Chapter 21: Living, they commit greed, delusion, folly, arrogance, and doubt; dying, they suffer flogging, axe-hacking, and boiling

Can a pie really drop from the sky?

Ever since he was a child, the education Luo Ji received taught him that free lunches do not exist, and he had always maintained a subtle, critical view of university students who fell for telecommunications scams.

After all, any normal person's thought process would be: You are already a university student, how could you possibly fall for such a simple scam?

Luo Ji used to think the same way.

That was until a lone Aphelios genuinely appeared right in front of him, and the distance between them was only the legendary 0.01 millimeters.

In that instant, he suddenly attained enlightenment.

If so-called telecommunications scams were all of this particular variety—

Then even if Liu Yifei were to aggressively pursue him, or if the elderly gentleman he helped up on the street happened to be the richest man in the world and chased after him to gift him a house, or if a random lottery ticket he bought won the second prize over and over again, he would gladly accept it.

AHN: "What the hell, a Volibear!"

Luo Ji: "What the hell, a pie!"

Almost subconsciously, the two of them made their moves simultaneously.

AHN flashed directly toward the entrance of the jungle, while Luo Ji anticipated the enemy's flash location and initiated his ultimate to leap forward.

Everything happened far too quickly.

So quickly that by the time the rest of IG reacted to their AD being engaged—

Right before their eyes.

AHN's Aphelios had already been stunned and slapped down right at the edge of the jungle entrance.

"Oh no!"

Yuekai operating his Twisted Fate closed in rapidly, Zika's Aatrox—wait, Crocodile—began teleporting to spin into action, and the supporting Thresh released his Q skill the moment he reached range, attempting to save his teammate.

However.

How could Luo Ji, who had finally seized this hard-earned opportunity, be deterred by such a tiny hook?

The exact moment the hook-shot was about to hit him—

"Swish!"

Hextech Flashtraption!

Accompanied by a thunderclap descending from the heavens, an auto-attack interwoven with an Ability-plus-W skill combo was unleashed to its absolute limit.

Aphelios's originally full health bar was emptied almost instantly in a split second, leaving only a sliver of health barely sustaining his life.

Before he could make his next move—

Right beneath his feet.

A gray railgun target reticle was already aiming from afar.

R [Piercing Darkness]!

Although the shooter was not physically present at the scene yet, the aerial strike from V5 successfully locked onto the enemy AD instantly.

"Whoosh~"

Accompanied by the sudden release of Senna's ultimate.

V5 Photic killed IG AHN.

It's over.

The moment the notification of the AD's death popped up, the entire IG contingent felt that something was terribly wrong, but the teamfight had already broken out.

Right now, they truly had nowhere left to retreat.

Twisted Fate successfully arrived to deliver a yellow card, and the returning Diana didn't waste any words, initiating a flurry of moon-linked combos the moment she laid eyes on the enemy.

Combined with Thresh's slow-and-control E plus R.

For a moment.

Luo Ji, whose skills were completely on cooldown, genuinely became a living target for the opposing IG team.

However.

IG's reinforcements arrived swiftly, but V5's backup was equally fast!

"I've come to aid you!"

Still in the jungle area, Karsa, having successfully rushed to the battlefield, entered the fray right as IG's skills were on cooldown. Without a shred of hesitation, he warded and dragon-kicked over the wall, closing in right beside the newly teleported Crocodile.

R [Dragon's Rage] plus F [Flash].

Executing an R-Flash, he adjusted the trajectory and directly kicked Zika's Crocodile right into Diana's face.

In the void.

Pitch-black dark magic energy emerged once more.

This time.

The target was aimed squarely at Luo Ji's location; his position overlapped almost completely with Diana's—a textbook perfect target!

Upon touching the Diana knocked airborne by the Crocodile, he immediately unleashed his second-stage ultimate to dive in at the speed of light!

WEQ half-health combo!

The skill coordination of the veteran mid and jungle duo produced a visual display on the stage that could only be described as explosive. Seeing his teammates arrive, Luo Ji took the initiative and charged straight into the enemy turret range.

