Xiao grumbled in part truth. “It’s not. I’m dying from the pain. Captain, let’s return to S City.”

“Mm.”

The group of them took the earliest flight back to S City. The excitement that ran high on their way here had turned into a dull silence.

They landed in S City, alighted the plane, and boarded the van.

The van was Mix battleteam’s private business van, and they first brought everyone to the base to grab their stuff and then headed straight to the hospital. In between, Ji Zhiyao did not leave. Instead, he had followed them to the hospital and accompanied Xiao through the CT scans and consulting the doctor.

However, when the doctor was explaining his condition, Ji Zhiyao silently left the room and did not listen in together.

He did not belong to Mix after all, and Xiao’s injury was part of the team’s privacy. It was not right for him to listen in on the details of his condition.

Feeling a little spaced out, Ji Zhiyao sat on the long bench outside of the doctor’s office and played with his phone.

He waited for a very long time, and had almost gone through every app on his phone and, at last, scrolled to news about today’s tournament on Weibo’s trending search.

[Iamthepasserby: Watched the performance of Mix battleteam against Bug battleteam live today, Although the little older brothers were all very handsome, visuals cannot make up for my disappointment towards Mix battleteam anymore. The difference between their score wasn’t great but I could easily tell that the Mix jungler was struggling towards the end and couldn’t keep up with the pace. Such capability is really worrisome.]

[fruitjuiceinmineralwater: Don’t make me laugh, they were the champion team of the national qualifiers two years ago after all. Are they really planning to participate in the national qualifiers a year later in such conditions?]

[woodenfish123123: I just want to ask a question, will there still be a Chinese eSports team at the international league two years later?]

[I’mnotlisteningtowhatyousay: Really, a jungler has to carry the pace of the game. What had Xiao even done? Didn’t they lose too badly? Who said he was fifty-fifty against Boom? I’m laughing so damn hard my tooth is going to fall out.]

There were many many comments like this, and some were even intolerable to read.

Ji Zhiyao, with a frown, read through all these posts, and he read until his eyes hurt. For countless times, he had tapped opened the text box and wanted to tell all these people that Xiao was still in the hospital, yet he could not reply anything and could only watch the Weibo comments spread at a rate of 10 comments per second.

A few posts contained images of him with a worried frown in the audience. Then claiming to be his fans, the posts tagged him to come out and make clear if Xiao was really such a lousy player.

Ji Zhiyao wanted to hurl his phone onto the faces of “his fans.”

He fell back heavily in the chair, and some strands of loose hair fell before his forehead, blocking a small part of his view.

Ji Zhiyao squinted his eyes, suddenly finding that a part of the light coming from above had dimmed. He looked up a little surprised and realized that Mo Huaifeng had, from not sure when, come out from the doctor’s office. A cigarette was clipped between the joints of his fingers, but it remained unlighted.

His eyes were deep and serene, so dark that he almost could not breathe. Ji Zhiyao stiffened slightly, taking quite a while to come back to his senses. Standing up, he looked towards the empty space behind him. “Fi-god, Brother Xiao..”

Mo Huaifeng cut him off. “I’ll send you back to school first. We’ll talk on the way.”

Ji Zhiyao paused for a second, speaking slowly. “It’s okay, Fi-god, you don’t have to send me. I can just book a ride on an app.”

Mo Huaifeng’s dark brown pupils looked over unblinkingly, making Ji Zhiyao’s sentence break off abruptly, at last nodding reluctantly.

There was no other reason.

Mo Huaifeng seemed to be in a really bad mood.

The two of them did not use the elevator but took to the stairs. It was dinner time right now, so there were not many people at all in the stairways.

The lighting was a little dim, like their depressed moods.