After dinner.

Liu Zilang had originally planned to sneakily go online and take it easy for a couple more days.

However, his plans were disrupted by Douyu’s massive entourage which welcomed his arrival at the airport. There were even people streaming the scene live. His followers and fans would have caught wind of his return even if they had not been there in person.

If he had tried to feign ignorance and stay offline that night, he would be bombarded with questions the next day.

8.30 pm, the prime time for casting.

Just like before, Liu Zilang turned on his live-stream in the Attractive Section of Douyu.

He had not streamed for more than a few minutes when Douyu’s administrator placed his channel on the main page.

“The Return of the King, The Night of Champions!”

Live stream viewers were generally sensitive toward the term ‘Champion’. Many familiar and unfamiliar faces rushed into his channel.

As for long-time viewers who had subscribed to notifications of his channel, they were immediately informed by the app on their smartphones. Hence, they quickly joined the party as well.

Liu Zilang’s channel exploded in view count and his popularity shot past three million. Not to mention, it was still rising. Streams with a million views usually got the top ranking in the Attractive Section. Three million was simply astronomical.

The administrator of the Attractive Section saw the soaring numbers and could not wipe the smile off his face.

New comments appeared on the bullet screen every split second. Sometimes, the bullet screen even lagged.

Fortunately, SharkChilli Wang Qianqian had been stalking Liu Zilang in his stream. She had contacted tech support to split the bullet screen into separate channels and managed to alleviate the situation.

Bullet screen messages could be diverted but gift notifications could not.

Lu Zilang was the talk of the town for being a recently-crowned champion. His stream was full of airplanes and rockets! 1

“Huan Yu gifted the streamer a Super Rocket! — Finally, you’re back!”

“Randy gifted the streamer a Super Rocket! — Dear Streamer, are you selling your golden pan? No? I’ll ask again tomorrow.”

“ZeJW gifted the streamer a Super Rocket! — Vic, will you be going to BML this weekend? Can we meet up?”

“TeacherAWolf gifted the streamer a Super Rocket! — Be honest. Did you deliberately win the last chicken dinner with your MK14?”

“RiseNGrime gifted the streamer a Super Rocket! — Defeat the evil Vic! Protect our Xiaotong-chan!”

“…”2

Liu Zilang felt emotional seeing the generous gifts and messages presented by the ‘tycoons’. ‘These bros in the live-stream are all very talented! Let’s keep this pace going!’

“Ahem…” He coughed to clear his throat.

“Hello, my dear viewers! I’ve missed you so much! I believe you must have missed me as well?”

The bullet screen of the channel exploded once again when the viewers heard Liu Zilang speak for the first time after a long while!

“Wow, our big star world champion is back!”

“I’ve found Mr. Big Star’s Weibo account. It’s @bigstarlittlebro.”

“D*mn! Why didn’t you tell us you were coming home? I’d have loved to meet you at the airport!”

“Me too! I only know he’s back because I watched a video!”

“Say! Were you planning to go into stealth mode tonight?”

“Vic is still a kid. Next time this happens again, we’ll just beat him to death!”

“Don’t! Just break his legs. He’ll need his hands to win another world champion title.”

“Is this the world champion’s channel? I’m new here. Anything I should know?”

“Wow! We have newbies here! Do you want to get better at the game?”

“Hey new guy, just buy a Human Implant Hack. Just a simple one-time fee for lifetime improvement!”

“…”

“Birds of a feather flock together”, so the saying went. A streamer would attract viewers of the same temperament.

These viewers had not seen Liu Zilang online for many days. Everyone was excited to see him again, and they left an insane amount of messages on the bullet screen.

With that number of Super Fireworks messages, a drainage effect was caused on the fishball treasure chests that were up for grabs. Very soon, Liu Zilang’s popularity shot up to 5.38 million.

Many new viewers did not know who Liu Zilang was. They saw so many tycoons showering gifts upon this streamer and thought there was new ‘eye candy’ in the Attractive Section. Hence they had entered the channel with shining eyes.

