Chapter 1: Scapegoated and Cut

The loss in the finals was like a blunt-force trauma. It didn't just shatter the elite team's final shred of dignity; it stripped away every carefully polished layer of their prestige. Zhao Tianba didn't throw a victory party—he didn't even offer a decent word of consolation. Instead, under the cover of night, he cornered Lin Wan in the cold marble corridor leading to the training room.

The air was thick with the sour stench of cheap coffee mixed with damp mold. At the end of the hall, the emergency lights flickered, stretching their shadows into long, distorted shapes. In Zhao Tianba's hand was a pre-drafted Scapegoat Agreement, the edges of the paper so sharp they looked like they could slice through the air.

A fake smile clung to the corners of his eyes, his lips curled at an angle so precise it was nauseating, but his gaze was as cold as a viper's, locking onto Lin Wan. "Wanwan, just sign it. For the sake of the bigger picture."

Su Xiaoman suddenly burst out of the training room, drenched in sweat, strands of hair plastered to his forehead, his eyes bloodshot. He began questioning her furiously, like a hot-blooded youth desperate to prove himself, his chest heaving. "The team loses and you just run? Have you been wanting to quit this whole time? Why are you looking at me with such indifference?"

He reached out to grab Lin Wan's sleeve, trying to break the eerie silence with physical contact, but she lightly stepped aside. The movement was gentle yet absolute, like a falling leaf drifting past a fingertip. Lin Wan didn't defend herself; she simply reached up and removed her spare earpiece. The metal clip made a crisp *click* that sounded jarringly loud in the oppressive atmosphere.

She looked at Su Xiaoman’s distorted, agitated face, feeling nothing inside—only a flicker of sadness for her own silent nature. In a world centered around voice-control, her silence was mistaken for coldness, treated as ironclad proof that she was dodging responsibility.

Su Xiaoman's accusations sounded chaotic within the ripples, like a tangled knot unable to form an effective rhythmic resonance, eventually dissipating into the air.

Seeing that she remained silent, Zhao Tianba's carefully maintained elegance collapsed instantly. His voice spiked, carrying the characteristic arrogance and pressure of a corporate financier. "Lin Wan, do you not realize the situation? You're the one who corrupted the starters; you're taking the fall for this. If you don't sign now, the entire team will lose its funding. Do you have any idea what that means?"

He stepped closer, his towering frame casting a shadow over Lin Wan's slender figure, creating a suffocating sense of oppression. On the surface, Lin Wan lowered her head meekly, her lips pressed into a calm line like a compliant lamb. Internally, however, she was performing a biting, cold analysis: she could hear the faint tremor leaking from his Adam's apple as his speaking pace quickened.

It was a waveform—a mixture of extreme greed and extreme fear. Zhao Tianba didn't care if the team lived or died; he was simply sacrificing her to protect his own position and the actual star player, who had the skill but couldn't afford to take the blame.

After leaving the base, the internet exploded. Lin Wan hid in the dim corner of an internet cafe, surrounded by swirling cigarette smoke and the cacophony of clicking keyboards and game sound effects. Countless malicious comments and insults scrolled across the screen like a tide, every word designed to pierce the heart, with real malice hiding behind every ID.

Her fingertips tapped the keyboard unconsciously. The rhythm didn't belong to any macro; it was an instinctive reaction to the immense pressure. Each tap sent tiny ripples through her mind, as if she were trying to capture the logic behind the noise. The world was loud, but her inner self was unnervingly quiet, possessing a streak of cruel composure.

She watched as fans who once idolized her now cursed her with the foulest language. There was no grievance in her eyes, only a cold, lucid clarity. She knew that leaving the team was only the beginning; the real battle lay elsewhere.

Lin Wan logged into a newly created, blank white account, her fingers tracing fluid, predictive trajectories across the keys. In her field of vision, ripples connected friend and foe like silk threads; every keystroke was like performing a silent symphony. She was no longer the background character who only took orders; she was the master of the rhythm. The matchmaking list spun quietly on the screen, a blinking point of light.

Staring at the rank she was about to enter, she whispered a vow of return. The voice was soft, yet it echoed in the small room with an unquestionable resilience. The image froze on the cold, determined curve of her lips, as if in the next moment, she would pierce through the screen and tear through this world of noise and prejudice.

Recalling K God's lethal blind-snipe at the World Championships, a flame of defiance quietly ignited in Lin Wan's heart. That play had been based on extreme auditory prediction; the ripples showed a flawless trajectory with no wasted movement, like an improvised piano piece, precise enough to make one shiver.

And she had once been nothing more than the support background character standing behind the hero, silently calculating damage—ignored and marginalized. Now, Zhao Tianba called her. The tremor in his voice-print betrayed that he didn't actually care; he had been pushed by public pressure to beg for mercy. "Wanwan, for old times' sake, come back. As long as you don't pursue the matter, I'll agree to any condition."

Lin Wan kept her eyes down, her gaze seemingly carelessly sweeping over the expensive mechanical keyboard on his desk. Within the worn patterns of the keycaps lay the rhythm she once knew. Her fingertips brushed against the raised switches; the touch was cold, as if she were testing some forbidden boundary.

