something insane or outplayed his opponents. But there were also a few who started complaining. It was a small minority at first. But their complaints started to gain steam, and it soon turned into a vocal minority. More and more people started joining in. This was boring to watch. Lin Feng was just too good. There was no thrill in watching these games, no suspense. There wasn’t another player who could make Lin Feng sweat a little. There was no pressure! The people watching the stream wanted to see Lin Feng actually trying! They wanted to witness him struggling to win and finally clinching it at the last second!

「STOP SMURFING BRO」

「go play on your main!!!!」

「GO KICK ASS IN CHALLENGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!」

“You guys want me to stop smurfing?” Lin Feng asked the chat. Then he smiled. “Alright.” Then he smiled a little bit more. “Yeah. That sounds way more fun, right guys?” His smile grew until it was positively beaming. “Alright! Yeah! That sounds like a plan! I agree! Let’s go play some higher ranked games and make this more exciting!”