Looking at the barrage in the stream, Lin Fan expressionlessly opened QQ Games.
Everything else was still downloading, so he decided to play a couple rounds of Gomoku to kill some time.
TL: Chinese version of checkers, much harder, much more rules, this is a big oversimplification explanation.
With the internet speed at the Top Esports base, this wait would be just about right.
A Gomoku opponent was matched instantly.
After fourteen turns, Lin Fan failed to notice his opponent's four-three chain and lost the game by a single move.
"..."
"Hahaha, this is hilarious. You can't even figure out pro matches, and now you can't even play Gomoku?"
"Isn't this just Dine's daily routine? When he has vision advantage, he doesn't know how to place wards and lets the enemy backdoor. Blind as hell. Missing the opponent's setup in Gomoku is totally reasonable."
"You trash are seriously killing me with laughter…"
"Come on, your brain development isn't great. Anything you play, you're bad at."
Checking the download progress, Lin Fan clicked into another match.
This time, his luck clearly wasn't great—he directly ran into a hater from the stream.
Seriously, what was wrong with these people? Why did they keep chasing him just to flame?
Couldn't they at least let him play a round of Gomoku in peace…
The opponent immediately started going off.
You could ignore the stream barrage, but the Gomoku chat box was right there in plain sight.
"How can someone as bad as you have the nerve to support JackeyLove? Do you even know Top Esports is already on a five-loss streak?"
"You don't even know how to leech properly as a support? Go study how Gold-tier supports cling to carries."
"Just retire already. Stop dragging down these top-tier players. Who would've thought TES's roster would start with five straight losses? Two champions still can't carry you, trash support."
"So you've got an attitude now? Uninstalling on stream, huh? If you've got the guts, just retire outright!"
Seeing the opponent rage in the Gomoku room, the stream chat grew even more fired up.
Still, even though the other side came purely to flame, they kept playing.
Lin Fan didn't say anything. Right now, his thinking was simple—at the very least, as a professional player, he had to have basic competitiveness.
He lost the last round, so he had to win this one.
So his eyes locked tightly onto every move his opponent made…
And then—he still lost.
Sure enough, Gomoku just wasn't for him.
There were way too many experts.
Out of nowhere, the opponent would form a four-three or double-three, completely unsolvable.
Lin Fan could only silently close the match window. The downloads were finally almost done.
"Well played…"
As he said that, the corner of Lin Fan's mouth twitched slightly.
This was beyond embarrassing.
He couldn't even win when he wanted to—losing to someone who was flaming him the whole time.
Next time he killed time, he'd just play Landlords instead. No complicated setups there.
After waiting a bit longer for installation to finish, he entered PUBG.
PUBG had already become a free-to-play game, but that didn't change the fact that it had long since cooled off. Player activity had dropped significantly.
Thinking back five years ago, the game had once been so popular that people thought League of Legends was finished.
Yet LoL never died. Instead, its competitive scene only grew larger, with global popularity far beyond expectations—and at this pace, it would stay strong for quite a while longer.
There was no instant death on landing.
Lin Fan was playing a pure rat style—he didn't even bother looking for guns. The core gameplay was simple: find a vehicle.
Get in the car and wait patiently.
As soon as someone got in and drove it away, he'd immediately switch to the passenger seat, pull out a frying pan, and start smashing.
This strategy worked every single time.
At first, people were flaming Lin Fan for not training properly and even uninstalling League of Legends on stream.
But they were quickly drawn in by this shameless rat gameplay.
Honestly, it was pretty entertaining.
Just wait for someone to come, then kill them.
Some viewers who had no interest in PUBG before suddenly wanted to play it again.
"If Ruolaoye had known this back then, he wouldn't have needed cheats—twenty-seven kills would've been easy."
"True. This doesn't test aim at all. Just find a car and camp it."
"But actually getting a chicken dinner like this is still pretty hard. It's mostly for fun."
"Isn't PUBG just about fun at this point? As long as it's enjoyable. Guohao's probably retiring this year anyway…"
"Guohao? Didn't he retire ages ago?"
"What you just said sounded kind of dumb."
"Damn? Dine actually looks kinda cracked at PUBG?"
"He's clearly a LoL pro—why is his PUBG play so filthy?"
The effect was obvious.
The number of messages telling Lin Fan to retire or calling him trash dropped noticeably.
PUBG wasn't a game you could play endlessly without getting bored.
Unlike League of Legends, with over a hundred champions—twelve years in, even maining a single champion might not be enough to fully master it or reach the highest ranks.
Otherwise, there wouldn't be ten-thousand-game Bronze and Silver players.
So PUBG's replay value was limited.
After a little over an hour, Lin Fan was already bored.
At that moment, a familiar ding sounded in his ear.
"Task complete."
"Completed slacking for two hours. Mechanics increased by 5%. Game sense increased by 5%."
Lin Fan closed his eyes.
The change didn't feel that big.
Five percent to mechanics and awareness was still far from enough.
No problem. He'd just wait for tomorrow's tasks to refresh.
As long as he kept slacking every day, the gains would add up.
Maybe one day, a task would give out a huge reward.
With the task complete, there was no point sitting here any longer.
He turned off the stream, said goodbye to everyone, and prepared to head back to the dorm to rest.
"Brother Fan, get some good rest today. Don't overthink it. Tomorrow, let's duo and train again," JackeyLove said to him.
Lin Fan nodded. If it worked out, that'd be great.
He also wanted to test how much of an impact that 5% boost to mechanics and awareness actually had.
JackeyLove finally smiled.
Given a bit of time, Brother Fan had cooled down after all.
If training went well these next few days, he could mention it to the coach—at least try to secure him a chance to play.
That was all he could do.
At the end of the day, JackeyLove was playing professionally for results.
If Mark was stronger and synced better with him, there was no reason to protect Brother Fan.
They were colleagues, maybe friends—but not close enough to sacrifice results.
TL: If you want to read ahead by at least ten chapters, patreon.com/EdibleMapleSyrup