But it was already time to disembark.
Zhou Yanxing clearly looked a bit irritable. Though he’d showered in the morning, his messy black hair was left unstyled, sticking up in wild tufts that made him resemble a college student more than the young, successful business elite he usually appeared to be.
Chi Zhan was starting to suspect that person from earlier might not have had ill intentions after all. It was highly likely they were from the company or a business partner.
“President Zhou, you didn’t sleep?”
“Dozed off for a bit. Come on. Time to get off the boat.”
Their schedule for the day was packed. There was no time to linger.
Still, Chi Zhan caught a glimpse of Zhou Yanxing’s laptop—he was still digging through information on the ship’s passengers.
The deck was a sea of people dragging their luggage ashore. In the chaos, Chi Zhan got separated from Zhou Yanxing. As he looked around, a faint scent hit him—a mix of lemon and alcohol, mellow and intoxicating. It instantly jolted his memory.
—That person!
Chi Zhan’s head snapped up as he scanned the crowd, but the scent was fleeting and disappeared as quickly as it came.
Su Ran was already waiting at the port. After exchanging handshakes, they got into the cars bound for the hotel. Chi Zhan, Zhou Yanxing, and Su Ran shared one car, while the rest took another.
Chi Zhan was about to get into the front passenger seat, intending to leave the backseat for Zhou Yanxing and Su Ran. But Zhou Yanxing nudged him toward the back first and then climbed in himself, leaving Su Ran blinking in surprise before reluctantly settling into the front.
“……”
He was seriously beginning to suspect that Zhou Yanxing had caught on to his attempts at matchmaking—every time Chi Zhan tried to do something, Zhou somehow managed to cut off his escape route in advance.
Su Ran, clearly having done his homework, knew Zhou Yanxing wasn’t fond of romantic small talk and opened with business instead.
“President Zhou, I’ve already confirmed the list of streamers for the collaboration with Secretary Chi. Hopefully everything goes smoothly this time. Would you be free for lunch later? I’ve booked a place.”
Zhou Yanxing nodded.
“What’s the game called? Let me take a look.”
He opened the app store to download the game, glancing sideways at Chi Zhan.
“Do you play games?”
Chi Zhan was about to say “yes,” but hesitated—admitting that might shatter the image he projected. So he changed his answer.
“Not really.”
Su Ran chuckled. “Secretary Chi doesn’t strike me as someone who games much. But this one’s easy to get into—fun for all ages. A few rounds and you’ll get the hang of it.”
Zhou Yanxing said offhandedly, “You download it too. It’s a team game—let’s run a match later?”
“……”
He already had the game on his phone, of course. But there was no way he could admit that. So he pretended to fiddle with his phone, then quickly opened a new account on a different server, still using the name “CHI.”
His main account was already level 56. Logging into that would immediately expose him as anything but a newbie.
Thankfully, the game had hundreds of servers. Every time you joined a new one, it reset you to level one and put you through the beginner tutorial again. It made pretending to be a newbie laughably easy.
“There are four streamers currently at our base,” Su Ran continued. “You’ll get to meet them tonight. God Qi has a tournament coming up—ah, I mean Qi Song, WT’s Seven. You’ve probably heard of him, right?” He grinned. “He’s insanely skilled. Ever since he returned to competition, his schedule’s been packed with practices and events. We can almost never book him. So when he agreed to this collaboration, I was genuinely surprised.”
While Zhou Yanxing frowned his way through the beginner tutorial, Chi Zhan tapped away at his phone, half chatting with Su Ran and half coaching Zhou in between.
“You should’ve used your ultimate there. Don’t waste your second skill.”
Zhou Yanxing raised an eyebrow.
“You seem awfully familiar with this.”
Chi Zhan instantly came up with an excuse.
“…I watched some gameplay videos while doing research recently. It’s not that complicated.”
Zhou gave a quiet “Mm,” seemingly convinced.
Chi Zhan broke into a cold sweat. That was close—he almost slipped up.
Su Ran also launched the game, and soon the car was filled with cheerful background music. Chi Zhan shot a message into the group chat. Conveniently, Jiang Yi and Xiao Jia also played, so he planned to pull them into the match later.
Zhou Yanxing clearly wasn’t a regular gamer. He even managed to get killed by bots during the tutorial. Chi Zhan was dying to laugh but held it in with great effort.
Zhou asked with a confused look, “Why is its HP back to full?”
“The dragon can’t leave its lair,” Chi Zhan explained. “If it does, it auto-regens. Stop running all over the map.”
Zhou Yanxing had zero grasp of the game’s mechanics. In newbie match mode, he ran aimlessly across the entire field. Though he miraculously didn’t die, he didn’t encounter a single enemy either. By the time the match ended in a win, he was still thoroughly bewildered—he’d played a game and gotten absolutely nothing out of it.
Chi Zhan, maintaining his innocent noob persona, exclaimed with wide-eyed admiration,
“President Zhou, you’re amazing! You actually won!”
In truth, Chi Zhan had long since cleared the beginner ranks. In the actual match, he sliced through enemies like a hot knife through butter.
Zhou Yanxing narrowed his eyes in suspicion. Was Chi Zhan just blowing smoke?
Chi Zhan looked completely sincere.
“Shall we do a round together?” Su Ran offered with a smile. “I’ll make a room. President Zhou, I’ll add you.”
The three entered the lobby.
“Hang on, I’ll bring two more in,” Chi Zhan said as he opened his invite list. “President Su, do you play often?” he asked casually.
“Sometimes. I mean, this is my industry. But it’s all just casual for me—no pressure.”
The two were still chatting when Su Ran suddenly went silent.
Then he blurted out in shock, “Why did Qi Song join? I didn’t invite him!”
The fifth player who had just entered the room had a name that stood out in bold:
WT-Seven
Top rank—there was no way it was a fake.
This game might have hundreds of players named Seven, but there was only one WT-Seven.
Chi Zhan realized too late—he had meant to invite Xiao Wang, but must have clicked on Seven by mistake while distracted by the conversation.
In this game, while accounts were server-specific, the friends list was shared across all servers. Any of your friends could be invited from any account.
After that lucky livestream draw, he and Seven had added each other, but hadn’t spoken since.
Who would’ve thought Seven would not only be online today, but actually accept the invite—and join the room?
