This victory seemed only like a beginning.
In the following games, Xu Cheng led his teammates and carried the entire Chenzhou team, achieving a record of sixteen consecutive wins.
Not only did they win, but they obtained victory in almost every match with crushing dominance without deliberately showing off techniques or other unnecessary arrogant behaviors. All of their tactics and skills were for the sake of winning better and faster.
They wanted to win, they had to win.
This was the motto team captain Xu Cheng would say before every match. Others might have a choice, might look down on this, or might fail, but they could not.
In every match, they could only win, not lose.
Only in this way could they live up to Brother Ye’s trust in them without reservation.
From the moment they accepted that money, or even earlier, they had already decided to devote their utmost for this team.
To die for one’s bosom friend, they would overcome obstacles all the way to win the supreme trophy for Brother Ye in all the “Devour” games.
They had to do their best in every match in order to ensure foolproof success. They would not take any opponent lightly, even if it were just a challenge match.
The Chenzhou team kept winning all the way, remaining firmly at the top of the scoreboard before the final challenge match.
When Qi Zhu cleared the health bars of the opponent’s last two heroes and successfully devoured them, the huge victory exploded on the screen and ignited the atmosphere of the scene.
Normally, a team would truly start gaining fans only after achieving decent results in the official matches. But Chenzhou was different.
The three original members of TOK already had their own fans. Although many of these fans were very confused by their decision to join the new team, some even stopped supporting them and turned into haters, cursing wildly on the forums for days. Still, they came when the matches started.
This initial group of fans-turned-haters only wanted to see how badly the unknown new Chenzhou team could play and to vent their anger with some scathing curses.
But liking is liking. The past feelings of excitement, joy and thrill they experienced wouldn’t disappear. As long as they were still competing, still players, even after ten thousand curses, these former fans would still be attracted when seeing them again.
Also, the new Chenzhou team captain Xu Cheng…
He gave fans a very, very familiar feeling. His slick operations and unique style faintly resembled the former TOK team captain Xu Chengfeng.
The fans knew clearly Xu Cheng couldn’t be their old captain. Having such similar techniques was probably from hard practice imitating to match the team tactics.
But seeing him take over the old captain’s role and cooperate seamlessly with Qi Zhu still made many old fans’ eyes redden.
Moreover, Chenzhou’s performance in the challenge matches this year was quite remarkable, with tactics and attribute point distribution that hit all the right notes, leaving no room for complaints.
But these were only challenge matches, after all. No matter how outstanding they were, haters would still not give up mocking them, while fans of rival teams from past competitions even more viciously attacked them and Chenzhou.
Unable to criticize their results, they found other angles of attack, accusing them of just bullying newbies to show off in the challenge matches. Paper tigers that would instantly reveal their true forms once the real league started, and so on.
The fans-turned-haters saw their former favorites being attacked like this, especially by old rivals they often quarreled with, and immediately went mad.
No matter how mediocre Chenzhou is, no matter how poorly Qi Zhu plays, only their fans can criticize them. What right do outsiders have to criticize? Say one more word and see what happens?!
Thus…these fans who originally intended to stop supporting and bash them immediately resumed their old habits. They tore into the haters fiercely online, quarreling into a chaotic mess.
What’s wrong with the challenge matches? The challenge matches are also officially organized by Devour. And Chenzhou f*cking won all the way from the start to the end of the matches, sweeping all the games. Dare any other team guarantee they could sweep the challenge match games?
Is it so hard to admit Chenzhou is excellent? Huh?
As the quarreling continued, the fans seemed to rediscover their old passion. In less than a month after stopping their support, they quickly put their fan club memberships back on.
Plus Chenzhou’s heaven-defying performance in the challenge matches also attracted many new fans.
Sweeping games across the entire challenge match season with continuous wins, this was a record never seen before in Devour’s history.
With such a fantastical experience, Chenzhou accumulated a huge fanbase from their old and new fans during the challenge matches.
