Rebirth is fine, but I get eight hundred dollars right from the start?

That's right, the drab little building in front of us is the "comfortable nest" that Lin Shu found for 500 yuan a month.

It's a typical old, dilapidated apartment from the 1990s, six stories high, standing deep in an alley, giving off a sense of decay and decline.

From the outside, the once snow-white walls have been marinated by time, covered with a layer of yellow stains that cannot be washed off.

The old-fashioned iron windows are rusty, and in some places the paint is peeling off, flakes off in the wind.

Carrying my laptop upstairs, I found the motion-activated lights in the hallway to be slow to respond, requiring me to stomp my feet to get them to turn on, and even then, they were a dim, ambiguous yellow, as if they were about to die.

The environment is a bit poor, but it's cheap!

Five hundred dollars!

Where else could you find this price in Taicang in 2012?

Moreover, the surrounding area is really convenient.

You can find a place to eat downstairs. There are breakfast stalls, fast food restaurants, and noodle shops all available. You can eat your fill for five to ten yuan. Although there isn't much oil or fat, it's convenient.

You don't have to go far to buy things; there's a medium-sized supermarket on the next street that has everything from toothpaste and towels to instant noodles.

I just don't want to spend money cooking for myself; there's a farmers market just a few steps away.

More importantly, most of the residents in this building are local elderly people who go to bed early and get up early, making it very quiet.

Only a few office workers and migrant workers accompanied Lin Shu. There was basically no mixed bag of people, so there was no need to worry about safety at all. He also didn't have to worry about being disturbed while catching up on sleep during his long live stream at night.

Well... I'd say he's more likely to bother others.

Of course, to put it bluntly—a small room of just over 20 square meters, with its own private bathroom, what more could you ask for at this price?

Besides, it's on the third floor, climbing the stairs isn't tiring, and whether there's an elevator or not doesn't make much difference.

Summer heat is a hot topic, but by then, Lin Shu is confident that he will have earned enough money to improve the environment.

"Just put the computer on the floor."

Lin Shu pointed to the area against the wall. The floor inside was made of old-fashioned floor tiles popular in the 1990s. Some parts were black and dull, but the landlord had cleaned it beforehand, so it was fairly clean and wouldn't kick up a cloud of dust with every step.

"Alright, please check the items again. Once we've delivered them, we'll be leaving."

The delivery staff neatly stacked the accessories one by one, checked the list, and then turned and went downstairs.

Lin Shu didn't buy all the parts from the same store—in order to keep costs to a minimum, he repeatedly compared prices between several stores on Taicang Computer Street, buying CPUs from one store, graphics cards from another, and RAM from yet another, essentially cosplaying Mulan going to war.

It saved two or three hundred yuan, but the price was that no one would provide assembly services.

Four thousand three hundred yuan.

This is all the money he has spent on this "tool of the trade".

Unlike playing games normally, live streaming requires a camera and microphone.

Lin Shu didn't skimp on these two things. Whether it was for the sake of the live stream effect or to avoid being criticized in the future as "the number one live streamer in China with a static microphone" or "the legend of a person with a mosaic face," it's always better to have better equipment.

"Let's get started!"

Lin Shu rolled up his sleeves, squatted down, opened the packaging box, and began his computer assembly project.

Align the CPU with the socket, press down gently, and the clip will spring back with a click—it's secure!

Apply thermal paste... install the heatsink... insert RAM, install the motherboard into the case, route cables, connect the power supply, and connect the hard drive;

Two hours later!

Lin Shu pressed the power button, the fan started whirring, and the screen lit up.

The moment the BIOS interface popped up, a satisfied smile appeared on the young man's face.

Not bad, the technique hasn't deteriorated.

When he first joined the team in his previous life, the club was dirt poor. For a long time, he and the team leader, a young woman, assembled the computers one by one by themselves.

The skills I honed back then have unexpectedly come in handy again today.

After assembling the computer, Lin Shu pulled out the dusty network cable from behind the door and plugged it into the back of the computer.

This is actually one of the main reasons why he chose this house.

The previous tenant had already installed the internet and the cables were all laid out. He only needed to go to the service center to open an account and transfer the connection, saving him the trouble and expense of installing cables.

"The computer's done. Now it's time to think about the next step."

Lin Shu took a breath and plopped down in the office chair he'd bought for thirty yuan from the secondhand market.

The chair creaked, as if reminding him—don't get cocky, you're still a poor wretch.

Yeah, poor bastard.

After buying the computer, my savings returned to just over a thousand.

Fortunately, the key production materials have been obtained.

We really need to think carefully about our next steps.

One word: fast.

This is the main theme he set for himself.

time does not wait.

It's already the end of 2012, and we're about to enter the golden age of esports, spearheaded by League of Legends.

The opportunity is there; whoever moves fast will take off.

This is the area I'm good at and familiar with.

If you want to get a share of the e-sports pie and then use e-sports as a springboard to expand into e-commerce or even high-tech fields, then you must accumulate initial capital quickly.

There was no talk of seeking stability.

The window of opportunity for the Internet is only two or three years.

If you lag behind, at best you'll be a high-level employee. Want to be the one making the rules? Don't even think about it.

Lin Shu opened the document and started typing rapidly, writing and thinking at the same time, deleting each line as he typed, as if he were sifting through his mind.

I still have to do power leveling.

In the short term, this is the fastest way to make money; there's no other choice.

Then live stream... no, let's not live stream for now.

There will be conflicts between boosting services and live streaming. At the very least, you can't openly place orders during a live stream, otherwise it will be troublesome if someone takes a screenshot and stirs up trouble.

Although there is no explicit ban on game boosting in China for the time being, you will eventually have to step into the limelight. When you are starting from scratch, people might be able to defend you if you engage in game boosting.

But if you've already reached another stage and you still engage in such activities, especially when they're out in the open, it's easy for someone to seize on your weaknesses and cause your downfall.

"We definitely have to participate in the Rank Championship, but we can try a different format."

The title of "Number One in the Chinese Server" is a treasure trove that comes with its own built-in audience. If you don't have the ability, fine, but if you do, you must hold onto it tightly.

But he doesn't need to be like others, with a title like "Trying to be number one in the national server," and rise and fall with a group of people, chasing and competing with each other.

What is the key to live streaming?

is differentiation.

You have to have something that others don't.

Lin Shu's plan was to secure the top spot in the Chinese server before the live stream even started. While others' ultimate goal was still "reaching the top," his live stream title had already changed to "A Simple and Unpretentious Diary of the Number One Solo Queue Player in the Chinese Server."

"Striving for the top spot in the Chinese server" and "Maintaining the top spot in the Chinese server" differ by only one word, but the level of sophistication and the amount of attention they receive are completely different.

Why was Li Guapi from the neighboring region so commercially valuable in my previous life? The fundamental reason was his overwhelming championship honors.

While other talented players aim to "win a championship," this player already has several, including three consecutive championships.

Just like the promotional video for the finals says, no matter which path you choose, the final destination of that path is him!

Therefore, the impact felt by the audience is self-evident.

Therefore, Lin Shu plans to copy his approach and make the Rank Championship hosted by YY his personal challenge.

At that time, for every well-known player defeated, a highlight video of the top-ranked player in the Chinese server will be released.

Sigh, posting one a day, it's hard to keep the attention low.

"Oh, and you can also make money by making videos!"