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

In the audience, the lights shone down, and thousands of faces blended into a blurry patch of light.

Two familiar figures were dressed in their usual respectable clothes, their hair neatly combed.

No message was sent.

I didn't make a phone call.

He wasn't given any hints before the match.

I sat right in the middle of the crowd, looking up in his direction;

Zhang Hai's finger, which was hovering over the mouse, suddenly stopped.

Riven.

He was indeed planning to lock down Riven.

As a hero with multiple dashes and built-in crowd control, his early-game burst damage is extremely high with his lightning-fast QA combo; with a large health potion at level 3, he has a strong all-in capability and can easily secure first blood and win.

To put it dramatically, from the moment he learned he would be facing sOAZ in the first solo match, he had repeatedly rehearsed in his mind the laning details of Riven against countless possible opponent champions.

How to use Q to bait out the opponent's key skills in the third wave, and how to use the knock-up effect of the third Q to follow up with a basic attack to deal maximum damage.

Even techniques like lane blocking, RE combos, and W-flash are already in my repertoire, just waiting to be used.

Riven is his main champion; he can execute her combos with his eyes closed.

If he picks Riven, he's 98% sure he'll win, and he'll win in a very exciting, flashy, and spectacular way.

But at this moment, as his gaze passed through the stage lights, through the swaying glow sticks and support signs, and landed on the two respectable outfits in the third row, fragments from six months ago suddenly surged up—

His mother, with tears in her eyes, locked him in his workplace and said, "If you play video games again, I'll lock you up until you're an adult."

My dad smashed his mechanical keyboard, pointed at his nose, and yelled, "Esports? What kind of reputation can you make by just typing on a keyboard?"

At its worst, he climbed to the rooftop of his own building, the wind billowing through his T-shirt like sails, and shouted down, "If you don't believe me, I'll jump down and show you!"

Finally, at 3 a.m., he climbed over the wall behind his residential compound and hid in a blind spot of the security cameras. His backpack contained two changes of clothes and his ID card, and his earphone wire was tangled up and stuffed into his coat pocket.

A completely different thought suddenly popped into Zhang Hai's mind.

His parents sat there, separated by the entire venue and the noisy cheers of thousands of people.

Their deepest connection with games in their lives was probably just the occasional mention of "e-sports" in the TV news. To them, Riven's gameplay was nothing more than a green-cloaked female character flashing her sword wildly on the screen, so fast that they couldn't even see where the blade was.

They couldn't understand how extreme it was for the third part of Q to knock up and interrupt the crocodile's E skill, they couldn't understand how precise the prediction was needed to block the opponent's poke with E skill, and they couldn't understand what it meant to calculate the kill threshold to single digits when using W-Flash followed by an auto-attack.

The only thing they could understand was probably the child sitting on the stage.

He didn't smash the keyboard, fling the mouse, or roll his eyes at the camera.

I no longer slam my headphones on the table when I lose a ranked match like before, I no longer argue with my parents until my face turns red like before, I no longer...

He now sits quietly in front of the world, his left hand on the keyboard, his hair short, his back straight, and he has become a true professional player.

Zhang Hai took a deep breath.

Then he gently twisted his wrist, and the mouse steadily moved one space to the right.

The cursor completely left Riven's portrait and stopped on the silver-white mechanical sphere. Double-click to lock it.

"I'll help you kill the enemy, that'll definitely be fun!"

The countdown has reached zero.

The moment the screen appeared, the doll's voice rose an octave:

"Huh?! Orianna?? Tele picked Orianna for a top lane solo??"

Miller was also stunned for a moment, then quickly realized: "This choice... is very prudent."

"Orianna has a natural advantage in harassing short-range top lane champions. She has long range, a shield, speed boost, and a complete control chain. If Irelia dashes in but Orianna shields her and creates distance, Orianna can counter with a QW combo, which will make things very difficult for Irelia."

"From a purely visual perspective... cough cough, from a gameplay perspective..."

The doll's tone carried a hint of confusion, "Orianna is indeed stable in solo play, but her skill ceiling is far less explosive than assassin-type heroes like Riven. Tele isn't going for flashy plays; he's going for a guaranteed win—this is completely different from what we predicted."

The live chat exploded at the same time, filled with question marks.

【? ? ? 】

【Wait, what's with the clockwork thing?】

[Top lane solo, bro, why don't you play mid lane?]

[Did Brother Ta chicken out?]

[I understand that Orianna is a safe bet, but wouldn't it be faster for you to win with Riven?]

[I don't understand, but I respect the choice of the world's second-best player.]

In the arena, Zhang Hai looked away, glanced at the loading screen, and smiled slightly.

He doesn't just want to win this game.

Moreover, he needs to win the solo match in a way that demonstrates his abilities as a true esports professional to his parents, who don't understand games.

……

Rest area.

The computer screens in front of the LPL team members were broadcasting the draft phase on stage in real time.

Abu stood frozen in place, holding his thermos, while Mingkai frowned and hissed.

Completely bewildered.

Dude, you were dominating the LPL Spring Split, but now you're playing it safe on the world stage. How come you're good at domestic competitions but bad at international ones?

Leaning back on the sofa in the lounge, Lin Shu's lips twitched slightly. He roughly understood what his top laner was thinking.

As the head of the HWG team, he has been leading these young men for more than half a year, and he knows this kid's usual behavior better than anyone else.

When I first started playing professionally, I would jump up and shout "Wasn't that awesome?" after winning a game in the training room, and if I lost a match, I would squat on my seat and pull my hair until it looked like a bird's nest. Every time I played a scrim, I would always choose a tough character that was "good at maneuvering, good at showing off, and good for getting cheers from my teammates".

In official matches, Jayce, Riven, Irelia, and Renekton are all signature champions that rank highly in his champion pool. When ahead, he can dominate a lane, and even when he is targeted, he can hold on for half the game with his skill.

In short, he is a player with very obvious strengths and weaknesses. He is strong in lane and good at split pushing, but his team fight awareness is lacking and he relies entirely on his teammates to cover for him. He is a good prospect, but also an unpolished stone.

The reason why others couldn't notice was because he was in charge of the game, and HWG basically won all the games.

But this doesn't change the fact that before the All-Star game, he was a clueless young man who couldn't even meet his own requirements for practicing Kennen.

To be honest, Lin Shu was somewhat troubled about how to strengthen the opponent's team fight capabilities next.

Unexpectedly, this stone has now turned on itself.

The moment Zhang Hai saw his parents appear in the audience, he instantly let go of his obsession with Riven... or rather, with her gameplay.

He didn't choose the hero who was "most likely to win," but rather the hero who was "most understandable to his parents."

When playing Orianna solo, it's not about lightning-fast QA, burst damage of five attacks per second, or nimble movement. It's about distance awareness, positioning, the rhythm of skill rotation, and the timing of each shield application.

These details might not seem as explosive to those in the know as Riven's, but to laymen, the logic of this hero fighting that hero, you hit me once and I hit you once, your health bar goes down slowly and mine goes down quickly is crystal clear.

Zhang Hai chose to wind up the clockwork because he wanted to tell his parents something:

My decision to become a professional player wasn't a passing fancy, nor was it based on a single hero, a single trick, or a single strategy.

I can dominate the game with Riven, and I can also play other heroes with rock-solid stability.

I can operate it, and I can manage it;

They can fight tooth and nail, or they can grind their opponents down with their basic skills.

This is the professionalism a player should have, not just being a show-off addicted gamer obsessed with the online world.

My name is Zhang Hai!

Game ID: tale!

He is a true professional esports player!

(You know what I'm trying to write about in this chapter.)