In the V5 lounge, after finishing their match against IG, they hadn't left immediately. Instead, they planned to watch the full TES versus RNG match.
After all, both teams were recognized powerhouses—the spring split champion and runner-up. A clash between these two teams was bound to be interesting.
And with their next match being against TES, they really needed to pay close attention.
But after watching both games in their entirety... the atmosphere in the entire lounge became somewhat heavy.
"Meat Kun, we're facing Brother Infinite Borders next match."
Karsa said while packing up his things, "That was way too fierce. He beat Li Yuanhao into a complete mess. After today's match, Xiaohu probably needs four or five days to recover."
"Meat Kun, do you have confidence?"
"Maybe in a 2v1, but in a 1v1 I really don't have much confidence. I didn't expect him to play both these champions so aggressively. That Orianna was clearly an experienced Orianna player, and from the laning you could tell the Azir was also an experienced Azir player. His grasp of ability ranges was kind of exaggerated."
Rookie's brow furrowed slightly. He really didn't have much confidence in the lane matchup.
"JackeyLove's luck is pretty good. Never thought he'd get paired with another good mid laner. Don't you feel like the son you raised got snatched away by someone else?"
"Go away. If you can say that to Jackey's face, I'll acknowledge you're impressive. Let's see if he'll stay up all night playing mahjong with you."
"Better not. Their mahjong games are deadly—go in during the day, come out during the day. If you go in at night, you still come out during the day." Karsa scratched his head.
"Speaking of which, I've never played mahjong with you guys."
"Well, if there's a chance, set up a game with them. You should give it a try. Anyway, JackeyLove and Uzi are money dispensers—you don't need to worry about losing when playing with them."
"Ah, we don't even know what the next match situation will be like. Talking about this in advance feels a bit premature. We should think about how to handle TES's mid-jungle synergy instead. Some things people said weren't wrong—once Dine came out, he directly revitalized the entire team. Tian is playing with more and more spirit." As a jungler, Karsa's observations of junglers were naturally more detailed.
He'd been watching matches frequently during this period, and unlike before, Tian wasn't like a puppet on strings where he'd only move when mid moved. Most of the time now he was proactively making plays, coordinating with mid for a double-pronged attack. So now when TES got an advantage it was unstoppable—their mid-jungle impact was somewhat beyond imagination.
"It's actually quite interesting. Who would've thought that Brother Infinite Borders coming in as a substitute could create so many changes?" Karsa shook his head.
After all, this was about benching Knight.
When White Moon made that decision, quite a few people thought he was trying to discipline Knight. It was fine if they lost the match—Knight's competitive form had major problems, it was time to give him a wake-up call.
At most after one or two matches, Knight would return to the starting position.
Dine couldn't even play support well, making him play mid—wasn't that forcing someone to do the impossible?
And during that time, Dine had started soft-retiring, not playing ranked daily, spending all day on those weird games like Infinite Borders, PUBG, and Naraka: Bladepoint.
Under these circumstances, who could believe Brother Infinite Borders could save TES? Who could believe that?
Not a single person could believe it.
But what happened next left everyone's jaws on the floor.
Not only did he beautifully secure TES's first win upon debut, he subsequently led the team to a ten-game winning streak, achieving an overtaking maneuver.
"But even now I still haven't figured it out—does Brother Infinite Borders really not play ranked?" Karsa asked.
Rookie heard this and silently nodded.
Actually, he'd asked JackeyLove about this too.
After all, people are naturally curious, especially as professional players. They understood even more clearly how much daily training affected their competitive state.
Not training—how could you maintain your form? It was really a big question.
After getting a definitive answer, Rookie was completely shocked.
At the time he thought they must be lying to him, so later he went to the livestream daily to check, and really discovered he was playing these messy games every day. The streaming hours were frighteningly long too.
Now he was truly certain there was no ranked play.
"I heard he only plays during scrims, doesn't play the game any other time."
