The results from Study of the Three Kingdoms went far beyond Ye Lingchen's expectations. The dramatic surge in popularity was surprising and it even surpassed Candle Blowing Ghost.

On second thought, Candle Blowing Ghost was good but it was not widely accepted by the general public. There was a big difference between spiritual novels and history. His Study of the Three Kingdoms was recognized by the country as the absolute benchmark.

Upon entering the system interface, the accumulated popularity during that period had changed increased from 20,000 to 89,568. It would not be long before it reached 100,000.

Sure enough, making frequent big waves was very conducive to popularity gain.

He looked at the time. It was only ten minutes past nine, and since Ye Lingchen had nothing going on, he decided to enter the gaming world.

He clicked on the WeChat group and called out in the game hosting group, "Are there any premade spots?"

After Ye Lingchen's earlier suggestion, Song Qian immediately began to act. He encouraged the game hosts to form a premade team at a set time every night to attract the audience's attention.

Doing so actually made it the center of attention, turning into a good topic for interaction between fans. It was really interesting to watch the hosts fighting each other in the game and sometimes even blaming each other.

[Love Letter: F*ck! BOSS is here!]

[09: Yes, there's still a spot, but...whichever team BOSS is in will surely win!]

[Wu'er: Huhuhu, Big Bro Y-God finally remembered Wu'er. I want to team up with Big Bro Y-God.]

[Coold: Y-God, you seem to be in a good mood. Congratulations on the popularity of Study of the Three Kingdoms.]

[Little Guai: I'll feel really guilty if Y-God is my opponent. After all, he's my boss and even I wouldn't dare to kill him.]

Ye Lingchen smiled slightly. [Little Guai, you seem to be confident in your technique? See you on the battlefield.]

Little Guai immediately sent a half-crying emoji, [It's just a joke, please don't abuse me.]

Soon, the team started.

To maintain the balance considering Ye Lingchen's outrageous strength, him, Coold, Wu'er, Cannon God and nada formed a team of five. Fundamentally speaking, the other five-person team was better than Wu'er's team.

The game soon began.

Originally, many viewers watched the host's premade team as usual. At that time, however, everyone froze and rubbed their eyes vigorously before squinting to see once more.

[F*ck! Who am I seeing here? Y-God?!]

[I thought I was seeing things, but it really is Y-God!]

[Y-God, oh f*ck! Did you come here to game right after you finished streaming Study of the Three Kingdoms?!]

[You should continue streaming Study of the Three Kingdoms; I still want to listen to what's next for Cao Cao. You fell from grace!]

[Shut up! Y-God is also very good at playing games. I haven't watched him for a long time. It's a visual feast!]

[I pity Y-God's opponents, but...would they dare to do anything funny, since Y-God is their boss?]

...

Ye Lingchen's appearance immediately attracted more attention, with each person watching the game attentively. The entire OTA category's popularity increased by 50%!

Love Letter and the rest of the fans got even more ecstatic. Y-God's graciousness brought them plenty of fans and ample attention.

However, the prerequisite for their gratification was that they had to accept Y-God's ruthless abuse. The more ravaged they were from the torture, the more explosive the bullet screen was.

[Not gonna lie to the host, I came here just to watch Y-God abuse you.]

[Miserable, so miserable! This is the first time I saw the host being abused so terribly, but why am I feeling so delighted though?]

[Don't cry, host. Stand up for yourself!]

[Here's a bonus question. How large is the area of darkness within the host's inner heart at the current moment?]

[Answer: 100%!]

...

The following days, Ye Lingchen went to class during the day and coded when he had time to spare. At night, he would make live streams for enrichment.

When Saturday came, Ye Lingchen headed straight to Huaqing University.

That was the day he promised to meet with Xu Wanqing—the day of his participation in the math competition.

Ye Lingchen arrived at Huaqing University entrance in the early morning. Xu Wanqing was already waiting there.

"Student Ye, here!" Xu Wanqing beckoned Ye Lingchen. "Come on, I'll bring you to the classroom. We'll gather there first."

Capital was a metropolis, so it was only natural that Capital would be selected as the competition's location. It also avoided the trouble of having to travel to another city, which was good news for Ye Lingchen.

Once they entered the classroom, they discovered that many people were already there. Even so, they all seemed to have arrived fairly recently as were busy chatting with one another.

"Teacher Xu is here." Everyone noticed Xu Wanqing, and although she looked young, her reputation was still quite prestigious.

However, everyone frowned when they laid their eyes on Ye Lingchen. A plump middle-aged man could not help but ask, "Teacher Xu, this is ..."

"He's Ye Lingchen. A student at Capital University. I was the one who invited him to participate in the competition," Xu Wanqing explained.

"What?"

Everyone was dumbfounded, including three gray-haired old professors present there. They subconsciously began sizing up Ye Lingchen and frowned deeply.

"Professor An, is this a student from Capital University? Do you know him?" an old man asked.

Professor An shook his head.

"Student Ye, these three are Professor Bai from Huaqing University, Professor Tang from Capital Institute of Technology, and Professor An from your Capital University," Xu Wanqing introduced them to Ye Lingchen at once.

Ye Lingchen immediately greeted them.

"This student, are you from Capital University's mathematics department?" Professor An thought for a moment but came up empty, so his only recourse was to ask.

As a math professor at Capital University, he was more than familiar with the university's outstanding math students. He knew each of them, but he had never heard of Ye Lingchen.

"I'm a freshman from the language department," Ye Lingchen answered softly.

"What?"

Everyone was startled yet again. They stared blankly at Ye Lingchen in complete speechlessness.

"Are you kidding me?" The plump middle-aged man looked at Ye Lingchen in disbelief. He then turned to Xu Wanqing. "Are you sure he's the one you invited to participate in this competition?"

The middle-aged man was named Xu Dong and he was also one of the teachers who led a team.

Xu Wanqing nodded, "Student Ye's math is very good. I can attest to that."

Despite her words, the expressions shown by the others made it quite clear that they did not believe it.

"Teacher Xu, this is not the time for child's play! There are many students who score good in math, but only three participants from the entire Capital are allowed to participate in this competition! Capital's reputation is at stake here!" Xu Dong frowned. He finally said what he had to say after finding it hard to keep it all in.

He later pointed to two other students who looked slightly elder than Ye Lingchen and said, "You two, please introduce yourselves."

"Zhang Yu, a graduate student in the mathematics department from Capital Institute of Technology. I won the first prize in the Youth Mathematics Competition, the National Mathematics ***1 Award, and the first place in the Mathematical Modeling *** Team ..."

"My name is Cao Tongtong, a graduate student in mathematics at Huaqing University. During my studies, I published three papers on mathematics, all of which were accepted by the state for publication. I also won the *** Award and the *** Mathematics Award."

...

This and the *** appearing in the next few instances are exactly from the raw.