While absorbing turret aggro.

He executed the 5A-tier combo interwoven with movement positioning to absolute perfection!

There was no need to obsess over minor details.

He had already completed the vast majority of his mission; all that remained was to tank the turret properly.

As for damage?

He only needed to keep auto-attacking, and the base stats would help him clear everything in his path!

"It's blown up!"

"IG has completely blown up!"

"With the blind spot in the jungle vision, Youmeng found a textbook perfect flank! IG never expected a Volibear to be sitting in their own Wolves camp! Is AHN going? AHN walked in! AHN spotted him! AHN escaped! AHN is dead! (Voice cracking)"

"IG's follow-up reinforcements arrived very quickly, but V5's backup seemed even faster! Karsa and Rookie pulled off a flawless coordination, and Youmeng is still pushing forward on Volibear!"

"This game... is over!!!"

The moment the most farmed Aphelios was vaporized before he could even exert any pressure, this game completely lost any remaining suspense.

Zika and the others wanted to trade Luo Ji for their lives before dying, but PPGOD, who had kept a close eye on Luo Ji's health pool, gave the enemy zero opportunity.

Flash and a chomp—!

欸.

They couldn't kill him.

They simply couldn't kill him.

When Luo Ji's Volibear emerged from Tahm Kench's belly once more, the massive white shield of nearly 1,000 health points hovering above his head plunged everyone on IG into despair.

They had lost, completely lost.

A clean 0 for 4 teamfight.

Capitalizing on this wave of kills, V5 marched all the way from the enemy's tier-two mid turret to the inhibitor turret, and finally to the Nexus. By the time the IG members respawned, the mid lane was already reduced to a wasteland.

Next came.

Pure, unadulterated garbage time.

When the gold lead translated into item advantages reaching a certain threshold, no matter how much IG wanted to play safe, they could no longer carve out any breathing room for Aphelios to farm securely.

A few minutes later—

Accompanied by the unreasoning hard engagement of a super-fed Volibear's ultimate and the commentator's frantic rap-like shouting as if his mouth had been scalded.

In the end, IG collapsed like a mountain falling.

Securing the victory.

Since the red side had successfully managed to counter blue, V5 returning to the blue side was simply unstoppable.

2:0.

An effortless victory!

[Congratulations V5!!!]

[The traveling red banner only lacks TT now; we can officially announce in advance that the legitimate lineage of IG resides in V5!]

[Gathered together they are a blazing fire, scattered they become stars all over the sky.]

[When Rookie left IG and came to V5, did he realize that V5 feels more like IG than IG ever did? This top laner and jungler are insanely ferocious!]

The audience were not blind.

When Volibear completed his core three items—Chemtank, Black Cleaver, and Titanic Hydra—he embodied the pinnacle of tankiness and violence, boasting rapid cooldowns, high damage, and immense fault tolerance. If he were to add Anathema's Chains later on, he could literally swim like a dragon right through the enemy crowds.

And most importantly:

This hero, in low-elo ranked queues, had no counters!

Or rather.

The only counter that might possibly exist... was their own teammates.

The exact moment the match ended.

Luo Ji casually tossed his headset aside and cast his gaze toward Rookie, who was seated right in the middle.

In the past, whenever Rookie won a match, a bright smile would adorn his face, and he would actively celebrate with the surrounding teammates. But today, he suddenly grew shy.

There was still a smile.

Yet it seemed as though he was desperately reigning it in, preventing himself from looking too overwhelmingly happy.

Luo Ji exchanged glances with Karsa sitting beside him; clearly, both of them had caught onto his contradictory behavior.

"Feeling good now, Chicken Bro? A clean 2:0 sweep against your old team," Luo Ji teased.

"What do you mean feeling good or not? Everything I do and all my happiness is for the team and the club, completely devoid of any personal motives," Rookie hastily waved his hands in denial.

"I get it, we all get it. But you might want to rein that expression in just a bit, because the handshake session is coming up next," Karsa said with an evil grin, patting Rookie on the shoulder.

This reminder—

Finally made Rookie realize that he had still failed to completely suppress his grin.

