The familiar computer screen lit up. Lin Fan looked toward the camera in the bottom-right corner, smiling with that handsome face of his.
"Did you miss me, viewers? Heh heh. Look what rank I'm at now."
A lot of the fans in chat had a million things they wanted to say. They'd waited so long for this moment—just to finally get their questions answered.
But the moment Lin Fan said that, everyone subconsciously looked at the account in the center of the screen.
TES dine.
Rank: Glorious Diamond I, 77 star points.
Holy shit!!!
Today, they'd probably used up an entire year's worth of "holy shit."
But there was no helping it—too many things had happened, and every single one was shocking.
Just when they finally calmed down, another jump scare hit.
"I was afraid you'd queue-snipe me, so I didn't stream at first. I climbed a bunch first, and I'm not planning to keep playing TFT right now, so I came on stream."
"Let me tell you—streaming to climb before you hit high ranks is basically asking to suffer. Tomorrow I should be able to stream my climb to Master."
"Damn, you dodged us for a whole day just because of that? We wanted to know something way more important!"
"Yare… if we'd known you were worried about that, we shouldn't have contested you yesterday."
"You asked for it. We could've known the truth early in the morning, and you forced us to wait this long."
"This is absurd. How did Brother Infinite Borders climb so fast? Two days and you're already Diamond I?"
Meanwhile, a huge wave of Honor of Kings viewers didn't join the chatter. They just watched silently from the side.
First off, the looks were definitely a plus—an instant boost of goodwill.
He didn't seem as terrible as people imagined.
But they still held onto suspicion.
Could this be club hype?
Was the club intentionally funneling popularity to this guy? After all, TES had a strong player like Xiaopeng.
Maybe Xiaopeng made a new account, then used this guy's ID…
That kind of thing was actually common in fandom circles.
Use hype to quickly gather popularity for the "main character."
At least so far, this guy everyone called Brother Infinite Borders hadn't actually shown any Honor of Kings skill yet. The official statement was just dry words—hardly convincing.
So they decided to observe first.
"Alright, we're done with that. It's been a long time since I streamed Infinite Borders for you guys. I'll log in and take a look."
"Looks like settlement is in the next couple days. I'll just farm a bit of merit points."
"I've got over three million merit points this season. I didn't really grind that hard."
"S1 is still pretty boring. Once you confirm the Conquest Alliance, it's all friendly matches."
"You fight for a day or two, and you can tell right away who's stronger."
"The main thing is integration. But the Brave Family people are strong—high account investment and high grind."
While explaining, he logged into Infinite Borders.
But Infinite Borders was still a niche game. In a room with over five million popularity, barely any chat messages could follow what Lin Fan was saying.
Instead, JackeyLove shouting in the training room drew everyone's attention.
"Come on, come on—what, you scared?"
"Your mom's ass—like I'm scared of you."
Chat instantly exploded.
"Holy shit, make JackeyLove stream."
"So this is what Bingbing is like?"
"Worldview shattered!"
"Now I kind of understand why TES doesn't release post-match voice comms. If you listen, it's probably all censored—how would they release it?"
"I'm dying…"
Lin Fan logged into Infinite Borders, fired two shots, wiped out all his squads, set up conscription, and logged right back out.
Farming merit points wasn't exciting.
At most, if he couldn't win, he'd complain about why Ma Chao couldn't beat "Ma Sister."
It had become psychological trauma for him.
A fully maxed Ma Chao getting slaughtered by "Ma Sister's" stacked slashes.
"The happy Three Kingdoms strategy game is over. What do you want to watch next? I basically play anything."
The moment he asked, the entire room got excited.
They'd waited so long—wasn't this the moment they wanted?
Five million popularity, 130,000 real viewers, and the chat spammed in sync:
"Honor of Kings!"
"Honor of Kings!"
Lin Fan was stunned.
Wait—I'm a League streamer, and you're telling me to play Honor of Kings?
It'd been ages since I played League in front of you. Didn't you always spam "play League" before?
How did you switch sides so fast?
Still, he could understand it.
He just didn't expect that playing two casual Honor of Kings games yesterday would cause this much chaos.
