Chapter 3: Refusing the Giants

The lingering warmth of the rain clung to her skin, bringing with it a stifling, uncomfortable humidity. Lin Yue had just straightened her collar, trying to hide the frayed fibers of her sleeve, when the phone in her pocket began to vibrate violently. The frequency was so intense it felt as if it were trying to tear through the fabric and shred her nerves.

She glanced at the screen. The contact labeled "Manager Su Na" was flashing red, like a venomous snake flicking its tongue in the dead of night, ready to swallow its prey.

The moment she answered, a frigid aura surged through the receiver and washed over her entire body, instantly wiping away the remaining dampness of the rain.

Su Na: "Lin Yue. I heard you beat Old K in the underground circuit. Not bad. You've got guts."

The voice was devoid of warmth. Every syllable felt like a precision-engineered blade, slicing cleanly into Lin Yue's nerves.

Lin Yue let out a soft chuckle, her pace steady as she navigated the neon-lit streets. Rain dampened the tips of her hair and slid down her cheeks, dripping into the puddles with a faint, rhythmic sound. She said nonchalantly, "Manager Su, calling this late... I assume you want something."

Su Na: "Cut the chatter. Five million in signing fees, plus top-tier hardware support. Join Chen Xiao's team. It's your only chance to return to the professional circuit."

Lin Yue stopped in her tracks in front of a shuttered vending machine. She looked back at the towering skyscraper in the distance, its massive holographic projection looping a game advertisement. The light pierced through the curtain of rain, looking both hypocritical and solemn. A mocking curve touched her lips as rain trailed down her chin. "Five million?

To buy out a traitor's professional career? Su Na, you've got your calculations down to a science—I can practically hear every copper coin clinking against my bones."

Su Na's tone turned abruptly cold, carrying an unquestionable pressure, as if she were looking down from a great height. "Lin Yue, read the room. Chen Xiao is purging the market. Every free agent attempting to stay outside his control will be blacklisted. If you refuse, you'll vanish from every leaderboard by tomorrow. You won't even be able to step foot in an internet cafe."

The words felt like a cold needle stabbing into Lin Yue's temple. She took a deep breath; the damp night air filled her lungs with the scent of machine oil and dust, but it couldn't dispel the chill in her heart. Her gaze sharpened, her voice low and clear as it carried through the rain to the other end. "The data fabrication... you think nobody knows?

I have plenty of copies of the altered win-rate reports from inside Aurora Team. Su Na, if you want me dead, you'd better check if the person backing you is standing on solid ground. Don't forget—fire can burn the house down, but it can also blow back on the one who lit it."

There were three seconds of silence on the other end—a dead, heavy silence broken only by the faint hum of static. Then came a sharp *beep* as the call was disconnected. Lin Yue turned off her phone and fished an expensive chip from the depths of her pocket.

She tossed it into the air, watching it glimmer in the rain-mist with a cold, metallic sheen before it slipped through the gap of a sewer grate and was swallowed by the murky water. Since there was no way back, she might as well burn every bridge.

She turned and walked into a dimly lit underground internet cafe. This was a corner of the city's underbelly; the stairs were narrow and caked in grayish-black sludge. The air was a pungent cocktail of tobacco, expired coffee, and cheap coolant that stung the nostrils.

In the deepest part of the cafe hung a rickety sign: "Aurora Team." The first character was missing a stroke, clattering loudly in the wind.

A man in a cheap jacket was slumped in a chair, three scratched-up monitors arrayed before him. The game screen was frozen on a crushing defeat settlement page. This was the captain of Aurora Team—and a washed-up streamer on the brink of bankruptcy. He looked as if his spine had been removed, his back hunched, fingers mindlessly tapping the edge of the keyboard with a hollow echo.

The man looked up, his eyes clouded. When he saw Lin Yue, a flicker of hope and despair intertwined in his gaze. The hope was so fragile it seemed it would shatter at a touch, while the despair was as deep as an abyss. "You're the lunatic with the helmet? I heard you just hit the jackpot in the undergrounds?"

Lin Yue pulled out a chair and sat down, the legs screeching harshly against the floor. Her movements were casual yet carried an untouchable poise. She peeled off her wet jacket and tossed it at her feet. "I didn't just hit the jackpot. I'm here to save you."

The man gave a bitter laugh, his fingers drumming on the desk in a crisp rhythm, as if providing a soundtrack to this absurd conversation. "Save us? Aurora's account balance is at zero. We can't even scrape together next month's rent and server maintenance. What are you going to save us with? You going to bash your head against a wall with that broken helmet? Or maybe use your faded reputation?"

Lin Yue didn't argue. Instead, she plugged directly into the cafe's public terminal and booted up her Neural Sync Helmet. With a faint hum of electricity, golden streams of data unfurled across her retinas like blooming flowers.

