The teleportation room had no incandescent lights, only a few dim wall lamps.
They made everyone's faces look even gloomier.
Huo Ziyan's face was pale and his lips were pressed tight as he listened in silence to the third team's captain berate him.
"You never put your heart into training, and now you've even snuck out to play?
You said you weren't feeling well, so what was that about? Doesn't playing tire you out?
If your teammate hadn't been worried something would happen to you on your own and reported it to me, I'd still be fucking kept in the dark!"
The captain was so angry that he spoke without restraint. The third team's vice captain chimed in, too, running Huo Ziyan down as utterly worthless.
"Little Huo, don't blame us for scolding you. You've been freeloading ever since you joined Azure Mist. We haven't seen you contribute anything to the team."
Xu Guan and Meng Yijia, the captain and vice captain of the first team, said nothing. Xu Guan watched Huo Ziyan silently, while Meng Yijia still wore a smile.
"Xiao Liu, go easy on him. Ziyan's young, and he's at the age when he wants to have fun. Now that he knows he was wrong, he'll change."
Captain Liu of the third team hurried to flatter him.
"Yes, yes, Vice Captain Meng is right. Huo Ziyan, the vice captain's even standing up for you. Just admit you were wrong and that'll be the end of it!"
Captain Liu wasn't a bad person. He was usually strict with Huo Ziyan, but when the latter said he was sick, he had granted him leave.
He didn't know what Huo Ziyan had been through on the first and second teams, but judging by his usual performance, he was the talented type. For some reason, he had ended up on the third team.
He had protected Huo Ziyan both openly and discreetly, but Little Huo had low emotional intelligence and couldn't get along with his teammates. Today, one of them had reported him, saying he had faked his illness and spent hours every day playing in a materials instance without coming back.
Captain Liu had lost his temper and cursed at him, and somehow Meng Yijia, the first team's vice captain, had heard him while passing by.
Not only had Vice Captain Meng heard him, but he had also gone and fetched Captain Xu Guan.
Xu Guan was a man who couldn't tolerate the slightest wrongdoing. Stiff and serious by nature, he showed no mercy when criticizing team members and never went easy on those with bad attitudes.
Now they had gone and hit one of Captain Xu's sore spots. Anxious and angry, Xiao Liu really wanted to curse Huo Ziyan for being such a disappointment.
After this incident, he understood a little: Little Huo must have offended Meng Yijia back when he was on the first team! No wonder he couldn't stay on either the first or second team and had slipped down to the third.
Originally, the third team had been playing the bad cop. After a few stern words of criticism, Huo Ziyan could have taken the cue and admitted his mistake, and with luck, the matter might have blown over.
But the normally obedient Little Huo had somehow been brainwashed by someone and actually fought back!
"I didn't do anything wrong," Huo Ziyan said, speaking up for himself for the first time, his voice still trembling a little. "I did go to the hospital, and I gave the captain my consultation slip. Evenings are my personal time. However I use them, I'm not breaking any team rules."
"You're still talking back-"
Captain Liu was so angry his head felt ready to burst. He wanted to slap him. He had given him a way out, and the boy hadn't even taken it.
"That's enough, Xiao Liu." Meng Yijia had seen enough of the third team's performance and cut him off without mercy. "Little Huo has a point. The team's authority doesn't reach that far. As long as our members don't go street racing or drinking, or do anything dangerous, we have no reason to interfere."
Then he looked at Huo Ziyan, who stood ramrod straight, and smiled.
"Besides, Little Huo will soon have a new path ahead of him. Let's not spoil things for him. You're going to scold him right before he leaves? When Little Huo makes it big someday, you'd better watch out, or he might settle accounts with you."
Meng Yijia's offhand remarks struck Huo Ziyan precisely where it hurt most, and he couldn't help clenching his fists.
He knew perfectly well how Huo Ziyan had been driven out of the first team!
It had happened a year ago, during the then-rookie Huo Ziyan's debut. Azure Mist's higher-ups had high hopes for him and had him join the first team for an S-rank instance called the Seventh Hospital.
The instance was no easy one, but Azure Mist's first team was made up of elites, and they had prepared thoroughly. When running an S-rank instance, they could usually ensure that everyone came out unscathed.
Vice Captain Meng had volunteered to guide the rookie through the map. Meng Yijia had only recently been promoted to vice captain, and Xu Guan assumed he wanted to prove himself and secure his position, so he assigned him the task of looking after Huo Ziyan.
