The excitement of successfully awakening the [Remembrance] Path cooled a little after he summoned that chibi Spirit of Remembrance, which did nothing besides act cute and claim it could suck blood.
Luo Li looked at the red ball of energy floating in the living room, curiously surveying its surroundings and occasionally trying to "sniff" Castorice's hair, and sighed deeply.
"Whatever. At least it's a Path summon. Maybe it'll get stronger if I raise it for a while..."
That was all he could tell himself as he forcibly recalled the Spirit of Remembrance into his mental space while it was still clamoring, "Master, Master, I think I'm a little hungry! Can I taste a drop of blood? Just one!" This was a basic operation that came with his Path abilities, similar to recalling a pet.
Life seemed to have returned to normal, yet something was different.
With a legal identity, Castorice had much more freedom to move around.
She began trying to shop alone at the convenience store by the residential complex's entrance, though she always strictly followed the route map Luo Li had drawn and tightly clutched the change and the slip of paper with their address that he had prepared for her.
Luo Li's livestreams returned to normal too. In fact, thanks to a subtle change in his mindset, his gameplay became bolder and his trash talk more plentiful, unexpectedly making his streams considerably more entertaining.
That afternoon, he had just finished a thoroughly satisfying Peak Tournament match. While waiting in the queue, he habitually picked up his phone to browse a short-video platform, hoping to find some new memes or gaming news.
Then he saw a new video posted by that username that made his eyelid twitch-
[Did God Li Serve Up a Meal Today?]'s latest upload: "Yuan Ge's Thousand-Layer Cake: You Think I'm on Level One, but I'm Actually in the Basement! Li Dog's Latest Meal-Serving Gameplay Compilation VOL.15"
The thumbnail captured the ridiculous moment when his Yuan Ge's puppet was instantly vaporized by focused fire while his main body fled in panic.
The corner of Luo Li's mouth twitched.
[Did God Li Serve Up a Meal Today?] was one of the platform's big three accounts dedicated to clipping his livestream "iconic moments," "notorious" for its fiendish choice of angles, devilish editing rhythm, and perfectly matched goofy background music.
Countless times, Luo Li had "solemnly declared" on his streams and social media that he would go after the account owner, only to be counter-killed every time by even cheekier edits, cementing his "meal-serving" image ever more deeply in people's minds.
"Let's see which of my 'heroic moments' you clipped this time!"
With the masochistic attitude of "let's see just how infuriating you can be," Luo Li tapped the video.
The familiar, intensely rhythmic meme-remix background music began.
The video opened with a cool moment from yesterday's stream: his Yuan Ge executing a perfect engage, swapping positions with his puppet and following up with a cross Flash, seemingly about to finish off both enemy carries.
Then the footage abruptly slowed down, accompanied by the caption [At this moment, Li Dog thought he was king of the world].
Immediately afterward, the camera cut to the enemy support landing an unexpected Flash crowd-control skill squarely on his main body.
[Reality: You're just a little punk getting beaten up on level five!]
Onscreen, the Yuan Ge he controlled instantly froze, then all five enemies swarmed him and melted him in a moment, turning his screen gray.
At just the right moment, his own bewildered wail from back then floated across the screen as a bullet comment: "Seriously, officer? That actually hit me?!"
The video immediately filled with [Hahahaha] [Classic, never cool for more than three seconds] [Li-style macro: slaughter early, feed late].
And that wasn't all.
The next clip showed him confidently telling his viewers, "I'll flank with Yuan Ge here, and they're done for! Watch this!"
But halfway through his flank, a low-health enemy jungler passing by casually tossed out a skill that revealed him, then easily collected him like an ATM withdrawal.
The edit paired his awkward chuckle from that moment with bullet comments reading [???] [That's your guaranteed game-winning play?] [The only thing blowing up is your own mental!].
The video ended with a compilation of him dying to unidentified AOE, getting killed by minions, and even accidentally Flashing into a wall because his inputs were too fast. Tragic, stirring background music and captions like "Please stop feeding" and "Your teammates have worn out their question-mark keys" pushed the entertainment value to the limit.
