League of Legends: League of Unknowns

At the Central Hospital, Yu Luocheng was carefully helping Yu Jing back into bed.

He took out his handphone for a look. It was already eight.

“Oops.” He clapped a hand to his forehead. Looking after his dad had taken longer than he’d expected.

Yu Luocheng hurried out of the hospital, hailed a taxi cab, and sped towards the Dragon Rising Cyber Café.

Aboard the taxi, he frantically made a call to Commander Qin.

A dozen missed calls, all from Qin. Yu Luocheng was in a panic.

The call went through, and Yin Qin’s voice came over the line. “Hey, hey! What’s up with you, kid? You didn’t pick up your phone! The game’s about the begin!”

“I’m in the taxi. I’ll be there right away!” Yu Luocheng turned to the driver. “Sir, please hurry.”

“Alright.”

***

Over at the Dragon Rising, Commander Qin held onto his easy smile in the face of a crowd of suspicious stares.

Team Scarlet would be facing Team Pride.

That was Huang Mi’s team, which had lost to Team ATM earlier in the day. Naturally dissatisfied at being defeated, Huang Mi had immediately thrown down three hundred bucks to rejoin the tournament.

After the match-ups were re-shuffled, Huang Mi and his four teammates were in despair—they’d be up against Team Scarlet! Three hundred bucks, down the drain!

Huang Mi’s team was considered one of the strongest ones in this territory, and should have been a shoe-in for the semi-finals… but after suffering a surprise defeat to the dark horse Team ATM, they would next have to fight against Commander Qin’s Team Scarlet!

If it hadn’t been Huang Mi’s own hand which had drawn that number, he’d think the cyber café staff were out to get him.

“Brother Mi, it looks like something might have happened to their Support. He probably won’t make it for the game. We’ve still got a chance!” Lin Xu whispered to Huang Mi from behind.

5v4. Huang Mi felt confident he could handle Team Scarlet, with those odds.

Was their Support really not coming?

***

Yu Luocheng raced for the Dragon Rising like his feet were on fire. Even at the stairs, he could already hear the commotion raging within, as though everyone had lost their minds.

Inside, it was a thriving sea of people. It was hard to get through the press of bodies over in Section B.

“It’s crazy in here…” Yu Luocheng hadn’t expected to see something like this. With a herculean effort, he managed to squeeze through the sweaty, smelly crowd until he reached the barrier.

“Stay back, stay back! Only contestants are allowed in here. All spectators must stay outside the barrier!” Noticing Yu Luocheng’s advance, a staff member warned him off with a frown.

Nearby, Zhao Kesong’s sharp eyes spotted a familiar face near the edge of the crowd.

“Hey, isn’t that Yu Luocheng?” Zhao Kesong piped.

“Yu Luocheng, Yu Luocheng! We’re over here! Come over here and watch with us!” Wang Qin saw him too, and raised his voice to holler over the roar of the crowd.

Sun Yang, Yang Qianqian, and Cao Sheng waved for him to see.

Yu Luocheng laughed to see them. “I’m playing in the tournament.”

“Oh, you?” Wang Qin nodded, as though remembering something, and then asked, “So which team are you on?”

“Yu Luocheng, play your best! You have to keep going! Team ‘Bone Dragon’ has been wiped out!”

“That’s right, all our hopes are on you. Fight in the name of Class 8!” Several of his classmates were cheering him on.

“By the way, if Yu Luocheng’s playing right now, and that awesome Team Scarlet is also playing… which game do we watch?” Sun Yang had happened upon a very good question indeed.

It was four simultaneous games between eight teams. They watched as Yu Luocheng wandered between the rows of computers, as though unsure of which team he belonged to.

“Obviously we watch Team Scarlet,” Zhao Kesong said. “Yu Luocheng’s probably just joined up with any random team. No matter how well he plays, it’ll be nothing compared to Team Scarlet vs. Team Pride.”

“Let’s stay and watch Team Scarlet’s game. It wasn’t easy to get these front-row seats.”