"That comfortable? The coach doesn't manage him?"
"If you could keep winning matches and even take the MSI championship, I believe the coach wouldn't manage you either." Rookie directly gave him a look.
"Let's go, let's go. There's no point dwelling on this. Let's hurry back to the club and train hard. I feel like my form is pretty good right now."
"Indeed, I also feel your recent form has been quite good." Rookie revealed Xiao Yang's signature smile, making it momentarily impossible to tell if they were two different people.
...
On the other end, everyone from TES had already boarded the team bus. After all, they had the last match—after finishing they could head back to base.
"Why does it feel more tiring today when the matches were actually shorter?" JackeyLove lay back in his chair and stretched hard.
"Still didn't unleash full strength. Could've played even faster, could've gotten back to base ten minutes earlier."
"Tsk tsk tsk, listen to what JackeyLove's saying—is that even human talk? If RNG fans heard that, you probably couldn't get back to base today. You wouldn't see tomorrow's sun."
"Whatever, RNG fans are the last thing I'm afraid of. They used to chase me around flaming me all the time—didn't anything happen? Not a thing." JackeyLove wasn't scared at all.
"But we're facing V5 in two days."
"They're on a seven-game winning streak like us right now, aren't they?" Tian asked.
"Right, they're also on a seven-game win streak. Feels like quite a bit of pressure. V5's form is really good—feels like they're winning their matches very easily." Luo Sheng, leaning against the window, inserted himself into the conversation.
"No worries. No matter how good their form is, they'll have to lie down when they face us. We specialize in beating strong teams. We don't even want to play if they're not strong."
"Jackey-ge, if you play V5 the same way you played RNG and just mindlessly pressure bot lane, I can only say you'll definitely get educated by Karsa. Experience a level-two gank bot."
"Bullshit, I'm definitely going full firepower against V5. If I get beaten by my substitute, where would I put my face..."
"Cough cough, you might actually not be able to beat Little P. Little P's performance during this period has been kind of exaggerated. I think his stats surpassed yours."
"Ah? Surpassed me? But that's pretty normal, right? Teams on winning streaks definitely have good stats."
"Besides, this patch doesn't win through bot lane. Brother Fan carrying us to victory is enough. Just wish he'd make moves a bit earlier so I could have just a tiny bit of game experience."
"Didn't you say your game experience was pretty good today? How come now that you're on the bus you have no game experience again?"
"Interview segments are like that. I can't exactly say Brother Fan plays matches too fiercely, that he hard carried me and made me very comfortable." As JackeyLove spoke, he started getting improper again, but everyone was long used to it.
Right now the match had just finished, and on the way back to the club everyone could relax and liven up the atmosphere.
Although today's matches were relatively easy, they were still competitive matches after all.
Luo Sheng looked at these team members and also revealed a smile.
This team had a great atmosphere. He really liked it.
"Rest well when we get back today. Tomorrow we're playing a scrim against DK—should have some decent gains, right?"
"Against DK? Nice, White Moon, you can even schedule scrims with LCK teams." JackeyLove was quite surprised.
Mainly because LCK team scrims were way too hard to schedule before.
After all, different regions with different match schedules made it hard to coordinate a suitable time. Plus LCK region teams felt they were stronger, so when playing scrims they'd often be rather casual, afraid of exposing tactics that could get stolen.
Anyway, subjective regional impressions played a big role, especially for top-tier teams like SKT and DK.
You even had to pay to scrim with SKT...
"No, I didn't reach out to the LCK region. DK reached out to us on their own initiative. Probably because their recent record hasn't been great either, the pressure's getting to them."
Actually this was quite normal.
"Right now the strongest is still Samsung. All other teams are second-rate. ShowMaker really did reforge Samsung's glory though."
"SKT probably got beaten senseless by us, their form is also quite poor."
"Predicting Samsung wins LCK. Feel like Samsung is the biggest threat to us at Worlds, right?" Da Huang said.
