CH 1

At 7 o’clock in the morning, Rong Yi was awakened by the vibration of his phone.

He answered the call with sleepy eyes.

The person on the other end spoke very politely, “Brother Rong, I’m at your doorstep. Are you ready?”

Rong Yi’s voice still sounded sleepy and hoarse, but also pleasant, “Okay, give me ten minutes.”

The person on the other end had a professional tone, “No rush, we came too early. We know the work schedule of your profession.”

Rong Yi got out of bed quickly, put on a white T-shirt, and began to wash up.

He didn’t bother to explain that as an e-sports player, his daily routine was actually quite stable.

When he was fifteen or sixteen, he used to stay overnight in internet cafes, but as he got older and realized he was not very good at it, he quickly became a health-conscious person who brewed goji berry tea in a thermos.

When he went out, the man at the door obviously hesitated for a moment.

It was no wonder, because as the former commander of the famous but faceless RS team, the public’s speculation about his looks was generally not good.

But the young man in front of him was so handsome that he thought he had gone to the wrong house. Rong Yi had fair skin and looked slightly younger, like a high school student. His peach blossom eyes were very beautiful.

Rong Yi didn’t have any airs, and only a few traces of laziness showed between his delicate eyebrows.

When the man didn’t speak, Rong Yi raised his eyebrows and started the conversation first, “RVG team?”

“Yes, yes, I’m the manager of the RVG club. Here’s my business card.”

The manager handed him his business card. “Today, we mainly want to take you to our venue to take a look. It’s the off-season, and our club has excellent conditions. If you come here, you will definitely be a star player, and your treatment will not be worse than that of RS.”

“No need to go to the venue. I don’t want to be photographed by the media.”

Rong Yi pointed to the outside of the window casually, with a slight tiredness in his beautiful peach blossom eyes. “Let’s talk over there.”

The team manager choked for a moment, but didn’t dare to say anything else. He followed Rong Yi to the café across the street.

This was a commercial district, with residential areas located near the business district. The location was prime real estate.

The two ordered coffee and sat down. Rong Yi remained silent, looking down at the team’s information that was handed to him.

He was very quiet, his face young and tender, but his gaze was clear.

This kind of temperament reminded people of some of the legends about Rong Yi in his early years—he was the best e-sports headhunter in the world, and three out of four members of the RS championship lineup in the spring tournament this year were recruited by him.

What kind of person would the Challenger team see him as?

After a moment, the team manager cleared his throat and still wanted to take back the initiative. “Well, our boss has always been your fan. Since you are now free from your contract with RS, we want to try and see. We are willing to add 20% on top of the existing listing price. What do you think?”

“Let’s not talk about money for now.”

Rong Yi looked at the information, “I play the command position, your team doesn’t need a commander.”

“We can make way.” The manager tried to show his sincerity, “We promise to make everything center around you, including publicity and team coordination. We can tailor the tactics for you.”

“The only thing we can guarantee is that our resources will be tilted towards you. Besides,…” The manager glanced at Rong Yi secretly, “As long as you’re willing to be in the spotlight, it will be a win-win for anyone. Your experience in RS will not be repeated.”

“I’ve thought about it and I don’t want to,” Rong Yi said.

Rong Yi answered quickly and calmly with a slightly closed eye, “If we focus on selecting popular players for tactical configuration, then there is no difference from RS. We don’t need to discuss further.”

The conversation only lasted for ten minutes, and Rong Yi ended it decisively. The manager was somewhat stunned, “You…”

“That’s it. Thank you for taking the time to meet with me.” Rong Yi got up to settle the bill and said to the receptionist, “Please serve breakfast for that gentleman again.”

He turned and went to the restroom, feeling a little drowsy. He bent down to rinse his cheeks with cold water.

His phone kept vibrating, and the manager on the other side persisted in sending him messages.

“I hope you can reconsider! The number of teams that can offer this price is really not high, and the mid-lane player selection in the league is approaching saturation. We came with sincerity. Honestly, if you miss this opportunity, you won’t find a better one. You are still burdened with the termination fee of RS, right?”

…

Actually, the other party was right.

After terminating his contract with RS, he paid a breach of contract fee of 14 million yuan, which was the total amount he had earned in his years in the industry. Now, he was not exaggerating when he described himself as penniless. And he really couldn’t find a better team to join.

RS had just won the domestic spring championship and was in high demand. He had a wide network of contacts.

He was the former chief tactician of RS, but nobody cared. After all, he didn’t show his face, didn’t give interviews, didn’t release peripherals, and more importantly, RS didn’t need him anymore.

Even though he was responsible for the team’s draft strategy and lineup, he was also blamed for leading the team off the beat, and was thought to be out of sync with the team’s rhythm.

After washing his face, Rong Yi turned around and took the elevator back upstairs, contacting the landlord about moving out next month.

With no stable income, he would have to manage his finances carefully sooner or later as a broke person this month.

There were many unread messages on his phone, and Rong Yi flipped through them one by one while opening his computer.

He didn’t have many close friends, but he knew a lot of people in the industry who were mostly interested in his termination from RS and came to inquire about the news.

More people, like his former teammates and students, were silent.

Perhaps because they were still celebrating their victory in the spring tournament, as things stood, RS was the most likely team in China to compete in the world championship.

Rong Yi returned home and habitually turned on his computer, started live streaming, and played games.