In e-sports circles, high popularity means higher chances of attracting sponsor investments.
As expected, right after Chenzhou won the challenge match championship, that night when Ye Zhou and Xu Cheng were celebrating, they received a call from an investor.
It was a company mainly producing monitors. Their manager openly said they thought highly of Chenzhou’s potential, and wanted to sign a one-year endorsement contract with them.
Although not a huge company, they had quite a good reputation in the industry.
After looking through the information Boss Jiang gave him, Ye Zhou really couldn’t find a reason to refuse.
After asking Xu Cheng and the others for their opinions, Ye Zhou reluctantly signed the endorsement contract with the other party and received this e-sports team’s first bucket of gold.
It wasn’t a large amount, only 1.3 million. It didn’t even match the small change from the endorsement contracts when they were at their peak previously. But they were still very happy. At least this endorsement proved their capabilities to Ye Zhou.
Most importantly, it proved Ye Zhou’s judgment was not wrong, and they didn’t let him down.
If anyone was dissatisfied with this money, it could only be Boss Ye himself.
His feelings were rather complicated. Whenever he went to watch the matches live, Ye Zhou would transform into a fervent fanboy, hoping with all his heart and eyes for his team to charge ahead slaying everyone and win win win!
But…he really didn’t want to earn money. He only wanted to silently spend money extravagantly, to be a happy money-squandering young man.
Although not a huge sum, these were only the challenge matches! Just the game of a challenge match was already attracting investors. In the future, if they really achieved good results in the official league, he wasn’t boasting or worrying needlessly – as the boss, he sincerely believed his team was f*cking amazing!
By then…Ye Zhou closed his eyes, not even daring to think about it.
“We’ve already smoothly obtained the qualification to participate in the official league. The new season will kick off in mid-February. I’ll keep an eye on the training… Ye-ge, are you listening?”
Seeing Ye Zhou’s absent-minded expression, Xu Cheng stopped his motions and patted his shoulder, asking with some concern.
“No problem, I’m fine.” Ye Zhou quickly waved his hand and snapped back to reality.
Clearing his throat apologetically, Ye Zhou carefully placed the trophy back on the table and said, “There’s something I want to tell you all. Captain Xu, could you call everyone over so we can have a chat together?”
Xu Cheng was a little surprised but soon nodded and got up to call the others.
Their team didn’t have many people. Currently, other than an aunt who came to the base daily to clean up, there were only the four players.
Initially, Ye Zhou wanted to directly help them assemble a complete team with a manager, coach, chef and more. But Xu Cheng rejected the idea, saying they didn’t need that yet and to talk again after the qualifiers ended.
With so few people, it didn’t take long for the four Chenzhou players, including Xu Cheng, to gather.
Ye Zhou got straight to the point, frankly telling the four his thoughts from the past two days.
“It’s like this – the monitor company transferred this year’s endorsement fees over the past two days, totaling 1.3 million. To celebrate our team’s first endorsement…”
“I’ve decided to split this money between everyone.” Ye Zhou said decisively.
If possible, Ye Zhou actually wanted to say the endorsement fees were theirs to split from now on, he didn’t need a share. After all, money and possessions were external to the self, not important.
But considering the revenue sharing model between teams and players in the e-sports circle, if Ye Zhou really did that, it would be challenging the rules of the entire circle, not to mention Xu Cheng and the others might not agree either.
So, the intelligent Ye Zhou cleverly came up with celebrating as the reason to directly split the money, making it perfectly justifiable and reasonable. He could also avoid holding this hot potato.
Hearing this, Xu Cheng, as the captain, was the first to disagree: “That won’t do. Our contract from back then…”
“Captain Xu,” Ye Zhou interrupted him, a trace of gratification on his face as he patted Xu Cheng’s shoulder, speaking heavily, “Do you still remember what we discussed when we first met?”
Xu Cheng blanked briefly, quickly sifting through his memories of that time.
