Chapter 21: So Trash, What Pro Are You Even Playing?

Curly and Smile exchanged a glance, reading the same confusion in each other's pupils — they had clearly seen Jiang Ming's Zed strolling leisurely through the jungle, yet could never penetrate the thought process behind those scarlet electronic eyes.

"It's nothing more than the most basic half-map principle of a later generation." Jiang Ming took a sip of his long-cold coffee, watching the Zed on screen, now buffed with Bloodlust + Brutality, and feeling that the show for the viewers and the YY platform stream was about wrapped up — like placing the final checkmate piece on the board.

Jiang Ming began his full-scale assault on the blue side.

The instant the mid-lane tier-one tower crumbled with a roar, a shrill scream echoed through the OMG base: "Why is he at the wraiths?!"

Gogoing would never forget that scene: when he stumbled into the jungle to rotate bot, Zed's Shadow Slash stabbed out from the wraiths' shadow with surgical precision.

W shadow sealed the retreat, body EA dealt damage, ult's second cast dodged the rolling barrel — and that final shuriken tossed toward the tower even predicted where his Flash would land.

The barrel died, and Jiang Ming pushed down the mid tier-one tower in one motion.

Walking out again, under the WE bot duo's expressions of both confusion and shock, Zed proactively offered to swap lanes with the two of them, delivering a small dose of mid-jungle 1-3-1 split-push enlightenment.

When Zed suddenly pinged bot requesting a lane swap, Smile's Ezreal was last-hitting in the river.

"He's going to solo push through bot?" Curly's Soraka paused before the tier-two tower, Wind Requiem still fresh on her strings, "It's only thirteen minutes in, that doesn't match—"

"Damn it, we've got to catch Zed out at least once."

The red-side players watched Jiang Ming's brazenness and felt a nameless fire flare on top of their heads.

Before the words faded, Zed's scarlet ping lit up on the enemy tier-two tower.

Three seconds later, the sound of the turret exploding and the system's ace announcement rang out at the same time — the blue side's four-man gank on Zed became a perfect jar-trap for Sui Zifeng's Jarvan IV to ult.

(All) Jarvan IV: "Brave Vanguard team-building site, buy one get three free!"

(All) Jarvan IV: "Want to outnumber me? Did you ask my loyal Brave Vanguard bodyguard first?!"

Triplekill!

Legendary!

(JM: GG!)

Obviously, the blue side had underestimated Jarvan IV's player's burning desire to climb. While Zed was split-pushing, aside from helping the bot duo with a bit of vision, the rest of the time he just hovered within a thousand units of Zed. Jungle camps? Didn't matter — he left them all for WE's Smile to farm. The key point was his mid-laner daddy could not die.

A four-man gank on one, and they got three of themselves killed in return.

The purple side's other three pushed straight through to the nexus!

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

(Jarvan IV: hehe, JM god, can you give me a friend slot?)

(JM: no problem)

"Phew, hasn't been this comfortable just lying back in a while."

After the game ended, Smile sighed with feeling.

In past high-elo games, the enemy basically acted like they wanted to set up a mahjong table bot lane and never leave. Today, suddenly winning a game riding on mid-jungle, he was more than a little out of his element.

As a support sensitive to shifts in the game's tempo, Curly felt this deeply: "This year we're not going to have it easy. The new patch's pace is way too fast — mid-jungle's power spike comes way before bot lane's."

WE's past matches all relied on stalling for Smile to farm, then winning through teamfights.

But today, in a ranked game of the new season, their Zed never really showed his face in major teamfights from start to finish, yet single-handedly carried the blue side to death. If this kind of tempo became the norm, it wouldn't be good news for their team.

"Mingkai, what do you think?" Curly asked.

"What do I think about what."

"About the match just now."

Mingkai spun his gaming chair with a creak, the monitor reflecting his greenish complexion: "A mid-laner glued to lane plus a fasting-style Jarvan IV — even a dog would shake its head at this ally-enemy comp."

Mingkai ranted furiously about his mid-lane teammate: "Always bragging, this mid-laner never fixes his old habits, all that boasting is useless — this trash, playing pro at this level, might as well go home and raise pigs."

"Damn!!"

From across the computers, a sudden shriek rang out.

Smile and Curly quickly stood up. "What happened?"

Suddenly, Mingkai's national-server client emitted the buzz of a match found. The moment he saw the ID on the opposing side, the sound of a teacup tipping over rang through the training room: "It's that kid JM again."

"……"

At the same time, on the 16th floor of YY's headquarters in Tianhe District, Yangcheng, the air was nearly frozen solid.

Voice Business Unit General Manager Xu Tao, Operations Director Chen Wen, Marketing Department Head Li Rui, Technology Department Lead Zhao Zhigang, and a host of other executives sat around the round table.

"Sorry for dragging everyone into a meeting this late."

Xu Tao spoke first. "But please take a look at this data first."

Xu Tao tapped the projection screen, his laser pointer's red dot lingering on the bar chart's peak: "This is the concurrent viewer count just pulled from JM's stream backend — it broke 87,000, setting a new record for the games section. Also setting a record is average watch time per user, which is even more terrifying at 47 minutes per person, three times that of our other streamers."

He switched to the gift-donation page: "At the same time, single-day revenue broke 43,000, of which 60% came from our platform's top-tier gift 'Excavator' donation effect. Keep in mind, he only started streaming past midnight today."

"Old Xu, you mean?"

"My meaning is simple. While we've been agonizing over how to help our games-streaming section attract the surge of new LOL preseason players, JM has already run ahead. A full third of this streamer's new followers this week are new users."

"Hiss!" an executive sucked in a cold breath.

A third of new users — what kind of concept was that?

In other words, this one streamer, JM, had single-handedly done most of their new-user acquisition for them?

Operations Director Chen Wen quickly said: "The previous terms aren't enough — JM's contract must be raised. If at this critical juncture he gets poached by another platform, the consequences would be unthinkable."

Penguin was about to roll out a series of promotional campaigns nationwide for LOL's popularization, and the terrifying traffic contained within — everyone present was smart enough to understand what it meant for their platform to have a top-tier traffic-magnet streamer.

"The terms we offered before really weren't much……"

Marketing Department Head Li Rui pulled up a competitor analysis chart: "It's not optimistic. The neighbor, a certain Yu, is already in preparation stage. Zhanqi is still running its showgirl-stream model, but it's already got ideas about entering the streaming industry. If we stand still, we might miss the best window to cash in on the games-streaming dividend."

"But what price should we set for JM and his team's contract, and what level of resources should we give?"

"Also, since the neighbor is already preparing, they can't possibly not be paying attention to streamers like JM in the LOL section — they might even already be running poaching procedures. With competition in play, it's hard for us to gauge the right measure."

Offer too high, and the platform's interests suffer; offer too low, and the guy will leave.

If it were those streamers who just sell looks with no personal style, fine — you could copy one out anytime.

But a presence like JM is currently like a scorpion taking a dump—one of a kind.

"I suggest giving him an S-tier rating directly, and the team can make adjustments based on performance." Chen Wen, who had been following JM's streams closely, knew exactly what this person was capable of.

Uploading the materials in her hands to the projection screen, "My reasoning is very simple. Everyone, please refer to this as well. Our operations department has also been analyzing JM's streams during this period…"

"Currently, for our platform, compared to other streamers, JM has three irreplaceable qualities in attracting new viewers!"

"① Technical poverty-alleviation style streams—he breaks down high-level game awareness and disseminates it as 'Last-Hit Economics,' 'Ward Geometry'… his teaching videos are so clear that even middle schoolers can understand them."