The last trace of hesitation in Lin Anke’s heart completely vanished after Xu Sheng so readily used him as reassurance for someone else.
Last year, when TIG had once again been sent home in the quarterfinals of the World Championship, Lin Anke had been cursed at viciously across the entire esports forum.
He was a support player and he had a large number of female fans. It was almost as though those things alone had made him a natural target.
The No. 1 Support in the country, a burden to the team, a freeloader, dead weight…
Those labels had followed him for a very long time.
What had Xu Sheng said to him back then?
Lin Anke still remembered what Xu Sheng had told him at the time.
“It’s fine. Don’t bother arguing with them. These people are just bored and looking for somewhere to vent their emotions. Just don’t read the forums.”
And now Xu Sheng was telling Xingxing:
“It’s not your fault. Even if Anke had played the last game, we still would have lost.”
Lin Anke gave a self mocking smile.
A voice suddenly came from downstairs.
“That’s not necessarily true. If Anke had been there, I’m really not sure I could have tower dived and killed you three times.”
Duan Chi swaggered into the TIG base.
He was still wearing the DG team uniform from today’s match, a beige gray baseball style jacket with three black stripes printed along the shoulders and sleeves and the DG team logo emblazoned across the chest.
“Safer?”
Xingxing jumped in surprise.
The moment Xu Sheng saw him, the humiliation he had suffered on the stage today immediately resurfaced. Suppressing his anger, he said, “Who let you in? This is TIG’s base! Get out!”
Duan Chi sneered. He was just about to throw a few more sarcastic remarks at Xu Sheng when he suddenly heard a familiar voice coming from upstairs.
Lin Anke came downstairs carrying a suitcase. He glanced calmly at the people gathered there before saying, “I told him to come in.”
“Let’s go,” he said to Duan Chi.
Xu Sheng froze when he saw the suitcase in Lin Anke’s hand. He was still completely unaware of what was happening.
“Anke, where are you going? We still have to review the match later.”
Lin Anke replied calmly, “My contract expires at the end of this month. I’ve decided to terminate my contract with TIG.”
His words sent shockwaves through the entire room.
Everyone in the living room except Duan Chi stood frozen in place.
The TIG manager reacted the most strongly.
“Encore, are you joking? Didn’t I already give you the renewal contract? Captain Xu has already signed his, so why are you- ”
“Why?”
Xu Sheng looked at him as though he could not believe what he was hearing.
“Just because of one match? Anke, don’t be childish. We still have the Summer Split even though we lost this time. We can just fight our way back.”
“Xu Sheng, I’m not joking.”
Lin Anke was never a particularly talkative person.
Even now, at a moment like this, he had no desire to argue with Xu Sheng over those trivial, fragmented little matters. It was beneath him.
Xingxing, who was standing behind Xu Sheng, was still tugging lightly at his clothes.
None of the others seemed to think there was anything strange about it.
And so Xu Sheng simply let Xingxing continue holding onto him as he said to Lin Anke, “Anke, stop messing around. We’ve all been playing all day. Everyone is exhausted.”
“Xu Sheng.” Lin Anke interrupted him.
For the first time, Xu Sheng saw an unmistakable trace of impatience on Lin Anke’s face.
Lin Anke said, “We’re breaking up.”
At those words, Xu Sheng’s brows furrowed. Before he could say anything, Duan Chi had already naturally taken Lin Anke’s luggage and shoved past Xu Sheng.
“Excuse me, sir. Please move aside.”
After walking a few steps, Duan Chi suddenly turned his head and flashed Xu Sheng a smile.
“Next time you run into us on the stage, remember to hide inside your fountain, idiot.”
Duan Chi had swaggered into the TIG base and he swaggered back out just as boldly.
When he left, Lin Anke was walking beside him.
His mood could not have been better.
Lin Anke, however, was nowhere near as relaxed.
As he left the TIG base, he could not help turning his head for one last look.
This was a place where he had spent three years.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that he and Xu Sheng had built it up together with their own hands.
In the beginning, TIG had been nothing more than a struggling team in the lower tier league and the five man lineup had not been the same five people they had today.
