That afternoon, Shanghai.

Wu Yue, the owner of FV Club, was furious in his office.

“Ding Gan and his people are going too far!”

“Their team gets dismantled, so they come to dismantle mine?”

“They even join forces to put pressure on us. Are smaller clubs with less financial strength just supposed to be pushed around by them?”

“And that dog Zhao Xuming is playing along with them. Disgusting!”

Manager Lu of FV Club was also indignant beside him: “Boss Wu, these people are all cut from the same cloth!”

“Zhao Xuming is obviously in cahoots with Ding Gan and his group.”

“They talk about qualification matches to determine who goes to the world championship, but what’s the point of playing? Once they’ve picked their teams, it’s already predetermined!”

“Our team’s strength was relatively intact, but our reputation is far behind those other clubs, so Ding Gan joined with other clubs to pressure us into selling our players. The most infuriating thing is that Zhao Xuming pretends to mediate, but he’s actually on their side.”

“Simply put, they want to send the three clubs with the biggest names and most fans, and they’re willing to dismantle small clubs like ours to build their teams.”

Boss Wu grew even angrier: “The most outrageous thing is, these people poach our players and then say we’ve profited from the transfer fees, calling it a win-win? I’ll win-win his grandmother’s leg!”

Since they were in his own office, and Manager Lu was his own man who knew the inside story, Wu Yue didn’t care about appearances anymore and cursed openly.

Last week, Dragon Yu Group and Finger Corporation had finalized their cooperation matters, and Zhao Xuming had started organizing domestic teams to participate in the qualifiers to select the teams that would go abroad for the IOI Global Finals.

However, they encountered a very serious problem: the teams of various established clubs had been poached apart!

Take the SUG Club, for example; their IOI division only had three players left. How could they compete like that?

Other established clubs were in similar situations. Many promising talents had been poached by Lin Chang leading GOG clubs, leaving most teams understaffed.

It was like playing mahjong—how could you play with only three players when you needed four?

While cursing Tenda for executing a devastating strategy, Zhao Xuming had no better solution and could only make do.

This was for the world championship—they couldn’t just promote newcomers to fill the vacant positions and start from scratch, could they? They would be brutally defeated, which would be worse than not going at all.

Therefore, to fill the gaps in a few teams and bring them up to a level capable of competing in the world championship, they had no choice but to dismantle other teams.

So the question became: which ones to dismantle and which ones to strengthen?

They could only dismantle small clubs and strengthen big ones.

From Zhao Xuming’s perspective, even if he didn’t consider the financial aspect, he had to consider reputation and popularity.

Established clubs like SUG had a large number of fans domestically and some international recognition. Such teams competing in the world championship could truly represent the domestic IOI esports circle.

As for small clubs like FV, their reputation was too low, with little recognition either domestically or internationally, falling far behind in terms of generating heat.

After all, Zhao Xuming understood clearly that the primary purpose of the IOI World Finals was ultimately to bring traffic to the domestic IOI server. If it couldn’t generate traffic, everything would be for nothing.

Results were important, of course, but since they were dismantling teams anyway, which one to dismantle and which one to strengthen—what impact would it have on results? Given the current competitive level, no team had a chance of winning the championship.

That being the case, obviously letting big clubs take the lead would bring more attention.

So Zhao Xuming and several big clubs joined forces to approach small clubs like FV to buy players.

Player transfers were certainly voluntary, but the pressure was objectively real.

FV Club was a small club, practically a cyber café team. Its owner, Wu Yue, funded it personally out of an interest in maintaining the club. How could he resist the combined force of Dragon Yu Group and these big clubs?

Of course, Wu Yue could choose to firmly refuse to sell his players and let the team compete in the qualifiers, but after offending these big clubs and Dragon Yu Group, could there be any good outcome in the future?

Moreover, Wu Yue himself wasn’t 100% confident in his team. If they failed to make it through the qualifiers and the players weren’t sold, that would be an even bigger loss.

So after much consideration, Wu Yue had no better option but to reluctantly dismantle his team and sell the players to other established clubs for reinforcement.

GOG clubs had dismantled established IOI clubs, and now established IOI clubs were dismantling smaller IOI clubs, becoming a cycle.

Wu Yue was very reluctant to sell his players, which was why he was so furious in his office.

But he had no choice; small clubs had no say in the matter.

After venting, Wu Yue gradually calmed down, waving his hand and saying, “Forget it, let’s move past this. You can go now, I need some time alone to think.”

Manager Lu nodded and left.

Wu Yue leaned back in his chair, worried about whether to continue running his club.

FV Club was solely funded by himself, purely maintaining it out of interest and at his own expense. He couldn’t even dream of getting a GOG slot—it was completely unaffordable—so he could only play around with IOI to maintain a living.

But now even the IOI team had been dismantled.

Of course, he could recruit new players and rebuild the team, but anyone with eyes could see that there was no hope for this qualifier.

Zhao Xuming had given FV Club a slot in the qualifiers for the sake of appearances, but the problem was: where to find good players?

After all, Zhao Xuming felt a bit guilty about dismantling these small clubs, so he gave them qualification slots for show, knowing these small clubs had no chance of advancing.

Even if they managed to put together a team to participate in the qualifiers, they would most likely be destroyed by teams like SUG.

Once they missed this IOI World Championship, they would likely face a situation where there were no competitions to participate in.

The predicament Wu Yue now faced was: the team he had painstakingly built had been dismantled, leaving only three players; rebuilding would be troublesome; there would be no competitions to participate in for the short term, meaning pure money burning without any heat; he had earned some transfer fees from selling players, so quitting while ahead seemed like a decent choice.

So Wu Yue was somewhat disheartened and didn’t want to continue.

