Daze

Everyone was in a daze.

Before anyone could react, Xue Wei had swiftly entered the intranet training system, created a team for himself, named it [National Team Three], and simultaneously requested to join the training team matchmaking.

Team matchmaking had to be approved through the coach system.

At this moment, Alan and the head coach, who were in front of the main control panel in the coach’s room, were both startled.

The other few training staff coaches were also startled.

“Where did this National Team Three come from?”

Alan clicked open the team information, and the corner of his mouth twitched.

Captain Now.

T side (Terrorist).

He alone brought three bots, one of which was named [Pretty on Business Trip], and had a famous ‘salted fish’ hood from 《Fire》.

“What kind of move is this?” The other few training staff members whispered, “Is the kid just messing around? Is this little sniper Captain Wen brought in a bit too disorganized and undisciplined?”

“Never mind, let him play. It just so happens they’re short a person for scrims. I’ll just keep an eye on it.” Alan clicked to approve the matchmaking request, then picked up his teacup with interest.

He hadn’t told anyone else that he had studied Xue Wei’s playstyle before he joined the team.

He had duo queued with him and witnessed his terrifying sniping ability.

Others had seen it in the All-Star Game, but none as exaggerated as he had.

Alan added a few more red dates to his teacup and picked up a bag of potato chips: “I’ll watch; it’s fine.”

He was clearly in spectator mode.

If the club offered popcorn, he would be holding potato chips and popcorn.

Inside the training room.

“What do you mean?”

The remaining Team Two members exchanged glances.

The atmosphere remained frozen.

Only one person with a slightly more volatile temper dared to speak, but even his tone wasn’t too defiant.

He merely asked: “Are you serious? One person playing against our three teams? You’re completely messing around!”

“Um…” Chubby looked at the team-up page and said weakly, “The coach approved it, huh.”

Everyone looked towards the team panel.

Xue Wei’s team, with one person and three bots, had already been added to National Team Two’s team panel.

Alan had approved it, but he had changed the name of Xue Wei’s team.

“Calling it National Team Three is a bit much. This little lone wolf, Team Three’s establishment approval hasn’t even passed yet,” Alan enthusiastically watched from next door, munching potato chips. “Let’s change it to National Team 2.5. When God Wen comes back, it’ll be National Team Three.”

He saw that Xue Wei had put a ‘salted fish’ hood on the bot named Pretty, burst into laughter, and quickly screenshotted it, sending it to Wen Man’s private chat.

–Look, your lone wolf is playing a training match with you.

Wen Man: “?”

Here, National Team Two’s atmosphere was still silent.

The matchmaking page had quickly entered the game.

[National Team 2.5] and [Group B Team] successfully matched.

Silence and a few others’ faces turned green.

Their team was Team B. Tonight, they were the CT side.

“Why are we playing? Is he looking down on us? I can’t believe Alan actually allowed him to join matchmaking? There must be a problem with you in this!”

The remaining people were still grumbling.

Xue Wei raised a hand to his mouth, shushing them: “Shhh—it’s starting. National team training matches also count for individual points. How many kills do you want to give me?”

He actually never killed AFK players; he was just trying to scare them.

The others fell silent, all turning back to look at their computer screens.

On the other side, Team A and Team C also successfully matched.

Everyone put on their headphones and began their respective scrims.

“Captain, what do we do?”

The other few people asked Silence in the team voice chat.

Their IDs were Stellalou, Earth, and Second, respectively.

“Are we playing seriously?”

“Play!” Silence encountered something so outrageous for the first time, and it was happening within National Team Two. He found it somewhat intolerable: “Free training individual points, why not take them! Play quickly! Shut him out sixteen rounds in twenty minutes, then we’ll go complain to the coach! This is too outrageous.”

The bots in this game could be controlled.

Their control methods and bot skill level were similar to auto chess—reaction speed and aiming accuracy took a random average, and their reaction speed and accuracy would not be lower than the average professional player’s standard.

The national team always had a fixed standard value for bot settings.

Xue Wei displayed the bot numbers on the team panel.

Alan also entered the spectator system.

He publicly stated: “No problem, play. I’ll supervise.”

At the same time, he saw Wen Man ‘watering’ the group chat, and privately messaged him: [Stop ‘watering’ the group chat. If you don’t watch the kid you brought, I’ll have to watch him. Next time you’ll have to cover for me.]