After entering the stream, they saw a young man chatting on the screen while petting a cat that was sleeping on his knees.

The new viewers were confused.

Σ(っ°Д°;)っ

‘Am I… behind the times?

‘Why are so many people watching some random guy petting a cat?’

After Douyu’s administrator had set the channel title as ‘Return of the King, Night of Champions’, those people were reminded of the news headlines that they had seen trending in Weibo searches when they first woke up that morning.

“F*ck me! So that’s the Face Value Chicken King!”

“Wow! That boy looks pretty handsome if you look closely!”

“I don’t know what competition that is. However, if he’s a world champion then he’s amazing. Following!”

“…”

As the number of people in his stream increased, so did the number of trolls and spammers.

However, Liu Zilang fully abided by the rules of a ‘green live-stream channel’ and strived to become the ‘greenest live-stream channel’ in all of Douyu. 3

With the help of multiple channel moderators, those people quickly found themselves booted out of the channel once they had opened their mouths…

Fortunately, they were the extreme minority, just a small ripple in the roaring tides of the bullet screen.

Liu Zilang did not pay any heed to those people. As he continued petting his cat, he answered questions posed by his fans.

“The first official PUBG Global Invitational is starting soon. Have you registered, Vic?”

“Vic! Vic! I’ve heard that your contract is going to end soon. Will you be continuing with 4AM?”

“Did Bilibili invite you to BML 4this weekend? If you are, let’s agree on a secret phrase! I want to meet you!”

“Can you tell us what the champion weapon skin will look like? When will it be released? I’ve been keeping an eye on the news. I’ve heard that the designers are all foreigners, and I have doubts about their aesthetic sense…”

“…”

Liu Zilang noticed that those questions were the most frequently asked. He smiled and answered in order.

“I can’t talk too much about it, all I can say is that 4AM will undergo a change in the core team after this tournament. The team roster will be expanded.”

He paused for a moment and then continued, “As for whether I will be extending my contract, that’s not currently on the agenda. But I can guarantee everyone that no matter which team I end up in, I’ll definitely join the PGI.”

“I think I received a BML invite in my mailbox. I haven’t replied yet, but I’ll let everyone know if I’m going.”

He took a sip of water and remembered that someone had asked about the champion weapon skin.

He smiled and then continued speaking, “The weapon skins are tentatively gloves and an MK14. The designers are working hard on it now, and I’ll only be able to see any preliminary models when they’re done. Don’t you trust my aesthetic sense?”

The bullet screen exploded once more after his answer.

“D*mn! Now that you mention it, I don’t think I’m going to be able to rest easy!”

“Any Vic fans here? Can someone tell the guy above to please shut up?”

“I’m sorry, big bro! I was wrong!”

“…”

Liu Zilang’s face darkened as he watched the bullet screen scroll by.

Among the gift notifications in the channel, there was a sudden stream of rocket gifts.

“Sloth gifted the streamer Super Rocket x11!”

“…”

“Sloth gifted the streamer Super Rocket x55!”

“…”

“Sloth gifted the streamer Super Rocket x99!”

“…5”

Everyone was stunned when they saw the insane streak of Super Rockets!

‘Is that how one should gift Super Rockets? Why does it feel like he’s gifting fishballs6?

‘Does Vic have a sugar momma somewhere?

‘Wait a second! Sloth?

‘Why does that name sound so familiar?’

…

1 Airplanes and rockets are gifts that viewers can give casters. They are worth 100 RMB ($14) and 500 RMB ($70) each.

2 Each Super Rocket is worth 2000 RMB ($285).

3 This means no mature content.

4 BML = Bilibili Macro Link, an offline ACG event hosted by the video site Bilibili

5 For those doing the math, that’s a total of 165 Super Rockets, or 330,000 yuan, or 47,330 dollars.

6 Fishballs are the basic currency of Douyu, worth 0.1 cents each.