Chapter 498: I Won’t Apologize!

Tsunamis of rage from fans flooded Cao He’s Weibo, yet, he still stood his ground, maintaining his claim that e-sports had no place in the professional sporting world. Cao He talked a lot about how sports was supposed to train your body and other nonsense, hoping that his followers could rationally think about sports.

However, his attitude only caused players to become even more upset, and the comments were rushing in even faster than before. Ultimately, Cao He had no choice but to delete his original post.

After he did so, the arrogant little Cao He thought that this would be the end of his predicament, but the internet community didn’t relent, wanting a formal public apology from the diving champion.

In just a moment, people were in heated debates on whether or not Cao He needed to apologize.

This just once again proved that you should never anger the internet, and if you did, you had best be prepared to face the consequences!

Luocheng was getting a kick out of reading all these posts. He hadn’t been in such a good mood ever since his short trip to Beijing, but the protectiveness and passion these players had toward e-sports comforted Luocheng’s nerves. Among the rows and rows of rage, there were your standard angry netizens, but there were some that went much darker. Cao He probably enjoyed reading the post, but he would also be spitting froth when he got to the last sentence.

“Can you people be more rational? What Cao He meant when he said e-sports wasn’t an official sport was that sports needed to train one’s body. Factually speaking, e-sports does not help strengthen a player’s physical health, and with professional e-sports players sitting in front of their computers motionlessly for hours on end, their bodies would surely start to deteriorate, proving that e-sports should NOT be considered a true sport. In conclusion, Cao He means that activities that require one to use their brains are not sports, you have to use your limbs instead. So I urge you, please stop bullying brainless retards like Cao He. Retardism is a serious disability, please give our disabled friend some respect for his determination to continue diving…”

Luocheng was in stitches by the time he finished the post, what a twist!

Indeed, Cao He had read the comment all the way in the Beijing Aqua Academy, proceeding to go dive as usual after reading through it, but because he hadn’t recovered emotionally from the comment yet, he ended up belly-flopping onto the water’s surface, and the splash he caused was really quite the spectacle for the other people around him.

Most importantly, the members of the female swim team were resting by the pool as well and they had a clear view of the absolute fail Cao He had just made, laughing out loud at the scene.

Cao He crawled out of the water with his face completely dark.

“Cao He, what are you doing, that was a beginner’s mistake! You had problems with your breathing! Take a deep breath and adjust before jumping, don’t just dive straight away like that!” his coach scolded.

“Must be because of the stuff on Weibo.” Chen Bing laughed from the side.

Chen Bing was one of Cao He’s good friends that trained with him, but unlike Cao He, aside from being an amazing diver, Chen Bing was also an avid lover of video games. World of Warcraft, Dynasty Warriors, DotA, LoL, he played all of them, after his strenuous daily training, of course.

Part of Cao He’s dislike toward e-sports was actually because of Chen Bing. Chen Bing performed better than him, however, he played games during his free time while Cao He spent his free time practicing. Even so, Cao He still couldn’t dive as well as Chen Bing could, and he would often mutter to himself about how Chen Bing’s diving career was going to be destroyed by those video games.

“Shut up!” Cao He was already angry, and with Chen Bing fanning the flames, he was furious.

Cao He may have raised his voice too high seeing as the whole pool heard him, and even the women lounging by the pool jumped a little in their skin, all starting to whisper to each other instead.

Seeing that there were girls present, Cao He pushed his rage down.

D*mn it, his ‘Prince of Diving’ image was ruined! He had been trying so hard to only show the most handsome and most gentle sides of him in front of the girls, this Chen Bing was such a pain in the ass! Those two e-sports kids were too, they must’ve been behind what had happened on his Weibo.

“Cao He, why don’t you just post an apology and settle everything. Otherwise, who knows how long this will go on for?” Their coach spoke up.

“Did I say anything wrong!? Why should I apologize!?” Hearing his own coach telling him to apologize, he was obviously upset.

“This isn’t a matter of right or wrong. If you cause such a fuss on the internet, the Sports Administration is definitely going to find out. If this little ‘scandal’ affects your ability to participate in competitions, you’re going to lose out on much more.” The coach tried to reason with Cao He, but sadly, it was to no avail.

“I won’t apologize, I’d rather die! Let them say what they f*cking want to!” Cao He scoffed and waltzed toward the changing rooms.

Cao He would usually talk to the girls before he left, but he wasn’t in the mood today, keeping his head low as he walked by them.