Wen Man already knew what happened tonight.

He replied to him: [You’re watching? Then you’d better bring a notebook.]

The four members of Group B all felt a simmering anger they couldn’t suppress.

Playing with three bots, this was the highest level of mockery and disdain!

Their map this round was Ridge City.

Ridge City was a small town built on two ridges.

The distance between them was not small, and there was no cover.

The largest cover consisted only of a narrow passage made of seven or eight connected corrugated iron barrels, allowing only one person to pass through.

There were two points.

One was relatively normal, on the rooftop of a house on one side of the ridge.

The other was more ‘unconventional’, in a low-lying area between the two ridges.

This was also the point with the highest comeback rate in 《Fire》, often resulting in instant death upon peeking or death in a chaotic skirmish.

Standing at the ridge’s vantage point and spraying downwards would be like ‘catching a turtle in a jar’—or rather, a slaughter.

The members of Team B discussed it in low voices, deciding to use their most common and highest win rate tactic on this point.

Internally, they called it the “concentrate-activate tactic,” while netizens called it the “pig slaughtering tactic.”

It involved using the terrain difference on both sides of the ridge for cover, gradually pushing with firepower step by step.

They would ignore the points first, ensuring all enemies were forced into the low-lying area between the two ridges within one minute, then proceeding with elimination.

No one would choose the ‘unconventional’ point.

Anyone trying to choose the ‘unconventional’ point to launch a surprise attack and gain a time advantage would generally still be unable to withstand the firepower from directly above the ridge.

So, in this map, gambling on points was not important.

National Team Two’s main lineup didn’t rely much on a core.

It was also developed to counter Team One’s sniper tactics—their four players could switch to four assaulter roles at any time, with very fierce firepower.

So, a minute of suppressing fire was relatively easy for them to achieve.

This tactic was trained in the latter half of the last season, had been used three times in international matches, with no defeats, and was also one of the tactics developed by the Chinese team.

It was a tactic brought forth by Wen Man.

When foreign teams got this map, they basically fought guerrilla warfare behind the corrugated iron boxes in the low-lying area, trying their best to create an economic disparity—then quickly bought M82A1s.

With the M82A1’s penetration damage, the terrain difference issue was no longer so great; it was basically whoever had the M82A1 ruled the world.

—However, this tactic was also developed and brought forth by Wen Man.

Outside the arena, Alan watched.

His thoughts drifted to this point.

Wen Man was famous for developing tactics and then researching countermeasures himself.

This was perfectly exemplified on the Ridge map.

Xue Wei hadn’t yet studied this map—it wasn’t realistic for him to watch all tactics from all international competitions within a few months.

He just played a round with random movements first.

“Guerrilla warfare playstyle, huh, little lone wolf.” Alan was a bit surprised, “Does he know this tactic? It’s a bit old, though.”

“Now, your tactics are outdated!” Team B’s Earth said with a sneer over the mic, “That’s God Wen’s playstyle from hundreds of years ago. Foreign teams still use it, but we stopped long ago!”

In the first round, they used a new playstyle and easily drew.

Xue Wei looked at his wiped-out team panel.

Far from showing any anger or displeasure, his eyes instead…

…lit up with excitement!

“New playstyle, who came up with it? Finally, a new playstyle, beautiful!”

He praised the team list of three bots exuberantly.

Excitement burned in his dark eyes, yet it also revealed an unusual calmness.

There were forty seconds of preparation time left before the next round.

Forty seconds.

Xue Wei’s small notebook was spread open on the table.

He picked up his pen, the tip touching the paper, thinking rapidly.

Several keywords appeared in his mind.

Assault.

Encirclement.

High ground.

A network had already formed in his mind.

He thought he had written it down in his notebook, but in reality, his thinking speed was far greater than his writing speed; he hadn’t written a single word.

The match began!

Xue Wei had lost the previous round, a pauper.

He didn’t have a single good gun, only a basic P90, with 30 bullets.

There were only three thousand economy points in the system.

He spent two thousand nine hundred on smoke grenades.

Too many items; he couldn’t carry them all himself.

Xue Wei “tsk”ed.

He could only throw the rest to the bot, the one with the ‘salted fish’ hood, [Pretty].

