Chapter 1: Thunder in the Sparring Room

At two in the morning, the Sparring room reeked of cheap coffee and low-grade tobacco. The stale, acidic smell clung to the yellowed walls and seeped into every breath taken in that space. Lin Qian sat in a creaking swivel chair tucked into the corner, her fingertips tapping a steady rhythm against the desk. Click, click, click. In the dead silence of the room, the sound stood out like a broken metronome. This was the bottom of the heap, a backwater corner of the competitive scene where even the lights were faulty. The flickering glow bounced off the ceiling in mottled patches, pulsating like the heart of a dying creature. Suddenly, a wave of electrical static flooded her old headphones, sounding like a swarm of flies buzzing against her eardrums. The humming noise wove into a suffocating net, trying to wrap around her consciousness.

Lin Qian didn’t flinch. She just pressed the earcups deeper against her ears, the cold metal casing pressing against her skin. In her mind, the chaos instantly layered itself. The low-frequency hum of the electricity was the air conditioner compressor overloaded and straining. The high-pitched crackling was the lingering echo of mechanical keyboard switches being hammered by her neighbor playing games. She closed her eyes and caught the subtle ripples within the noise. In her subjective perception, the world stripped away the static, leaving only pure, cold streams of data.

The new recruit, Chen Hao, had just won three games in a row. He shoved his keyboard forward, his chair scraping back against the floor with a harsh squeal, the scratches on the wood telling the story of his impatient movements. A smirk of unmasked disdain hung on his lips. He clearly enjoyed the feeling of control, his fingers tapping rhythmically on the desk as if he were showing off his victory.

Chen Hao yanked off his headphones and threw them on the table; the plastic casing clattered against the wood with a sharp crack. "Lin-jie, do you even deserve to be sitting in this Sparring spot?"

He leaned forward, planting his elbows on the edge of the desk, his eyes radiating superiority. In those arrogant, youthful eyes burned a disdain for the "old era." "I think you’re just here to retire, you useless piece of trash. You can’t even keep up with our warm-up pace."

Lin Qian didn’t respond. She just gave him a cold, sweeping glance. The look was devoid of emotion, like a stagnant pond, so deep it was chilling to look into. Then she put her headphones back on properly, her fingers hovering above the keyboard, showing no sign of rebuttal. Her challenge seemed like a leaf blown by the wind, failing to stir even a ripple.

Chen Hao let out a scoff and turned to his teammates. "Did you hear that? Our war god is now just a lamb waiting for the slaughter. We need to crush him before he gets up." His teammates burst out laughing, the sound tinged with the pleasure of watching a spectacle; it gave them a strange jolt of excitement in their late-night fatigue to see an idol who used to be out of reach fall into the mud.

The door was pushed open with a bang. Cold air rushed in, carrying with it the expensive scent of Lu Chen’s cologne. It was a mix of cedar and sharp mint that instantly cut through the smoke in the room. He stood outside the glass partition, his suit crisp, the perfectly tailored fabric outlining his upright posture. His gaze swept over the room like a blade, coming to a final rest on Lin Qian. His leather shoes stopped on the floor for a second, making a slight friction sound.

Lu Chen’s voice came through the speaker, calm and devoid of any warmth, like a verdict descending from the clouds. "Lin Qian, effective immediately, your Sparring contract is terminated. And you are officially removed from the team’s historical roster."

The Sparring room fell into instant silence. The only sound was the amplified hiss of the static, making it even more piercing. Even the players drinking water froze in place, cups hovering in mid-air. Water droplets slid down the sides of the cups and hit the desk, making a faint *drip* sound.

Chen Hao was stunned for a moment, then a look of relief and pleasure washed over his face. His gaze toward Lin Qian became even more contemptuous, as if his previous insults had just been proven correct.

Lin Qian slowly raised her head, her eyes frighteningly calm. "One more match."

She looked straight at Lu Chen’s direction. Her voice wasn’t loud, but every word was clear, cutting through all the noise and awkwardness. "If I lose, I walk out right then and there. No drama."

"If I win, you hand me my ID badge yourself, and you personally process my retirement."

Lu Chen was silent for two seconds. The corner of his eyebrow twitched slightly as he assessed the risk of this little circus. Through the glass, he looked at that woman who had once been a mix of glory and controversy, his finger unconsciously rubbing the button of his suit, his knuckles turning white.

Lu Chen nodded. "Alright. One condition: This match will be recorded in full HD. No changing equipment, no breaks allowed."

"You accept the consequences? Can you handle what comes next?"

Lin Qian said lightly, "I can handle every single click I make."

The game loaded. The enemy was Chen Hao on his main role. The loading screen spun, the countdown numbers ticking, tension stretching to the limit.

In the first thirty seconds, Chen Hao aggressively pushed the lane. His moves were flashy but slightly restless; his mouse trajectory carried an anxious urge to prove himself. His breathing could be faintly heard through the microphone, short and rapid.

From the team voice, other players’ laughter came through, laced with a bit of schadenfreude.