During the handshake ceremony, he completely lost control, walking past the IG player booths radiating the aura of an elder brother inspecting his junior subordinates.

[He's laughing so hard, Rookie.]

[Slapping the face of your backstabbing former home—anyone in your shoes would laugh. Back before the New Year when Xiao Yan defeated Nalan Wenbo, he had the exact same expression on his face.]

[The club management are just heartless scumbags, but the players still cherish old ties. During the handshake, the IG players looked like they were all calling him: Brother Yijin.]

[The V5 boss must be laughing his head off right now.]

Stepping down from the stage—

Looking at Rookie's beaming countenance, Luo Ji finally gained a crystal-clear understanding of the clubs and players within the professional esports scene.

Actually, similar things had happened prior to his transmigration.

For instance, when Uzi watched matches, he was never overly harsh toward the old RNG members, but the moment the camera panned to the RNG management, the word "bad luck" would instinctively slip past his lips.

Having defeated IG.

The entire tournament patch would now officially transition to Patch 12.4.

For V5, this was magnificent news, because they had pretty much exhausted all the strategies they could possibly squeeze out of Patch 12.2, and the entire league was already following suit and copying their homework.

The moment the patch changed—

They would be just like Ash Ketchum, the protagonist of the Pokémon world, packing up Pikachu and starting all over again. As for what kind of record they could churn out?

It all depended on whether "Pikachu" decided to troll or not.

In the eyes of everyone on V5, Luo Ji at this moment was undeniably that literal "Pikachu" himself.

Karsa was chosen for the post-match interview this time around.

Winning 2:0 against IG and slapping his former home in the face had already satisfied Rookie; accepting any more interviews would carry a subtle suspicion of piling it on.

Karsa didn't mind.

A veteran like him had done plenty of interviews and felt zero nervousness; it was just a walk through the motions.

On the other hand, Xiao Yan was itching with eagerness. However, it wasn't for the interview itself, but rather for the surge in follower count that followed. Even as a teammate, watching Luo Ji's follower count skyrocket made his mouth water, though a bit of that runoff inevitably trickled down to him as well.

Still, youth being youth, he ultimately wanted more.

"How come he seems so thirsty?" PPGOD asked, somewhat puzzled.

Clearly, every time Luo Ji made a trip back, he brought back plenty of Holy Cups, and from now on, whenever any new models of Holy Cups were released, they would be given straight to Xiao Yan.

As the price for this—

Xiao Yan was required to provide post-use evaluations so that Luo Ji could feed the feedback back to the factory. It was a win-win situation.

"I don't think it's thirst, he's probably just influenced by what I said earlier," Luo Ji scratched his head, formulating a rough guess.

"What did you tell him?"

"I told him that once your performance improves, the fans follow; once the fans follow, your high-quality options multiply. And then, once you achieve success and renown, experiencing things will feel just like buying ice cream after you've become rich—you get to taste every single flavor."

"And then?"

"And then you'll know what flavor you actually like. He must be at the stage where he's spotted a few prestigious brands, but laments that his pockets are empty, so he's desperately eager to take things a step further."

Nofe remained silent.

He similarly felt that Xiao Yan harbored many of the flaws typical of young men.

Fortunately.

There was Luo Ji, someone even younger than him, serving as a role model to establish his values and keeping a tight leash on his hormones.

Otherwise, he would really need to figure out a way to hang a calligraphic scroll in Xiao Yan's room.

He had even prepared the text for it:

In life, commit the sins of greed, delusion, anger, pride, and doubt; in death, suffer the whip, the axe, the boiling cauldron, and the frying pan.

The Six Precepts: abstain from gambling, abstain from lust, abstain from theft, abstain from greed, abstain from slaughter, and abstain from laziness.

There were far too many AD carries in the LPL exhibiting traits of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Or rather.

Hardly any professional players managed to avoid breaking the precepts entirely.

There was only one Faker under the heavens. The irony was that such a flawless Faker was also born out of the same plight as Brother Sun—never gaining the favor of the person he adored, thus allowing his legendary dedication to take shape.

