CH 65

The next morning, Jiang Shaoyu sent Yu Mingxiang the news that he was going to the CIP Club and Yu Mingxiang immediately arranged the schedule. The city where CIP was located wasn’t far from the imperial capital so everyone took the high-speed train instead. It took them an hour to arrive.

On the way to the club in a car, Qi Heng gave an introduction. “There is a wealthy backer behind the CIP Club, similar to TNG. The player they want to support is Mo Hantian. Do you remember?”

Jiang Shaoyu indifferently replied, “I naturally remember. The last Gun King image ambassador and the eldest baby of the Gourd Babies Squad.”

Yu Mingxiang couldn’t hold back her laugh. “Cough, Xiao Mo has quite a few titles!”

Qi Heng smiled and touched his nose. “In fact, Xiao Mo’s talent isn’t bad but his mentality is quite poor. Didn’t you arrange the five star difficulty map, Pirate Base, the last time you played a training match in the national team? I remember that he only fired a few shots the entire time. He played the game like he was sleepwalking.”

Jiang Shaoyu nodded. “Yes, he has a glass heart and a princess disease. He didn’t know how to type on the computer after being scolded by me and stared at the computer in a daze.”

Qi Heng laughed. “Indeed. He is an alpha but he is as fragile as glass that breaks when touched.”

In the beginning, Mo Hantian collided with Jiang Shaoyu in the online game. After being killed, he pulled a group of people over to line up and die. Due to this, he became the eldest baby of the national team’s Gourd Babies Squad. His mentality completely collapsed. Then Jiang Shaoyu suddenly organized a training match. His performance was poor and he was scolded by his idol Wing again. Under the double crit, he left the training room with tears in his eyes.

In fact, the talent of this eldest baby wasn’t back. Based on the data of the A-grade League last year, Mo Hantian ranked second among snipers in the league. He was right after Vice-chairman Qi’s apprentice, Liu Shaozhou.

His heads definitely weren’t given by his teammates because the position of sniper was very simple. Whether he could kill or not depended on the accuracy of his marksmanship. The opponent wasn’t a stake standing still for him to kill. It was impossible for his teammates to maim someone and let him collect their heads. In most cases when a sniper killed someone, it was an instant kill with a ‘headshot.’ This was difficult to achieve if their response speed wasn’t fast enough.

Mo Hantian’s kill count ranked second in the league, which showed that he still had some ability.

The biggest difference between him and Lu Xingyun was that Mo Hantian’s own strength wasn’t bad and he was also handsome. The club was willing to support him. The biggest problem was his glass heart and that his ability to adjust after losing a game was poor. Lu Xingyun’s own strength was very average but he thought highly of himself. He relied on his teammates to get the heads.

It was like a top student who could take first place in the exam by himself but he would break down and cry if he failed in the exam. The other was a ‘pseudo top student’ who relied on cheating to take first place in the exam and he would scold others if he failed the exam.

Therefore, Mo Hantian might’ve bumped into Jiang Shaoyu in the beginning but Jiang Shaoyu didn’t directly deny him and gave him a chance. After all, psychological quality could be slowly honed through competitions.

Jiang Shaoyu looked at the information of CIP that was summarized by Qin Bo. “CIP is a single core lineup and they fight based around the sniper. Their tactics are too singular. I can see why they only won third place in the league last year. Mo Hantian became the image ambassador of Gun King because the CIP Club sponsored the national team, right?”

Qi Heng smiled. “It wasn’t just the sponsorship. Xiao Mo also won the highest popularity award last season. This award was purely selected by netizens and players who already won could no longer participate. Therefore, people like Yezi, Xiao Zhou and Xiao Liu couldn’t participate. Last time, Mo Hantian and Lu Xingyun competed for first place. As a result, Mo Hantian’s popularity was higher and he won the highest popularity award. In this way, CIP can justifiably hold him up as the image ambassador of Gun King.”

Jiang Shaoyu finally understood the cause and effect. The image ambassador of the Gun King national team was different every year. In previous years, Zhou Yiran and Yezi served as this image ambassador. The e-sports industry had become the same as the entertainment industry. What was the highest popularity award voted on by the Internet? It was funny.

E-sports players looking at popularity instead of achievements? No wonder why ugly players like Xiao Pang and Si Wenhui would be suppressed.

Jiang Shaoyu frowned. “I don’t want an image ambassador this time.”

Qi Heng told him, “In the national team, no one can compete against Fred when it comes to popularity. Only the big streamers have more fans. If you really have to choose an image ambassador, it is likely to be Xiao Pei. Don’t you think that Xiao Pei is quite suitable to be the image ambassador, whether it is his appearance or personality?”