“Yang Qianqian, what do you think?” Wang Qin turned to her, but she was already pushing her way through towards Yu Luocheng. There was no need to hear her reply.

However, before she got very far, she saw Yu Luocheng coming right back again.

Scratching his head in embarrassment, he hurried up to Yang Qianqian and the others, tittered awkwardly, and then sat down in the empty seat where Team Scarlet’s Support player should be!

Seeing this, Wang Qin was taken aback for a moment, and then he shouted, “Yu Luocheng, you’re in the wrong seat! That one’s for the Team Scarlet Support!”

Zhao Kesong, Cao Sheng, Fang Xiaomei, and Zhong Xiaoyun were also clamoring to inform him of his mistake.

“That idiot! Doesn’t even know which team he’s on, so he runs over to Team Scarlet and sits in one of their places. Does he really think he’s that good?” Feng Xiaoqing of Class 3 was here as well. Seeing which seat Yu Luocheng had finally chosen, he immediately burst out laughing.

Yang Qianqian’s sharp ears caught this remark, and she turned to glare at him.

“Team Scarlet, are all your team members present?” one of the event coordinators asked.

Commander Qin was on the phone. Just as he was about to reply ‘Not yet,’ he saw Yu Luocheng taking his place at the table. Hurriedly, he nodded and said, “Yeah, everyone’s here.”

And then Yin Qin walked over to Yu Luocheng and clapped a hand down heavily upon his shoulder. “You think you’re an AP Master Yi, showing up at the last second like this? You scared me half to death.”

“Sorry, sorry. I was held up at the hospital,” Yu Luocheng stammered in apology. “I’m ready to go.”

“Adjudicator, our Support player Yu Luocheng has arrived. We may begin!” Commander Qin called out to the coordinator.

After he’d spoken, a great hubbub arose from the surrounding spectators.

“He’s that new Support for Team Scarlet?”

“Looks like he’s just a schoolboy. He isn’t even wearing their uniform.”

“Where did this kid pop out from? I’ve never seen him before.”

“He doesn’t look like anything special. Maybe he’s here to get carried ¹ ?”

As the crowd gabbled away, the spectators from Class 8—Zhao Kesong, Cao Sheng, Fang Xiaomei, Zhong Xiaoyun, and Wang Qin—were staring with eyes as wide as dinner plates!

At length, Wang Qin swore vehemently. “Hot damn, he got into Team Scarlet!”

“I don’t believe it. How could he have made it into Team Scarlet? It’s not possible!” Zhao Kesong screeched.

“Commander Wang, you instructed me to observe how the Team Scarlet Support player plays… isn’t that just Yu Luocheng, though?” Sun Yang said.

Having just been sneering at Yu Luocheng a moment ago, Feng Xiaoqing was now in a state of utter shock.

What in the world was going on, here? That… that fool wasn’t in the wrong place? He actually was the Team Scarlet Support?

Feng Xiaoqing had recently been spending a lot of time in the cyber café as well, tagging along after Lin Xu, and he’d gradually come to understand that the difference between squabbling schoolkids and the elite players of the Dragon Rising was the distance between heaven and earth.

The team that he’d been in, under Lin Xu, had been torn to pieces that afternoon by some second-rate contender. Feng Xiaoqing realized that meant his team was less than trash, in the pecking order of the Dragon Rising.

It had been a painful lesson, to have been beaten so badly by some unremarkable team that had just been thrown together at the eleventh hour. How much further away were they from a top-tier team like Scarlet, which trained in the VIP area, and which had mopped the floor with every other team in the Dragon Rising?

When he’d caught sight of Yu Luocheng earlier, he’d assumed that, at best, Yu Luocheng had found some second-rate team as well to take him on. He’d been secretly hoping that they would go up against an elite team, someone who would give them a good, sound trashing. It would have been something like revenge.

He’d never once dreamed that Yu Luocheng would sit down right at Team Scarlet’s table!

After jeering loudly at Yu Luocheng in front of everybody the way he’d just done, Feng Xiaoqing wanted nothing else at the moment but to crawl into a hole and die.