The girls on the swim team were resting on some chairs, all sat in a row as they watched Cao He walk past. Once he was out of earshot, the youngest fifteen-year old of the group asked with her eyes wide, “Hey, what’s going on with Cao He? I hear he’s been in some trouble?”

“Trouble?” Yu Yu asked, a puzzled expression crossing her face as she dried her hair.

“Oh, is our little Yu Yu worried about her Cao He?” Ai Ping, one of the older girls on the swim team teased.

“Ooh~” The girls were suddenly very excited.

“Shut up!” Yu Yu said, crossing her arms and looking away as she did.

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The girls saw that Yu Yu was upset, not pushing the subject any further.

It was pretty obvious to everyone that Cao He had a crush on Yu Yu, but it was also pretty obvious that Yu Yu wasn’t interested at all.

Then again, people change. The Aqua Academy prioritized results, and if one day Cao He came back with a golden trophy from a prestigious competition, their short-lived love story just might get a continuation. After all, Cao He’s family background was quite impressive, he was also good-looking, and several other girls already had their sights set on him.

But with what had happened on Weibo recently, a lot of people realized that there was more to Cao He than his flirty exterior.

“So, what happened?” the fifteen-year old asked.

“Something happened on Weibo. Not sure why, but Cao He suddenly posted about how the recently popularized e-sports wasn’t a true sports, he said something like ‘If they could play video games and become a champion, what do people like us train all day for?’” The all-knowing Ai Ping said.

“Is there anything wrong with that statement? Winning champion just by playing video games doesn’t seem right, does it?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s weird.”

The older Ai Ping looked at her younger teammates who were clueless about the real world and shook her head. “You guys… E-sports is super popular right now. Go ahead and ask any random guy in any random university, they’re all either playing LoL or DotA or something else. These video games were just that—games. However, e-sports now has its own professional players. Playing e-sports, winning prizes, winning international competitions, these are what these pro-players live for, not too different from us athletes. The only difference is that our country hasn’t fully recognized it as a sport, but even so, 17 people are going to represent China to compete in the Asian Indoor Games. Cao He was basically asking for it when he decided to diss e-sports online for no reason, and with how much of the internet community are gamers, they could easily grind him to dust.”

“Really? I always thought e-sports was just playing video games.” The youngest girl suddenly had a moment of realization.

“Me too…”

“Yeah, I didn’t know e-sports was so popular nowadays.”

“Do they train as hard as us?”

“It seems like it. You try spending ten out of your twenty-four hours a day in front of your computer, you’d go crazy no matter what you were doing, let alone spending all that time on gaming. Plus, most of their free time is spent playing as well, day in and day out. E-sports players don’t have a lot of the benefits that we have either… For most of them, not winning prize money means not being able to pay that month’s rent.”

“If you put it like that, Cao He was being really mean by posting that…”

“I still don’t think so… e-sports just isn’t a sport. You’re just moving your fingers all day, it has to be easier than us swimming all day.”

The girls were chatting up a storm, talking over each other and gesturing wildly to try to get their points across, but Yu Yu sat silently next to all the commotion.

She really didn’t know much about e-sports, she only knew that they were video games… video games that had ruined the lives of a lot of young people, her brother included.

However, Yu Yu hadn’t expected all the backlash Cao He was getting from a single Weibo post. Could it be that e-sports wasn’t what she had thought it was?

It didn’t matter anyway. How could her big brother run away from their home again and again!? He didn’t have any sense of responsibility.

What she really couldn’t stand was how she had put an effort to go and find him, and yet, he acted like he didn’t want anything to do with her, so annoying!

“What are you all talking about? If you have the energy to gossip, why don’t you go swim a few more laps! Do you want to get into the Olympics or not!”

The female coach’s booming voice scared the girls into timid little mermaids, all of them quickly hopping back into the pool.

She walked over to the diving coach, looking at her girls pretending to work hard and shaking her head. “These kids… can’t take my eyes off of them or else they’ll slack off.”

“Hehe, they’re already training really hard, they all know that the Olympics is coming. If they don’t perform well then, all their previous efforts would be for nothing.” The male coach laughed.

“It’ll be good if a few of them can even get into the preliminaries.” The female coach sighed.

“That Yu Yu girl’s pretty alright, good performance, and she’s very stable.”

“Yes, I just hope she won’t be a disappointment. If she could bring back a huge trophy, everyone will be happy.” The female coach was quite pleased when Yu Yu was mentioned, she saw so much potential in her.

“Haha, she will! This Cao He kid however, he’s got a good foundation, but that attitude… he’s been all over the place with what has happened recently…”