Jiang Shaoyu shook his head and explained coldly, “The national team is going out to play games. It isn’t rolling on the keyboard with their faces. What is the use of being handsome? Xiao Pei doesn’t care about these false names. Rather than being the image ambassador, he prefers to be the MVP of the World Series. This type of entertainment style exaggerated publicity should be avoided.”

Qi Heng and Yu Mingxiang exchanged looks. Every national team had an image ambassador but it was going to be directly exempted this season?

It seemed that the clubs’ strategy of relying on sponsorship to support players would be completely impossible this time.

30 minutes later, the car stopped at the door of the CIP Club. It was now 4 p.m. and it was the club’s afternoon training time. QI Heng used his old skills again and took them directly to the manager’s office. Manager Chen of CIP was on the phone. He smiled when he saw Vice-chairman Qi and asked him to sit down.

Qi Heng asked him to invite the coaches over. Manager Chen did this before asking curiously, “Vice-chairman Qi, is this to check discipline during the regular season? You can rest assured that all the players in the club strictly abide by the league rules. No one has made a mistake and they have been obedient recently!” Then he looked back and saw several people behind Qi Heng.

Yu Mingxiang? What was the leader of the national team doing here?

Next to her was a young man wearing glasses and a young man with very white skin and a cold expression…

Who were they?

Manager Chen was puzzled and was about to ask Qi Heng who these strangers were when he saw the coaches and data experts enter the office.

Qi Heng smiled. “Let me introduce you. This is Coach Jiang of the national team, the engineer Qin Bo and the team leader Sister Yu.”

Everyone’s eyes widened in unison. Coach Jiang? The legendary God Wing?

Manager Chen smiled and enthusiastically held out a hand. “It turns out that the coaching staff of the national team is here! Why didn’t you give an advance notice? I would’ve sent someone to pick you up!” Then he looked at the assistant next to him. “Quickly call Xiyuan Room and book a VIP room. Invite a few leaders to have a meal…”

Jiang Shaoyu interrupted him. “Don’t bother. We didn’t come to your club to eat.” His gaze swept over the group. “Please wait here. I’ll go to the training room with Vice-chairman Qi to take a look.”

Qi Heng said with a smile, “It is a surprise inspection, do you understand? Don’t even think about sending warning messages.”

Then the two of them walked out of the meeting room.

Yu Mingxiang and Qin Bo guarded the group of people like prisoners. Qin Bo openly put the signal jammer in the middle of the table and told the data expert, “Hello, Coach Jiang wants to take away the usual training data and the attendance sheet of the CIP Club to facilitate the comprehensive evaluation of each player. Please cooperate.”

The data expert turned on the computer with a confused expression and let Qin Bo insert a USB to copy the data.

Jiang Shaoyu and Qi Heng came to the training room together. At 4 o’clock, CIP didn’t have a practice match arranged. CIP wouldn’t meet their first opponent of the regular season, BM, until Saturday and there was plenty of time. The players were practicing separately. From the glass window of the back door, Jiang Shaoyu could clearly see everyone opening the training software and doing daily training like precision shooting, dodging and moving.

Daily training was a must for e-sports players in order to maintain their hand and brain speed. During the time when Jiang Shaoyu was at ACE, he attached great importance to daily training and the players had to complete their training on time every day.

Jiang Shaoyu’s eyes swept over the training room and he quickly found Mo Hantian sitting in a corner.

Unlike his surrounding teammates who were shooting targets at the shooting training ground, Mo Hantian’s interface was open to the game. The interface showed a variety of buttons and a lot of unknown Korean words. Jiang Shaoyu’s eyes narrowed and he looked carefully. “Is he playing the rankings in the Korean server?”

Qi Heng also leaned over to take a closer look. “It seems to be. Doesn’t he need to do the daily training? Is he playing the rankings alone?”

Jiang Shaoyu didn’t say anything and turned to walk into the small training room next door.

The players wore sound-isolating headphones during training so no one noticed anyone at the door, nor did they hear the door of the next training room being pushed open. Jiang Shaoyu found a computer in the small training room and sat down while Qi Heng went to the office and called the head coach of CIP over.

Coach Lin ran over, sweating profusely while asking in a trembling manner, “C-Coach Jiang, are you looking for me”

“Yes. You have an OB account, right? You can watch the training of the players.”

Coach Lin hurriedly replied, “Yes.”

Jiang Shaoyu told him, “Please log in.”