Lin Anke still remembered how excited they had been the first time they made it into the SEL league.
Back then, Xu Sheng had confidently promised that he would take Lin Anke all the way to a World Championship title and then bring him home…
His thoughts were suddenly interrupted halfway through.
Following Lin Anke’s gaze, Duan Chi glanced at the large stone at the entrance of the base and suddenly snorted.
“That name is seriously unlucky. Who names their own team ‘Shave Clean’? Didn’t we just shave your heads clean this time?”
Lin Anke fell silent for a moment before shooting him a glance.
The two of them met each other’s eyes.
Duan Chi raised an eyebrow.
“Our DG’s name sounds much better, don’t you think, Anke?”
DG, “Dominating the Game” in this context and also carrying the meaning of winning the championship, was indeed not bad.
But Lin Anke had no intention of playing along with him.
He got into the passenger seat, fastened his seat belt and said, “What’s so nice about a bunch of gamblers?”
Duan Chi choked.
The people in the esports scene might have questionable morals but when it came to coming up with mocking nicknames, they certainly knew what they were doing.
Duan Chi’s playstyle was extremely aggressive. Despite being an ADC, he loved putting himself in dangerous situations.
As long as he was given a roaming ADC, he was almost always involved in initiating team fights, contesting objectives and diving enemy towers. If his teammates looked away for even a moment, he would charge straight into the middle of the enemy team and unleash his ultimate.
His list of such incidents was practically endless.
This kind of playstyle could indeed produce spectacular results when it worked but it was simply too dangerous. One careless mistake could drag the entire team into disaster.
Ever since Duan Chi joined DG, the veteran team known for its controlled, methodical play had suddenly transformed into a team that made every viewer’s heart race like they were riding a roller coaster, a team the entire league jokingly called a bunch of gamblers.
After successfully leaving Duan Chi completely speechless, Lin Anke’s mood inexplicably improved.
He turned his head and watched the nighttime scenery flashing past outside the window.
Only then did he belatedly remember to ask, “Where are we going?”
A smile curled at the corner of Duan Chi’s lips.
“Pretty quick on the uptake.”
Lin Anke glared fiercely at him.
Before Lin Anke could open his mouth and start cursing him, Duan Chi handed his own phone over to him.
“Here. Use the navigation. I’ll take you home.”
Lin Anke did not take it.
Instead, he pulled out his own phone and opened the navigation.
Duan Chi let out a soft laugh and withdrew his hand.
“Fine, then.”
Unlike his style of play, Duan Chi drove very steadily. Sitting in the car, Lin Anke could hardly feel even the slightest bump in the road.
“Come to think of it, there’s actually something I’m really curious about. Did Xu Sheng save your life or something?”
“In that play in the jungle during the second game today, you could have killed me but Xu Sheng had fallen behind by a wave of minions earlier, so you wanted to use my kill to make up for his lost economy. Xu Sheng didn’t dare follow, though, because he thought I had someone with me. That’s why I managed to turn around and kill you instead, right?”
Lin Anke said nothing.
It was precisely that failed play, where Duan Chi had survived with only a sliver of health and killed him in return, that had gotten Lin Anke thoroughly torn apart on the forums.
There was no way for him to explain why he had dared to engage Duan Chi at that moment.
In the eyes of an ordinary person, there was no way Duan Chi would have appeared alone in the jungle at that particular time. There had certainly been teammates nearby.
That was why Xu Sheng had not dared to follow.
And even though the viewers could see the positions of the other players from the omniscient perspective of the broadcast, they still believed that Lin Anke had simply thrown his life away.
Only Lin Anke himself knew just how familiar he was with Duan Chi’s playstyle.
When Duan Chi did not have his support beside him, he liked to enter the jungle alone and farm the small jungle camps. Once his support arrived, the two of them would then go to the tower to clear the minion wave.
Because Duan Chi himself liked diving towers, he assumed that everyone else would do the same.
It was a habit Lin Anke had taught Duan Chi himself.
Lin Anke turned his head toward him. “I was simply outplayed. There’s nothing to say.”