As he was struggling with his thoughts, there was a knock at the door.

“Knock, knock, knock.”

Wu Yue looked up to see that Manager Lu had returned.

“Boss Wu, there’s a very urgent matter.” Manager Lu’s expression was somewhat incredulous. “Mr. Pei from Tenda Group wants to personally come to Shanghai to meet with you.”

Wu Yue was stunned: “Who?”

Manager Lu repeated: “Mr. Pei from Tenda Group.”

Wu Yue was completely dumbfounded.

Mr. Pei?

Wasn’t that the designer of GOG, the big boss who established the GPL league?

He wants to meet me?

Wu Yue even suspected this was false information, because the gap between them was too great—what matter would be worth Mr. Pei making a personal trip?

GPL league slots had been bid up to sky-high prices, with many traditional corporate giants entering the scene. It could be said that GOG was currently the hottest esports circle both domestically and even worldwide.

Tenda Group was the organizer of all GOG competitions, and the recent standardized contract incident had conveyed a message to the outside world: Tenda had the final say in the GOG esports circle.

In contrast, FV Club was just a small, privately-run club, purely amateur in nature, with neither reputation nor strength.

Originally, the strength of the IOI division was barely passable, but now that the excellent players had been poached, it immediately became just an empty shell.

Why would Mr. Pei personally visit?

Wu Yue couldn’t understand it for the moment.

But of course, he wouldn’t dare to be negligent, and hurriedly asked: “When will Mr. Pei arrive?”

Manager Lu answered: “He said he’d be at Shanghai’s high-speed rail station in about an hour.”

Wu Yue quickly stood up: “Bring my seven-seater business van over, let’s head to the high-speed rail station to pick them up immediately!”

…

Two hours later, at an upscale restaurant near the FV Club.

Wu Yue, Manager Lu, Pei Qian, and Zhang Yuan were all seated.

They had already exchanged pleasantries on the way, and now, sitting down while drinking tea and waiting for the food, it was about time to get down to business.

This was the first time Wu Yue and Manager Lu had met Pei Qian and Zhang Yuan, and they found it hard to believe that these two were among the top figures in the GOG esports circle.

Mr. Pei was ridiculously young, and his real identity turned out to be that actor from the short drama, which surprised both Wu Yue and Manager Lu; Zhang Yuan also looked ordinary, even somewhat plain, making it hard to imagine he was Tenda’s highest-ranking person in the esports circle.

Wu Yue personally poured tea for Mr. Pei and Zhang Yuan, smiling as he said: “Mr. Pei, Mr. Zhang, your esteemed presence truly brightens our humble FV Club. This happened so suddenly that we didn’t have time to properly prepare the reception, so we could only make do with this restaurant. Please don’t mind.”

“Tomorrow, tomorrow I’ll arrange another meal, invite a few friends to accompany us, and I hope Mr. Pei will certainly honor us with your presence.”

Pei Qian quickly waved his hand: “That won’t be necessary, please don’t stand on ceremony, Mr. Wu. I came today to discuss business, and I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning.”

Wu Yue nodded: “Alright, Mr. Pei, please feel free to speak. Whatever requirements you have, I will certainly do my utmost to fulfill!”

Pei Qian didn’t bother to beat around the bush and said directly: “It’s not a big deal. I want to invest in FV Club.”

Wu Yue was stunned for a moment, almost thinking he had misheard: “What?”

Invest in FV Club?

What kind of club did he have? Didn’t he know better than anyone? What was the point of investing in it?

Wu Yue looked at Mr. Pei: “Mr. Pei, are you serious?”

Pei Qian nodded: “Of course!”

After considering for a moment, Wu Yue said: “Mr. Pei, if you’re interested in FV Club, I’ll sell it to you directly. Flat price of 1.5 million, what do you think?”

Wu Yue didn’t dare quote too high, because he knew very well what the FV Club was.

It was a negative asset, with no profitability, burning money on player salaries and venue rentals. Moreover, FV Club had no achievements, didn’t even have competitions to participate in, had no traffic, let alone traffic monetization—it was simply impossible.

If there was anything useful now, it might be that FV Club could participate in the IOI qualifiers, but there were quite a few teams with this qualification, and Mr. Pei himself had the GPL league, so he couldn’t possibly be interested in this.

The remaining three players did have some value, but if they couldn’t be sold, there would be no transfer fees. Besides, these three players themselves weren’t very skilled; otherwise, they wouldn’t have been left behind while others were poached.

Wu Yue didn’t know why Mr. Pei would be interested in the FV Club, but if he wanted it, he could just take it all. He would also be happy to hand it over and take the opportunity to exit the esports circle.

Pei Qian shook his head: “I don’t want to buy the club, just invest.”

Wu Yue was a bit confused—what did this mean? If he were interested, wouldn’t it be better to buy it outright?

Could it be that Mr. Pei was willing to pay far less than 1.5 million?

Wu Yue asked: “Then how much do you plan to invest?”

Pei Qian: “Three million.”

Wu Yue: “…”

What the hell, three million!

The entire club was priced at only 1.5 million, but Mr. Pei directly invested 3 million? Wasn’t that redundant?

Wu Yue found it very puzzling and asked: “Then, do you plan to change the team name? Replace the management team? Or add advertising spots on the uniforms? Are there any other additional requirements?”

Wu Yue was a bit panicked—this amount of money was a bit too much for the FV Club. Was Mr. Pei going to arrange some kind of performance agreement or similar trap?

Pei Qian shook his head: “None of that. Just investment, take some shares, no other requirements.”

Wu Yue blinked, completely unable to understand.

For just 1.5 million, the entire club could be bought outright, but Mr. Pei didn’t want to buy; he just insisted on investing.