League of Legends: League of Unknowns

Xu Pingyang was given his just desserts from the crimes that he had committed.

This relieved a lot of stress that Luocheng had been building up, plus, it finally gave Xiao Bei some form of closure.

The punishment was heavy. Cyber laws in their country were slowly being built up, those that thought a few stolen accounts and trojan horses weren’t going to harm the bigger picture were incredibly naive. With the way things were progressing, these cyber criminals were going to become the law’s next big target.

“Who was in charge of this case?” Lin Dong asked Li Xi.

“You mean who solved it?”

Lin Dong nodded.

“The cyber police here in Shanghai are a bit more advanced than other parts of the country. I’m not quite sure who was in charge of the case per se, but as for who did the most heavy-lifting on the technical side of things, if I’m not too mistaken, it was probably those two amazing policewomen,” Li Xi said.

Lin Dong’s face fell.

Hearing someone mention the cyber police, especially those two women, Lin Dong felt as though he was meeting Hades for the first time again, an indescribable sense of hatred and fear boiling up inside of him.

But thinking harder about it, those two most have had a hand in solving this case, otherwise, who knew when they would be able to get rid of the malignant tumor in the gaming community that was Xu Pingyang.

Lin Dong didn’t push the topic. It was a rare occurrence for all of them to be in such high spirits, he didn’t need to rain on everyone’s parade over those two female white-hats. His little lockdown was going to be over soon anyway…

Luocheng was all smiles as well. Even though he had missed out on the opportunity to play in the Asian Indoor Games, this turn of events had washed all his previous worries away.

***

Staying true to what they had told the media, Team Skycrown donated all the money they received from the organizers and Xu Pingyang to Xiao Bei’s hometown, giving the children there a chance at a proper, modern education. Hopefully when the children grew up and made it big, they would still remember that they would never have had the success that they had without the help of the e-sports community.

After making their donation, the internet had quite a lot to say about Team Skycrown’s generous act, giving their champion team a huge boost in online popularity and notoriety.

In the LPL, Team Skycrown’s unique and innovative battle tactics had made them the shining stars of the entire LoL Professional League, and with the world-shocking 1 vs 4 play Da Luo had made at the end, players everywhere were going wild! Players quickly found out that Team Skycrown wasn’t under any e-sports club, instead finding their homes in Demacia Cafe where they frequently played against the public. These people were down-to-earth and relatable, it was no wonder so many fans quickly flocked to their side. Meiqi was even starting to wonder if she shouldn’t have sold their streaming rights to the Thunder Club.

The way their income would be allocated within Team Skycrown had already been decided. The 5 players each took a larger cut out of their sponsorships, hosting fees, investments, and prize money. Meiqi and Jian Feng would both get a smaller portion of the money as well as receive a fixed income, the cut the two of them got had already been decided on by Meiqi.

Since Luocheng and the others didn’t know much about business, they had originally thought that all their money should have been divided equally among all of them. Jian Feng and Meiqi included, they had played an extremely important role in their current success after all, but as someone from a wealthy background, Meiqi knew how far Team Skycrown had come business-wise, and to avoid any future financial altercations among them, she set some firm rules before they advanced any further. They would be handling this in the most professional manner as possible so as to ensure the steady growth of the entire team.

Many teams fell or disbanded because they never had any rules or clear goals in mind, and so, Meiqi laid everything down before her boys very clearly, explicitly telling them that their personal emotions should never be involved in matters of money. If they didn’t want to complicate things both financially and interpersonally, they had to follow her rules.

Everyone naturally stayed silent, but they all felt a little bad that Meiqi and Jian Feng were getting a smaller share because they had been there with them every step of the way, managing and building their team as best as they could.

But of course, Luocheng knew that she was right. Some things shouldn’t be changed to accommodate one’s feelings. It was immature and it would only lead to more troubles for their team further down the line.

500,000 RMB was quite a large sum. All money was managed by Meiqi and nobody had too many opinions on that matter. She would punctually give out basic salaries and cuts of their earnings to everyone at the end of each month, even preparing a spreadsheet detailing how each person’s money that month was calculated.

In reality, no one in Team Skycrown felt the need to comb through all the details. Meiqi took her role in their team very seriously as it was something meaningful for her, and as for the money, she probably didn’t even care. 500,000 RMB was an astronomical amount of money for Luocheng, Lin Dong, Zhou Yan, Wu Sen, and Da Luo, but for a rich girl like Meiqi, it was basically nothing. Her purses were thirty or forty thousand, an ear stud cost her four to five thousand, an outfit would be another one to two hundred thousand, all custom made with brands from all around the world…

Perhaps every guy in the team had had the thought flash across their minds to get romantically involved with this pretty (and insanely rich) young woman, but when they saw that the price tags on her new bags had more digits than their bank accounts, the thought quickly died out along with any bravery they had.