"Summer split isn't even over yet and you're already thinking about Worlds?" Luo Sheng shot him a look.
"And with your current form you can't even play scrims. If you don't properly grind and improve yourself, playing CS:GO all day—do you think you're Lin Fan or something?"
Seeing Luo Sheng training Da Huang, Lin Fan quickly closed his eyes.
Just don't cue me. You train your player, don't drag me into it. Don't look at me playing other games like I'm slacking off—actually I'm doing advanced meditation training. The more I slack, the stronger I get.
Does anyone really think I'm just having fun every day and it's easy? It's equally tiring.
"Since we're on this topic, tomorrow's scrim is seven games—Sunny plays two, Zoom plays five."
The chubby little guy sitting next to Da Huang heard this and nodded vigorously.
Every scrim opportunity was precious to him. He just needed to keep his rank up. Whether he could get stage time, he'd leave that decision to the coach...
As long as he could play scrims, that was progress.
Da Huang's previous performance in the league was mediocre, and later his training attitude also had some issues. Now he couldn't even qualify for scrims—that was a warning bell for himself.
Must keep working hard! As long as you keep working hard there will be rewards. Brother Infinite Borders is a genius, different from ordinary people like us.
Trying to imitate him would just kill you faster...
None of the other players on the team had that thought. Every day when they got up, they trained hard, especially after losing that one game to LNG.
Watching them win so easily today—if he went up there himself, could he win just as easily?
Zoom's performance might not seem particularly brilliant to others. Any top laner could do the same thing.
Wasn't it just simply holding steady and not giving opportunities?
But the truth was, if you swapped in someone else, they really might not be able to do it.
Although Brother Breath wasn't a top laner known for laning, once mid couldn't open up the situation, Wei would start camping top.
These were all things he had to learn.
After going back, while playing ranked he'd rewatch today's match video and study the experience of veteran top laners like Zoom. This was actually a very critical thing.
Then tomorrow's scrim against Nuguri...
He definitely had to perform well.
Thinking about this got him a bit excited. After all, this was also one of the top lane ceiling players, albeit a former ceiling.
As for Da Huang beside him, the smile immediately vanished from his face...
He felt targeted. Very unfair.
Why is it that Lin Fan doesn't train every day and messes around with all sorts of things but you don't manage him, yet I'm just a small substitute, and playing other games during my off time gets me constantly flamed by you?
What's the meaning of this?
Don't piss me off or I'll just switch to play CS:GO professionally. After this period of time, he'd also discovered he had talent for CS:GO.
His shooting was extremely fast, no issues whatsoever, practically perfect.
Anyway, League of Legends had no prospects. Going to play something else professionally would be pretty good too.
Luo Sheng had no idea that just these two sentences had sparked so many rebellious thoughts in Da Huang.
After all, he was doing all this to make the team better.
Right now the whole team was heading in a better direction too, thriving and prosperous.
If they could take a Worlds championship, this year would truly be perfect.
After sitting on the bus for an hour and a half, they finally made it back to the club before ten o'clock.
Everyone simply ate something and then quickly returned to the training room. Lin Fan was naturally the same.
They were already back at the club—shouldn't they train properly?
Man, he'd really been playing Apex way too little lately. This was very inappropriate.
So tonight he planned to play a couple rounds to relax.
As soon as he started streaming, the chat in his stream began scrolling like crazy.
"Brother Infinite Borders, today's match was beautifully played. Didn't expect you'd beat RNG so easily."
"I thought it'd be a fierce battle like everyone predicted, but turns out I was overthinking it. Complete one-sided domination."
"RNG might be runner-up, but honestly the gap is pretty big. Really don't come trying to create comparisons."
"Holy shit, Brother Infinite Borders is playing Apex! Haven't seen Brother Infinite Borders play this on stream in so long."
"This game is still too niche, doesn't have much heat. Plus there are so many toxic players in it, the game environment sucks."
