Practical training

They arrived at two in the afternoon.

The national team had just finished their lunch break.

Members of Team One and Team Two, with sleepy eyes, entered the training room in an orderly fashion.

“Get up, get up! Today we’re reviewing yesterday’s tactics,” Alan said, blowing a small trumpet downstairs in the villa, then laughingly tossed it onto the sofa.

He turned and saw Wen Man enter with Xue Wei.

He first approached and patted Xue Wei’s head: “Hi! Little lone wolf!”

Then he looked up at Wen Man and said: “Captain Wen, you’re back. The training group needs you to look at some documents. And our preliminary plan from yesterday. We need to hold a meeting.”

“Alright, I know, coming right away. I’ll settle down the little one first,” Wen Man said. “Ten minutes.”

He returned to the national team base.

His usual casual demeanor was reined in, and his aura settled, exuding a great deal of authority.

The team members had all washed up and gotten out of bed.

They stood by the stair railing, looking down.

Initially, some were drinking water and chatting, but seeing Wen Man there, they dared not say anything, and immediately went downstairs to the training room.

A few close teammates only dared to give a quick greeting, then quickly rushed into the training room.

No one dared to greet Xue Wei, as if a transfer student had suddenly arrived during class, not daring to have any other active thoughts.

“Come here, I’ll introduce you. On the first floor, there’s a living room, lounge, gym, and swimming pool. The side is the dining hall. There are two cooks; you can order meals a day in advance if you want.”

“The training room is in the other building, the place where the promotion match was held that day. There’s a training ground in the middle; running drills twice a day, morning and evening.”

“Team schedule, you must strictly follow it. We…” Wen Man turned to him, his stern tone softening slightly as he addressed him, “won’t give you time to adjust. Understand?”

“I know.”

Xue Wei looked up at the team rules.

First rule: No snacks allowed in the training room.

Second rule: Strictly adhere to the schedule, phones collected during training, phones collected during evening training.

Third rule: No negative play allowed. Violators will face internal team punishment. More than two punishments will result in expulsion from the national team.

There were many rules, but Xue Wei read them once and found them all reasonable and acceptable.

“The second floor has player rooms and some training staff coach rooms. The third floor is for training staff coach rooms. We have many empty rooms, but most haven’t been cleaned yet.”

Wen Man paused: “Stay with me first? I don’t come back to stay often; this season I’ll be traveling frequently.”

“Oh, okay.” Xue Wei thought for a moment and had no other objections.

Wen Man carried his luggage into the room for him.

Xue Wei had been there once and knew the room’s layout.

He opened his luggage and stuffed his clothes into the wardrobe.

“Team uniforms will be measured and custom-made tomorrow, along with new season physicals. You can rest today.”

Wen Man checked the time and glanced outside.

He probably had to go to the meeting.

He opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Xue Wei had already stood up and told him: “You go to the meeting.”

“Mm, okay.”

Wen Man, hearing him say that, still stood by the door, unmoving.

He stood with his hands in his pockets, quietly watching him, a complex surge of emotions seemingly in his eyes.

Xue Wei didn’t notice.

He quickly put his things away, then stood up: “Then I’ll go to the training room too. I don’t need to rest.”

“That works, come on,” Wen Man gently let out a breath, “I’ll take you.”

“Then, are you my coach?” Xue Wei asked him for confirmation again.

“Not really,” Wen Man said, leading him downstairs, his voice very soft, “Officially, I’m a national team starter, national team captain, and one of the training group leaders. But I have some new plans for the new season. It’s not finalized yet.”

“Then I’ll call you Captain,” Xue Wei decided.

He didn’t like calling him coach.

If Wen Man wasn’t his coach, he felt more comfortable.

“Introduce me to National Team Two,” Xue Wei followed behind him, thought for a moment, then requested.

In the entire world, no one else dared to speak to Wen Man like that, as if he were a tour guide and nothing else.

Wen Man chuckled again.

“National Team Two, the head coach is the same as Team One. Alan will be responsible for more. The new season has just started, and our training group still has many things undecided, so for now, we’re mostly following last season’s routine. The captain leads the team, conducting match reviews, solo training, and team training based on daily practice.”

“Who is the Team Two captain?”

“ID Silence. I’m not very familiar with the specifics; I mostly lead Team One,” Wen Man said. “You can also get to know them first; just playing casually is fine.”