Not waiting for him to recall, Ye Zhou smiled and directly brought up the past, using an extremely emotional voice: “The reason why I was willing to invest in your project, invest in this team, was not out of great selflessness. I just happened to have the capability and coincidentally met all of you.”
“After all, I didn’t do it for anyone, only to fulfill a dream of my own.”
“You don’t need to thank me at all. Gold will shine wherever it is. Even without me, Ye Zhou, you would sooner or later meet Wang Zhou, Li Zhou, and Zhao Zhou. With real skill, you would make your way out eventually.”
Ye Zhou sighed, gaze falling on the trophy on the table, satisfaction and refreshment flashing through his eyes as he shamelessly improvised: “Rather than thanking me, it’s me who should be thanking you for fulfilling my dream.”
After saying this without a change in expression, Ye Zhou took out the card from the manufacturer and placed it next to the trophy.
Before Xu Cheng could speak, he continued first: “This money represents my feelings and is what you earned with your own skills and effort. You deserve it. There is no need to be polite between us.”
“More than money, I want to see you achieve good results.” As Ye Zhou spoke, he got up from the sofa. To prevent Xu Cheng from reacting and refusing, he subtly moved toward the door, preparing to flee first.
“Alright, that’s it for today. I won’t disturb your training anymore. No need to see me off.”
Successfully making it to the door, Ye Zhou tossed out these words and swiftly made his escape.
Xu Cheng was really stunned by his long speech. By the time he reacted, Ye Zhou had long vanished. Only the four of them were left looking at each other, staring at the card on the table, falling into a long silence.
Both Xu Cheng and the usually smartest vice-captain Qi Zhu had never met such a boss before.
Xu Cheng picked up the card on the table, wanting to transfer the money back to Ye Zhou, but was stopped by Qi Zhu.
“Forget it.” Qi Zhu pressed down his hand and shook his head. “Ye-ge won’t take it. Even if you transfer it to him, he’ll still think of ways to split the money with us.”
“Ye-ge…is a very good person.” The usually talkative and mischievous Wei Xun now dismissed his casual expression, voice hoarse as he said.
The fat guy was also deeply moved but struggled with his limited vocabulary, not knowing what to say. He could only nod vigorously.
“Since he refuses money, then we’ll show it to him with our performance.”
“Doing as he said, exerting all our effort to seize that trophy – that’s the best repayment for him, right?” Xu Cheng murmured.
Qi Zhu put an arm around his shoulder, voice firm: “He’ll like it.”
“So, we must try our hardest, okay?”
…
With the qualifiers over, Ye Zhou’s life returned to busy days. Recently he had been busy working with Song Qifan to revise the script, while also starting to look for suitable people to rebuild the crew. He was dizzyingly busy every day.
In addition, due to the decent box office of A Farce, several video platforms had extended olive branches to them during this time, vying for exclusive broadcasting rights.
Ye Zhou mostly handed matters like this to Jingzhe’s team. In principle, he didn’t need to worry too much, but somehow his personal number had leaked.
Several smaller video platforms knew they couldn’t compete openly with the major platforms, so they kept trying to contact Ye Zhou privately, hoping he would compromise.
Ye Zhou was extremely annoyed. He had clearly stated he couldn’t decide this and to contact Jingzhe’s relevant executives if interested, but they stubbornly refused to listen.
Left with no other option, Ye Zhou could only tell Boss Jiang about it. In less than half a day, the world became peaceful again.
Before Ye Zhou could breathe a sigh of relief, he received news early that morning that was difficult to classify as good or bad.
“You mean Zhong Bai agreed?”
Ye Zhou was a little incredulous, his tone trembling slightly from the huge amount of information in He Feiyang’s words.
He Feiyang grinned foolishly, clearly also extremely excited as his eyes narrowed into slits, simply nodding vigorously at Ye Zhou.
