How could Su Yuhan not know? She knew perfectly well. After all, she was the one who'd personally handled it.
The final payment, symbolizing the mission's completion, was still sitting in her account right now.
However, this silly girl and her friend clearly hadn't connected her to the incident, so Su Yuhan was happy to keep her secret identity under wraps.
"Really? Someone actually accepted a weird mission like that and even completed it? That's incredible."
"Right? My friend said his boss was ecstatic. He even made a special trip to the office yesterday afternoon to buy them all milk tea. But the person who did it is really mysterious. They're probably afraid of retaliation or getting into trouble. Now, whenever employees at his company ask, the boss just clams up. He only says it was a righteous person who couldn't stand by and watch, and he won't reveal another word. We don't even know if it was an internal employee."
Su Yuhan smiled faintly, neither confirming nor denying anything.
"Whether it was one of their employees or not has nothing to do with us. We can just watch the drama unfold."
"That's true."
"Alright, since that mission is done, let's drop it. Think about this for me: what kind of work makes good money fast and has a relatively flexible schedule?"
"Good money, fast, and a flexible schedule?" Yuan Xiangxiang actually pondered her words for a moment. "I've got it! Why don't you start livestreaming with me? Or you could make short videos."
"Livestreaming and short videos?"
'Maybe I've been a programmer for too long,' Su Yuhan thought. 'I feel like there's a generation gap between me and these young people.' She really didn't know much about the things Yuan Xiangxiang was mentioning.
As if sensing Su Yuhan's confusion, Yuan Xiangxiang gave her a quick rundown on how online livestreaming and making short videos worked, including how to make money from them. Afterward, still worried Su Yuhan didn't get it, she hesitated and said, "Why don't you come over to my place tonight and watch me stream? Think of it as a trial run. If you think you can handle it, you can give it a try. If not, we'll figure something else out."
Su Yuhan thought it was a viable idea. She had always been a woman of action. After resting for a day, she was lively as ever that evening and went over to Yuan Xiangxiang's place to watch.
Yuan Xiangxiang was currently living in an apartment she'd rented after getting a job. It was a one-bedroom, one-living-room unit and wasn't very large. All her streaming equipment was set up in her bedroom.
When she said "equipment," it was really just a computer and a ring light.
According to Yuan Xiangxiang herself, she just streamed a few rounds of a game after work every day to kill time and earn a little extra cash for food. She was no match for the professional streamers who did this for a living, so she didn't need high-end equipment.
While Yuan Xiangxiang was in the bathroom, Su Yuhan took the opportunity to download the streaming platform's app on her phone. She then searched for her friend's account ID, followed her, and then casually started browsing through her past stream recordings.
Just as Yuan Xiangxiang had said, streaming was only her side hustle. Her past streams were mostly from around 7 or 8 PM to 10 PM. In the beginning, she only had ten or twenty viewers, but now that she'd been streaming for a while, she could get a hundred or so people during peak times.
She wasn't exactly popular, but for an amateur streamer with little experience like her, it was pretty good.
While Yuan Xiangxiang was streaming, Su Yuhan sat on the other side of the bed in the bedroom, quietly watching the stream in her friend's channel to see how she did it.
After the usual greetings, Yuan Xiangxiang skillfully launched the game and started queuing for a team.
The game she was currently streaming was a well-known 5v5 multiplayer competitive game. Once the team was formed, they entered the lobby and began picking the characters they would play.
Before Yuan Xiangxiang could even react, someone on the team instantly locked in a side-lane marksman. The small speaker icon next to the character portrait lit up.
"Support, stick with me. I'll carry this game." The voice was that of a mature man, his tone filled with unmistakable confidence and arrogance.
Su Yuhan's brow furrowed slightly. She recalled the stream recordings she'd just looked at; the ratio of her playing support versus Mage was about eight to two, which meant Yuan Xiangxiang was used to playing the support role.
Sure enough, once everyone else had more or less picked their characters, Yuan Xiangxiang also chose a healer support.
After the pre-game countdown ended, the support dutifully trotted after the marksman to the side lane. They had only hit the minions a couple of times when the enemy jungler burst out from their own jungle, making a beeline for the marksman.
Yuan Xiangxiang immediately moved her support forward to block, taking a burst of damage from the enemy jungler while activating a skill to heal her marksman.
Unexpectedly, the enemy jungler was a real beast. He wasn't afraid of a 1v2 at all, weaving back and forth as he thrashed them both. Not only did he not lose any health, but his health bar actually went up a tiny bit.
Seeing that her marksman hadn't farmed up yet and lacked damage, he was beaten to low health in a matter of moments.
The support diligently tried to heal him while blocking the jungler to absorb damage, trying her best to sacrifice herself to save the marksman.
But who knew the marksman was a complete idiot? The jungler was about to hammer him to death, but instead of running, he just wanted to show off. He rolled right into the enemy jungler's face and died on the spot without even getting a skill off.
[First Blood]
Yuan Xiangxiang: "..."
The stream viewers: "..."
Su Yuhan: "..."
'So this is his so-called "carry"? This is it? This?!'
Perhaps stunned by the marksman's suicidal maneuver, Yuan Xiangxiang soon met the same fate, becoming another kill for the enemy jungler.
Giving up two kills right at the start stunned their other teammates as well.
But at that moment, no one said anything, giving the two of them the benefit of the doubt.
However, the main culprit behind it all used the voice chat during his respawn timer to curse out the support for not knowing how to play and getting him killed.
Su Yuhan: "..." 'What kind of freak is this? My friend is getting all the blame for nothing.'
What happened next was simply surreal. This marksman dude kept talking about carrying, but in reality, he had zero skill. His entire damage output came from brute force.
The healer had a miserable time following him. Not only did they get double-killed numerous times, but every time she sacrificed herself, she'd be made the scapegoat, facing verbal abuse that even escalated to personal attacks.
Yuan Xiangxiang wasn't a particularly good-tempered person to begin with. After this happened a few more times, she couldn't take it anymore and started slacking off, watching him feed the enemy kills again and again.
Then the verbal abuse got even worse. Eventually, even the stream chat was affected, as a few trolls—who knew if they were people or bots—popped up and started launching sexist attacks against Yuan Xiangxiang.
[I've been saying it, team games don't need women. Every single one is worse at dragging the team down than the last. Seeing a female player makes me physically sick.]
[Out of ten female gamers, nine are trash, and the last one is especially trash. The marksman is right. Running into a garbage noob like you when I'm trying to rank up is the worst fucking luck. You're a piece of trash!]
Yuan Xiangxiang knew her skills weren't the best, but she truly felt wronged by what was happening today. Her eyes reddened with anger, but she didn't dare just go AFK, afraid it would affect her other teammates who were still playing seriously.
Just then, a hand suddenly covered hers. "Don't worry," a voice said. "I'll take over."