The corner of Duan Chi’s lips curled upward.
“Anke, I’m actually surprised you never told Xu Sheng about my habit of clearing waves. I really didn’t expect that.”
Even if Xu Sheng had successfully secured Duan Chi’s kill during that exchange, however, DG’s support, Yuanshan, had already reached the lane and their jungler was also making his way toward the bottom half of the map.
Xu Sheng still would not have been able to push the tower or invade the jungle to expand their advantage. It would not have changed the fact that TIG was destined to lose the game.
But at the very least, they would not have lost quite so badly.
Lin Anke did not respond to what he said.
“I simply didn’t have time to tell him.”
The circumstances at the time had not allowed him to carefully explain Duan Chi’s habits to Xu Sheng.
Besides, he had warned Xu Sheng about it long ago. He had told him that Duan Chi liked entering the jungle alone and that they could find a way to catch him when he was isolated.
Xu Sheng simply had not taken it seriously.
He had not even trusted Lin Anke when they were on the professional stage.
As far as Lin Anke was concerned, this was simply a problem with the team’s communication. He could not understand why Duan Chi was so hung up on it.
“Is that so?”
Duan Chi kept his eyes on the road ahead. Then, out of nowhere, he said, “If it were me, even if you ran all the way into the enemy fountain to initiate on someone, I’d still follow you.”
Lin Anke froze.
“A support has his own reasons for doing whatever he does. If you’re playing a damage dealing position and all you dare to do is hide under the tower and obediently clear waves, then what are you even doing playing in the SEL?”
“Wouldn’t it be safer to just go home and play Plants vs. Zombies?”
Duan Chi stopped the car beneath a streetlight and turned his head toward Lin Anke.
There was an arrogant boldness between the young man’s brows that seemed completely out of place with the rest of the SEL.
With one hand resting casually on the steering wheel, he leaned closer.
“Anke, I think you should find yourself a younger ADC. What do you think?”
Lin Anke went rigid in his seat.
He was too close.
Close enough that Lin Anke could smell the clean, faint fragrance of laundry detergent clinging to Duan Chi, mingling with the dry, restless summer night breeze flowing in through the car window.
It was clean yet carried with it the slightest hint of something distinctly aggressive.
Duan Chi did not immediately move away. Instead, maintaining that close distance, he raised his arm and took a folder from the compartment in front of the passenger seat.
As he moved, the cuff of his sleeve brushed against the wrist Lin Anke had resting on his knee, bringing with it a faint, ticklish sensation.
Lin Anke instinctively drew his hand back.
Only after Duan Chi straightened up did Lin Anke finally come back to his senses. That tingling sensation from being enveloped by the young man’s presence seemed not to have completely faded. It crept from the roots of his ears all the way to the back of his neck, lingering there and refusing to disappear.
Duan Chi, however, seemed completely unaware of it and simply said, “Sign it, Anke. I guarantee you, DG absolutely has no substitute and we don’t have an ADC who’s afraid of dying either.”
Lin Anke’s fingers tightened around the document. He said nothing.
His sexual orientation was toward men. In his everyday interactions with other people, he would instinctively maintain a certain distance, avoiding getting too physically close whenever possible. This was also one of the reasons his relationships within the professional scene were fairly ordinary.
But just because he behaved that way did not mean everyone else had to do the same.
Duan Chi might simply not have noticed. If Lin Anke acted as though he minded too much, it would only make the atmosphere awkward.
The contract with DG was more important.
Lin Anke made himself relax and lowered his head to examine the document.
The paper contract still carried the faint smell of freshly printed ink. Along the side, it had already been stamped with the overlapping seal of the DG Esports Club and the final page also bore the general manager’s signature and official seal.
All that was missing was Lin Anke’s signature for the contract to take effect.
Lin Anke was somewhat surprised by how readily DG had prepared everything. Then, from the corner of his eye, he caught sight of one of the clauses on the final page and suddenly stopped.
It stated that if DG E-sports Club ever removed him from the starting lineup, he could choose to terminate the contract at any time. He would not only be exempt from paying any penalty for breach of contract; instead, the club would have to compensate him.