On the night the match concluded.

The "Mic Check" voice communications featuring IG were successfully released as well.

Riot had thoroughly figured it out: Luo Ji himself was a massive traffic magnet. For the LPL, which had already secured three World Championships in four years, nothing attracted attention quite like good-natured memes and drama.

The V5 management understood this too.

Lately, they had given him raises through various overt and covert means multiple times.

The implication was crystal clear.

If Luo Ji could genuinely sustain this level of hype and performance going forward, having only signed a one-year contract with him was undoubtedly risky.

Yet jumping to conclusions too early out of fear that he might just be a flash in the pan wasn't ideal either.

So what could they do?

Just raise his salary!

You lack money, and I have money; how could things in this world be such a coincidence?

Throw money at him!

Smash cash into his face mercilessly!

Following a succession of salary bumps, bonuses, and endorsement deals, Luo Ji's wallet expanded at a visible rate. However, it didn't stay in his hands for long before the vast majority of it was plowed back into his personal investments, leaving behind only a small fraction of social funds used to grease the wheels of various relationships.

Right after the review meeting concluded, Luo Ji wasted no time and launched his livestream.

That's right.

He was adopting Doinb's playbook to a certain extent: streaming after a win to farm fans, and streaming after a loss to take the heat—any method that generated traffic was fair game.

As someone reborn into this era.

He was well aware that after the conclusion of S12 in his original world, the viewership and traffic for League of Legends would experience a cliff-like decline. By the time S3—no, S13—also ended, LPL player contracts would never see numbers as absurd as 20 million a year again, and even maintaining 10 million a year would be a stretch.

Even with his presence potentially defying fate and extending their championship streak, but...

The window for massive contracts (three years or more) remained strictly confined to this year. He had to accumulate sufficient hype and secure enough honors to cash out a massive fortune once and for all.

Once the late-night stream went live—

Spectators began pouring into the broadcast room in a continuous stream.

[Such enormous power, your excellency might be?]

[Streaming late at night, you're putting me in a very difficult spot at this hour.]

[I was halfway through watching some soft-core content and busy with things, but now your stream is live. You can't expect me to pause halfway through, right? Let me check in here first and I'll be back later.]

[The slow ones are still roaming room by room searching for their homeroom teacher, while the fast ones have already called a ceasefire and transferred to a new battlefield.]

True to form, the core demographic of livestream viewers consisted mostly of young people.

Even though it was already deep into the night, the viewer engagement inside Luo Ji's stream remained exceptionally high, with many having just wrapped up an entire day of white-haired, beast-eared, twin-tailed anime girl journeys in solo queue.

Though the games might not always end in victory, as long as they locked in that pick—

Their faces would—

100% be filled with smiles.

Watching the comment section scroll past at an increasingly dense pace, Luo Ji instinctively clicked open the game client while dropping a deep-water depth charge into the late-night chat at the appropriate moment:

[How do you feel about today's matches?]

"Pretty decent, mostly because Kaka—cough, Karsa and Chicken Bro carried hard. As you guys saw, game one I fed on the jungle's welfare, and game two I dined on the blue-side welfare."

[Why are you streaming so late?]

"Farming money, what else? If I didn't stream after winning to suck up traffic, would I stream after losing instead? Wait! Actually, that might not be a bad idea either."

[Any new cheese strategies?]

"There are, bros, definitely are. I've already got ideas for the new patch, but you guys know how it is—tricky stuff has to be saved for ambushing people in official matches."

[Got any exclusive alpha leaks?]

Luo Ji's eyes lit up.

After waiting for ages, he finally caught what he was waiting for.

He cleared his throat.

And spoke up:

"As everyone knows."

"The streamer is merely a rookie in the LPL right now, currently relying on cheese tactics to tide things over. There are still gaps in my practical experience that require continuous learning, but figuring things out alone is always slow. So, I've already gone ahead and tracked down a veteran top-lane boomer, getting ready to invite him over to cash him out."

"Once the streamer fully inherits all of his techniques, I will become the LPL's next super top laner!"

"Superman!!!"

Livestream chat: ???

What?