Chapter 142 Network Malfunction

Amy's Little Nine-Nine Live Stream.

Amy, the beautiful live streamer, had nothing to do today and on a whim decided to give her viewers a makeup class. It must be noted that she was primarily a gaming streamer, so most of the viewers tuning in were middle-aged guys and couch potatoes who came purely for her good looks. But at the end of the day, the core interest of the audience was still watching gaming streams. Especially all sorts of professional tournaments, which were thrilling, passionate, and offered plenty of valuable things to learn.

Thirty-five minutes into the broadcast, Amy had been applying makeup for thirty-five minutes, and the guys found it utterly boring. Yet, upon leaving the stream, they couldn't find anything better to watch, so they simply stayed put to watch the pretty girl put on makeup. On the flip side, a group of girls was squealing with excitement, exchanging makeup tips across the network and incidentally patronizing Amy's Taobao store.

A new batch of users entered.

"Grapefruit Archdemon's live stream is broadcasting a CF provincial semi-final. Pepsi Clan has truly produced a monstrously brilliant strategist. He's way more badass than Dawn and Yang Yu!"

"It's absolute truth, absolute truth! We saw it with our own eyes."

"Damn it, that strategist is practically a real archdemon, sweeping the opponents 10:0 in demolition mode. And this is a professional match..."

This wave of remarks instantly caught the attention of a large number of viewers. If it were just one or two minor anti-fans flooding the screen, they could be completely ignored. However, most of the people who just spoke wore Amy's fan badges, clearly indicating they were regular visitors to Amy's live stream. Since they said so, it obviously couldn't be false.

"Is the match over yet? I have to go check it out."

"Not yet, but almost. If we don't go now, we'll be too late."

"Monstrously brilliant? I must see just how monstrous he is, and whether he's more badass than Dawn!"

Seeing the bullet comment momentum turning against them, the yellow-badge moderators sprang into action left and right, muting some and kicking others. Yet this move not only failed to achieve the desired effect, but it actually backfired, sparking even greater interest among a massive group of gaming fans.

At that moment, a luxury Lamborghini sports car suddenly roared in, flooding the entire screen with dazzling animations.

Amy's third-tier fan, King Amy's Only Love.

He was a "King" tier donor and one of the pillars of support who helped Amy rise to fame, having long ago obtained the permission for split-screen microphone interaction. As soon as he entered, he got on the mic directly, his tone filled with excitement.

"Amy! Hurry, hurry, stop painting your face. Aren't you in HuZ? Set off right now and rush to the HZ Wankai International Exhibition Center; you might still make it in time for the live broadcast of the CF finals. That monstrous strategist actually brought nearly 70 million in investments to the Pepsi Clan."

What? 70 million in investments? Over thirty thousand viewers stood dumbfounded, and Amy even put down her eyebrow pencil, her delicate brows furrowing into curves.

"Only Love, make yourself clear. What do you mean?"

"That monstrous strategist is an external-hired player for Pepsi. He led the Pepsi Clan through four consecutive knockout wins, fiercely breaking through into the semi-finals. You know Young Master Jinghua from HZ, right? He was the first to spot the external strategist and aggressively invested 15 million into Pepsi, triggering a wave of upper-class investments in HZ. Such huge news—you should rush to the scene and grab some popularity. If you manage to interview that monster, you might genuinely explode in popularity across the entire country!" King Amy's Only Love blurted out a long string of details, making it exceptionally clear.

Amy's expression changed drastically. She never expected that she was merely seventy-five kilometers away from HZ and almost missed such monumental news!

"Alright, I'm going right now. My dear friends, no more chatting for now. I'll live stream from the venue later, gotta go!" Amy hastily ended her broadcast, quickly tidied up, hopped into her Maserati Quattroporte, and sped furiously toward HZ.

Being abruptly disconnected, the viewers were naturally somewhat displeased, so they had no choice but to swarm over to the Grapefruit Archdemon's live stream, planning to switch back once Amy arrived at the destination.