Seeing his appearance, Liu Zhao helplessly shook his head and explained to Ye Zhou: “Director Ye, don’t listen to his nonsense. After we passed the script to Actor Zhong’s side, they only said he happened to have free time recently and could meet to chat first. Nothing’s been finalized yet.”
“Since he’s willing to meet, it means he’s at least interested in the script. The chances of success are still quite high.” Ye Zhou analyzed.
For a top-tier actor like Zhong Bai to agree to set aside time for a meeting was already not easy at all. Clearly, he would only suggest meeting to discuss details if the script appealed to him.
The silly He Feiyang continued nodding, obviously also fully agreeing with Ye Zhou: “That’s what I think too. Over the phone, he seemed really nice with a good attitude. I could tell he really likes Liu Zhao’s script.”
After speaking, He Feiyang even added, “I like it a lot too, hehehe.”
Seeing him like this, Liu Zhao was utterly exasperated. He gently patted He Feiyang’s back and said, “Director Ye is here, speak properly. Stop laughing.”
Ye Zhou waved his hand to indicate he didn’t mind.
But he did feel this news was quite unexpected. His impression was that the book’s plot didn’t seem to have this part, and Zhong Bai had never accepted a work like Tears Behind Bars either.
Based on the timeline, he was indeed discussing a movie now, but if he remembered correctly, that should have been a period costume film called The Hero.
The current developments did not match the plot in the book. The only explanation could be that he was a butterfly flapping its wings, causing a butterfly effect that altered some events.
Thinking carefully, from when he transmigrated until now, the changed plotlines in the book seemed to be more than just this one case. The most representative example was Zou Rong appearing prematurely and the protagonist couple’s movie flopping.
Wait, did this mean…
Thinking this, Ye Zhou inexplicably felt a sudden headache. Severe pain caused his complexion to gradually turn pale as his body also began swaying as if he could collapse any second.
Liu Zhao had been speaking with He Feiyang and noticed Ye Zhou’s condition, instantly shocked as he reached out to support him anxiously, asking: “Director Ye, what’s wrong? Are you uncomfortable somewhere?”
Ye Zhou wanted to say he was fine but was surprised to find he didn’t even have the strength to speak. His mind was hazy, eyelids growing heavier and heavier.
When he awoke again, the thick smell of disinfectant filled his nose. Ye Zhou blinked, struggling to adapt to the room’s brightness.
“Awake?” A familiar voice came from his side.
Ye Zhou turned his head to see Boss Jiang sitting there, a fruit knife in one hand and a half-peeled apple in the other.
His appearance seemed somewhat haggard, the usually neatly pressed suit now wrinkled. More importantly, Boss Jiang’s eyes were actually bloodshot.
“How long has it been since you had a good rest?”
“Are you thirsty? Do you want some water?”
The two spoke in unison, which was particularly clear in the quiet hospital room.
After a brief silence, Ye Zhou shook his head somewhat awkwardly: “Uh, I’m fine.”
Jiang Tingyuan didn’t speak but placed the apple back down and took the cup filled with water, bringing it to Ye Zhou’s lips.
Ye Zhou only intended to drink a little for show initially but clearly overestimated his body. Thirsty and parched, he gulped down the entire cup uncontrollably.
“Another cup?” Jiang Tingyuan asked.
This time Ye Zhou really had enough to drink, declining: “No need, I’m really not thirsty now.”
Hearing him say this, Jiang Tingyuan also didn’t force him to drink more. After setting the cup down, he pressed the call button by the bed.
In less than two minutes, the room door opened from outside as several people dressed like doctors in white coats came to Ye Zhou’s bedside.
Seeing Ye Zhou awake, the head doctor sounded a little surprised: “You’re awake. When did you wake up?”
Ye Zhou was startled by the question, trying hard to calculate the time: “Um, probably…”
“Five minutes ago.” Jiang Tingyuan answered before him.