In that instant, countless blinding Melodic Ripples exploded in the depths of her mind. Those ripples didn't come from Zhao Tianba's low, coaxing voice, but overlapped with the jarring noise produced by the main jungler's recent mechanical error and the frantic, guilty heartbeat of the starter dodging accusations.

That heartbeat was chaotic, like a broken drum beating against Lin Wan's taut nerves.

The loading screen didn't feature the usual flashy effects or lore; instead, it was minimalist white text on a black background, cold as a scalpel. Lin Wan's finger hovered over the mouse, her fingertip turning slightly white—a muscle memory left from long-term, high-intensity training, and the only anchor that gave her a sense of control.

She closed her eyes, replaying the ripple trajectory of that blind-snipe in her mind—not K God's, but the predictive paths she had calculated for the team countless times, only to be ignored.

Lin Wan didn't respond to any voice chat. Her consciousness felt as if it had been stripped of its flesh, completely immersed in a torrent of data. The ripple system activated, blue thin lines spreading from the center of her vision to outline every enemy's potential positioning, skill cooldowns, and the elevation of the terrain.

The sense of oppression brought by this omniscient perspective actually relaxed her tight nerves. She adjusted her breathing, her rhythm as steady as a precision machine.

The words weren't spoken through her vocal cords, but leaked from between her lips as a nearly silent current of air, yet they sounded deafening in the dead-silent room. The ID of the new account lit up in the center of the screen—no nickname, no level marker, just a pure, almost blinding white dot. It was a disguise she had chosen deliberately, and her first provocation to the world.

The teammates' voices spiked instantly with disbelief and shock. Lin Wan remained silent; her screen showed only lines of skipping predictive data, like a silent manifesto. In this match, her support hero didn't die once. In the final critical moment, she utilized the terrain difference and a tiny skill delay from the opponent to complete a textbook counter-kill coordination.

Lin Wan stared at that name, the chill in her eyes deeper than the surrounding air. She slowly raised her hand and moved the mouse toward "Start Game." This time, she didn't choose support, but the position she had once viewed as a background role, yet was now destined to lead her to the altar of the gods—the Marksman.

Lin Wan's hand didn't hesitate; her operations were fluid, possessing an eerie elegance. When the first team fight broke out, she didn't rush forward to soak up damage. Instead, she stood in the shadows of the backline, precisely releasing a highly targeted crowd-control skill.

The teammates watched the pure white new account in shock. Some began copying her ID to search for her, only to find nothing—this was a brand-new account with no registration info and no match history, like a ghost born from the void.

She didn't close the software; instead, she placed her hand on the keyboard and lightly tapped out a line of code. It was a backdoor key she had left after hacking into the league's data layer, a command known only to her and a few insiders.

As the Enter key was pressed, the red warnings on the screen were instantly covered by green. A new encrypted message surfaced from the bottom database, showing the next youth training selection list being discussed by the league's high-ups.

Lin Wan looked at the word "Victory" on the screen, and the bone-chilling curve of her lips finally froze. She lightly pressed the "Leave Party" button, and the ripples in her vision slowly dissipated like a receding tide.

Listening to that fake repentance, Lin Wan let out a cold sneer and indifferently hung up and blocked the number. She didn't need Zhao Tianba's charity; she only needed a chance to prove herself again.

A teammate glanced at the stats column in surprise, paused for half a second, and then let out a scoff. "A newbie? With an ID like that, they probably haven't even practiced basic support skills. Watch out, the other team's gonna target you."

Lin Wan's gaze instantly became as sharp as a knife. They were checking her because this level of play had already exceeded the limits of an ordinary player—because of that professional glory buried deep in her heart, which she thought had been completely erased.

"This mechanical skill..." A teammate who regularly watched pro matches swallowed hard, his voice trembling. "This predictive logic... no human can do this, unless..."

She signed her name without a word. The scratching sound of the pen piercing the paper was exceptionally clear in the silent corridor, like the crisp snap of breaking bone.

Just as she was about to close the game client, a pop-up suddenly jumped from the bottom right—an anonymous report system from the official professional league.

As the light and shadow of the game map reorganized on her retina, the noisy guild channel and the voice commands of her teammates surged in like a tide.

The moment the victory settlement screen appeared, the entire room fell into a dead silence, save for the faint hum of the computer fan.

"This time," she whispered in her heart, her voice soft yet thunderous, "I won't hide behind anyone."

The warning message flashed coldly: [Abnormally high-level account detected. Verifying associated information...]

The landing point of that skill overlapped perfectly with the trajectory of the enemy carry's flash a second later.

He didn't dare say more, because that name was too distant, and too sensitive.

"Position 1, what kind of smurf account are you? Why don't you even have a level?"

The first name on the list was written clearly: Zhao Tianba.

The moment the matchmaking countdown hit zero, the connect button was pressed.

"Forget it, just get into the match, don't waste time."

The first game began, and she locked in the support position.

"Lin Wan! Are you insane?"

"I will be back."

"How is that possible?"

The cursor lingered on "Start Game." Outside, the sound of rain grew louder, as if providing the accompaniment for the coming storm.