Chapter 33: There’s Nothing Shameful About Making Money!

Page (1/3)

“How sharp is the jungler we trained with our own hands?” Jiang Ming lounged lazily in his gaming chair, his slender fingers tapping lightly against the desk. “Seamless support across all three lanes, flawless vision control in the jungle, and team-fight initiation precise enough to have guidance systems installed.”

“Will you be streaming?”

“I will, but not yet. The qualifiers aren’t over. Once they’re finished, the players will meet everyone on the exclusive YY team channel. We hope you’ll continue to support us then.”

“Heh, speaking of support, anyone who’s interested can click the link in the lower-right corner of the stream. A-Ming has successfully climbed to Challenger today, so the snack shop is holding a huge sale. If you like snacks, don’t miss it.”

“Hungry during ranked? Grab a pork floss pastry… A-Ming’s snack shop carries only carefully selected branded snacks. The prices are affordable, and the quality is guaranteed. What are you waiting for?”

[???]

[Seriously, A-Ming? That sudden switch into shameless salesmanship nearly threw out my back.]

[Streamer, your style changed faster than Flash!]

[Where did that Challenger-level aura go? How did you turn into a live-commerce host in one second?]

[Brothers, fill the screen with the word “truth”!]

[Order placed! Don’t ask. If you ask, it’s because I’m paying tribute to my faith!]

With the stream audience swelling to enormous numbers, Jiang Ming launched into an advertisement without the slightest concern for his image.

It would have been foolish not to make use of such overwhelming traffic. Personal popularity in the stream was secondary; what mattered was converting it into real money.

His expectations were not high. If even one percent of the viewers bought a single pork floss pastry, the order numbers backstage would look like rockets taking flight.

…

All one could say was that human joys and sorrows were never truly shared. While Jiang Ming was celebrating his promotion to Challenger, the WE training base was as silent as the grave.

Strawberry, the team’s top laner, stood behind the others. Having watched the entire match, he remained slightly open-mouthed, unable to think of the right words to comfort his teammates.

A minor mistake?

Or simply a moment of carelessness?

Forget it. Those excuses might fool outsiders, but they must not fool themselves.

Page (2/3)

WE had sent four players into the same team, yet the opposing JM had crushed them—and even PDD from IG—with nothing but a Jarvan IV jungler at his side.

“The patch changes have had an enormous impact on the mid and jungle positions!” Abu, who was standing in the room as well, sighed.

Riot’s decision to raise the strategic importance of mid and jungle in the new season had struck WE like a blow to the head.

“The pace of the game is too fast, and mid-lane assassins deal far too much damage. There isn’t even enough time for the AD carry to reach his power spike.” Smile painfully rubbed the bridge of his nose.

Curly Hair was the first to recover from the defeat. He spoke frankly. “Abu, I suggest we watch some of JM’s videos. His understanding of the current patch is genuinely better than that of most players.”

“I…”

Abu wanted to say that, as the coach of a professional team, he had no need to study the playstyle—or even the tutorial videos—of some ordinary solo-queue player. But the failure of his own team stood plainly before him, leaving no room for them to avoid the issue.

Their mid and jungle had been completely demolished. The tactical system WE had always relied upon had been ground into the dirt.

“The IPL5 championship is already in the past. This is the age of the assassin.”

A line JM had spoken during the stream suddenly flashed through Strawberry’s mind. His gaze shifted toward Ruofeng, whose face was pale as paper.

The age of mid-lane assassins.

Ruofeng, are you up to it?

…

Jiang Ming did not dwell on the shift in WE’s mindset after that ranked game.

Every move he made to advance the League was intended to reshape the ecosystem of esports.

This was a wild age shackled by capital, and someone had to wield an iron hand to carve a path through the chaos. At this moment, the million viewers surging through his stream were the fulcrum with which he would pry open change.

After chatting with the audience for a while, he returned to his ranked grind.

As he joked and bantered with his viewers, his fingers never stopped moving across the keyboard.

Streaming around the clock was not merely about consolidating his lead as the top-ranked player on the Chinese server. More importantly, he intended to temper the flood of traffic invested in him by the YY platform into the edge that would one day belong to NXG.

Page (3/3)

In this fan-driven world dominated by the 60E, a newly formed team that could not cleave open the heavens and earth with the force of thunder would ultimately become an anonymous speck of duckweed drifting in the shadows of the established giants.

Convert the stream’s followers into attention for NXG.

In the primordial era of esports, fan-club culture was by no means weaker than it would be in later years. Otherwise, strange fan groups such as the 60E and 59E would never have appeared.

Jiang Ming’s ambitions were simple. Once NXG qualified for the LPL, he did not expect its fan base to immediately overwhelm old clubs like WE. At the very least, however, NXG could not become the kind of transparent little team whose match tickets no one bothered to buy.

A professional player with little personal fame could still seek opportunities through sheer competitive ability. But when a club lacked traffic, it truly found itself struggling at every step.

For starters, commercial investment and sponsorships would be out of the question. Advertisers simply did not consider marginal teams. Then there was the problem of recruiting and renewing the club’s supply of fresh talent.

For a newcomer, which would be the first choice: an established powerhouse, or a club with neither strength nor results, where joining would amount to a gamble?

The original LCK had the clearest answer. With SKT ruling the region alone, any talented newcomer—except those playing mid—would place T1 at the top of their list of preferred clubs. Other teams could only pick over T1’s leftovers, or wait for players to leave T1 before signing them at a premium.

Jiang Ming understood better than anyone that the first word written in the ledger of an esports club’s life or death was always “traffic.” A team without the spotlight was destined to wither beneath sponsors’ cold indifference and the abandonment of gifted newcomers.

NXG had undoubtedly made an excellent start. As its owner, Jiang Ming already brought attention with him. For the foreseeable future, so long as the team demonstrated a certain level of competitiveness, it would not lack either exposure or the region’s allocation of resources.

That was why, during the ranked games that followed, Jiang Ming deliberately—or seemingly casually—kept NXG on the tip of his tongue, tirelessly reinforcing the name in his viewers’ minds.

He wanted everyone to remember that an NXG team would soon appear in the newly opened LPL.

During the afternoon and evening ranked sessions, Jiang Ming was fairly lucky. He began with a modest four-game winning streak. Although he encountered a few griefers and thin-skinned players in the latter half, his steady performance in mid, combined with his formidable shot-calling, carried the games to victory in the end.

It was around nine that night, after he was matched against a jungle-support duo whose names carried the prefix “DY Live,” that someone intentionally threw the game and ended his winning streak once again.

“Come on, can you be any more ridiculous? You don’t even bother pretending—you trade a couple of insults and immediately start feeding?”

By the middle of the night, as Jiang Ming’s victory points continued to climb, some players who realized they could not compete with him through legitimate means began resorting to underhanded tactics.

Someone’s internet would conveniently cut out during a crucial team fight. A support would go AFK at the start, forcing the AD carry to face a two-versus-one lane. A jungler would recklessly tower-dive the enemy at level two. Someone would give away both buffs at the beginning. Two players with matching name prefixes would concoct an excuse so awkward that even they could not believe it, then launch into the childish refrain: “If you’re a real man, feed.”