The remaining two bots, he ignored them, letting them take random routes.

[National Team 2.5] began to move.

He was on the T side.

His spawn point was on the other ridge.

Team B spawned at the foot of the opposite ridge and would need some time to climb up.

“About eight seconds left. Everyone, deploy smoke before going up. Pay attention, Now is a sniper, and his sniping ability is very strong. We won easily last round, but don’t get complacent,” Silence commanded.

The other three answered in unison: “Yes!”

Stellalou, Earth, and Second dispersed, each deploying smoke, then ascended the ridge after repositioning.

“The enemy deployed smoke too!”

Earth was the first to climb the ridge.

He quickly scanned the outside position, then entered a house: “Position: valley low ground! He probably wants to come over! Should we spray him directly?”

“Spray directly!” Second was a bit excited, his voice carrying a hint of fervent triumph, “We don’t even need to herd the pigs anymore; he went to the execution ground himself! We can’t be blamed for being ruthless!”

Silence gave instructions: “All members, focus fire! Suppress with direct firepower through the smoke! They only have three seconds of smoke left; if they don’t come out, they’ll die hiding inside! Remember to spray backwards! Don’t give them a chance to retreat!”

Indeed, given such a small area, if all four of them sprayed and suppressed, even a mosquito would be shot through.

Everyone switched to assault weapons, spraying fiercely into the smoke below!

One second passed.

Nothing happened.

“Missed? Are they moving?”

Second hesitated for a moment, didn’t listen to orders, and threw another grenade, but still no notification appeared in the upper right corner.

“Is the opponent full armor? Can they really tank that much? Didn’t even buy guns, huh? (Full armor refers to full defensive weapons, which are expensive)”

But something was still wrong.

“No!” Silence shouted, “No! There’s no one there! Go quickly!!”

It was the third second.

The smoke still hadn’t dispersed.

Because it wasn’t one smoke grenade, but several continuous ones.

As one dispersed, another followed, solidly blocking all vision of the large area behind the other ridge.

“A single leaf can obscure sight.”

Xue Wei muttered to himself over the mic: “This tactic will be called ‘A Leaf Obscures Sight’.”

The position where he threw the smoke was close to Team B, creating two consequences:

Team B thought he would push up from the low valley/provide cover, misjudging the firepower.

The second consequence was that Team B couldn’t see the situation in the large area radiating behind the smoke at all.

From Alan’s spectator view, he could see what was happening on the field:

Xue Wei stood alone on the ridge, never moving from his spawn.

The T team, apart from throwing smoke, did not move at all!!!

“Holy crap, he’s just throwing smokes.” Alan threw his pen, laughing hysterically and cursing, “There’s even this kind of play!”

On the international stage, players were accustomed to using smoke for cover/movement because smoke grenades were expensive and not thrown casually.

Xue Wei’s usage, on the other hand, looked particularly like a play made by a casual player in bronze rank who had no idea how to play.

The smoke in front of Team B hadn’t dispersed, but the visual obstruction in front of Xue Wei had already cleared.

Four people, four dispersed firing positions.

Gunshots pierced through the valley and smoke, accurately transmitting position information into his ears.

The approximate position information of all four was now extremely clear.

At the same time, all four reached their reload moment, and the gunshots briefly disappeared.

Alan thought Xue Wei was about to fire, but he still didn’t move.

—The national team would not make the major mistake of all four reloading at the same time when suppressing with firepower; they reloaded in rotation.

“Where are they? Holy crap, are they ghosts? Or have they already flanked us from behind?”

The four couldn’t help but turn their perspective to look behind them.

Just then, Xue Wei opened fire!

Four people, four points.

Xue Wei stared into the mist, his movements without any hesitation.

He focused on firing his bullets.

[CHN.Now] used P90 to kill [CHN.earth]

[CHN.Now] used P90 to kill [CHN.silence]

[CHN.Now] used P90 to kill [CHN.second]

[Bot Pretty] used a dagger to kill [CHN.Stellalou]

Xue Wei: “Hm?”

Only then did he notice that the free bot, wearing a ‘salted fish’ hood, had pulled out a dagger because its equipment was exhausted, and freely rushed towards the enemy… and even knifed one to death.

Xue Wei:

‘His words halted abruptly.’

“Always stealing kills,” he muttered softly.