The main thing was, his rating wasn't that high. The enemy Gongsun Li felt like she'd break the moment you touched her—who would've thought she was a pro?
"Uh… nobody wants me to play League?"
"Play League my ass. Honor of Kings, go!"
"Honor of Kings! Honor of Kings!"
"Alright. I usually play one or two Honor of Kings games a day for fun. Since you're all asking, I'll stream it for you."
To stream Honor of Kings, he needed a data cable.
After fiddling with it for a bit, the Honor of Kings screen appeared on stream.
Everyone immediately checked the ID.
dine. The avatar matched too.
So it really was this account.
"For Honor of Kings, I don't really have anything to teach you. It's not like League where it's my main job. In Honor of Kings, I honestly don't have much confidence."
"???"
"Brother Infinite Borders is doing the 'humble brag' again. No confidence—yet you blew up pro players."
"Look at that thread. When people saw the official post say he was a League player, they didn't believe it at all."
"So satisfying. I'm telling you, you gotta slap their faces hard like this."
Lin Fan clicked Start Game.
"Peak Tournament, 2200 points. Not low, not high."
Honor of Kings had a huge player base. After only a minute and a half, he got a match.
The moment he loaded in, people started bargaining for roles.
"Third pick jungle, third pick jungle—third pick is China's #1 Lan."
"Fourth pick jungle, fourth pick jungle—fourth pick is 2400 points, China's #1 Jing. Check me."
Lin Fan didn't fight for a role.
"I'm flexible. Leave me whatever you want—I can play it. But usually they give me gold lane."
As he spoke, he flashed his stats.
"Holy shit, that's a carry!"
"Which pro player is this? So cracked!"
A 100% win-rate Yu Ji, with a Large National Badge.
That was basically a top-ten-in-China level marker.
"Damn—Brother Infinite Borders just flexed hard again."
"With stats like that, who dares not give you the role?"
"He quietly tossed a grenade. No wonder Brother Infinite Borders' Varus is so strong! This is the Honor of Kings training method."
With the badge shown, Lin Fan naturally got gold lane.
Without hesitation, he locked in Yu Ji.
Both sides picked quickly, and the draft was decided in a blink.
On the other end—Tencent E-sports.
"Yu Ji…? The Yu Ji players I've been running into lately have all been pretty strong…" Yinuo's voice was quieter, like a bullied little wife.
But thinking back to the day he got blown up, he stayed tense.
Not afraid of "what if," only afraid of "what if it's that guy again."
Then, out of nowhere, he saw chat messages spam: the enemy Yu Ji is dine…
He immediately opened mic: "Jungle and gold lane can watch out. Enemy Yu Ji seems really strong—target her a bit. I'm Yinuo."
That move instantly confused his viewers.
"Who's Yu Ji?"
"Didn't you hear about today's chaos? dine. He stomped Yi Zheng, Zhang Daxian, and Yinuo."
"Ahem. I'm calling jungle because I get countered. Marco Polo doesn't like Yu Ji. If you gank a few times, it's easy to play."
"Mainly because Yu Ji's range is long. We shouldn't trade first—stay back. Once the jungler comes, we win."
Yinuo wanted a clean revenge game.
At minimum, he couldn't let "dine" automatically mean "Yinuo got stomped."
That couldn't stand.
And the most outrageous part was that this was a League pro.
He couldn't accept it.
Luna jungle heard it was Yinuo and immediately agreed, promising she'd come after her clear.
Only then did Yinuo relax a little.
He never expected that after only streaming for a bit, he'd run into his current nemesis.
Countless pros were terrified of matching into dine and losing—getting nailed to the shame pillar again.
Playing Marco Polo, Lin Fan's plan was clear: level one, press the lane.
He controlled Yu Ji and walked up, auto-attacked, then sidestepped down to dodge Marco Polo's first skill, and fired his own first skill to hit cleanly.
The arrow cut through the air, and Marco Polo's HP visibly dropped.
He chased and kept poking, forcing Marco Polo down by a full third of his health with two more hits.
Just from that wave of micro, eighty percent of the viewers were basically convinced.
Yesterday's trending player really was Brother Infinite Borders.
Insane.