The alley warfare had already reached the third round, with Pepsi winning the first two.

Grapefruit was completely captivated. He wasn't particularly fond of CrossFire; his rare knowledge was limited to the Dongjia Clan winning seven consecutive world championships. But today, after watching these short dozens of minutes, he discovered that he genuinely fell in love with this game.

Passion, heat, teamwork, individual heroism—there were simply too many elements packed into it.

Especially witnessing the consecutive kills process firsthand made him feel as if he were personally immersed within it, standing right on the battlefield and ruthlessly reaping the lives of his opponents. This feeling was indescribable, echoing the war dream that existed deep inside the heart of every man.

The engrossed Grapefruit didn't even realize that within a mere two minutes, the number of viewers in his live stream had surged by over twenty thousand. And judging by the growth rate of the numbers, it seemed nowhere near its peak. This instantaneous surge in popularity instantly caught the attention of the live streaming platform, which forcefully hoisted Grapefruit Archdemon's stream to the front page and top screen of the platform, ranking it as the second most popular stream of the day.

The title was even more domineering: A monstrous new CF king is currently being born!

Consequently, even on a Monday morning, Grapefruit Archdemon's live stream grew increasingly hot, with viewer numbers continuing to skyrocket.

The milestone of over 50,000 popularity was very likely to be broken today.

Song Lun hadn't noticed yet. At this moment, the director's perspective switched to Yiran, the strategist for the Pepsi Clan, and everyone's attention followed his movements as he navigated through the alley map.

Having secured two consecutive rounds, Pepsi hit a rough patch in the third round. It wasn't a problem with the strategy, nor was it an issue with the team members themselves. Rather, they were experiencing network latency on their end. Official professional matches had extremely high-spec requirements for internet speed and computer configurations; the network speed had to guarantee a ping value below 5, and the computer's FPS value had to be above 190.

Just as the third round began and the five members of Pepsi picked up their guns from the ground, the ping value suddenly surged to over 30. Thinking nothing of it as merely a minor fluke, they found themselves caught off guard when encountering Left Path from the Black Wind Clan during a gunfight, and the ping value spiked straight up to 80.

Now, things had truly turned troublesome.

In casual leisure gaming, a ping of 80 might not matter at all, but in a professional match, its impact was massive. In this unexpected skirmish, the Black Wind Clan aggressively wiped out Li Gang and his three teammates, paying the extremely low cost of only one death and one member reduced to half health. Looking over at Pepsi's side, only Lu Qing remained, holding a sniper rifle and covering angles from inside a small sniper house at the back.

At the venue, the silence was so profound that even the drop of a pin could be clearly heard. In Grapefruit's stream, the twenty-odd thousand viewers who had just flooded in initially kept the chat screen scrolling frantically, but they quickly quieted down, holding their breath as they intently watched the match.

Everyone was waiting in anticipation to see if this monster could pull off a counter-attack.

"Referee!" Team leader Jiang Chuxue raised her hand, signaling a pause and requesting the organizers to check the network issues.

Li Xin abruptly extended his right hand, cutting off Jiang Chuxue's proposal. Li Gang and the other three members felt immensely depressed, yet they placed absolute trust in Li Xin, leaving their hearts tangled with a complex mix of emotions.

Instantly, Li Xin moved.

He switched to a tactical knife and sprinted directly through the right lane toward the Global Risk base. Passing through the middle route, he picked up a grenade and unhesitatingly hurled it toward the small window. Then, continuing his charge, he switched to an AWM sniper rifle as he approached the window.

Bang!

A grenade kill, striking the half-health Global Risk defender dead center.

Everyone erupted into wild cheers; that tactical awareness was simply godlike.

Yet at that exact moment, another member of the Black Wind Clan, Black Wind Fatty Pig, suddenly rushed out, unleashing a blinding spray of fire from his AK47.