The two entered the operating room, where a monster wrecked the raven camera. The footage from that period was missing, and viewers in the livestream saw only darkness.
Soon afterward, a camera in the corridor showed Huo Ziyan escaping alone, while Meng Yijia's screams came from inside the operating room.
With the vice captain injured, Xu Guan used a Rest to forcibly interrupt the instance.
There were several ways to interrupt an instance: either all the players were wiped out and it was automatically judged a failure, someone found a bug in the instance, or someone used a Rest.
When Zheng Xun had repeatedly run the Huaiyin Instance by jumping off the building, it wasn't because the jump couldn't kill him, but because he had discovered a bug there during a simulation.
Of course, the bug had gone undiscovered for so long because no normal person would jump off a building. Without using a skill card, death in the game would directly cause death in reality.
Rest was also one of the powerful skill cards. It could stop an instance in progress and spit out all the players.
But the skill card's effect came at a price. After Xu Guan used Rest to save everyone, every team member felt as though all their strength had been drained away and remained unconscious for several days before waking.
Meng Yijia was hurt the worst; he had nearly bled to death.
They had already been very lucky. Had things been worse, someone might have died.
The first team had gone to such lengths and only narrowly escaped the instance. Everyone, including the viewers, believed that Meng Yijia had been severely injured because Huo Ziyan had abandoned the vice captain and fled alone.
Such a betrayal of a teammate was extremely serious, but Azure Mist took into account that he was a rookie who didn't understand many things and needed to be taught gradually, so they placed him on the second team.
It was said that Huo Ziyan had defended himself, but that was only hearsay. The facts were plain to see, leaving no room for argument.
Only the people involved knew the truth.
Now the two people involved stood face-to-face, confronting each other, and the gulf between their positions had become impossible to bridge.
Meng Yijia appeared as the victor, while Huo Ziyan, the young man in whom the guild had placed its hopes last year, whom the higher-ups had favored, and who might even have become a candidate for vice captain of the first team, was about to be driven out of the Azure Mist Guild.
If it had been someone else leaving a major guild, there would still have been guilds ranked in the thirties or forties willing to take them.
But Huo Ziyan couldn't. He bore the stigma of being a despicable person, had made no contributions to the team, and was being kicked out of Azure Mist on less than amicable terms.
Other guilds, so long as they didn't want to offend Azure Mist, wouldn't sign him.
So what if he was a genius? He had still ended up unwanted!
Faced with Meng Yijia's barbed remarks, Huo Ziyan had no way to fight back.
He had never been good at defending himself. Otherwise, he would have proven his innocence long ago!
How else could things have come to this...
The teleportation room fell quiet, and only Huo Ziyan's somewhat heavy breathing could be heard.
Xu Guan, who had not said a word, finally spoke.
"Who went into the materials instance with you?"
Huo Ziyan looked up, a little surprised, unsure how Xu Guan had guessed.
"You've been going into the materials instance to mine for over a week, but today was the first time you brought ore back. Conditions in the sand zone are poor. You couldn't have gone there just to clear your head. Who did you give your ore to?"
Meng Yijia didn't understand why Xu Guan cared about this. They had checked the teleportation portal's travel records, and Huo Ziyan had been the only one.
"If it wasn't someone from our team, there's no need to pursue it, is there?"
Xu Guan shook his head, standing firm.
"Tell me."
"It was... Zheng Xun." Huo Ziyan hesitated, then said the name.
Zheng Xun!
The name was like a bomb dropped into everyone's hearts.
Anyone involved with the White Tower Game would have noticed that name.
Xu Guan seemed not to have expected a member of his own team to have any connection to Zheng Xun, and he froze for a moment.
"Zheng Xun." Meng Yijia ground his teeth at the mention of the name.
Another so-called "genius"!
"Getting involved with someone who ignores rules and discipline like that, no wonder you're becoming more and more-"
"Talking about me?"
A voice that shouldn't have been there rang out.
They all turned toward the source.
A head emerged from the chimney-shaped teleportation portal. The man reached out and hooked his arms over the outer wall, supporting his whole body.
He narrowed his eyes and looked around the room, his gaze finally settling on Huo Ziyan, who stood alone with no one to help him.
Looking excited, he waved.
"Little Huo, why are you just standing there? Come out and play."