League of Legends: League of Unknowns

“I’ll call and ask now whether Secretary Liang has the contract in his hands or not!” Lin Dong exclaimed with glee written all over his face.

Contract!

The contract was just too important to them. In the beginning, they had suffered because they had no evidence. They had no chance of turning the tables at all, but as long as they could find the original contract, they could bring Xu Pingyang to court!

Da Luo, Zhou Yan, and Luocheng’s eyes were shining, and they were able to breathe a sigh of relief after so long. If they really could find the contract…

Lin Dong hurriedly dialed the number, but just as he was about to push the call button, Meiqi snatched the phone away from him, slamming the flip-lid shut.

Lin Dong looked at her in confusion.

“You can’t just call like that and ask, we don’t even know whether the contract is in Secretary Liang’s hands, plus we don’t know if Xu Pingyang has any moles in the ACE. If there is, the moment this topic is brought up, Xu Pingyang would definitely get his people to get rid of the contract!” Meiqi explained.

A chill went up Lin Dong’s spine.

Indeed, there might have been Xu Pingyang’s people inside the ACE, how could he have acted so hastily.

“You guys, don’t worry about this matter, just focus on your match instead. I’ll think of a way to ask Secretary Liang about the situation.” Meiqi said.

“But…” Lin Dong started.

“Let Meiqi settle this. If there really is a copy of the original contract in the ACE records, then this is the only evidence we have to sue Xu Pingyang. Xu Pingyang is cunning and sly, able to get out of almost anything that we have thrown at him. We can’t act recklessly like before!” Luocheng said.

“Yeah, leave it to Meiqi.” Zhou Yan agreed.

“Trust me, if there’s a copy in ACE, I will find it and get it in our hands!” Meiqi said.

***

Professional players needed to focus all their concentration during the game, not only when they were on the venue, but they also needed to maintain that state of concentration for the entire duration of the game.

That was why, you couldn’t afford to miss out on any daily trainings before the match.

The days after that incident had Team Skycrown consistently looking for opponents for their training matches.

Their long awaited death-match against Team Sky was next Saturday at 7PM, whether or not they would be able to regain everything they had lost was one thing, the most important thing was that they needed to get the championship for the LPL!

Training, more training, normal games, ranked games, cross-server team games, arranging team matches with other professional teams… In those five days, Team Skycrown dedicated every moment available to training while the media was hyping up the final game in the meantime.

***

On Thursday, just as they had finished eating lunch, Luocheng led his team who had had a good fill into the training hall.

Just as they walked in, they found that the spots they had been using this morning had been taken over by another team.

“F*ck, what the h*ll is this bunch doing!” Da Luo said angrily as he saw Team Sky, the fire burning in his belly.

Team Sky!

The five members of Team Sky were wearing their white and blue uniforms, seated in the seats, looking as though they were about to play a game.

“What are you doing in our seats?” Da Luo was the first to voice out his dissatisfaction as he came forward, pointing toward Team Sky. “What a dog in the manger you’re being!”

“Hm, why are you guys still here?” Guan Langjie asked with a surprised look on his face as he turned around to see them.

“Why can’t we be here?” Lin Dong shot back unhappily.

“Zhao Tinghua, what’s the meaning of this, take your people and scram!” Da Luo said.

Tinghua turned around and looked at them, saying, “Are you guys just pretending not to know? Wouldn’t this affect your mood for the competition?”

“Know about what? What we do know is that your group of dogs are sitting in our places!” Da Luo said.

“Talking like that, are you picking a fight!?” Langjie stood up, pointing his finger at Da Luo’s nose.

“Of course, there’s nothing more that I want!”

Tinghua ignored Da Luo whose bark was worse than his bite at the moment and looked at Luocheng instead. “Are you intending to abstain?”

“Abstain my a*s, I’ll f*ck you up until your mother won’t recognize you, hurry up and f*ck off from our seats, we still need to train!” Da Luo’s mouth shot back like a machine gun.

“Abstain?” Luocheng repeated, his brows furrowing as he gave Tinghua an odd look.

“Hmm, it’s not like you have anything on hand anyway. Even if you went, it would be a waste of time.” Tinghua said and then ignored Team Skycrown. Glancing at his own members, he said, “Let’s go, we’ll use the second training room.”

Luocheng and the others were confused, none of them had any idea what Zhao Tinghua was talking about.

***

After playing the whole afternoon, Luocheng received a call from an unknown number in the evening.

“Good day, may I know if this is Mr. Yu Luocheng?” The voice of a man came through the receiver.

“I am.” Luocheng replied.

“Have you prepared for tomorrow’s hearing?” The man asked.

