Powerful Investment Chapter 36: No Misunderstanding

Chapter 36: No Misunderstanding

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: Karai

 

At the beginning, most players in the esports circle were Alphas and Betas. Later on, more Beta females and Omegas appeared. Beta females and Omegas tended to be more emotional and occasionally shipped real-life couples among players who had good relationships or seemed to have chemistry.

This type of fan was good at both gaming and spending money; as long as they weren’t too extreme, the official side generally tolerated them. The most famous couples were, for example, the “NaiQi” CP and the “HaoHao” CP. The “HaoHao” CP was quite interesting — it was LPF’s Naisi (nice) and his teammate Good (good).

Every time LPF won a match, Naisi would say “good,” and Good would say “nice.” Their IDs and catchphrases were ironically reversed, and their usual interactions were very sweet, so fans named them the “HaoHao” CP.

There were also some niche CPs, but the coldest, coldest one was the “Brick King” CP — that was Brick and Ji Jin. It was cold all the way to the Arctic Circle.

The entire esports community knew that Ji Jin had abandoned the IKW team and left alone. Without its core, IKW was like a drifting boat without a lighthouse, recklessly crashing about. Their first match without Ji Jin ended in a total defeat.

Lu Yao had stood up during that turbulent time and shouldered the responsibility. But some rumors said that although Lu Yao was a youth trainee, he had often been mentored by Ji Jin before — basically half a disciple. When the master left, abandoning his disciple and the team, Lu Yao was both angry and disappointed, and from then on, he hated Ji Jin.

Proof of this was when, after a match, a reporter asked Lu Yao about Ji Jin. Lu Yao immediately scowled, threw down the microphone, and walked off without giving the reporter any face.

Gradually, rumors spread that Ji Jin and Lu Yao were mortal enemies who couldn’t stand each other. However, some people liked shipping these kind of fierce, antagonistic rivals, turning them into a couple.

Because their feud was well-known and Ji Jin had already retired, this became the coldest CP of all — the Arctic Circle CP.

But now it was different. Ji Jin returned to the esports circle and was revealed to be a unique Omega comparable to an Alpha. The fans who liked to ship CPs came back in full force.

Many who hadn’t found them ship-worthy before suddenly thought this CP wasn’t bad at all after Ji Jin’s return. So discussions started to appear under this post. The more they talked, the more attention this Weibo post gained, drawing the eyes of more players and fans. Brick had too many fans in the Legend Reappearance circle, who tested the limits of grossing out opposing fans by trying to ship Brick with rivals.

Lu Yao’s fans got angry, fiercely clashing with the CP fans in the comments and wildly explaining that their Brick was only scouting the enemy.

But it was obvious that wasn’t the case. The first match of the autumn season was IKW versus MOE. Clearly, MOE stood no chance against IKW. Also, the regular season used a single round-robin format, so these two teams wouldn’t meet again for the rest of the season — so where was the “scouting” excuse coming from?

Then Ji Jin’s fans also got angry. “Our God Ji is way above you all, and now you even disdain him? Who do you think you are?” Originally, Ji Jin and Lu Yao’s fans loved to fight, but this time the argument escalated even more, pushing the Weibo post straight to trending.

Other fans started flame wars as well, but Ji Jin was lying in bed holding his freshly scented little baby son while scrolling through Weibo. Then he saw @Ji Jin’s Head-Patting Recommendation Squad also reposted the trending post.

@Ji Jin’s Head-Patting Recommendation Squad: “This is love!” //@Bai Yike, furious: “Ahhh I can’t believe it! Could Brick actually be a fan of God Ji too? There was a match today, but he came early to watch God Ji play? What a beautiful senior-junior relationship!”

Ji Jin: “…Kid, did you really think no one would know you sneaking your own agenda in with your alternate account? You dare say whatever nonsense you want?”

Ji Xingxing turned to look at his fragrant daddy, not sure why daddy almost choked even though he hadn’t drunk any water. He quickly crawled over to pat daddy’s back.

Ji Jin cleared his throat, feeling like one day he might be driven crazy by Lu Yao.

After patting daddy, Ji Xingxing wriggled his little butt into Ji Jin’s arms, coquettishly acting cute with a babyish voice, “Is baby good? Is baby daddy’s little treasure?”

“Yes, yes, yes, baby is daddy’s little treasure!” Ji Jin helplessly kissed his little treasure. Ji Xingxing’s temperament was becoming more and more like his Alpha dad’s — their way of acting spoiled was exactly the same.

Ji Xingxing happily rolled around on the bed after getting daddy’s kiss.

Ji Jin glanced at his phone and saw a message from Lu Yao:

“Brother was great today.”

Ji Jin thought to himself, “Lost but still great? You really know how to talk.” But he replied calmly, “Just did my best. You have a match later, why did you come watch the live game?”

“Because I wanted to see brother play. It’s been a long time,” Lu Yao replied quickly, making it seem like he had carefully thought out his words.

Ji Jin stayed silent, unsure how to respond, when Lu Yao sent another message:

“Brother, did you see the trending topic?”

“Sorry brother, I really didn’t mean to be caught on camera.”

