Does Love At First Sight Exist In E-sport

CHAPTER 54

Ch.54 – Does Love at First Sight Exist in Esports?

As the first match on the first day of the qualifiers was Group A-I’s, Noah’s Ark’s group, Yao Sen accompanied Shao Han to the stadium first thing in the morning.

“Good luck, baby,” Yao Sen smiled as he rubbed Shao Han’s head. “I’ll be watching you from the audience.”

Each qualifier match consisted of three rounds. The round would end when either one team remained standing or the game time ran out, at which point the scores of each team would be calculated by the official in-game system and added to the scores from professional referees.

Yao Sen bumped into Jiang Yang in the audience; the latter had apparently planned to stay and watch the competition all day long. Among the 8 small groups, Group A-I had a relatively uneven strength-level. The three rounds they played in were of standard difficulty, thus Noah’s Ark pretty much breezed through them. In the end, their points total placed them second in Group A-I.

After his match was over, Shao Han immediately made his way to the spectators’ seats to watch Group A-II’s match with Yao Sen.

Yao Sen tilted his head to the side, smiling as he whispered, “Baby, you look way too handsome when you play. Did you know how jealous I felt when I thought about how so many people in the world can watch you through the stream?”

Since Jiang Yang was sitting on Yao Sen’s other side, Shao Han didn’t dare to speak too loudly. He could only mumble, “Aren’t you the same…”

Group A-II’s match began not long after. With the exception of one or two rookie clubs, there was little difference in strength. Yao Sen paid close attention to NL’s matches in particular, which were unexpectedly stable. Their firepower was mediocre, but their teamwork was pretty good. Yao Sen would have assumed they were an experienced team based solely on their performance if he hadn’t already known for certain that they were a new club.

One of their members stood out among the rest. Yao Sen presumed that it was their captain Cheng Rui, and sure enough, when they announced the player IDs at the end of the match, Yao Sen had guessed correctly.

Yao Sen looked at the match results on the big screen and fell into a bout of contemplation; although Cheng Rui had played well, his strength was marginally over average. But that still didn’t explain why he had thrown the game when he played the friendly match against Yao Sen back then—unless Cheng Rui was reserving his strength in these qualifiers.

NL ranked fifth in Group II’s standings. This was, in actuality, a dangerous position to be in; as long as Group I and Group II’s scores were neck-to-neck, NL would easily get pushed down from their current rank.

After the overall ranking of Group I and II came out, Noah’s Ark were ranked fourth, while NL was lucky enough to rank eighth and advance to the second stage. No matter how NL performed after this, a brand new club that had been established barely a year ago advancing to the WCAD’s second stage was already an extremely surprising result.

Meanwhile in the audience, Jiang Yang was scrutinising Cheng Rui with a frown on his face, his expression clouded with suspicion.

It was only when Yao Sen called out to him and asked if he wanted to join them for dinner did Jiang Yang shift his eyes away from Cheng Rui, rising to his feet and trailing after them.

“Captain,” Jiang Yang paused, “That Cheng Rui guy—do you know him?”

“I don’t know him, but we’ve met once.” Yao Sen turned to him. “What’s the matter?”