The doctor nodded and said something quietly to his colleagues behind him. It was too far for Ye Zhou to hear clearly, but soon the doctors gathered around to examine his condition, occasionally asking him some questions as well.
Mostly things like ‘Do you feel discomfort anywhere’ and so on, which Ye Zhou truthfully answered based on his condition.
After the examination, the doctor told Jiang Tingyuan, “The necessary tests have been done previously. He’s very healthy. No need to worry too much.”
Jiang Tingyuan nodded slightly, glanced at the IV drip that was still more than half full, turned the speed down a bit, and then left with the doctor. Clearly, they had something to discuss but didn’t want Ye Zhou to know.
Ye Zhou was helpless but really couldn’t do anything. If not for the doctor saying just now he was healthy, he would have almost doubted he contracted some incurable illness.
Around ten minutes later, when Ye Zhou was bored enough to count the IV drips, Boss Jiang finally returned.
He watched Ye Zhou for a while before speaking: “Stay at the hospital under observation for two days, then you can go home.”
Ye Zhou wanted to say he didn’t need observation and could go home immediately but figured Boss Jiang wouldn’t agree even if he said it. He swallowed the words back to avoid making trouble for himself.
He continued spacing out while Boss Jiang threw the half-peeled apple that had started oxidizing into the trash can.
With the muffled thump of the apple falling into the trash, Ye Zhou’s brows jumped sharply. He took a deep breath, bracing himself for the coming storm.
Unexpectedly, Jiang Tingyuan’s voice remained as calm as ever, with no anger.
“Do you know how many days you were unconscious?” Jiang Tingyuan asked.
Ye Zhou was stunned. Days?
Jiang Tingyuan looked at him deeply before uttering a number: “Three days.”
Ye Zhou felt somewhat unwell. He unbelievingly searched for his phone. Seeing the date on it, he was instantly thunderstruck.
“Wha-, what’s going on?” Ye Zhou tossed his phone aside, face full of disbelief.
Jiang Tingyuan seemed to have anticipated his reaction and asked heavily, “Remember what happened the day you fainted?”
“Let me think.” Ye Zhou swiftly sifted through his memories of that day, slowly recounting: “I got Director He’s call, went to his studio. He told me Zhong Bai agreed to his invitation. We were both quite excited and then…”
The memories stopped there. Ye Zhou vaguely felt he had forgotten something important, but no matter how hard he tried to remember, he couldn’t recall anything.
Seeing his expression, Jiang Tingyuan immediately said, “That’s enough, don’t think about it anymore.”
His voice seemed to contain some magical power that instantly pulled Ye Zhou out from his messy thoughts.
Coming back to his senses, Ye Zhou found his back was drenched in a thin layer of cold sweat somehow.
Jiang Tingyuan’s cool, dry palm covered his forehead as if feeling it wasn’t accurate enough. Before Ye Zhou could react, he lowered his hand and leaned in. Their foreheads swiftly transmitted warmth to each other.
The distance between them was far too close. Ye Zhou could even clearly feel Boss Jiang’s warm breaths fanning his face. His whole body stiffened, not daring to move at all, as if petrified.
The forehead touch lasted around ten seconds before Ye Zhou felt Jiang Tingyuan finally pull back. But before he could breathe a sigh of relief, his jaw was gripped, forced to tilt up slightly.
The previously widened distance instantly shrank. Ye Zhou watched, stunned, as Jiang Tingyuan’s face rapidly enlarged in front of him.
Next, he felt his lips covered by a pair of slightly cool, thin lips.
This should be a kiss. Ye Zhou’s mind blanked, the faint scent of white pine filling his nose. He remembered this was Jiang Tingyuan’s scent.
Reason told him he should push away now, but considering their identities, he didn’t actually have a reason to refuse. What surprised him even more was that Ye Zhou discovered he didn’t seem to dislike this kiss.
He liked the scent of white pine on Jiang Tingyuan.
T/N: I feel so giddy for their kiss, I am going to update one more chapter today hehe
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