Being good at League was one thing—but being good at this many games too?
Holding his phone, Yinuo's face stiffened.
"Why is the enemy's reaction so fast? This is annoying."
But that was only the first wave. The real pain was still ahead.
Every time Yu Ji's skills came up, she'd fire a heart-piercing arrow.
And she'd always catch Marco Polo at the moment he walked up to last-hit, then punish him with autos.
Honor of Kings wasn't a game where you could ignore last-hits.
On the contrary, last-hits mattered a lot—each one gave more gold than the baseline.
Especially for pro players, who were more sensitive to it than anyone.
Which meant Lin Fan constantly had windows to harass.
In no time at all, Marco Polo's HP dropped below half.
After level two, he popped his second skill and chased even more aggressively.
Yinuo couldn't stand it anymore and retreated under turret.
Then another arrow came through—ice-cold to the heart.
"Damn it. The enemy Yu Ji is disgusting."
With only a bit over 100 HP left, he wanted to run back for a healing pack.
"There's no choice—I have to call Luna."
Luna wasn't level four yet, so there wasn't much gank potential.
But having to recall this early was unacceptable.
He could only forcefully "shake for help."
Lin Fan saw the enemy staying on lane at that HP instead of recalling.
That was obviously calling for help.
In that case, he could call his support up too.
He pinged for assistance on the minimap, and Cai Wenji ran up immediately.
Seeing Yu Ji press Marco Polo in front of turret, Luna hurried up without hesitation.
After all, this was Yinuo. Helping him win meant a big chunk of rating.
Once Luna was in position, Yinuo jumped out with second skill and threw first skill to start a burst.
But Lin Fan was ready—Yu Ji popped second skill and pulled back, dodged Luna's skill, then fired a heart-piercing arrow that hit both.
Their damage didn't come out, so the kill was hard to secure.
Then Cai Wenji fired her first skill!
Crap—why is Cai Wenji here?!
Yinuo instantly realized something was wrong.
But his summoner spell was Stun, not Flash.
He got stunned in place, and Yu Ji's two autos emptied Marco Polo's HP.
First blood!
"It's over. Why the hell is Cai Wenji here?!"
The worst part was that both of their skills missed, and the enemy Yu Ji styled on them.
Staring at his grayscale screen, Yinuo felt miserable.
After he died, he watched Luna get chased down by Yu Ji and Cai Wenji.
No way to fight back—just got run down.
Even under turret, a perfectly aimed shot cleared the remaining HP.
Double kill!
"Done. I got two kills—now they can't play. I don't get it. You're not even level four and you come up here to donate?"
"Yare… is this even fair? Brother Infinite Borders hasn't missed a single first skill, huh?"
"They're actually suffering."
"People said that's Yinuo."
"Who's Yinuo?"
"AG Super Play Club's pro. Won a title. He's decent."
"Decent? He's getting hung up and beaten by Brother Infinite Borders."
With two kills, the economy exploded, and Lin Fan started mowing people down.
Marco Polo walked up—one arrow and he was at half.
No way around it. The item lead was too big, and Lin Fan snowballed the gold even faster.
In Honor of Kings, once the opponent has a lead, comebacks are hard.
Of course, because the gold comes fast, if you can stall to 20–30 minutes, there's still a chance.
But Lin Fan didn't sit still after getting ahead.
He rotated mid and opened on Angela.
He sidestepped the second skill, landed two autos to crit, and finished with a first skill.
Angela's remaining HP evaporated.
Angela opened her item page and her eyes widened.
Peak Summoner 7: Endless Blade, Shadow Blade, and Daybreak were all nearly completed.
How did he have so much money? Where did he even rob it from?
Meanwhile, the Honor of Kings crowd watching was stunned.
Yu Ji cut people down wherever she went.
And this game wasn't against weak players—his lane opponent was Yinuo.
But Yinuo's scoreline was already 0–7. Completely stomped.
The game ended easily in fourteen minutes.
"So strong!"
"So hard… this Yu Ji!"
Looking at Lin Fan in the bottom-right camera, the girls' eyes went hazy.
TL: If you want to read ahead by at least ten chapters, patreon.com/EdibleMapleSyrup