Lin Anke could not help staring in a daze.
If this clause appeared in the contract of practically any other club, it would be enough to make Lin Anke wonder whether their owner had completely lost his mind.
“Did your manager actually read this contract?” Lin Anke asked, somewhat suspicious of whether the contract was even genuine.
Duan Chi handed him a pen and replied casually, “Of course. His signature and the official seal are both right here.”
Lin Anke carefully inspected the official seal stamped onto the contract. He could not find anything wrong with it, so he went through the contents of the contract carefully once more.
Most of the other clauses were more or less the same as those in his contract with TIG.
There was only one significant difference.
Once the contract took effect, DG Esports Club would pay Lin Anke a one time signing fee of twenty million yuan.
Lin Anke fell silent.
Had DG’s manager really not accidentally added an extra zero?
How could he possibly be worth twenty million?
It was common knowledge that the signing fees for starting players on top tier SEL teams were never low.
Although the league authorities had placed restrictions on the range of monthly salaries that clubs could offer their players, signing fees were different. As payments directly given by a club to an individual player, they were not subject to the league’s official restrictions.
In order to attract outstanding players, many clubs would offer signing fees ranging from several hundred thousand yuan to several million, or even more than ten million yuan.
……
Among all the different positions in professional esports, support players had the lowest average signing fees.
When Lin Anke signed with TIG, he had barely any reputation, so his signing fee had been only one hundred thousand yuan.
Even the renewal contract that the TIG manager had brought him yesterday offered him only eight hundred thousand yuan.
And the twenty million yuan from DG was merely his signing fee. The monthly salary stated in the contract was already the highest amount permitted under the league’s regulations. On top of that, there were additional commercial fees, livestream revenue shares, match bonuses and other forms of compensation…
Lin Anke composed himself and asked, “Is your club owner insane? Even TheOne couldn’t possibly command a price like this, could he?”
TheOne was currently recognized as the number one support in the SEL. He was the starting support for the Korean team Can and together with his ADC partner Kina, he had won the World Championship five consecutive years. He was unquestionably one of the dominant figures on the professional stage.
“If he can’t command that price, it’s because he isn’t good enough.”
Duan Chi said it as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“They gave you the contract, which means you’re worth it.”
“…”
Lin Anke handed the contract back to Duan Chi.
“I can’t sign this. Take it back. I don’t know exactly what’s going on with this contract but at the very least, I need to go through a trial period before signing. Tomorrow, I’ll go to your base myself and talk to DG’s manager.”
Whether DG’s owner had simply lost his mind or genuinely believed that Lin Anke was worth twenty million yuan, Lin Anke could not sign this contract.
He was no longer a young newcomer who had just entered the industry. He did not have the reckless, arrogant confidence of someone like Duan Chi, the kind of youthful swagger that made him feel as though he were the center of the world.
Something that looked like a pie falling from the sky did not strike Lin Anke as something that would land in his hands for no reason.
Thinking of this, he could not help reminding Duan Chi, “Your contract with DG is also worth that much… Have you had a lawyer look it over?”
Duan Chi was slightly taken aback.
Looking at the seriousness in Lin Anke’s eyes, he smiled.
“You don’t need to worry about my contract. They wouldn’t dare screw me over.”
Then, after a brief pause, he asked, “So… should I come pick you up tomorrow?”
✦ ✧ ✦
Fleurveil
[Translator]
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← PreviousNext →
ChaptersChapter 1 · He was substituted off the fieldChapter 2 · I’ll avenge youChapter 3 · Leaving TIGChapter 4 · Point and shootChapter 5 · Join DGChapter 6 · Live stream collisionChapter 7 · MysteriousChapter 8 · Transfer NoticeChapter 9 · Want the championshipChapter 10 · Galaxy BattleshipChapter 11 · Be my DogChapter 12 · Post match ConflictChapter 13 · ReportedChapter 14 · Weibo CodeChapter 15 · Live Streaming to attract FansChapter 16 · Duan Chi’s horse was exposedChapter 17 · Emotional articlesChapter 18 · Match voice recording