“Hearing… What hearing?” Luocheng asked in return.

“Did you not receive the summons given to you by the court? The lawsuit and other legal documents.” The man replied.

As soon as he heard about the court summons, Luocheng suspected that the other person on the phone was a scammer.

In this day and age, there were all kinds of tricks of people pretending to be public security officers, how could Luocheng believe this kind of ridiculous scam?

The call was cut off then and Luocheng didn’t bother about it.

Walking a few steps further, Luocheng felt that something wasn’t right. If the other party was indeed a scammer, how had he known his name, and his full name at that?

Just as he was pondering, his phone rang once more and he picked it up again.

“Luocheng, there will be a hearing at 3 o’clock tomorrow afternoon on this matter. If you and the other defendants don’t appear, we will consider it as an abstention on your end and you will have to compensate the plaintiff for the loss as stated in the contract.” The man’s voice came through again.

“Wait, I don’t understand, what do you mean plaintiff and defendants?” Luocheng asked.

“More than half a month ago, plaintiff Xu Pingyang submitted a lawsuit to our court. We accepted the civil lawsuit and the summons were issued to you half a month ago. The receiver was a Ms Meiqi. If you don’t have sufficient evidence prepared, you may choose to abstain which would avoid some loss of time and resources.” The man replied.

Luocheng listened with dread.

Plaintiff Xu Pingyang?

The court summons was received half a month ago!?

Suddenly, Luocheng recalled what Zhao Tinghua had said to him earlier in the afternoon…

“The message has been communicated.”

The other side hung up the call, not leaving him any other words or a number. It didn’t sound like a scam either, if you have questions please call back.

Luocheng stood there for a long while, his mind not recovering.

“Talking with your girlfriend again, why are you wearing such a strange expression. Did she break up with you? Aih, that’s great, I heard a lot of beautiful girls are wanting to warm your bed, can’t be monopolized by one girl all the way, yeah?” Meiqi teased as she sipped on her drink, walking past Luocheng’s side.

Luocheng snapped back to reality, he hurriedly caught up to her and grasped her hand.

Meiqi was startled, thinking in her mind, “Don’t tell me I hit the mark!?”

“Court summons, you received court summons!?” Luocheng asked.

Meiqi was stunned, and asked, “How did you know?”

“What the h*ll is going on!?” Luocheng exclaimed.

“I was worried that it would affect your performance in the game so I didn’t say anything about it. I wanted to tell you guys after the game with Team Sky to find a solution. I didn’t expect Xu Pingyang to pull the strings and somehow bring the court date forward…” Meiqi said, her head hanging low.

Meiqi explained seriously the situation that had led to her receiving the court’s summons to Luocheng. It was when they had defeated Team Beijing, a letter using fast courier had been delivered to their hotel and Meiqi had received it. Seeing the court stamp on it, she had opened it.

After reading it over, Meiqi had been stunned for a long time, only coming back to her senses after half a day.

“What was on it?” Luocheng asked.

“It was regarding the contract that you signed with Xu Pingyang. Didn’t you say that the term was changed to five years suddenly? That is to say that until now, the contract is still in effect. Xu Pingyang accused you of not complying with the contract’s subsidiary clause.” Meiqi said.

Subsidiary clause…

Luocheng clearly remembered that Xu Pingyang had added an additional clause stating that he didn’t allow Luocheng to join any other clubs or teams after leaving Sky Club.

***

“D*mn, I will kill that b*stard!” Da Luo’s angry voice burst out from the room.

So shameless!

Xu Pingyang was so shameless, even to the point of using a contract that should have expired to continue to stir up trouble.

Worse still, to do it at a time like this just before they had their match against Team Sky, this was deliberately looking for trouble!

To put it bluntly, they just didn’t want Team Skycrown to win. Even with such a shameless method, they wanted Team Skycrown to be restless!

Lin Dong lay on the sofa, his face burning red with anger. He just couldn’t understand, why didn’t this type of f*cking shameless son of a b*tch just get hit by a car or poisoned at home!

“Meiqi, did you ask about the contract that day because of this matter?” Luocheng asked.

Meiqi nodded her head, saying, “I didn’t want this to affect your performance in the game, so I was trying to sideline and find some evidence that could help.”

Xu Pingyang’s underhanded method had definitely caught Team Skycrown by surprise. Initially, they had thought that if the seventh contract was found, they would be able to bring Xu Pingyang down. Who knew that he was ahead of them by one step, even bringing them to court.

“If we lose the case, what will happen?” Luocheng asked.

“The team will have to disband and compensate them for the losses.” Meiqi replied.

Everyone fell silent at the news.