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

"Warmest congratulations to WE, the CN representative team in the IPL5 League of Legends tournament, for defeating FNC 3-0 in the finals and winning China's first-ever LOL world championship!"

Early morning of December 3rd!

A news item from the e-sports community has successfully gone viral on various forums.

That evening, Lin Shu, as a witness, joined the players in the live stream to witness the five people lifting the trophy.

Yes, WE won!

Unlike their previous 3-1 record, the strengthened WE team easily defeated their opponent 3-0.

The exaggerated performance, accompanied by the glory of the first world championship in the Chinese server, and with the massive promotional resources invested by Tencent, the news quickly went viral on major forums, Weibo, Tieba, and Qzone, and even flooded the entire internet.

#WE wins the championship#

#CNLOL's First World Championship#

#Factory Manager Spider Godhood#

#Winning Celebration Event: Log in to claim your free skin!#

#Winning avatar distributed server-wide!#

No one expected that winning a game competition would generate such widespread attention and discussion.

It topped the Weibo hot search list, its topic views exceeded one million in a very short time, and its video reposts reached over 3 in a single session.

It left countless people outside the industry in awe and disbelief.

One can't help but ask a series of soul-searching questions?

who am I?

where am I?

What is esports?

The topic of WE's victory generated such buzz outside the gaming community, and its popularity was even more exaggerated in dedicated gaming communities like NGA.

NGA player community.

A post titled "WE! World Champions!" went viral, garnering over 5000 replies in just one hour. Community administrators even stepped in and promised to pin it to the top for half a month.

Duowan and the LOL forums even highlighted the video of WE's 3-0 victory over their opponent in the IPL5 finals in red, and made the video source freely available for players to create derivative works and promote.

The fat penguins weren't idle either.

League of Legends China server is in a critical period of promotion. What does a world championship mean?

It means traffic, it means new users, it means real money.

Soon, a series of events were launched, including a week of free access to all heroes from the finals, half-price skins for selected heroes from the finals, three hours of double experience and gold for all servers this weekend, and a permanent free WE champion avatar.

For a time, if you didn't understand WE or didn't say things like "Factory Manager is awesome" or "Smile is invincible," you'd be embarrassed to chat with your peers.

Just when the heatwave was at its peak, the fat penguin finally unleashed its trump card, which it had been holding back for half a year.

An announcement, posted on the official Weibo account of League of Legends, landed squarely in everyone's view:

[Official Announcement]

"Announcement Regarding the Establishment of the League of Legends Pro League (LPL) and the Start of the 2013 Preseason":

"To further promote the professional development of esports in China and enhance the standardization and competitive level of the League of Legends esports system, Tencent and Riot Games have jointly decided to officially establish the 'League of Legends Pro League (LPL)' as the highest-level professional League of Legends esports competition in mainland China."

The specific selection rules are as follows:

"..."

"The LPL preseason will officially begin on January 29, 2013. At that time, top professional teams from all over the country will gather together to compete fiercely in Summoner's Rift."

Who will reign supreme in the esports arena?

"Stay tuned."

Once the announcement was released, the comment section was quickly filled with player replies.

He's here! He's finally here!

[Waaaaah, our own national league is finally going to be established!]

It's been a long time coming. Before, we only watched various cup competitions, but now there's finally a formal organization for it.

Absolutely! WE has won the world championship, but the Chinese server doesn't even have a proper professional league yet. That would be a laughing stock.

There are still more than two months left, how am I supposed to wait?

By the way, which teams were in the first LPL season? Does anyone know?

[After reviewing the selection rules, it appears that the first LPL season will have a total of eight teams participating. WE is definitely in, being the world champions. Then there's the TGA Winter Tournament organized by Tencent, where Royal Club, as the runner-up, will also qualify directly. The remaining six teams will be selected through nationwide qualifiers.]

If the TGA runner-up can make it, what about the champion team?

Uh, the champion is WE, right?

[Hey, by the way, didn't Emperor say he was also planning to go pro? How's it going?]

[Yes, yes, and Emperor, that freak, he said in his livestream on the day of the finals that he wanted to form a team to participate in the first LPL professional league.]

[Great, great, great! We really need to look forward to this. Let's see if this devil who has dominated the top spot in the Chinese server for almost two months is more powerful, or if the professional teams will prevail.]

Don't get too excited yet; what if Emperor's team fails in the qualifiers?

[Upstairs, do you want to hear what nonsense you're spouting? Emperor failed in the qualifiers?]

[This guy clearly hasn't watched E-God's streams. He's a 3000 MMR powerhouse, and he's carried random players against pros in ranked games. You should be asking what those guys with professional dreams should do when they encounter him in the qualifiers.]

[Just for your information, the current chaotic state of the Chinese server is all thanks to E-God's (E God) influence.]

[Many of the strategies WE used in the finals were first popularized by E-God in the Chinese server.]

Indeed, we don't know the skill level of Emperor's hastily assembled team yet, as there's no track record, but to say he couldn't even get past the qualifiers would be an exaggeration.

[No, it's been several days and there's still no news. Haven't any top players from the Chinese server gone for the interview? If anyone has joined, please let us know.]

……

Lin Shu saw every single one of the noisy discussions online.

But he really didn't have time to pay attention to it right now.

The hype surrounding WE's victory was so intense that even a game streamer like him, who had only casually mentioned "wanting to form a team to enter the LPL," was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of attention.

The first to benefit was naturally their own Taobao store, which was already steadily gaining popularity.

Sales have skyrocketed in the last few days, like a rocket launch. The order notifications in the system have been nonstop, keeping the part-time college students extremely busy.

Immediately afterwards, all sorts of monsters and demons came knocking on the door.

On one side are those amateur players who are eager to become famous overnight through competitions, sending private messages one after another, attaching their own rank screenshots and highlights, wishing they could kowtow to him on the spot and beg for a trial.

On the other side were several merchants with an even sharper sense of smell than dogs. The esports market had barely begun to emerge when they caught wind of it and rushed over, immediately asking, "Boss Lin, shall we talk about sponsorship?"

Finding venues, trying out players, and negotiating partnerships and sponsorships for clubs that haven't even been established yet...

Even though Lin Shu has been extremely busy these past two days, he still has a lot of things to do.

It's ridiculous, really. If this got out, those professional teams struggling to make ends meet would be so jealous they'd pack up a brick and block his door in the middle of the night.

Before they even saw a single player or came up with a proper name for the team, sponsors were already lining up and offering themselves up.