Watching himself look like an idiot as he was repeatedly "publicly executed," Luo Li felt his blood pressure shoot up. He nearly crushed his phone in anger.
"That damn editor! This is absolutely deliberate! They only clip my meal-serving moments! Why don't they clip all my god-tier plays?!"
He indignantly closed the video, feeling that his mood for today's stream had been ruined.
Just then, a private-message notification sounded.
He opened it and found, to his surprise, a video link from his mother, with the message: "Xiao Li, look at the young man in this video. Doesn't the way he plays games look a little like you? Mom found it pretty entertaining."
Luo Li's heart lurched with a sense of foreboding.
With a trembling hand, he opened the link-
Sure enough! It was the "Yuan Ge's Thousand-Layer Cake" video posted by [Did God Li Serve Up a Meal Today?] that he had just watched!
Even his mother had seen it?! That reach!
Luo Li's vision went dark. This was what social death felt like.
Suppressing his mortification, he replied, "Mom! That is me! Your son! It's not a question of looking like me!"
Within seconds, his mother called him directly, her voice filled with disbelief and a trace of... strange excitement?
"Oh my! It really is you, Xiao Li! I thought he looked more and more like you! Look at you! You're this famous now? Someone even shared that video in Mom's square-dancing ladies' group. Everyone said that young man was hilarious!"
Luo Li: "..."
He couldn't feel happy about it at all.
After finally fobbing his mother off, Luo Li took a deep breath and decided to visit the other two "giants" to find a little "balance." Perhaps the other two would be slightly more objective?
He opened the second giant's account, [Li Bao's Thousand-Layer Tactics].
The latest video was titled: "When a Yuan Ge One-Trick Meets a National-Team Support: Twenty-Four Hours of Li Dog Getting Drilled."
It showed a match from a few days earlier, when a professional support player had been queued on the enemy team. Leading their teammates, that player suppressed his vision and landed precise crowd control from start to finish, leaving his Yuan Ge running around like a headless chicken, accomplishing nothing all game and even getting spawn-camped at one point.
The editing didn't deliberately use meme remixes, but that calm, documentary-like presentation, combined with his increasingly agitated voice and a freeze-frame of his final 0-10-2 score, was extraordinarily insulting.
Luo Li clutched his chest, feeling choked up.
Refusing to give up, he opened the last account, the most mysterious of the big three but widely acknowledged to have the best editing quality-[The Li Family's Most Devoted Lover].
This account had a rather distinctive style. It didn't just play with memes and sometimes clipped his highlight plays, but more often captured his bizarre remarks, strange trains of thought, and "classic quotes" produced during interactions with his chat.
Its latest video was titled: "Li Dog's Classic Quotes, Part Three: Philosophical Reflections on Love and Life (Not Really)."
The video included him blurting out "Women will only slow down my sword draw" in a fluster when a female fan confessed to him; when asked about his ideal type, he rubbed his chin, gave it serious thought, and answered, "Someone who can carry me up the ranks";
There was also a late-night emo moment when he gazed into the camera and sighed, "Perhaps my life is like Yuan Ge's puppet. There seem to be so many choices, but the ending was decided long ago..."
Only to get solo-killed the very next second after a misplay, instantly breaking character and roaring, "Fuck, why is this hero so hard?!"...
The video's comment section was an even larger scene of social death:
[Li Dog: Even I'm afraid of myself when I get deep.]
[Thanks, I've been philosophized. Off to lose rank with Yuan Ge.]
[On the self-cultivation of a drama-queen streamer.]
[He's genuinely working so hard to be funny, I'm crying.]
Watching those cringey, goofy, yet genuine clips of himself, Luo Li ground his teeth in anger, yet inexplicably felt a little like laughing.
These clip accounts really had him completely figured out!
He tapped into [The Li Family's Most Devoted Lover]'s profile, wanting to see just how much more embarrassing history the account owner had stashed away.
Just then, a new WeChat message popped up from a contact saved as [Cousin Yu Qian].
Yu Qian, the daughter of Luo Li's mother's older sister, was three years older than him, a typical urban office worker, as well as a hardcore internet surfer and... a secret master editor.
The message contained a video link, none other than the "Li Dog's Classic Quotes, Part Three" that [The Li Family's Most Devoted Lover] had just posted.