Every club would have an OB account that was used to monitor the daily training of the players. It was equivalent to the ‘administrator’ of the training room and could switch to any player’s computer at will. If some players were secretly watching TV series or surfing the Internet during the training time, they would be caught.

The OB account of the CIP Club was called CIP-01. After logging in, four rows of small squares like a surveillance room appeared on the computer. Each small square represented a player’s computer and the computer screen could clearly be seen.

Jiang Shaoyu immediately saw a small square in the lower left corner where a player was secretly reading a novel. The title of the chapter was ‘Interstellar Mecha Competition’. The player had the training window open on the left and the novel window on the right. He was reading it with relish.

The head coach: “……”

F*k! Why slack off when the national team came to check things?

Jiang Shaoyu ignored this little guy who was slacking off and directly enlarged Mo Hantian’s computer screen.

Mo Hantian had just started a ranking game. He saw Mo Hantian open a Korean translator and enter the sentence ‘I play sniper, thank you.’ He pressed the translate button and a line of Korean popped up. Mo Hantian quickly copied it and pasted it over.

The Korean words he copied appeared on the game’s team channel.

Qi Heng wanted to laugh when he saw it. “Is this guy bravely breaking into the Korean server with a translator?”

Jiang Shaoyu turned back and asked the coach, “Doesn’t he need to do basic training?”

Coach Lin explained, “Of course. Our club requires each player to complete three hours of basic training every day but the time when they complete it can be freely arranged. The training software will automatically count the data and anyone who hasn’t completed it can be seen. Xiao Mo probably finished it at another time.”

Jiang Shaoyu instructed, “Show me.”

The head coach opened the statistical software. The statistics of the training time for a week were very clear. The other team members had almost all neat three hours of training time. Meanwhile, Mo Hantian would spend two hours a day on ‘shooting training’ and another two hours on ‘position training’, etc. In other words, the club only required three hours of training time but he trained for an extra hour every day, exceeding the task requirements.

It seemed that after being scolded by Jiang Shaoyu, he started to think about improving his skills and silently increased the time for basic training.

Jiang Shaoyu was slightly relieved and switched back to Mo Hantian’s main perspective.

The teammates and opponents he matched with in his game were close to the 3,000 segment, which was similar to the level that Jiang Shaoyu and Pei Feng played against when they teamed up to play the Korean server during the winter holidays. In this segment, it was easy to collide with Korean pros players. The random map was Ghost Castle and he was on the guardians team.

Mo Hantian quickly ran to the middle of the road and set up a gun to guard the point. Jiang Shaoyu observed his operation from a god’s perspective.

On the opposite side, two people emerged from behind a statue. The moment the other person’s head appeared in the scope, Mo Hantian pulled the trigger.

Bang!

A clear gunshot was heard and the red skull icon of a ‘headshot’ popped up on the screen.

This was followed by another sound—

Bang!

The DSR-Apocalypse was Mo Hantian’s favorite sniper rifle. The hit rate of this gun was very accurate. Mo Hantian moved from left to right and fired two shots in a row, directly taking away the two heads of the opposite side’s charger and assaulter! A row of Korean words flashed on the screen. It should be his teammates praising him.

Mo Hantian played very smoothly. He saw that the enemy scout was coming around to attack so he immediately jumped off the statue, dropped a smoke bomb and moved quickly. After running a certain distance, he turned back and suppressed the opponent’s pursuit with two shots.

His teammate’ awareness was also good. Two people teamed up against one to kill the enemy scout.

In the first round, the guardians won!

The next few games were also very smooth. It could be seen that Xiao Mo’s basic skills were excellent and his marksmanship was very accurate.

After the game, a friend request popped up in the lower right corner and Mo Hantian pressed to accept it.

The other person sent a long message and the string of Korean was incomprehensible. Mo Hantian copied this paragraph of Korean into the Korean translator and the translation was: Hello, I’m a scout from the TQ Club. You are very good at the game. Are you interested in becoming a professional player? Our club’s treatment is very good. You can come to try out.

Mo Hantian typed a line of words into the translator: Hello, I am the intelligent AI robot No. 007 from the future. I’m sorry, my program doesn’t understand what you mean. The next game is about to begin. Goodbye, human.

He translated this line into Korean and pasted it.

The other person, “???”

Where did this mental patient come from?

In front of the computer, Qi Heng couldn’t help laughing. “Hahaha, intelligent AI Mo Hantian.”

The corners of Jiang Shaoyu’s mouth twitched. This eldest baby not only had a glass heart and a princess disease, how could he have a chuunibyou disease as well?