Poaching Talent, Chen Yan's Ambition

The next day, waking up from a deep sleep, Chen Yan discovered that he was trending on Weibo.

"Behind-the-scenes documentary: Rookie player bluntly scolds and wakes up his teammates."

To his surprise, the trending topic wasn't about him leading his teammates to defeat RNG and save EDG, but rather the clip of him furiously chewing out his teammates in the back room.

The comment section was full of applause, with people saying the team desperately needed someone like Chen Yan who had the guts to wake his teammates up.

Chen Yan was speechless at this. So it turned out he was actually in the right for chewing people out?

However, the esports scene seemed to really work this way.

As long as the end result was correct, nobody cared about the process.

Even if you spent your days chasing female fans, getting abortions, and playing Texas hold 'em, as long as you could lead LPL to victory, everyone would turn a blind eye and find some brilliant scholars to spin narratives and defend you.

After sighing with emotion, Chen Yan got out of bed, washed up, and began checking the messages on his phone.

Most of them were sent by various clubs.

"I am Su Xiaoluo, IG's manager. Are you player Chen Yan? Please reply if you see this."

"I'm the manager of Omg. I often watch your livestream and even sent gifts."

"I'm WE's manager. Our team is in great form this year. Once you join us, we'll have an all-star roster. Although the pay isn't much, the quality of our female fans is super high..."

...

They were all poaching messages.

Clearly, the other clubs had also realized that Chen Yan was a treasure player.

But what did it mean by "the quality of female fans is super high"? Was that appropriate? Was he, Chen Yan, that kind of person?

Chen Yan deleted the entire batch of messages, leaving only WE.

"How high is the quality?"

At the WE base.

"He replied!"

Upon seeing the message, the WE manager suddenly slammed the table in ecstasy.

"What did he reply?" Everyone crowded around.

"Is he coming to WE?"

"What about Wang Zai? Is Wang Zai going to the bench?"

"Su Hanwei, hurry up and pack your bags to make room for the genius mid laner."

Of course, these were just jokes among the WE players.

The atmosphere within the WE team was fantastic.

This could easily be seen from their team fights.

When it came to team fight coordination, the current WE could be considered in a league of their own.

Facing the teasing from his teammates, Xiye wasn't angry at all. "If he's really that good, pouring water for him isn't out of the question. Maybe I can even coast to a championship."

Everyone chuckled.

In truth, they didn't really think Chen Yan was that much better than Xiye.

Although Chen Yan's momentum was fierce right now, he had played far too few matches, and no one could be certain about his future performance.

The only reason the club wanted to poach him was to take a gamble, especially since the budgeted investment wouldn't be high anyway.

They had even analyzed privately that it was almost impossible for Chen Yan to join WE.

After all, WE was notoriously broke, while Chen Yan could make more just from livestreaming than what WE was offering. Chen Yan wasn't running a charity, so how could he possibly come to them?

"He asked how high the quality of our female fans is..."

After figuring out Chen Yan's reply, the WE manager was left slightly speechless.

The other players looked at each other in dismay as well.

After careful deliberation, the WE manager laid out his terms: covering the buyout penalty, plus a rookie contract of three hundred thousand yuan.

During the S7 era, very few rookie players could secure a contract like this; it was practically a top-tier contract for a newcomer.

For a poor club like WE, this could be considered quite sincere.

Yet Chen Yan laughed when he saw it. The traffic and commercial value he could bring to WE by joining them far exceeded that figure.

Three hundred thousand was practically a joke.

Whoever came up with this contract must have been a genius.

"Forget it, Clearlove won't let me hang out with WE people."

With that, Chen Yan stopped replying.

Staring at the message, the WE manager was utterly speechless.

"Is he coming?"

The WE manager shook his off. "He said Clearlove won't let him play with us."

This...

Everyone present was at a loss for words.

The history of grievances between Clearlove and WE ran far too deep, but that was already a matter of the older generation. The old members of WE had either moved on or retired.

Today's WE could only be called Version 2.0.

"He probably just didn't want to come."

The WE manager didn't dwell on it. "Whatever, we just wanted to try our luck anyway. If he's not coming, he's not coming."

...

Chen Yan rejected the poaching attempts from every single club.

It wasn't that he loved EDG all that much, nor was he afraid of being branded a traitor.

The main issue was that they offered too little.

If the pay had been generous, he might have considered it.

Since the offers were so meager, there was no point in even thinking about it.

After all, leaving for another team meant abandoning the "Starch" fanbase, and compared to other clubs, EDG's contract management was relatively normal.

Since the benefits weren't massive enough, Chen Yan didn't want to bother shaking things up.

From then on, Chen Yan's life returned to peace and quiet.

Aside from livestreaming every day, the rest of his time was entirely at his own disposal.

It was worth mentioning that Chen Yan had recently completed tasks to acquire two new skills: the God of Singing and the God of Dancing.

Chen Yan suspected that the system wanted him to transition into an entertainment and talent streamer, but compared to broadcasting variety shows, he still preferred playing games.

That being said, gaming livestreams had indeed hit a bottleneck lately.

As his internet hype subsided, his channel's popularity dropped along with it.

This was a normal phenomenon; after all, even RMB had people who disliked it, so it was impossible for everyone to enjoy watching Chen Yan's streams.

However, the drop in gifts was something Chen Yan found a bit hard to accept.

During those days of peak popularity, the gifts amounted to tens of thousands every single day.

Now that the hype had faded, daily gifts only amounted to a few thousand yuan.

Some might say, isn't a few thousand yuan a day already plenty?

For an ordinary person, a few thousand a day was naturally a lot, but for Chen Yan, who had experienced daily earnings in the hundreds of thousands, a few thousand wasn't even worth mentioning.

He could easily burn through a few thousand yuan just buying casual daily necessities nowadays.

What's more, he had hired a housekeeper to cook and clean the house, and her fixed monthly salary alone was eight thousand.

Chen Yan finally understood what it meant for money to never be enough.

As long as your wealth hasn't formed that kind of snowballing, passive appreciation, it's very difficult not to harbor desires for money.

Because capital is far too powerful; it will pinpoint your exact wealth bracket and rack its brains to dig into your pockets.

Luxury goods were born precisely for this reason.

The positioning of luxury goods is meant for rich people to flex and put on airs.

Many people say that saving face is useless, and that statement is fine.

But for wealthy individuals, spending a bit more money to buy face and emotional value is something they are quite willing to do.

Chen Yan was no exception to this human nature.

He wanted to buy luxury sports cars, a massive mansion, luxury goods...

Yet, setting everything else aside, even just a large mansion in Modu carried an astronomical price tag.

Given his current income, it remained completely out of reach.

"I'm still way too poor."

Chen Yan's gaze flickered, his entire mind consumed by wild ambitions for wealth.

...

That day, Chen Yan went live as usual.

Right as he started the stream, Clearlove called him.

"WE reached out to you?"