Yu Qian: [Image: (Hand-over-mouth laughing emoji) Not bad, Xiao Li Zi. One golden quote after another! Your cousin's practically become your diehard fan!]
Luo Li's eyelids twitched violently. An intensely ominous premonition washed over him like ice water poured over his head.
With trembling hands, he replied: [Cousin... this [The Li Family's Most Devoted Lover]... don't tell me it's you?!]
The other side fell silent for a few seconds.
Then she sent a [Rose-in-mouth.jpg] meme.
Yu Qian: [(Smile) What do you think?]
Luo Li: "!!!"
Case solved!
He had wondered why [The Li Family's Most Devoted Lover] could always pinpoint those tiny expressions and bizarre remarks that even he hadn't noticed! Even the editing style carried a familiar "malice" steeped in familial affection.
After all that, the biggest "mole" had been right beside him! A relative, no less!
Luo Li's blood pressure instantly maxed out, and he called her.
The call was answered almost instantly.
"Hello? My dear little cousin~ What can your big cousin do for you?" Yu Qian's languid voice came through, laced with laughter.
"Yu! Qian!" Luo Li gritted his teeth.
"So that account really is yours! You, you, you... you actually backstabbed me! And you're having such a great time editing it all!"
"Oh, come on, you can't put it like that."
Yu Qian spoke unhurriedly.
"Aren't I helping keep your popularity up? Look how hot you are now. The big three clip accounts! Your cousin deserves a lot of credit, okay!
"Besides, I put so much care into my edits. They've got way more depth than those other two who only know how to make meme remixes~"
"Well, thank you so very much!"
Luo Li was so angry his liver hurt.
"Delete it right now! Especially the latest one! What philosophical reflections? I was just running my mouth!"
"Delete it? What a waste that would be."
Yu Qian laughed.
"This is precious livestream material. It's your cousin's profound love for you~"
She paused, a hint of slyness entering her tone. "Besides, are you sure you want it deleted? I heard... you've been hiding a 'younger cousin' at home lately? Such a lovely girl too... Want me to edit a special 'beauty hidden in a golden house' feature for you? I guarantee it'll blow up even more than your Yuan Ge meal-serving compilations~"
Luo Li instantly broke into a cold sweat.
"Don't! Cousin! Big sis! You're my own big sister, all right?!"
He immediately surrendered.
"Well... she really is a distant cousin! Please don't edit random stuff! I'm begging you!"
"That's more like it~"
Yu Qian gave a satisfied hum.
"Relax. Your cousin knows where to draw the line.
"But... remember to come up with some fresh material next stream. You've nearly drained my stockpile lately."
After hanging up, Luo Li slumped in his gaming chair, feeling exhausted in body and mind.
Being completely under his own cousin's thumb felt truly awful.
He helplessly refreshed the page and discovered that a small parenthetical had quietly appeared after the latest video's title on [The Li Family's Most Devoted Lover]'s profile-(Certain portions have been "optimized" at the subject's emphatic request).
Luo Li opened it. Sure enough, the clips of his most cringeworthy remarks had been replaced with relatively normal content.
He breathed a sigh of relief, only to grow even more depressed.
Didn't this confirm that his cousin had successfully "threatened" him?
As he sat sulking at his computer screen, Castorice's gentle voice came from behind him. "Luo Li, what... are you watching? Your expression looks very... pained?"
Luo Li stiffened and slowly turned around to see Castorice holding a glass of water, curiously looking at the paused image on his computer screen: his own ugly face, twisted after being solo-killed.
At that moment, Luo Li felt immensely grateful that Castorice still knew nothing about this world's internet culture.
He hurriedly fumbled to close the webpage and forced himself to look composed. "N-no, nothing! Just some... um, academic discussion! Yes, academic discussion!"
Castorice nodded, seemingly half-convinced, and set the glass on his desk. "Oh... then remember to drink some water when you're finished discussing."
Looking at Castorice's clear purple eyes and caring expression, then thinking of those socially fatal clip videos online, Luo Li sighed deeply.
Sure enough, Castorice alone was the only warmth in this world!