Chapter 2: Crushing the Low Ranks by Ear

The report pop-up in the top right corner hit like a bolt of cold lightning, shattering the long-awaited peace of the settlement screen. The glaring red text felt jarringly out of place in the dim room. Lin Wan’s fingertips hovered over her mechanical keyboard, frozen. The ghostly blue light of the monitor reflected in her eyes—eyes so calm they were almost cruel, like a bottomless frozen lake.

She stared at the warning: 【Abnormally High-Level Account Detected】. A faint, barely perceptible smile touched her lips. The thunder she had suppressed for so long had finally found its outlet.

This time, she wouldn't hide behind anyone. She wouldn't be the silent background prop for some elite corporate team, letting their so-called "tactics" push her into the line of fire only to leave her holding the bag. Her cursor glided smoothly, locking onto the Support role. The moment the matchmaking countdown hit zero, she slammed the connect key.

Outside, the rain intensified, drumming violently against the glass as if providing a soundtrack for the coming storm. It was nature’s most primal beat, resonating with the rapid thumping of Lin Wan’s heart. A system notification popped up: New account matched. Entering Bronze tier.

As the game loaded, the voice chat of her Bronze teammates was a chaotic mess. Some were whining about a losing streak, others were screaming at each other over bad positioning. The clatter of keyboards and the clicking of mice blended into a cacophony of noise. Lin Wan remained silent. Her headset filtered out the static, leaving only the pure echo of the game's mechanics.

Her vision locked onto the enemy mid-laner. She spotted a faint, stuttering ripple in their movement—a tell. She predicted the exact trajectory of their next Flash. In that instant, time seemed to freeze; she could practically "see" the sound of the opponent's muscles tensing.

The enemy jungler was attempting a flank, footsteps flowing stealthily through the brush. Lin Wan didn't use her mic; she simply signaled the direction with a precise flick of her mouse. The cursor traced an arc—a silent command.

Stunned, Su Xiaoman followed her lead by instinct. A sudden stop sound effect was amplified to the limit in Lin Wan’s ears. The enemy's skill missed, whistling past her character's cloak; the heat of that near-miss made her hold her breath.

The moment the team fight erupted, Lin Wan didn't say a word. She commanded through gaze and subtle movements. Su Xiaoman caught on instantly, and the two of them dove into the heart of the battle like a single organism.

Amidst the sparks and chaos, the enemy jungler tried to flee. Lin Wan’s finger tapped lightly, predicting the opponent's desperate urge to counter-attack with low HP. It was a life-or-death intuition. A single skill shot harvested the kill, and the golden "Slay" text flashed across the screen. After a moment of stunned silence, the room was drowned in cheers—a long-overdue release, and a testament to raw skill.

The settlement screen lit up. Lin Wan took off her headset, her fingertips slightly white from the prolonged tension. Outside, the rain eased, and the scent of damp earth filled the air. Her phone vibrated; a mysterious email from Team Stardust was waiting in her inbox.

The attachment revealed a staggering signing bonus and an invitation. There was no signature. Lin Wan stared at the gold-embossed text, her lips curling upward. The storm was only just beginning.

The stream's chat exploded. The mockery and malice were instantly replaced by incredulous gasps. Viewers realized this nameless Support played with god-like precision. They began to question Zhao Tianba’s old ruling that had forced Lin Wan to take the fall, calling it the greatest injustice in the scene. The screen was flooded with a blur of "Redemption," "God-tier," and "The Real Deal."

Su Xiaoman shifted from confusion to fanaticism. He stared at the screen, executing every one of Lin Wan’s silent orders. Their coordination was like a precision instrument—zero friction, their very breathing falling into sync.

The enemy shot-caller began to panic, trying to disrupt the tempo, but Lin Wan had already locked onto the enemy Support's heartbeat rhythm through her accumulated melodic library. She predicted every single retreat with pinpoint accuracy. To her, those subtle skill sound effects were like musical notes, arranging themselves into a complete blueprint of the enemy's strategy.

Su Xiaoman whipped his head around, eyes shining with disbelief. "Sister Wan, that prediction just now... how did you do that?" Lin Wan adjusted her headset, her fingers brushing the cable, her gaze as calm as deep water. "Sound Localization. It's just instinct." Su Xiaoman clenched his fists, knuckles white, his voice trembling. "Instinct? I've practiced for three years and I don't have intuition like that!"

Lin Wan let out a soft laugh, a sound tinged with relief. "Don't misunderstand. I didn't quit the team; I was just finding my feel." Su Xiaoman’s eyes widened as if he were hearing a fairy tale. "Finding your feel? You just played the enemy jungler like a dog, and you call that 'finding your feel'?"

Lin Wan said no more. Her gaze drifted back to the mysterious email. The rain outside had stopped, and a faint rainbow shimmered in the distance, while the storm in her heart gathered strength, ready to sweep across the entire professional circuit.

In the stream, the flow of the chat shifted completely. The wall of "Rigged," "Match-fixing," and "Zhao Tianba is a scammer" was suddenly muted, replaced by a deluge of awe and doubt.