It was still too early, and his live stream had few viewers, so it was difficult to get his segment scheduled. Only a few bullet comments spoke in his live stream, wishing him a good morning.

He used to have around 170,000 fans, most of them RS team fans. Since he terminated his contract, he lost quite a few of them, but this was also a good thing. Before his termination, these people used to insult him regarding his tactical allocation. After the termination, they resumed being polite and came to his live stream every day to send messages similar to divorce declarations.

For example, “From now on, we go our separate ways and live happily apart.”

“Where will Rong Yi go in the future?”

A barrage message asked him and he guessed a few popular teams.

Rong Yi was in a good mood and quoted a classic phrase: “I am going to Quan Tai to recruit my old troops, with a hundred thousand flags I will slay Yan Luo.”

The barrage fans: “……”

The game began and Rong Yi stopped talking.

He was playing an anonymous ranked match, where points were the lifeblood of his ranking. He adjusted his headphones and microphone, hid the barrage interface to avoid being disturbed.

In this game, he was placed in a lower position, and his team was lacking a support player, so he filled the role. Then he saw the opposing team’s jungler was playing as “Yin.”

In this segment, the voice chat was on by default. His teammate on the mic laughed disdainfully and said, “Who is this? They dare to play Yin in this segment.”

Yin is a hero with T0 difficulty and popularity, with the most challenging skill mechanisms and the weakest body. Many players can kill easily with him in low-level games but can only act as an ATM in high-level games.

Yi glanced at the anonymous ID on the other side, the dark blue anonymous avatar didn’t reveal any distinguishing features, but his fingertips paused.

He was very sensitive to danger and this feeling had helped him save countless games on the field.

He opened his mic and said in a clear and gentle voice, “Let’s play it safe this game.”

“What are you afraid of? Stick with me, support.” The teammate was a bit impatient. “I’m Diamond rank, farm with me and we’ll end it in 10 minutes.”

Being a good sport, after scouting the vision, Rong Yi followed his teammate. But just before both of them were about to reach level 6, Rong Yi noticed something strange about the enemy’s position. So he warned, “Stay out of sight. The enemy has a Yin.”

His teammate had just started moving and hadn’t had a chance to enter the grass before a silver light flashed, and the enemy Yin jumped in, taking his head in one swift motion.

It was a fluid and fast combo that left no time to react.

Rong Yi pinged a warning signal, telling the rest of his team not to come over, but it was too late. The mid-laner rushed in to save his teammate and ended up giving the enemy Yin a double kill.

The game started off poorly, but Rong Yi remained calm. He was about to type a message to tell his team to calm down when the mid-laner spoke up: “The support can’t play. Can’t you deal damage or see the enemy’s low health?”

Rong Yi: “?”

The ADC who just respawned in the fountain also typed in the chat: “Indeed, it would have been better to follow me from the start. The support is a bit unreliable.”

Both teams could see their blame game in all-chat.

Rong Yi was determined to win, and he was willing to do whatever it took to climb the ranks. He had seen this type of situation many times before and had accumulated enough experience to handle it.

After careful consideration, he typed a sincere message to his team: “Let’s do it this way.”

“Should you two report to the police?”

The game quickly fell into a deathly silence.

It had only been twelve minutes since the start of the game, and the enemy’s Yin hero was already 12-0.

No assists, only solo kills.

Indeed, he was fierce. This rank had already entered the top fifty in the national server, and he was probably a professional player.

In his mind, Rongyi searched through the list of professional players he knew, but couldn’t think of anyone who was known for playing Hidden with such skill.

After a few small team fights, the game quickly entered the familiar stage of defending their base.

Their mid laner hadn’t dealt more than 10% of their total damage output yet, so Rongyi, who had picked a damage-oriented support, focused on clearing minions instead.

Seeing his new item build, his teammates suddenly resurrected their public chat banter.

“That’s all the support can do?”

“The show has just begun, huh.”

Rong Yi: “?”

Rong Yi had a low tolerance for idiots. Just as he was about to insult them, the enemy Yin who had been silently killing them suddenly typed a message.

[Enemy (Yin)]: “If it weren’t for your support, I could have killed you twenty times.”

[Enemy (Yin)]: “If you don’t understand why, you can ask me.”

While typing, the enemy player didn’t hesitate to kill two people on Rong Yi’s team again.

The morale of Rong Yi’s team was successfully reversed by the enemy’s words. The two people who were spoken to went crazy and charged towards the enemy tower, abandoning their own tower.

The enemy received a double kill.

Rong Yi was dead at the fountain, but he watched the enemy Yin’s entire performance and found it interesting.

It wasn’t just because the other side spoke up for him, but because he was the first person in recent years who had such good gameplay and awareness on Yin

The match ended and the settlement page popped up after the failure. The IDs of both sides were revealed as anonymity was lifted.

Rong Yi’s AD and mid laner were actually two players from the Chinese server, but their economy conversion rates were lower than his. They probably saw his ID and knew he was a professional player, so they retreated nervously.

After reporting one by one, Rong Yi felt better. He was about to send a friend request to the enemy Yin, but hesitated for a moment when he saw the ID.

The enemy Yin’s ID caught his eye: [Yin], unique across all servers, impossible to have the same name. From KDA to tactics, to playstyle, even the ID was clean and concise, as if one could catch a glimpse of the coldness and decisiveness behind it.

Everyone else had left, only their two avatars remained on the post-game screen.