Chapter 98: The Other Party is Not Your Friend

It turned out that the squad Fang Zhou encountered was also streamers.

They had planned to dominate the game, but their start was disastrous as they were wiped out by a single person. It was embarrassing to even mention it.

The chat in their livestream was ruthlessly mocking them.

“Hahaha, so pathetic. But it seems the opponent was Fang Zhou, your former top streamer. Losing to him isn’t shameful.”

“I’m dying of laughter. Holding a sniper rifle and still losing, you might as well go home and farm.”

“I’m switching my allegiance to Fang Zhou. He’s just too cool! Bye, streamer, I’m heading to his stream.”

As Fang Zhou’s name spread, many viewers got excited and proclaimed their intention to watch his stream instead.

Consequently, the number of viewers in the current stream dropped by more than half, presumably all moving to Fang Zhou’s stream.

Zhou Yongliang, enraged, slammed the table again, cursing out loud.

“Dammit! Fang Zhou has been out of the spotlight for so long, why is he suddenly making a comeback!”

In his view, Fang Zhou had often stolen the limelight before while in the Xingchen Guild. Whenever he streamed, the popularity of other guild members would drop by half.

This made many people resentful, blaming Fang Zhou for stealing their audience.

However, they conveniently forgot that Xingchen Guild’s growth and development were largely due to Fang Zhou.

It was his impressive achievements that attracted many talented streamers to the guild.

A group call on WeChat came through. It was the streamers from the squad.

They clamored, “Brother Liang! Invite Fang Zhou to a team match and beat the crap out of him. Let’s see if he still dares to act superior!”

“I’m so pissed. My viewers all left! They went to Fang Zhou’s stream! He’s a vampire!”

“Same here. He’s just an outdated streamer, and he’s been busy filming that romance show, hardly touching a computer. I bet he’s rusty!”

“Brother Liang, get him in here. I can’t swallow this anger!”

Zhou Yongliang was the owner of Xingchen Guild, and the younger brother of Zhou Yongde. After graduating, he had nothing to do and became a streamer under his brother.

He had long been displeased with Fang Zhou.

Why did Fang Zhou get the top-tier treatment in the guild, while everyone else had to fall behind him?

Resources, traffic, exposure—all prioritized for Fang Zhou.

To Zhou Yongliang, if not for Xingchen Guild constantly feeding resources to Fang Zhou, he wouldn’t have become such a popular streamer.

Other streamers in the guild had also been envious, jealous, and spiteful towards him, even sneering behind his back.

Fortunately, after Fang Zhou stopped streaming for a few months, his popularity plummeted, and his fans were divided among the guild members.

Even if Fang Zhou wanted to make a comeback, without the guild’s resources, it would be tough.

So Zhou Yongliang had coaxed his brother into cutting Fang Zhou’s salary and giving him the worst contract, to bring him down a peg.

As a result, Fang Zhou had simply quit the guild when his contract ended.

Zhou Yongliang had thought that leaving such a good guild, Fang Zhou would gradually disappear from the public eye.

But recently, thanks to a romance show, Fang Zhou had gained some traction, and starting a stream had stolen a lot of his own viewers.

“Alright, I’ll invite him.”

Zhou Yongliang agreed readily, planning to invite Fang Zhou to a team match after he finished his current game.

“Stay tuned for the ‘Hunt Fang Zhou’ moment.”

For the sake of the show, Zhou Yongliang even changed the title of his stream to this.

After all, it’s all about the traffic; might as well make the most of it and beat Fang Zhou until he begs for mercy.

On Fang Zhou’s side, after wiping out Zhou Yongliang’s squad, he led Mei Chuan Chuan to the end, reuniting with two other teammates.

The four of them won the chicken dinner without a scratch.

“Yay! We won!”

Mei Chuan Chuan shouted excitedly, and Fang Zhou could imagine her dancing with joy.

Finally having a moment to glance at his stream, Fang Zhou was shocked by the viewer count.

Over 200,000?

It was just 50-60,000 earlier, how did it jump so much? Did the platform recommend him?

Clearing his throat, Fang Zhou addressed the audience, “Welcome to the stream, don’t forget to follow.”

Before joining the romance show, Fang Zhou had about 400,000 followers. After the island part ended, it shot up to over 600,000.

And now, it seemed to have increased by another 20,000 in a short time.

More followers are always welcome.

“The streamer is amazing! One person wiped out a squad! And at such a high rank!”

“Hahaha, does it feel good to beat your former lackeys?”

“I came from Zhou Yongliang’s stream. He was so mad, banging on the table, very unstable. It’s much better here with Fang Zhou.”

After reading through the chat, Fang Zhou realized that the squad he defeated were streamers from Xingchen Guild.

His former colleagues.

But Fang Zhou felt no emotional stir, finding it rather ordinary.

He had seen through it all; so-called colleagues could only share joy, not hardship.

When he was thriving, these streamers would vie to team up, do PKs, or play other games with him.

In short, they would do anything to leech off his popularity.

Later, when he fell out of favor, none of them reached out.

Even when Fang Zhou asked them to help with a PK to regain some popularity, they made excuses.

Or they would bluntly say they were no longer in the same league and shouldn’t play together.

Fang Zhou had laughed in anger, deciding to blacklist them all.

He must have been desperate to think of asking them for help.

It’s easy to add flowers to the brocade, but hard to send charcoal in the snow.

Especially in the world of livestreaming, where flow is king, talking about true feelings is a loss; only popularity is the eternal topic.

Fang Zhou chuckled, responding to the chat while avoiding comments about former colleagues.

With so many people watching, saying the wrong thing could be taken out of context and used against him.

“Stick around in Fang Zhou’s stream, you won’t be disappointed or fooled, hahaha.”

Mei Chuan Ku Cha Zi was already urging Fang Zhou to start the next game.

“Hurry up, start another game, this is so fun.”

Fang Zhou refocused on the stream, seeing an invitation pop up.

『Xingchen – Xiao Liang invites you to enter team competition mode』.

He scoffed at it; wasn’t this Zhou Yongliang’s brother?

This guy always had an ulterior motive. Even after leaving the guild, he wanted to leech off him?

No way!

Fang Zhou unhesitatingly clicked decline and deleted him from the friend list, then started another game with Mei Chuan Chuan.

On the other side, Zhou Yongliang waited for a long time, only to receive a decline.

Suppressing his anger, he sent another invite, but the screen showed a message.

『The other party is not your friend, unable to invite.』

Zhou Yongliang, furious, smashed his mouse.

“Damn it! What’s with the attitude! Damn Fang Zhou!”