“I know him,” Xue Wei suddenly said, “I’ve watched his matches. He’s a commander free agent; he commanded all of National Team Two’s regular season matches. Your national team is a team where players have a very high degree of participation in tactics.”

“Our national team,” Wen Man corrected his wording, then said, “Yes, that’s our tradition. The in-team commander’s authority can be on par with the coach’s.”

“His commanding style is very rigid; I don’t like him,” Xue Wei said.

Wen Man looked at him, not speaking, but his brows still held that subtle smile.

He reached out again, his fingertips brushing his hair: “I know. I just have to put you in.”

Xue Wei: “?”

He didn’t understand Wen Man’s meaning.

Wen Man pushed open the door.

Snow light and daylight poured in together.

Xue Wei heard Wen Man’s low chuckle.

“If you had directly applied to join the national team training group, I would have let you in.”

‘Surprisingly, Xue Wei had obediently gone to the practice squad and even played promotion matches. The kid was incredibly well-behaved.’

“But this is good too,” Xue Wei heard Wen Man say, his voice calm and firm, “Play for one year, win the World Championship and the World Championship Tour Grand Slam. After that, whatever you do will be more convenient and reasonable.”

Xue Wei: “?”

Only then did he realize that Wen Man was even more forward-thinking than him.

The two went to the training building.

Wen Man turned left towards the training group’s conference room.

Xue Wei found the National Team Two training room sign himself, pushed the door open, and entered.

It was very quiet inside.

Captain Silence and a coach Xue Wei didn’t recognize were reviewing a match.

Seeing him push the door open, both of them stood up: “Come sit, you’re Now, right? Here, this is your spot.”

Their attitude was quite good.

Xue Wei found his spot and sat down to listen to them in the meeting.

National Team Two was reviewing their internal training for the new season.

The unfamiliar coach barely spoke throughout, mainly consisting of free discussion among the team members and Silence’s individual summaries.

Silence held a quite central position in National Team Two because he was the primary commander.

Team Two had a total of seven members, four backup tactical systems.

No matter how they rotated, he was the ironclad commander.

“Yesterday, we tried a new combination. First, for us, under the new rule set, if Team One is the enemy, who will they ban first? They’ll ban the commander, which is me. This is their consistent tactic, to target me for penetration. So last season we implemented a multi-core lineup system… We haven’t seen results yet, but that’s an issue with our training level. As long as we continue to intensify training, we can always train another system, especially a multi-free agent system, to target Team One’s Little P God.”

Everyone else listened attentively.

Xue Wei lowered his eyes, frowning slightly, his fair fingertips scratching at the tabletop.

Silence continued to speak.

Everyone had yesterday’s scrim replay open on their computers.

Team One played Team Two.

Team One’s lineup temporarily had no major changes, as everyone was still adapting to the feel of the new season.

It was still an M82A1 sniper lineup centered on Pandora.

Team Two, to counter Little P God, used two lineup systems in succession: one was the standard lineup (sniper, two assaulters, one free agent).

The second system was the four-free agent system that had appeared in the All-Star Game. It also heavily targeted Little P God.

The training coach and Silence were reviewing the specific drop positions of each person in detail.

After the review, Alan came in, then conducted a global review, followed by another training match.

Alan said: “We still need to confirm the individual role details. For today, let’s have free training first.”

Everyone said in unison: “Okay!”

Alan then pulled the coach inside and left, talking about something.

“Alright, everyone, please return to your positions now,” Silence’s tone was calm and mature, clearly well-versed in this procedure.

He looked up at Xue Wei, tilted his head, and said, “Now, want to join us? Just right, we had seven people before, so we could only take turns playing scrims. With you, we can directly split into groups for confrontation.”

“Okay,” Xue Wei had no objections, “Which group do I join?”

“You come to my side.” Silence studied Xue Wei, giving what he considered a friendly smile—he understood Xue Wei’s status.

Like Pandora, he was someone Wen Man insisted on bringing in, and given his performance in the All-Star Game, he was definitely not an ordinary person.

Such a person, when with him, could not be sidelined. That wouldn’t be good.

Xue Wei then joined Silence’s group.

The setup was sniper, free agent, two assaulters—a standard traditional configuration.

They started the first round.

Xue Wei and Silence’s team was Group A.

