Chapter 21: If You're This Bad, Why Play Professionally!
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Curly and Smile exchanged a glance, both sensing the same confusion reflected in each other’s eyes—they clearly saw Jiang Ming’s Zed strolling leisurely through the jungle, yet they could never decipher the thought patterns behind those crimson electronic eyes.
“It’s just the most basic half-zone principle from the future,” Jiang Ming said, taking a sip of his ice-cold coffee. Watching the screen where Bloodthirster and Brutalizer empowered Zed, he felt the live broadcast on the YY platform had reached its peak effect, like placing the final checkmating piece on a chessboard.
Jiang Ming launched a full-scale assault on the blue side.
The moment the mid lane outer turret crumbled with a thunderous crash, a piercing scream echoed through the OMG base: “Why is he at F4?!”
No Status would never forget that scene: stumbling into the jungle to support the bottom lane, only to be pierced precisely by Zed’s shadow blade as if wielded by a scalpel, emerging from the shadows at F4.
W shadow blocked the retreat, the main body’s E and A skills dealt damage, and the second part of the ultimate shifted to dodge the rolling barrel—his last shuriken thrown under the turret even predicted the flash location.
The barrel died, and Jiang Ming took the opportunity to push down the mid lane outer turret.
Upon respawning, with the WE duo’s expressions a mix of confusion and shock, Zed proactively sought to swap lanes with them, subtly delivering a shock of understanding to the concept of a 4-1 mid lane split push.
When Zed suddenly marked the bottom lane requesting a lane swap, Smile’s Ezreal was busy last-hitting in the river.
“Is he going to solo carry the bottom lane?” Curly’s Sona stopped before the second tower, the strings still stained with the enemy’s Janna’s blood. “It’s only thirteen minutes in, that doesn’t make sense…”
“Damn it, we at least have to kill Zed once.”
The red team watched Jiang Ming’s reckless Zed with flames rising in their hearts.
Before the words were out, Zed’s crimson mark appeared on the enemy’s second tower.
Three seconds later, the sound of the turret exploding and the system’s team wipe notification rang out simultaneously—the four-man blue side team attempting to surround Zed were caught like turtles in a jar under Jarvan’s ultimate.
(All) Jarvan: “Fearless Vanguard team-building event, buy one get three free!”
(All) Jarvan: “Thinking you can outnumber me? Did you ask this loyal Fearless Vanguard guardian?”
Triple kill!
Legendary!
(JM: GG!)
Clearly, the blue side had underestimated the Jarvan player’s eagerness to climb the ranks. Aside from helping the duo lane set some vision, Zed spent the rest of the time a thousand yards away, leaving the jungle creeps untouched, letting Smile of WE freely farm—the key was that their mid lane lord could not die.
One four-man gank turned into a triple counterkill.
The other three members of the purple team then proceeded straight to the base.
At this point, the blue side had no means left to resist.
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(Jarvan: Hehe, JM the legend, can I get a friend request?)
(JM: No problem)
“Tch, haven’t had a lie-down this comfortable in a long time.”
The game ended, and Smile sighed with some sentiment.
Previously, in high-rank matches, opponents would almost settle in the bottom lane like playing mahjong and not move, but today, relying on mid-jungle synergy, they won a game, which felt somewhat unfamiliar.
As a support sensitive to shifts in the meta, Curly felt deeply, “This year’s going to be tough. The new version’s pace is too fast; mid and jungle peak way earlier than bottom lane.”
WE’s previous matches relied on dragging out Smile’s farm and winning team fights.
But in today’s new season ranked match, their Zed barely showed up in team fights, yet single-handedly carried the blue side to their doom. If this rhythm became the norm, it would not bode well for their team.
“Ming Kai, what do you think?”
Curly asked.
“What do you mean?”
“About the recent match.”
Ming Kai spun his gaming chair with a creak, the screen reflecting his pale face. “Mid lane spirit tether + starvation Jarvan. Even a dog would shake its head looking at that team comp.”
He ranted wildly about his mid lane teammate. “Always boasting, mid lane still hasn’t fixed old habits, talking about Jebao like he’s top-notch. So bad, yet playing professionally—better off going home to raise pigs.”
“Damn!”
Suddenly, a shout came from the other side of the computer.
Smile and Curly quickly stood up. “What’s wrong?”
At that moment, Ming Kai’s Chinese server client buzzed with a successful match notification. When he saw the opposing ID, the training room echoed the sound of a teacup tipping over. “It’s that JM guy again.”
“...”
Meanwhile, in the 16th-floor conference room of YY headquarters in Tianhe District, Yangcheng, the air was nearly frozen.
Xu Tao, General Manager of the Voice Department; Chen Wen, Operations Director; Li Rui, Head of Marketing; Zhao Zhigang, Head of Technology; and other executives sat around a round table.
“Sorry to call everyone for a meeting so late at night.”
Xu Tao began first. “But please take a look at this data.”
Xu Tao tapped the projection screen, the laser pointer resting on the peak of a bar graph. “This is the simultaneous online viewer count from JM’s livestream backend, just captured. It has surpassed 87,000, setting a record in the gaming section. Equally record-breaking is the average watch time — a staggering 47 minutes per viewer, three times that of other streamers on our platform.”
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He switched to the gift rewards page. “Also, daily revenue exceeded 43,000 yuan, 60% of which came from our platform’s capped gift effect ‘Excavator.’ And remember, he only started streaming at midnight today.”
“Old Xu, what’s your point?”
“My point is simple. While we’re still worrying about how to boost our game streaming section and attract the surge of new LOL players this season, JM is already ahead. Among his viewers this week, one-third are new users.”
“Whoa!” An executive gasped.
One-third new users—that’s a massive influx.
In other words, JM alone has done most of the user acquisition work for them.
Operations Director Chen Wen quickly chimed in. “Our previous offer was insufficient. JM’s contract must be upgraded. If another platform poaches him now, the consequences would be disastrous.”
Penguin (YY) plans a series of promotional campaigns to popularize LOL nationwide. Everyone present knew full well the terrifying traffic potential of having a top-tier streamer on their platform.
“Our previous terms were indeed lacking…”
Marketing Head Li Rui brought up a competitor analysis chart. “The outlook isn’t optimistic. The rival ‘Fish’ platform is already in preparation. Although Zhanqi still focuses on show mode, they’re eyeing live streaming. If we stagnate, we risk missing the prime window to capitalize on game streaming dividends.”
“But what contract value and resource tier should we offer JM and his team?”
“Besides, since the competitors are preparing, they must be keeping an eye on top LOL streamers like JM. They might already be trying to poach him. With rivals in play, it’s hard to gauge the right balance.”
Offer too much, platform interests suffer; offer too little, they’ll leave.
If it were just streamers selling flesh with no unique traits, replacements could be found easily.
But JM is like a scorpion’s excrement—utterly unique.
“I suggest giving him a direct S-tier contract, with the team’s terms fluctuating based on performance,” Chen Wen, who had been following JM’s streams closely, stated confidently.
She uploaded her data onto the projection screen. “My reasoning is simple. Please also consider this: our operations department analyzed JM’s streams recently…”
“For our platform, JM is irreplaceable in three key aspects when it comes to attracting new viewers!”
“1. Technical poverty alleviation style streaming—he breaks down high-level game sense into ‘last-hitting economics,’ ‘ward geometry’… his tutorial videos are so clear even middle schoolers can understand.”