Esports world champion, debuted as the center of a talent show

[I think the official team behind "Shining Project" has no shame whatsoever. They're not only blatantly trying to ride the wave of popularity, but now they're sending a trainee to fabricate a bunch of River's information—what's the point of this?]

[To the person above: I understand what you mean, I saw it too, it's infuriating to watch.]

[What? What are the comments saying in the previous video? What happened now?]

【What? What happened? How did this get involved with that talent show again?】

[Please don't say this here, okay? If there's anything, go directly to the program's official channels. River might still be watching the live comments, so don't bother him with this nonsense.]

Sorry, it's my fault, I won't say anything more.

Some people tried to calm things down, not wanting to start a fight in unrelated live streams, but the public opinion at this point could no longer be suppressed with just a few words of advice.

At this time, Yan Zuo's live broadcast room had a huge audience base and a very wide reach. As long as one person brought up the topic, hundreds or thousands of people would follow suit.

In just a few minutes, countless viewers followed the clues in the barrage comments and went directly to the official account homepage of "Shining Project". They found the e-sports group variety show that the production team had just released at the perfect time and discovered Wang Zijie's divine interview. At this point, the pace of the discussion expanded uncontrollably.

Originally, the anger was only directed at the host for maliciously targeting Jiang Zhiyu, but now all the fans' anger is directed at the program team.

Everyone brought up all their pent-up grievances, listing them one by one clearly.

Someone compiled a long infographic detailing all the evidence that "Shining Project" has been overtly and covertly riding the coattails of the ZPL professional league and leveraging the River sentiment since its premiere, including deliberately filming e-sports variety shows, guiding players to talk about e-sports topics, attending matches in person, and subtly linking with trending topics and press releases.

They chased trends from beginning to end, but never did any research, allowing trainees to spread rumors and misinformation.

River fans, having gathered their evidence, directly tagged the official account, using strong language and a firm attitude, demanding that the "Shining Project" program team issue a public apology for Wang Zijie's remarks and provide a reasonable explanation for their malicious exploitation of River's sentiment.

The official account, which was originally just having a good time, panicked a bit when it saw the comments section suddenly getting bigger, after all, the other party was the legendary most powerful fan group in the modern era.

He immediately dialed director Hong Liu's number: "Hey! Director Hong! Don't give us a holiday! Something's happened!"

Hong Liu's voice was somewhat broken over the phone, but a hint of surprise could be heard in his tone: "Don't be so alarmed, what happened now?"

"Wang Zijie's interview in that e-sports variety show was very controversial, and now the public opinion is getting out of control."

"Oh..." Hong Liu recalled for a moment, then continued, "That? I know, you don't need to worry about it."

As soon as he finished speaking, Hong Liu added, "Is there anything else? I'm hanging up."

The staff member stared blankly at the phone that had been hung up.

He thought to himself: What does this mean? Has Director Hong become so arrogant that he doesn't even care about River's fans anymore?

He couldn't understand where Hong Liu's confidence came from, and could only watch helplessly as the insults in the comments section grew louder and louder.

Meanwhile, Jiang Zhiyu, one of the eye of the storm, was completely unaware of this.

During the period when the operations team was frantically reporting their work and the whole internet was in an uproar, he had already steadily completed three placement matches with Yan Zuo.

He won all three games.

At this moment, the game's results screen popped up on Jiang Zhiyu's computer, showing that his ranking result was the final tier.

Yan Zuo's tone was full of surprise: "You actually directly reached the Final Domain level? That's amazing! R God is incredible!"

Faced with Yan Zuo's obviously teasing tone, Jiang Zhiyu smiled helplessly and interrupted, "Alright, I'm logging off."

"Leaving already? Aren't you going to play a few more rounds?"

"No, I'm planning to go out for a bit."

"Okay, let's line up together next time we have time."

The chat in the live stream was even more eager than Yan Zuo's, with a dense barrage of messages flooding the screen.

[Yan Zuo, are you even capable? Just letting them go like that? That's your father!]

Don't go—(Erkang's hand)

[No! Waaaaah! When will we see each other again...?]

[How come you only got to log in once and already played three placement matches? I can't get enough of you!]

[Yan Zuo! Yan Shen! Yan Ge! Can you please try to keep River here? Just for our sake!]

Yan Zuo saw all the complaints in the live chat, but he knew that this was Jiang Zhiyu's rare vacation in the past few months, and he couldn't really tie him up to play games all day. So he could only comfort him, "Your R God needs to rest too. He's been very tired lately, and the fact that he said he had to go out means he has something to do. Let's play with him next time."

Jiang Zhiyu had already exited the game by this time, so he naturally couldn't hear Yan Zuo's subsequent attempts to comfort him.

He stood up and stretched his shoulders and back, grabbed his phone from the table, and planned to go downstairs to the supermarket to buy a few bottles of water.

Jiang Zhiyu's phone vibrated. He looked down and saw it was a message from Yan Zuo.

[Yan Zuo: Will my sudden invitation to duo queue today bother you? What are your plans for the next few days of vacation? Want to grab a bite?]

[Rr: It won't have much of an impact. I guess I won't eat, I need to control my diet.]

[Yan Zuo: ? You still want to lose weight? You're already so thin.]

[Rr: There's no other way, otherwise I wouldn't look good on camera.]

[Yan Zuo: You're surprisingly virtuous! Alright, are you going to watch RXG's match the day after tomorrow?]

[Rr: I haven't decided yet.]

[Yan Zuo: RXG's performance has been so-so lately, while Vax has been consistently improving.]

[Rr: Yeah, he's very strong, but he needs more practice.]

[Yan Zuo: Okay, I'm not saying anything more, the comments are calling me a slacker...]

Jiang Zhiyu slightly raised the corners of his mouth, put his phone in his shirt pocket, and walked out of the house.

He was wearing a loose, simple solid-color sweatshirt, a dark baseball cap, and a mask that covered most of his face, making him look like an ordinary young man at home.

The supermarket downstairs in the community is a chain supermarket. There are usually not many people. Most of them are residents of the community who come downstairs to shop. The environment is quiet.

Jiang Zhiyu pushed open the door and walked into the supermarket. He went straight to the refrigerated shelf area, bent down and picked out a few bottles of room temperature mineral water and iced drinks. Just as his fingertips touched the bottles, a sharp and piercing argument suddenly broke the tranquility of the supermarket.

"What's wrong with you, kid! Can't you watch where you're going?!"

The man's angry roar suddenly rang out, domineering and arrogant, with a strong penetrating power, instantly drawing the attention of all the customers in the supermarket.

Jiang Zhiyu also subconsciously looked up.