"Look at his positioning, he’s really asking for it."

"Lin Qian used to be the one God K scolded into tears. In her current state, she’s probably struggling to last-hit."

The static in the headphones suddenly exploded. In Lin Qian’s auditory domain, the world suddenly became abnormally clear.

The chaotic sound of electricity disappeared, replaced by a 3D map of light and shadow floating on her retina. It wasn’t a physical projection, but a visual interface rendered directly on her cerebral cortex. Blue and gold lines wove through the air. Each teammate’s position became a point of light, skill cooldowns were displayed as countdown rings, and blind spots in positioning were covered in red shadows, clearly marking every inch of potential threat.

Lin Qian blinked. When she opened her eyes again, a strand of eerie blue light flashed deep in her pupils—the brief clarity following data overload. She heard the subtle friction frequency at the edge of Chen Hao’s mouse pad. A 0.03 hertz deviation meant that under tension, his wrist would involuntarily tilt to the left.

Combining this with the difference in force on his WASD key strikes, she precisely calculated his displacement trajectory for the next second. The bounce of the keyboard switches, the rotation of the mouse wheel, even his rapid breathing rhythm—all of it converted into quantifiable variables at this very moment.

"He will use Flash to dash into the bush in three seconds. It’s his instinct."

Lin Qian recited this silently in her mind while her fingers traced a silent lightning bolt across the keyboard.

She intentionally dropped her health, baiting Chen Hao into chasing. At the exact moment his skill missed and his cooldowns reset, she closed the distance and executed a flawless kill. It was textbook operation; there wasn’t a single unnecessary move, every frame pushed to the limit.

The whole room went silent; only the roar of the computer case fans sounded jarringly loud. The kill notification on the screen was cold and resolute, announcing the end of this one-sided slaughter.

Chen Hao ripped off his headphones, pointing at the screen with a face full of disbelief, his fingers trembling slightly from agitation.

"Did you cheat? That reaction time is impossible!"

He roared, his voice cracking with panic. "That prediction earlier was too precise. There’s absolutely something fishy going on!"

Lin Qian ignored his shouting. She calmly took off her headphones, placed them in the corner of the desk, stood up, and straightened her sleeves. Her movements were deliberate and slow, as if the person who had just slaughtered everyone in the virtual world wasn’t her.

Lu Chen didn’t say a word. He personally walked over to the monitoring console and pulled up the replay.

He reviewed it frame by frame, zoomed in, then zoomed in more. He checked the network latency, checked the hotkey operation logs. The cold white light from the screen illuminated his face, highlighting the furrow on his brow.

Ten full minutes passed. Lu Chen’s expression grew increasingly grave.

The system logs showed that Lin Qian’s operational logic perfectly fit the optimal solution. There were no anomalies in the data, and no external code. Every command came from legitimate human input, yet it displayed inhuman precision.

He stood up and walked to the door, blocking Lin Qian’s path. His gaze was complex as he stared at her. That suppressed anxiety surged in his chest, but he struggled to maintain a veneer of composure.

"Why?"

Lu Chen asked, his voice very light, yet carrying an inescapable pressure. "The you from three years ago and the you right now are not the same person."

Lin Qian stopped walking. She didn’t turn around. She just handed him her ID badge, letting it hang against his chest. The metal badge reflected a cold light under the lamps, sliding over Lu Chen’s chest along the strap, bringing a chilly touch.

"President Lu, rules are rules. I won. I’m taking back what’s mine."

"As for why... that’s a heavenly secret. It’s not an answer I can give you."

Lin Qian turned and pushed the door open to leave. Her figure disappeared into the shadows at the end of the corridor. Her footsteps kept a steady rhythm, fading into the distance and finally merging into the silence of the ground.

Lu Chen was left alone in the monitoring room, his fingers flying across the keyboard as he pulled up all of Lin Qian’s match data from the past three years.

The curves on the screen had been as flat as straight lines, representing the mediocrity and silence of a removed player.

But in the last month, a strange, violent, and unexplainable fluctuation had suddenly appeared on the curve.

The fluctuation was like a dormant volcano being forcibly awakened. The data volume far exceeded human limits, even approaching God K’s peak records. The red peaks jumped glaringly against the green background, like some kind of warning, or perhaps some kind of summons.

Lu Chen stared fixedly at that red peak, a chill running up his spine from his tailbone to the back of his neck, even spreading to his scalp. He realized that what he had let go might be an existence more dangerous than a monster.

At that moment, Lin Qian was walking down a pitch-black street. The last hint of electrical static in her headphones had transformed in her mind into a brand-new, massive 3D map of the city. The streets, buildings, and crowds were all converted into flowing data nodes, clear enough to make her shiver.

She lifted her head and looked at the distant skyscraper with the neon sign for "Peak Esports Club." The neon lights bled into the rainy mist, blurry yet brilliant. A streak of cold light flashed in the depths of her eyes. There was no anger in that glow, only absolute calm and hunger.

The game had only just begun.