Atlas Studios

  Atlas Studios

  The elevator door opened.

  Ji Zhiyao, dragging his suitcase, happily walked at the front, completely forgetting about his Captain as he hurried to go find his other teammates.

  Mo Huaifeng immediately became more dejected.

  However there did not exist any strange telepathy between Ji Zhiyao and Mo Huaifeng, so he naturally couldn’t hear the uncertainties in Mo Huaifeng’s heart. He turned the corner with his suitcase and saw that all the other members were seated on the tatami in the middle of the living room, chatting about something.

  Ji Zhiyao excitedly threw down his suitcase and leaped over. “Big brothers, daddy is here!”


  Yuan Wei exclaimed, “Damn you mutt!”


  Heng shouted, “You look quite skinny, why are you so heavy, ahhhhh stay away from me, you’re weighing down on my balls!”


  Xiao asked awkwardly, “Nuo where are you putting your hand?”


  Xiaofei rebutted, “Brother Xiao who are you to chide Nuo, take your own hand back first!”


  Nuo’s response was a sob.

  The stats analyzer finally roared, “Damn it get lost!”


  At the back Mo Huaifeng silently watched this pile of people who looked like a pyramid and sincerely pondered if he should go over.

  And so ten minutes later.

  All the Mix members on the tatami finally settled down quietly.

  Ji Zhiyao asked, “All of you came here a week earlier, you guys should have familiarized yourself with the surroundings already? Do we not have a training room here? I don’t think I saw a place that looked like a training room.”


  The stats analyzer replied him, “We don’t. And we didn’t intend on finding a training room anyways. Japan’s eSports began from their video games centers, I think you do know that.”


  Ji Zhiyao nodded, of course he knew that.

  The few countries that were more developed in their eSports culture each had their own unique eSports tradition. For example Korea, they had various classes, North America advocated 1v1s; whereas for Japan, eSports culture sprung up from the video games centers, from the people.

  The video games complex, frankly put, was a more advanced video game center. The only difference was that all the equipment in them was for training in eSports, it was a place where the masters among the common folk and professional players mingled.

  “So we are going to be training in the hub?”


  Nuo nodded, “Correct. And we have already started.”


  Ji Zhiyao gained interest at once. “How are the standards?”


  Nuo scratched his head, Mo Huaifeng took over and answered, “Very strong. At least a third of the people are at the level of an above average professional player.”


  Ji Zhiyao was slightly stunned, “So strong?”


  “After all there are also many professional players in there, nothing surprising.”


  Ji Zhiyao licked his lips, looking slightly excited.

  When Mo Huaifeng saw him like that, his lips curved up a little. “You can rest first, restore your energy. After dinner, we’ll go together.”


  Ji Zhiyao stood up immediately. “Sure, which room am I in?”


  Yuan Wei pointed down the corridor as he said, “All the way in front, turn right, second room, beside Captain.”


  Ji Zhiyao was very satisfied with his arrangement, but he did not vocalize it, only saying, “Okay, wake me up when you guys are back.”


  With that, he dragged his own suitcase and entered his room.

  There was no bed in the room, only a super huge tatami. Ji Zhiyao laid down for a test, it was pretty soft, hence he closed his eyes contentedly to sleep.

  About two hours later, he woke up.

  Glancing at the time, he saw that it was not yet 6 PM, thus he walked into the bathroom for a shower and changed into fresh clothes. After he had dried his hair and picked up his phone, Ji Zhiyao saw that Yuan Wei happened to be gathering them for dinner in the group.

  Perfect timing.

  Ji Zhiyao took his room key and left, heading to the tatami that they sat on in the afternoon to meet the others.

  Then they went downstairs together to a Japanese restaurant nearby.

  What was more surprising for Ji Zhiyao was that, the translator this time wasn’t Mo Huaifeng, but the low-profiled and reserved Heng.

  After ordering, Heng could not help but get cocky after noticing the look of surprise coupled with admiration in Ji Zhiyao’s eyes. “Small matter, you don’t have to look at me like that.”


  “When did you learn your Japanese? I’ve never heard you say it in usual times, I really can’t figure it out.”


  “Isn’t this just a regular communicating language? Do you need to specially go learn it?”


  “Oh my, my team’s King of Mid-laners is amazing. Without pretense, no one knows of his capabilities, once he does, it is sensationalizing.”


  “Oh no, Yao-god you flatter me.”


  Nuo chimed in in all seriousness, “Actually Heng is right, as an avid fan of Japanese adult movies and hentai, Japanese is indeed one language that must be grasped.”


  The others exclaimed at once, “Oh damn!”


  Heng stood up immediately, intending on waging a life-and-death struggle against Nuo. “You mutt, stand right there! What right does the trash who keeps feeding and jinxing to criticize me!”


  “You can insult my professional standards, but it still cannot conceal the fact that you have no moral integrity.”


  “You f*cker!”


  Nuo distastefully bent his fingers like an orchid, then said like a rooster with its throat strangled, “Sir, yamete.”


  Ji Zhiyao chortled so hard that he almost suffocated.

  The two mutts kept fooling around until the waitress dressed in a kimono knocked on the door to serve their food. They resumed a pretentious manner of “I’m well-behaved, no crying, no nonsense, no showing off”, silence finally restored in the room.

  The portions of the Japanese cuisine were large and good. Other than not being able to accept the sashimi on top of a salad, he ate quite a portion of everything else and even downed two shots of sake.

  When they had eaten and drank their fill, they sat for another ten plus minutes before setting off to the eSports hub.

  The eSports hub was merely a ten minute walk from the Japanese restaurant.

  A two-story building with reddish violet neon lights hung on the outside with four to five Japanese characters on the iron-clad sign, making it look especially like certain undesirable places in the movies.

  Yet when Ji Zhiyao stepped through its front doors, he then realized that it wasn’t as demonic as he had imagined.

  Except for the slighter dimmer lights, everything else was great.

  The entire hub was very quiet.

  Ji Zhiyao toured the place following the rest and marveled. “Except for this light which gives me a little maladjustment, everything else is great.”


  Xiao said, “All these aren’t considered much, you can take a look at the practices that you can do on those game machines, such complete sets of equipment are very rarely seen even in Korea.”


  Ji Zhiyao initially did not think much of it, but hearing Xiao’s words, he took second glances, then asked Mo Huaifeng about them in a low voice and realized that these equipment were indeed rather different from those in normal arcades.

  Take for example, the rifle that was a small distance away, the buttons on it were controlled by a motherboard that was about the size of a palm. When one pressed down on the button that matched the balloon that lit up on the target board in a stipulated amount of timing, it would then be considered a successful shot.

  Then for instance, the “finger dancing machine” that was a few meters away. This felt somewhat like the desktop version of the colored blocks program, arrowheads would flow like water from up, left and right directions, everything was dependent on one’s hand-eye coordination and reaction capacity.

  Of course, there was also a specialized sound proof room, for solo games.