"Suggest the developers learn from Naraka: Bladepoint and host an official tournament, trick Brother Infinite Borders into coming and won't the heat be there?"
"Holy shit, Horizon? Brother Infinite Borders can play Horizon too?"
"Not just Horizon, he plays other legends pretty well too. Lifeline not so much, just uses her to grind points."
"Damn, honestly with Brother Infinite Borders' aim he can play anything. Lands and immediately upgrades to purple armor, you think he's joking? One round and he's basically eating chicken."
"If only I had Brother Infinite Borders' skill level, feels like I could participate in any tournament. Envious. The prize money here alone could support retirement."
"For real, ten thousand here, ten thousand there—making over a hundred thousand a year no problem. Grind for two or three years and save three hundred thousand, put it in the bank and the monthly interest alone would be eight or nine thousand. Could really just lie flat and retire."
"Holy shit, actually there's really no need to grind so hard. If I had a house in the capital I'd definitely sell it. For ten million, the yearly interest would be at least three hundred thousand, right? Go rent an apartment in a small county, then yearly expenses would be at most a hundred thousand or so. Could save quite a bit extra every year."
The chat in the livestream was lively with various discussions unfolding.
In fact, the official Apex developers really did have this idea.
They wanted to host a tournament and then trick Lin Fan into coming.
As long as they could trick him into participating, that would be success.
But right now the biggest problem was that before the plan even got on the agenda, three platforms started making moves.
They organized a platform alliance league.
Fortunately they got good news—Brother Infinite Borders didn't plan to participate.
So they enthusiastically planned to organize a tournament, but then the bad news immediately came through.
Brother Infinite Borders didn't plan to participate in the tournament, but he would be participating as a guest commentator.
They'd just finished rallying everyone, and now they were all listlessly slumped in their seats.
What could they do about this?
The main issue was the schedule was too tight. Next came playoffs, and after finishing those, seamlessly into the Asian Games.
Under these circumstances, would he really participate in a tournament?
That was a huge question mark.
After all, these matches were all very important. It was really hard to say.
But not capitalizing on this traffic flow also felt unjustifiable.
It was so conflicting...
After all, Lin Fan played Apex relatively rarely on stream. They really didn't know what position he placed Apex in.
Hard to say, so it was difficult to make a decision.
"Director, why don't we try? Maybe Brother Infinite Borders really has this idea?"
"Our tournament has another problem—he can't form a three-person team, and without a three-person squad he can't participate..."
This was equally a difficult problem facing the developers.
After all, for FPS games, Lin Fan didn't have much pressure. His aim was accurate—really just one shot one kill, a complete human aimbot.
Just like with CrossFire before, they could even catch cheating streamers.
Especially that most classic line—there weren't many people in the world with faster reaction speeds than him, he didn't believe he could run into one just playing ranked...
What confident tone. No wonder he could attract such a large fanbase.
The Apex officials were getting headaches.
Honestly, they really needed this wave of traffic. Whether the game could keep going depended on whether there was fresh blood.
Apex hadn't had fresh blood for quite a long time.
Although revenue was barely profitable, for capital it was still far from enough. They needed more...
Meanwhile, Lin Fan easily won two rounds, then logged into Infinite Borders to take a look.
The chaotic Season 2 was finally nearing its end.
Settlement was in the next few days. As a nomad army, he'd already captured a state capital.
"Sigh, can't handle it... looked at my wallet, barely made it through getting Ghost Lu Meng to full red. In Conquest Season I'll still need to pull for Bow Zhuge Liang, Shu Guan Yu, Ma Dai—these core cards will be even more painful."
"Have to say, NetEase's gacha is ridiculously predatory. But directly buying accounts lacks that sense of progression and fun."
"But next season I'm planning to go fight in T0 lobbies. Won't have all the drama of fish ponds. Come experience what ceiling-level battles feel like."