Xue Wei was about to habitually open the page to buy a TRG at the start of the round when he found that the team’s economy page was locked, changed to captain-allocated.

The team had five thousand economy; Silence gave him two thousand, and the remaining three divided the rest.

Xue Wei said: “Give me five hundred more; it’s not enough to buy a TRG.”

“For the team’s economy, Now, buy a V94 to transition for now,” Silence commanded, his voice steady, “Listen to orders.”

Xue Wei pursed his lips, said nothing, and obediently bought a V94.

In the first wave of direct engagement, they encountered an assault in the Maze Mansion.

Team B bought an M82A1 penetration sniper rifle and wiped them out with one shot.

Silence shouted over the mic: “Go! Go! Now, hurry and go! Save your gun!”

Xue Wei didn’t go.

He tried to shoot through the wall but failed, also getting wiped out.

The members of National Team Two were very skilled.

In close-quarters encounters, it was difficult to achieve a technical overwhelm because his aiming advantage was maximally compressed.

This round was a loss. The score became 0:1.

Second round, Xue Wei said coldly: “Give me five hundred yuan.”

The four members of Group A looked up at each other, and the atmosphere became tacitly silent.

Silence was a bit of a peacemaker: “Okay, okay, here’s five hundred yuan for you. I’ll give it to you from my economy.”

“I don’t need you to give it. My point is, in this tactic, you need to allocate 2500 economy to the sniper, not 2000. This isn’t my demand; this is the demand of the tactic. No matter who comes to play sniper, you should give them two thousand five hundred yuan.”

Xue Wei stated, his voice as gentle as possible.

Everyone else looked up, exchanging glances.

“Alright, alright, we’ll discuss the specific details later. I’ll give you this five hundred first. Let’s just play for now, okay?”

Silence, coaxing like a child, allocated five hundred yuan to him.

Xue Wei’s lips pursed even tighter.

He switched to a TRG.

Everything went much smoother afterward, but Team B suddenly changed tactics.

They must have gotten a taste of victory in the previous assault and decided to go for close-quarters aggressive pushes.

Xue Wei was about to rush out for a gunfight when Silence commanded: “Come back! You can’t go out! Your gun has a low rate of fire!”

“I can fight!” Xue Wei said over the mic.

But Silence had already rushed over: “You go quickly! I’ll cover you!”

Xue Wei was forced to retreat, but time had already been wasted.

They released smoke to cover their movement, but the enemy had already successfully planted the bomb, missing the defuse by one second.

After a round of training matches, they looked at Xue Wei somewhat strangely.

“Naonao,” Silence called his nickname, his tone as gentle and open as possible, “You’re a bit detached from the team. Don’t rush; take your time, okay?”

Xue Wei looked at him.

After a few seconds of silence, he stood up to get water.

Silence felt as if he had been stared at by a fluffy little lone wolf.

He felt somewhat guilty, turning to his teammates for help: “Did I… say something wrong?”

Taking advantage of Xue Wei going to get water, the others whispered: “No, Captain. These two waves were all his fault; I think there’s a big problem.”

“It was evident in the All-Star Game that he prefers to show off individually and isn’t very good at team coordination. We think you need to tell him this. After all, this is a team game…”

“Alright, I’ll send him a message and explain. Today, we’ll continue training, let him train separately for a while, then rejoin the team. That way, everyone’s progress won’t be delayed,” Silence said.

He quickly drafted a message and sent it to Xue Wei, tactfully conveying their opinion.

Xue Wei read the text message, drank a sip of water without a word, didn’t even eat dinner, and returned to his room to sleep.

Wen Man returned after the meeting.

Seeing no Xue Wei at the dining table, he went upstairs to find him.

Going upstairs, he only saw a lump of quilt.

Xue Wei was curled into a ball, facing the wall, sleeping in an introverted manner.

Wen Man asked around.

Alan finally got information from a team member and then relayed it to Wen Man.

“So you told him you thought his team coordination wasn’t good and he needed to practice more? He didn’t say anything, just went back to his room to rest. Is that right?”

Wen Man smiled.

“Yes… yes,” the team member who was asked seemed a bit anxious, “Wh-what’s wrong?”

“Then you guys are quite lucky. You caught him in a good mood, so he gave you face,” Wen Man put down his water cup, “He didn’t kill all of you.”