Chapter Five: A Grassroots Team Called Ember

To retain his right to public challenges, Lin Jin had seven days to qualify with a five-player team. Seventeen hundred people applied. Professionals demanded signing fees, streamers demanded audience shares, and many applicants simply wanted a chance to kill Lin Jin during practice. The three who remained looked nothing like a correct answer. Tang Tang, nineteen, was the café's former clerk and a diamond-ranked healer who could track ten players' cooldowns in a noisy room. Wei Feng, twenty-nine, delivered food after being banned from the secondary league for refusing a fixed match. His mechanics had slowed, but he always took the first hit for a teammate.