Chapter 21

Juanmao and Weixiao exchanged a glance, reading the same confusion in each other’s pupils—they had clearly seen Jiang Ming’s Jie strolling through the jungle, yet could never decipher the thought process behind those crimson digital eyes.

“It’s just the most basic half-map principle from later generations.” Jiang Ming sipped his cold coffee, watching Jie on screen, blood-drinking and Brutal Force activated; after ensuring the livestream’s spectacle for viewers and YY Platform was sufficient, he placed the final checkmate piece on the chessboard.

Jiang Ming launched a full-scale assault on the blue team.

At the instant the mid-lane first tower collapsed, a shrill scream echoed through the OMG base: “Why is he in the F4?!”

Wu Zustand would never forget that scene: when he stumbled into the jungle to support bottom lane, Jie’s Shadow Blades pierced from the F4 shadows with surgical precision.

Shadow W blocked the escape, the real body used E-A to deal damage, the ultimate’s second dash dodged the rolling barrel—then that last thrown shuriken even predicted his Flash position.

The barrel died; Jiang Ming pushed down the mid-lane first tower.

He reappeared, and amidst the confused and stunned expressions of the WE duo, Jie proactively requested a lane swap, delivering a shocking lesson in mid-lane 4-1 split-push philosophy.

When Jie suddenly marked bottom lane for a swap, Weixiao’s Ezreal was last-hitting in the river.

“He’s going to solo push bottom?” Juanmao’s Sona halted before the second tower, her strings still stained with the enemy’s Lulu’s blood. “It’s only thirteen minutes—this doesn’t make sense…”

“Damn, we’ve got to kill Jie at least once.”

The red team stared at Jiang Ming’s reckless play, their tempers flaring.

Before the words were out, Jie’s crimson marker flashed on the enemy’s second tower.

Three seconds later, the defense tower’s explosion and the system’s team wipe announcement rang out simultaneously—the blue team’s four-man ambush on Jie became a trap set by the Prince’s ultimate.

(Everyone) Prince: “Fearless Vanguard team-building event—buy one, get three free!”

(Everyone) Prince: “Think you can outnumber me? Did you ask this loyal Fearless Vanguard guard?!”

Triplekill!

Legendary!

(JM: GG!)

Clearly, the blue team underestimated the Prince player’s hunger for rank climb. While Jie was solo pushing, the Prince stayed a thousand yards away, ignoring jungle camps entirely—leaving them for Weixiao to farm, as long as his mid-lane dad didn’t die.

Four-vs-one ambush ended with three of them getting reversed.

The other three on the purple team simply stormed the high ground.

At this point, the blue team had no resistance left.

(Prince: Hehe, Grandmaster JM, can I add you as a friend?)

(JM: Easy.)

“Tch, haven’t lain back this comfortably in ages.”

After the game ended, Weixiao sighed.

In past high-rank matches, opponents always clung to bottom lane like they were playing mahjong there. Today, winning with mid-jungle synergy left him disoriented.

As a support with high sensitivity to game momentum shifts, Juanmao felt it deeply: “This year’s gonna be rough. The new patch’s pace is too fast—mid and jungle power spikes come way before bottom lane.”

WE’s past matches relied on dragging out Weixiao’s farm, then winning teamfights.

But today’s first ranked match of the new season—our own Jie barely showed up in any teamfights, yet single-handedly carried the blue team to death. If this pace becomes standard, it’s bad news for our team.

“Ming Kai, what do you think?” Juanmao asked.

“What do I think about what?”

“About the match just now.”

Ming Kai spun his esports chair with a squeak; the monitor reflected his pale, sallow face: “A ground-bound spirit mid-laner plus a starvation-style Prince? Even a dog would shake its head at this team comp.”

Ming Kai ranted about his mid-lane teammate: “Always bragging, this guy’s old habits never change—he’s been blowing himself up like Jie, but he’s this bad and still plays pro? Go home and raise pigs.”

“Damn!!”

A sudden scream came from across the computer.

Weixiao and Juanmao jumped up: “What happened?”

Suddenly, Ming Kai’s China server client pinged with a successful match. When he saw the opponent’s ID, the training room echoed with the sound of a tipped-over teacup: “It’s that JM kid again.”

“...”

Meanwhile, on the 16th floor of YY Headquarters in Tianhe District, Guangzhou, the air was nearly solid.

General Manager Xu Tao, Operations Director Chen Wen, Marketing Head Li Rui, and Technical Director Zhao Zhigang, among other executives, sat around the round table.

“Sorry to drag everyone in this late,” Xu Tao began.

“But please take a look at this data first.”

Xu Tao tapped the projector screen; the laser pointer rested on the peak of the bar graph: “This is the live-stream’s concurrent viewership, just pulled from JM’s backend—over 87,000, setting a new record for the gaming section. User watch time is even more terrifying: an average of 47 minutes per viewer, triple that of any other streamer on our platform.”

He switched to the gift page: “Daily revenue broke 43,000 yuan, with 60% coming from our platform’s top-tier gift, the ‘Excavator’ special effect. Remember—he only started streaming at midnight.”

“So what are you getting at, Lao Xu?”

“My point is simple: while we’ve been debating how to attract more LOL players in the new season, JM has already moved ahead. One-third of his followers this week are new users.”

“Whoa!” One executive sucked in a breath.

What did one-third of new users mean?

That JM alone had done half our user acquisition work?

Operations Director Chen Wen rushed to say: “Our previous contract terms are inadequate—JM’s contract must be raised immediately. If another platform poaches him now, the consequences will be catastrophic.”

Penguin will soon launch nationwide promotions for LOL; the traffic potential is enormous. Everyone here is smart enough to know what it means to have a top-tier traffic magnet on our platform.

“Our previous offer really was subpar…”

Marketing Head Li Rui pulled up a competitor analysis chart: “It’s not promising. FishTV is already in preparation; Zhanqi still focuses on variety shows, but they’ve already expressed interest in streaming. If we stall, we’ll miss the best window to capture the gaming streaming Hongli .”

“But what price should we set for JM and his team? What level of resources should we allocate?”

“Also, since FishTV is preparing, they must be watching JM—possibly even running recruitment pipelines. With competition, we can’t gauge the right balance.”

Offer too high, we lose platform profit. Offer too low, he leaves.

For streamers who just sell flesh with no personal flair, fine—we can replace them anytime.

But JM? He’s a scorpion’s shit—unique.

“I recommend giving him S-tier individually; the team contract can fluctuate based on performance.” Chen Wen, who had closely followed JM’s streams, knew exactly what he was capable of.

She uploaded her data to the projector: “My reasoning is simple—take a look at this. Our operations team has analyzed JM’s stream extensively…”

“For our platform, JM has three irreplaceable advantages over other streamers in attracting new viewers!”

“① Tech-poor relief streaming—he breaks down high-level concepts into ‘last-hitting economics’ and ‘ward geometry’… his tutorial videos are understandable even to middle schoolers.”