Meanwhile, in the dining room, everyone was already seated. Ji Zhiyao first placed the dishes down, then dropped into the only empty seat that was beside Mo Huaifeng.

There were indeed huge bowls of kimchi and spicy rice cake on the table, a sea of fiery red but nothing had been touched. It was evident that everyone was waiting for him.

Ji Zhiyao thanked them.

Lucia said gleefully, “Since everything is ready, let’s dig in. The aroma is already making me slightly impatient.”

Hyun Woo stopped him. “Hold on, hold on, have you forgotten about my kelp soup?”

Lucia exclaimed with an “aigoo” and frantically questioned, “Hyun Woo hyung, did you forget to turn off the fire?”

“I did not off it, but Yao might have, I better go take a look.” Hyun Woo prepared to stand up as he spoke.

Although they used Korean in their entire conversation, Ji Zhiyao saw that Hyun Woo was about to enter the kitchen and quickly said, “Is Hyun Woo going to turn off the fire? I already did.”

Hyun Woo then sat down again. “That’s great then, everyone can serve themselves later on when they want some soup. Let’s eat?”

Hence everyone began to eat.

At the start the table was very quiet, as they weren’t too familiar with one another. But later on, Sung Min tested a bite of a piece of sweet and sour pork and was surprised. “This is absolutely delicious, sour and sweet, how did you make this?”

He looked at Ji Zhiyao with eyes full of admiration, though Ji Zhiyao could not understand what he had said, but he thought that his expression did not look like he was complaining of a bad taste, hence he replied with his blind guess, “Very simply, it’s a very easy dish to make.”

Then Sung Min hugged Hyun Woo’s arm and began to chatter away, Hyun Woo appeared especially resigned as he said, “This rascal is insisting that I learn this dish from you, he’s really impolite.”

Ji Zhiyao waved his hand. “It’s alright. If you would like to learn, I can teach you.”

Hence the atmosphere at the table started to warm up, everyone also spoke a little more… Nuo watched on the entire time and could not help but sigh. “When we return home NoHomo would be able to release a book, called “Back When I Conquered South Korea with Sweet and Sour Pork”. Your pseudonym would be ‘The Chef Held Back by His eSports Career’, how does that sound?”

Ji Zhiyao answered him, “You talk too much.”

A lunch ended in liveliness. As Mix with the exception of Ji Zhiyao had not helped during the cooking earlier, the moment lunch ended, they jumped to help clean the table and went to the kitchen to do the dishes. Seeing that they could not stop them, the members of Vita could only allow them to do as they wished.

While Ji Zhiyao openly sat and slacked, exchanging a few words with the Vita members from time to time.

Qee asked, “When did you learn to cook?”

Ji Zhiyao blinked dazedly, thinking to himself, what kind of f*cking question what this, typically, shouldn’t he be asking when he starting gaming and when he joined the team?

Who would ask when he learned to cook on the first day of meeting? It’s not like he was a chef!

The corner of his lips lifted into an awkward smile, not knowing whether he should answer that question.

Lucia seemed to also sense that the question was slightly impolite and grabbed the impish Qee, his tone fierce as he ordered, “Apologize now!”

Qee exclaimed, “I’m sorry, I was just curious, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

Ji Zhiyao quickly shook his head. “It’s okay. As for cooking, I learned when I was young, but I only some basics, I can’t cook things that are too complicated.”

“Is that so? Yao is amazing at gaming and can cook too, you must be very well-liked.”

Well-liked?

Ji Zhiyao recalled the overwhelming amount of haters that he had and his fan club with the name of “Haters Support Club” and suddenly felt a slight sting of his conscience.

They continued to chat for some time. Finally the chores in the kitchen were done, the others from Mix walked out and sat on the sofa.

Sung Min said, “All of you don’t look too good. Since we are starting training from tomorrow, why don’t all of you go get some rest now?”

Mo Huaifeng translated it, all of them agreed that they felt a little tired and wanted some rest. Hence after parting from the Vita members, they all headed upstairs to sleep.

Ji Zhiyao sprawled on his back on the bed, bringing out his phone to scroll Weibo and Tieba. Mix’s official account did not announce that they had arrived in Korea for their training, as of now, the public only knew that they are overseas for isolated training, but did not know the exact location.

As it was the off season period and the fight for spots in the international league would only begin in a month’s time, everyone was either in the phase of resting and recuperating, holding training tournaments or doing advertisements to raise their popularity, the entire eSports scene was rather peaceful and calm.

The thing that could get everyone moving was the international league happening eight months from now.

By then, all eyes would be upon them, full of anticipation.

Ji Zhiyao smacked his lips, placed his phone aside, rested his head on his arm and slowly dozed off.

…

The first day in Korea, all was calm.

From the second day onwards, they were officially entering the training phase.

Early in the afternoon yesterday, Mix’s coach had already fixed up a preliminary training plan, dividing into aspects of time, response capacity, handling speed, overall health, standard of game play for training.

Everyone was expected to begin training at 10 AM in the morning, ending at 10 PM in the night. Unless there were exceptionally special situations, they were not allowed to apply for leave. Response capacity and handling speed would mainly be trained using an enhanced version of the color blocks program from Kang Kyung Chwa, with the addition of the aspect of response to sound. As for their overall health, they had to exercise for at least an hour after training every day, to improve the condition of their bodies, to avoid their physical capacity lagging behind when they needed to play extra-long matches in the future. Physiotherapists would be there every week to provide massages for everyone. Lastly, the standard of game play would be seen in the matches between various groupings.

This training plan may be said to be very comprehensive, but was also much stricter than before. When they saw it last night, everyone was shocked.

Nuo finally came up with something after suppressing it for a long time. “… Boohoo!”

The others all looked like they were wishing for death.

Though painful, they still had to follow the training plan.

Hence all the Mix members who had never woken up before 11 AM at their own base headed downstairs with yawns echoing amongst them on the next day. When they went past the second level, they realized that the Vita members were also rather listless, looking dispirited. All the internet-addicted youths in the world were the same, few could accept waking up early.

They walked into the training room.

The training room in the villa was huge, about three times of theirs. The seats were also very dispersed, unlike the sequenced seating that was often used in competitions. Everyone casually found a table and sat down, then turned on the computers.

The game configurations of Heroes in the Korean servers were about more than 10% better than China itself. To professional players, it was a total dream-like existence.

Of course, demands on capabilities were also higher.

As the level of eSports in the Korean servers were in the leading position, other than professional players, many amateur players in the Korean servers were also very strong, like Big Fish who was bought by Bug battleteam. Hence the amount of professional players who continuously lost after just entering the Korean servers were also not in the minority.