Though the text showed no expression or tone, Ji Jin somehow felt Lu Yao’s words were a bit… scheming. If Ji Jin hadn’t known @Ji Jin’s Head-Patting Recommendation Squad was Lu Yao’s account, he might have believed it.

He could believe the photo wasn’t taken on purpose, but the words on the account clearly couldn’t be accidental. Now Lu Yao was pretending to be an innocent little white rabbit in front of him — it was scary.

Ji Jin snorted, understanding everything in his heart.

“I saw the trending topic. It seems people misunderstood whether I liked or didn’t like something, but… as long as it’s explained clearly, it’s fine,” Ji Jin said deliberately.

“No, no,” Lu Yao typed quickly.

“Hm?” Ji Jin didn’t understand.

“There was no misunderstanding, I just liked brother,” Lu Yao responded more quickly. “I was even willing to let everyone know I liked brother… I was just afraid brother wouldn’t want that.”

Ji Jin’s heart stirred.

Unexpectedly, despite all his precautions, Lu Yao still caught his weak spot and poked it hard, making him feel a sweet taste rise from his throat, almost suffocating him with sweetness.

In the end, Ji Jin didn’t reply to Lu Yao again, and Lu Yao didn’t take advantage of the moment to send more messages.

However, all the IKW team members who stayed up training knew that today, for some unknown reason, Captain Lu acted like he was in heat, staring at his phone with a crazed expression that didn’t belong on his usually cool face.

Ke Yu stood outside the training room watching their captain, feeling like their own pig had rooted around in their own cabbage patch.

The incident on Weibo didn’t affect any team. According to Naisi, there were too many unscrupulous journalists and clickbait accounts these days who only knew how to grab useless stuff as news. Esports news should focus on reporting matches, and spreading rumors about Omega for performance was really unethical.

— Naisi scolded other gossiping players in the pro players’ group chat like this.

However, this very moral Naisi immediately privately messaged Ji Jin asking for the truth after scolding everyone else, and was eventually fooled by Ji Jin.

Still, gossip was gossip, and most players kept training intensely.

The second week of matches started soon. This time MOE’s opponents were a newly formed small team and the veteran team TAO. Compared to IKW and LPF, TAO was relatively easier.

The only thing that made Ji Jin uncomfortable was TAO, because Jiao Yue was on that team. If they lost to them, it would feel like targeting Jiao Yue, but letting them win also didn’t feel right.

Ji Jin mentioned this in a pre-match interview, which sparked a wave of mockery against him. But when the results came out, everyone was dumbfounded.

MOE won two consecutive matches — the small team was shut out, and they came back from behind to win two to one against TAO.

In the post-match interviews, the journalists looked wilted like frostbitten eggplants, unable to ask any tough questions and only asking a few simple routine ones. However, their published reports still mainly mocked MOE, saying although TAO was strong, they might occasionally make mistakes. As for the small team, they had never beaten MOE before and naturally lost again.

But the reports published only a week earlier were proven wrong as MOE went on to win three matches in a row, losing only the game against CYW. The subsequent matches were mostly against weaker teams, so they likely wouldn’t lose and their playoff qualification seemed guaranteed.

Still, the most impressive was IKW, which played eight matches over four weeks and didn’t lose a single one.

By then, the fourth week’s matches had officially ended, and MOE was still competing at the S city sub-venue. These two weeks had tightly scheduled early matches, giving them more time to prepare for next week’s game. Because G city was hot, Zhao Ze booked tickets early and immediately flew to the next sub-venue G city to acclimate in advance.

Because of the matches, Ji Xingxing was forced to be a left-behind child, staying in B city accompanied by Ji Huan. The kid was already quite old, but Ji Jin refused to take Alpha home, so Ji Huan also didn’t dare easily bring Ji Xingxing to the Ji family and had to take care of him alone.

Ji Xingxing had never been apart from his dad for so long before. Every night, no matter how late Ji Jin played games, the kid would wait for his dad, crying and whining over video calls until he fell asleep before hanging up.

Ji Jin missed Ji Xingxing deeply. Recently, his gaming style became sharper and faster; some small teams often lost before they even reacted. Some strong teams even studied counter-strategies against Ji Jin but failed to stop him.

Besides Ji Xingxing missing Ji Jin, Lu Yao occasionally chatted with Ji Jin online. For the first four weeks, the two teams were at the same sub-venue, which was convenient. The latter half of the schedule had their teams at different venues, so they probably wouldn’t see each other for a month and could only keep in touch via phone during breaks.

Since that heatwave episode, Ji Jin didn’t know how to face Lu Yao and couldn’t clearly define their relationship. Lu Yao understood Ji Jin, never asked, and just sent messages on schedule.

This actually saved Ji Jin some mental energy amidst the busy training and matches.

But what Ji Jin didn’t expect was that life always brought some surprises… or shocks.

On the first day arriving in G city, Ji Jin suddenly fainted.

 

Author’s note:

Heatstroke → Fainting → Seeing a doctor → Finding out there was a baby inside

This chapter is kind of a transition, the issue of the second child needs to be dealt with now.

 

 

 

 

 

This Title is available for faster chapter releases through paid Patreon membership. Any proceeds go to keeping the website running. Check it out HERE.