Chapter Ninety-One: Spots for the Contest

Lin Hao’s main purpose had always been to invade the enemy’s jungle, so for the opposing side, this was naturally a delightfully easy lane for Mace to farm. He could even slip over to the middle lane for waves, and that was something Lin Hao could not really stop.

But this time, since Mace was caught and speared to death by him, the result was entirely different.

The top side and the jungle had, from that moment on, fallen completely.

With Lin Hao driving the tempo on the upper half of the map like a rocket, his teammate Han Xin on the other side immediately began pressuring the enemy’s bottom side as well.

By now, with the level lead on his side, Han Xin was once again in the enemy jungle, bullying the underfed Jade to no end.

After Lin Hao secured the dragon, he saw that a brawl had already broken out near the bottom lane and simply took a detour through mid.

Just in time, he caught a Star River setting up a formation by the riverbank.

At that moment, Star River had only about two-thirds of his health left. Seeing Lin Hao, he decisively fled toward the river, back into his own chess formation.

His teammates were waiting there.

And Star River’s formation also served to block the path, cutting off Han Xin and A Li’s retreat.

Lin Hao immediately used his smite. The instant it landed, Meng Tian’s movement speed surged.

In the blink of an eye, he closed in on the Star River ahead.

Meng Tian unleashed a quick sequence of attacks, and even without his ultimate, his damage was still explosive, stripping away nearly a third of Star River’s health.

With Lin Hao pinning him down in front, Jinxan and Liu Shan also arrived in time from behind.

Just as with Mace before, they repeated the same pattern: Jinxan cast a full skill combo, Liu Shan charged in to lock him down, and Star River was sent straight back to the fountain to await resurrection.

“This tank smite can really be used like a sprint skill,” Lin Hao said.

After taking down Star River, Lin Hao immediately moved down to support Han Xin and A Li.

By then, Han Xin had just stolen the blue buff. With Star River no longer there to interfere, he was now beating Jade mercilessly.

The ensuing team fight was simple enough. With the numbers advantage, Lin Hao’s side wiped the enemy out completely.

This match ended very quickly as well. In under ten minutes, they had already flattened the enemy base.

In the mid and late game, Lin Hao’s side focused purely on pushing, and his teammates had begun running wild with kills, so the game ended exceptionally fast.

When the enemy crystal exploded, Lin Hao arrived at the results screen.

The Jade on the enemy side was even a top-fifty regional-ranked Jade, so at least he could be considered a nationally recognized player. Lin Hao said, “But under the influence of my tank-smite Meng Tian, all he could do this game was sit in jail, and he ended up with a 5.5 rating.”

“I suddenly feel like Meng Tian is insanely strong!”

“Enough said, I’m going to use Meng Tian in Peak Rank right now. Next month, there will definitely be a place for me among the national Meng Tian players!”

“To be fair, Haozi not only has great entertainment value, but his teaching is really solid too!”

...

Elephant Entertainment.

This morning, Elephant Entertainment’s King of Glory division held its final group meeting of the year.

After this, once the annual gala finished on Friday night, everyone would be on holiday.

And the topic of this meeting was fairly important: the allocation of spots for the upcoming professional streamer collaboration event.

Zhao Yi had her little notebook ready and sat in her seat, listening attentively to the team leader just as she had done back in school.

She already knew the rules of the event.

It was an event heavily invested in by the Shark platform.

The KPL side would provide a number of professional players to form a professional player pool.

Then the Shark platform would also provide a number of streamers to form a streamer pool.

Two Shark streamers, Teacher Ge and Tomy, would serve as coaches, selecting players, forming teams, honing them, and finally competing in a best-of-seven.

Teacher Ge was once a four-time KPL champion coach, the first to bring the concept of macro-oriented play into the KPL. He had personally built a QC dynasty. Now retired, he had become a Shark streamer. He usually played Peak Rank, and when there were matches, he commentated them. With his witty tongue and his famously cursed predictions, he had gained a large following.

Tomy, meanwhile, was a former KPL professional player and a KPL Angela with a one-hundred-percent win rate. He, too, had retired and become a streamer. He likewise spent his time watching and commentating KPL matches, grinding Peak Rank, and, late at night, playing all sorts of bizarre games with various professional players. These were the highlights of his stream, and he too had amassed a large fanbase.

As the two secondary commentators on the Shark platform, these two were among the most popular.

...

The team leader continued, “For this event, the list of professional players has already been decided. As for the streamer list, our Elephant division has three spots. If anyone has suitable candidates, feel free to recommend them.”

“Our King of Glory division streamer blu3 should take one spot.”

“Weiwei is also pretty good. She’s a streamer with potential and strong ability, definitely worth cultivating.”

...

As soon as the leader finished speaking, the room broke into discussion.

“Wait, I forgot to mention: since this is a confrontation with the professional players, the streamers’ strength at minimum needs to be at the level of a signature hero specialist. They must have the ability to rank within the top thousand in Peak Rank to qualify, otherwise in such a high-intensity clash, if someone keeps drifting through the match like a sleepwalker and performs terribly, it’ll inevitably stir up trouble.”

The team leader added another point.

At once, the voices recommending names in the room dropped sharply.

They began assessing the strength of the streamers they were familiar with.

Not to mention the top thousand in Peak Rank—even the top hundred streamers, there were plenty in the department—but many of them lacked discussion value and were not very popular, with fan counts mostly between one hundred thousand and five hundred thousand.

That was easy to understand. From a marketing standpoint, if a streamer wants to break out of their niche, they need something distinctive.

Take Yi Fan’s Old Master, for example. To this day, he stands alone across the entire internet, always ranking first on the national leaderboard. This is the very definition of a signature specialist, and it has even influenced the way Old Master is played by the whole King of Glory community.

A streamer like that is influential.

Or take Bei Mu. Heroes such as Luna, Mirror, and Abyssal Dragon, all of whom are top-tier jungle picks today, are used by plenty of streamers, and many people already hold national badges with them. But Bei Mu is the only one with one hundred and twenty-five hero mastery stages in the jungle, a true jungle king in name and in fact. That is where the difference lies.

By contrast, many of the streamers from Elephant Entertainment also walked the jungle-king path, but their heroes overlapped too much with those famous jungle kings, and they had no unique edge of their own. If viewers wanted that kind of content, of course they would go watch Bei Mu and Wei Liang instead.

In addition, since these were selections from Elephant Entertainment, they at least had to be names the audience had heard of; otherwise, viewers would surely start accusing them of backstage dealings.

Zhao Yi thought it over, raised her hand to get the leader’s attention, and said, “What about Hao Ran?”

When the leader heard the name, his eyes lit up.

This was a streamer who had developed rapidly and exploded in popularity within just two weeks, and also one of the newest streamers Elephant Entertainment had recently signed.