She didn't touch the keyboard. She simply stared at the historical match recordings on the screen, her fingertips sliding through the air to instantly pull up seventeen losses from Aurora Team's last three months.

"Third game, fifteen-minute team fight. Your top-laner sat in the brush for four seconds, but his reaction was slow by 0.8 seconds, causing the entire formation to collapse."

Lin Yue's voice was terrifyingly calm, like a judge passing sentence, every word landing clearly in the oppressive air. "This wasn't bad luck; it was a calculation error. You've grown accustomed to using experience to make up for missing data. But in the age of algorithms, experience is the cheapest kind of trash."

A frail young girl suddenly jumped up. This was Jiang Xue, the only non-professional genius on Aurora Team. She held a thick stack of printed papers, the edges curled and frayed. Her eyes sparkled as she looked at Lin Yue, as if she had found a long-lost relative. "She's right!

I calculated it—the positioning deviation at that spot was only two centimeters, but it was enough to make the ultimate miss. Two centimeters is the distance between life and death."

A burly teammate sitting in the corner sneered with obvious contempt, clutching a crushed energy drink can that made a metallic scraping noise. "Two centimeters? On the field, that's a death line. But why is a reject tossed out by the big leagues trying to lecture us?

Lin Yue, you can play the clever game in a mixed bag like the undergrounds, but on a professional stage, how many minutes would your little calculations last? Stop pretending."

Lin Yue didn't get angry. She simply pushed up a pair of non-existent glasses on the bridge of her nose—a habitual gesture she used to mask her internal fluctuations. A dark, mischievous smirk played on her lips, looking exceptionally sharp in the dim light. "Talk is cheap. Let Jiang Xue show the underlying logic of that analysis. Let's use data, not emotions."

Jiang Xue nodded obediently, her fingers flying across the keyboard. The projection screen was instantly filled with complex code and trajectory prediction maps. The previously chaotic combat paths became orderly under Lin Yue's annotations; every line pointed toward the optimal solution, like a precision-engineered spiderweb.

The burly man's face froze. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. The logic behind the data was airtight and flawless, completely crushing his so-called "intuition" and making him look like a joke.

Just then, the entrance to the cafe was violently shoved open. A thick cloud of cigarette smoke surged inside, mixed with the damp, cold scent of the rain. Old K stood there, lighter in hand, his bloodthirsty gaze sweeping the room before landing on Lin Yue. A flame danced between his fingers. "The rules have changed.

Next week's underground fighting tournament is upgrading to a mandatory team registration system. Solo entries are banned. Aurora Team... just happens to be missing a core player."

Lin Yue stood up and brushed the dust off her jacket, her gaze sweeping over the people present before settling on the captain's weathered face. It was a face that had been crushed repeatedly by life, with resentment hidden in every wrinkle. "I want full tactical command. I don't need a salary, but I'll shoulder all the risk of loss.

If we win, I take the glory that belongs to me. If we lose, Aurora Team officially disbands. Do we have a deal?"

The captain hesitated for a moment, his eyes darting between Lin Yue and the broken monitors around them. Finally, he gritted his teeth and nodded, as if making a life-or-death decision. He reached out, and Lin Yue met him. Their trembling hands gripped each other tightly, with a force that nearly bruised the skin of their palms.

On the other side of the city, Su Na stood before a floor-to-ceiling window as rain lashed against the glass. Watching the scene through a surveillance feed, a cruel curve touched her lips. She dialed an unknown number, her voice soft yet lethal. "Keep a close eye on Aurora Team, especially Lin Yue. I want her shattered into pieces before she ever reaches the peak."

Inside the cafe, Jiang Xue clutched her laptop bag, timidly tugging at the corner of Lin Yue's clothes. Her fingers were ice-cold, gripping the fabric until her knuckles turned white. "Yue-yue, are we teammates now?" Lin Yue looked down at the soft yet resilient girl, a flicker of tenderness crossing her eyes before it was covered by a cold resolve. She knew that from this moment on, there was no turning back.

"From now on, there are no rejects here. Only hunters."

As soon as she spoke, the overhead lights flickered violently with a piercing electrical buzz. A red warning pop-up snapped onto the center of the main screen, the crimson text glaring in the dark: "Aurora Team Account Balance: 0.00. Overdue payment detected. Forced power shutdown in three minutes."

Despair surged in like a tide, swallowing all the light. But Lin Yue's eyes remained as calm as still water. She raised her hand and lightly pressed the activation button on her helmet. The golden light flared again, illuminating a young face already mapped with scars.

In the final second before the darkness fell, her voice echoed through the cramped cafe, steady and powerful, like the first crow of a rooster before dawn. "It's fine. The power's out. It's the perfect time to start our counterattack."