"Wait for the staging area. Shengtian and them won't come out that fast. Don't know who the opponents are yet, but definitely won't be weak. Otherwise how would it be a World Cup showdown? I'm sure there are already tons of posts about it on the forums."
Once this topic came up, the Infinite Borders players in the livestream all emerged.
After all, Lin Fan initially made his name through Infinite Borders.
Spending all day immersed in Infinite Borders, occasionally helping viewers build lineups, he absorbed a massive fanbase.
Making all those Infinite Borders streamers grind their teeth in hatred.
After all, at that time Lin Fan's lineup building quality was high, and unlike others who just read from scripts, he really built based on card quality.
So many people liked coming to Lin Fan's stream for lineup help.
This left those Infinite Borders streamers without income.
After all, for these streamers, the big money came entirely from building lineups. Forty or fifty per session was normal, could go up to seventy or eighty.
As for account management and such, those were all grunt work. As streamers they definitely weren't willing to manage accounts, could only hand it off to other workshops. In that situation they only got commissions, so compared to lineup building income it was definitely much less.
Therefore, viewers who'd had Lin Fan build their lineups would occasionally come check his stream. Who knows, maybe they'd snag a chance to have him log in?
And look—the opportunity had come...
"Haven't built lineups for you guys in a while. Anyone want me to log in? If you want me to log in, I'll open my desktop and you can just scan the code to get in."
"Any season is fine..."
He opened the interface, and in no time someone logged in.
"Xingtian · A'dan..."
Seeing this eye-catching ID, Lin Fan immediately knew who it was.
"Brother Dan, how do you have time to watch my stream?"
As soon as Lin Fan finished speaking, A'dan directly sent ten super rockets in the livestream.
"Thanks to Brother Dan for the ten super rockets. Well, today I really need to build this account properly."
Actually, A'dan didn't come to Lin Fan for lineup building. In a sense, he planned to come advertise. After all, next season they were facing off against Xin Alliance, and this time he specifically asked NetEase for a server—the entire server was just their two alliances.
A true one-on-one showdown.
The winning side would claim the title of Infinite Borders' strongest alliance.
In this situation, they really needed accounts to join.
Of course, this level of battle... actually had a lot to do with grinding intensity.
If you didn't have strong grinding ability, you had to find workshops. In a sense, it was a battle between workshops—whichever side had the stronger workshop could win.
Then A'dan sent Lin Fan a WeChat message.
Lin Fan glanced at it and opened the profile interface.
"Xingtian Group recruiting people. Requirements: full red, weapons level 5 pink minimum. If interested, contact this WeChat: xxxx..."
Of course, he didn't say anything else. Out of three or four hundred thousand viewers in the stream, if anyone was interested they'd naturally reach out.
As for lineup building and such, wasn't it just displaying wealth?
Opening the general roster, row after row of full reds.
Then opening the artifacts, all top-tier red weapons.
"This is the world of the wealthy..." Seeing these weapons, Lin Fan thought back to when he was in Xingtian First Generation. At that time, a 15 Brave Bow was 200,000 yuan per weapon.
Ye Gucheng got himself a full set. At that time, full red Ghost Lu Meng plus red weapons, placed in a small county, was a whole house...
Never thought that after rebirth, going round and round, he'd end up back there. Sure enough, once an account hit full red, you'd join these top-tier small groups.
Thinking about this, he was quite looking forward to next season's World Cup.
Season 1 and Season 2—saying there was experience, there was some, but the intensity was too low. Playing one or two seasons was fine, but going forward he really needed to play in high-intensity alliances.
Many people who'd never played Infinite Borders watched the conversation between Lin Fan and A'dan and suddenly became quite curious about this game.
Might as well—nothing better to do anyway. Looked like a casual little game, could download it and check it out.
As for spending money and such, as long as you controlled your hands, wouldn't it be fine?
Absolutely no spending.
Then they opened the app store, found Infinite Borders and directly downloaded it. But with this download, they'd thoroughly stepped into the source of all evil...