Alas, may dreams continue to be dreams!

***

They were decently frugal with their money. They couldn’t just have 500,000 RMB sitting in a single bank account, so the 7 of them split the money immediately.

Meiqi was in it for the long haul, as in she had already considered the off-season period where they didn’t have any competitions as well as the possibility of Team Skycrown falling into a decline when divvying out their monthly salary, choosing to give their money out more frequently but in smaller portions so that Luocheng and friends could play each match without worrying about whether or not they would have food on the table that night.

Of course, Meiqi had to admit that she was also slightly worried that these unruly men might fall into the hands of alcohol and lust if they had enough money. She couldn’t possibly imagine what those little perverts had in mind, especially all the older men in Demacia Cafe, always trying to pollute the innocent minds of her Team Skycrown. Meiqi wasn’t going to let that happen, after all, these were her servants! *cough* I mean, friends!

***

“Haha, our champion has returned!”

The manager Xiao Duoduo welcomed Team Skycrown back with bright smiles.

Jian Feng spared a glance at the manager, walking with a little more confidence. He still remembered the first time they had entered Demacia Cafe and how much Duoduo hadn’t wanted them there.

Now, Demacia Cafe thrived off of Team Skycrown’s victory in the LPL, they were literally walking cash cows! Jian Feng couldn’t help but smile at the thought of Boss Lei handing them another sum of cash to make them stay.

Luckily, the boss of Demacia Cafe had treated them quite well and Team Skycrown had already decided to plant their roots here.

“Duoduo, remember when you said if our defending team got into the LPL you’d eat all the keyboards? Now that we’ve come back as LPL champions, I hope you’re hungry, cuz you might as well eat the entire bar! Would you like black pepper sauce or ketchup?” Jian Feng laughed.

Duoduo faltered for a brief moment before plastering on a much more forced smile, laughing dryly. “Everything’s on the house tonight, whatever you want to eat, say the word and we’ll prepare it for you!”

“That’s more like it!”

Satisfied, Jian Feng walked away with long strides after teasing Duoduo, only to be called back by him.

“What is it?” Luocheng asked.

“Here’s the thing, now that you all are LPL champions, your status has completely changed. Our Boss Lei was thinking about possibly cancelling your open challenges. There aren’t that many teams in the country that actually stand a chance against you guys, so stacking up the prize money doesn’t really mean that much anymore. We were thinking of creating a Defending Team A to take on the challenges instead?” Xiao Duoduo said.

“That’s true, but if there are any strong teams that want to challenge us, they should still be allowed to come,” Luocheng said.

The Team Skycrown now was much more different compared to theTeam Skycrown from a month ago. A lot of teams had the fighting spirit, but not so many had the guts. If this went on, their open challenges wouldn’t mean much anymore. They needed to give other teams a chance to keep these challenges going.

Of course, Luocheng wasn’t going to completely shelve his team either. If those challenging teams managed to beat Demacia Cafe’s Team A, let them take a shot at Team S. Luocheng would accept their challenge any day of the week. He hadn’t been joking when he said that during his interview.

A lot of the inspiration Luocheng had in building new battle strategies actually came from these random challengers. There was no way Luocheng was going to deny their requests, and if he had to increase the difficulty himself then so be it, but they were going to fight to the end!

After Team Skycrown was crowned champion, many high level pro-players were asking them if Team Skycrown was going to create a second team.

Each team still had 5 fixed members, and at first, Luocheng wasn’t planning on making a second team. However, after seeing what had happened to Asmodai, Luocheng knew that no matter how strong a team was, they could never win against the fight of time. To prevent such a thing from happening, the only solution was to never stop nurturing new talent.

When everyone in Team Skycrown retired, was their spirit going to retire with them?

That couldn’t happen! They needed new members to join so that they could rise again like a phoenix from its ashes.

Team Skycrown wasn’t a formal club so they would have a bit of difficulty building another proper professional team, but Luocheng thought that they could use Demacia Cafe as a platform to help make this vision come to life. Cafes like these would obviously last longer than a normal team, and it could be the homebase of Team Skycrown’s second team, practicing, playing competitions, streaming, and open challenges. They could have a decent salary as well, after all, Team Skycrown was now the strongest team in China! There weren’t going to be many people coming to the open challenges, but if the challenges could continue, their legacy would continue as well.