"That play just now? Is that even human reaction speed?"

"Melodic Ripples? What the hell is that? A Support can predict movement like that?"

"Zhao Tianba's ruling looks like a joke now. Lin Wan is a straight-up Carry."

Su Xiaoman’s question had been like a clap of thunder, leaving the air in the cramped rental apartment frozen for several seconds after Lin Wan’s flat response. Lin Wan didn't answer immediately. Instead, she put her headset back on and tapped the keyboard lightly—not to play, but as if tuning into a frequency only she could hear.

She didn't look at the stats on the screen. Instead, she looked through the monitor at the fading rainbow outside, as if that band of color were a guide to a higher dimension.

"None of that is right." Lin Wan turned, a sharp glint in her eyes, as if she could see right through the screen to Zhao Tianba, who was currently reviewing the match thousands of miles away. "They're afraid. Afraid that someone will use 'melody' to break the existing walls of the rules."

"Zhao Tianba's ruling seemed like it was about fairness, but it was actually about sealing off any non-mainstream paths. He doesn't want 'intuition' to become a quantifiable weapon."

Aside from the dizzying signing bonus, there was a hidden encrypted zip file in the attachment. Once extracted, it was a list. It contained the IDs of every player "purged" by Zhao Tianba’s team in the last month, along with their final social media posts before disappearing. At the end of the list were two names: Su Xiaoman, and...

Another ID Lin Wan had never heard of—"Shadow."

Lin Wan’s finger hovered over the keycap, motionless, watching a pop-up suddenly appear on the screen. It wasn't a game notification, but an email alert. The sender field was blank, containing only a string of garbled characters. But in the inbox list, the high-value contract from Team Stardust was flashing an eerie red.

Lin Wan took a deep breath and leaned forward, her spine straight. She closed her eyes. Her mind was no longer filled with chaotic cooldown timers and enemy health bars, but a pure ocean of sound. The wind, the rain, the footsteps of her teammates, even the microscopic friction of enemy character models moving against the ground—she disassembled and reconstructed it all.

Su Xiaoman paused. He didn't understand, but out of a strange, unwavering trust in Lin Wan, he silently executed the order. In the stream, a random viewer suddenly asked: "Hey streamer, are you from Zhao Tianba's team? Your ID suffix looks like a disabled pro account."

The enemy assassin tried to flank, only to be pinned in place by a crowd-control skill Lin Wan had pre-cast. In that moment, time stood still. Lin Wan’s finger dropped for the final harvest. Gold light flashed across the screen again, but this time, her expression remained blank. She simply exited the game.

The numbers in the attachment were staggering—enough to buy half a dozen villas in the city, enough to catapult any second-tier player to the peak of the pro scene. The signature was still that unsigned, gold-embossed mark, like an ancient seal stamped onto the turning point of Lin Wan’s fate.

An account with the ID "Stardust Hunter" posted a message in the public chat, the tone cold and provocative: "Just luck. True strength doesn't rely on cheap tricks. Next time you're in Bronze, I'll show you what real despair looks like."

Outside, the last sliver of the rainbow vanished behind the clouds. The sky darkened, as if night were arriving early. Her phone vibrated again. This time it wasn't an email, but a text from an unknown number. It was a single word: "Hide."

Lin Wan glanced at it, a ghost of a smile on her lips. She didn't reply. She simply whispered into the team voice channel, "Xiaoman, mute your mic. Next, I'm going to test the limits of the Limit Audio Range."

The words were like a stone thrown into still water, creating massive ripples in Su Xiaoman’s heart. He suddenly realized that what he thought was "finding her feel" was actually a gamble involving the very foundations of the industry.

The stream went silent for three seconds, then erupted into even wilder cheering. But Lin Wan had already tuned it all out. Her eyes were locked on the unread email in the bottom right corner of her computer. Mouse move. Click. Open.

"Xiaoman," Lin Wan spoke suddenly, her voice low and carrying a depth she had never shown before. "Do you know why Zhao Tianba's team is so eager to purge 'non-compliant' players like us?"

Right then, the game situation turned tense again. The enemy team of five grouped up, attempting to push the high ground. The chat boiled over: "Don't back down!" "Push them back!"

Su Xiaoman shrank back, lowering his voice. "Are they... afraid of being exposed? Or afraid a genius like you will come along and steal their lunch?"

"Two steps left, retreat, Flash." Lin Wan’s voice was clear and decisive, like a general commanding an army.

Su Xiaoman did exactly as told.

Lin Wan stared at that one word in the text. Her finger paused over the keyboard for a moment. Then, she slowly closed her laptop. The blue light died, casting her bright face into shadow. The slight smile vanished, replaced by a cold, hard resolve.

The storm had indeed only just begun. And this time, the prey wasn't just the opponents on the field, but the "Stardusts" hiding behind the screens, manipulating the rules of the entire esports ecosystem. She stood up and walked to the window. The rain had finally stopped, but the chill in the air had grown heavier.

She picked up her phone and called the unknown number back, her voice as flat as a dead calm sea. "Who I am doesn't matter. What matters is how much money you've hidden, and how many people you've buried."