Let Me Think It Over (Please Vote!)
By the time Su Zhe arrived in Hangcheng by high-speed rail, it was already noon, so he took a taxi straight to the club.
Someone at the entrance of the club glanced at a photo on his phone, then looked up at Su Zhe.
After confirming it was him, the person walked over. "You're Su Zhe, right? I'm Tianlu's trial coach. Come upstairs with me."
Su Zhe followed the coach through the club's entrance. As he walked, he looked around and felt even more pleased.
Tianlu's club was far grander than he'd imagined. He'd heard that some domestic CS clubs even rented apartments in residential complexes to use as training rooms.
The coach led him to the Youth Training Room. Su Zhe looked inside and saw at least a dozen people, all around his age.
The youth coach asked, "Would you like to take a break? I can arrange your trial later."
Su Zhe shook his head. "We can start now, but I need to warm up first."
He'd slept for a few hours the previous night, then caught a few more hours of sleep on the high-speed train that morning. It was the most rested he'd felt in over a month, and he was in great spirits.
Hearing that, the youth coach set him up at a computer. "Go ahead and warm up. I'll make the arrangements. Your trial will start in twenty minutes."
Su Zhe sat down and turned on the computer. The youth trainee beside him, who looked even younger than he was, struck up a conversation. "Hey, I'm Xiao Zhou. What's your game ID? Maybe we've run into each other on the Ladder."
Su Zhe wasn't sure how to answer. Coming up with his ID had felt great at the time, but now that a stranger had asked about it, actually saying it out loud would be a little embarrassing.
He skipped over the question and asked instead, "What does the trial involve? Is it hard?"
Xiao Zhou didn't seem to mind. He smiled. "It's pretty simple. They'll put together ten people, including you, and have us play three scrims. The coach will watch your mechanics and stuff, then decide whether to keep you."
"What's wrong? A little nervous?"
Su Zhe nodded. It was his first time doing anything like this, and he had no experience. It was only natural to be nervous, especially since this was about something that could shape his whole future.
Xiao Zhou reassured him. "Don't be nervous. Just play the way you do on the Ladder. The coach looks at the stats, sure, but more than anything, they want to see your decisions and mechanics in a match."
Su Zhe murmured, "Mm," and thanked him. Then he asked the question he most wanted answered: "If I pass the trial, how long will it take for me to make the Main Team as a starter?"
Xiao Zhou looked as if he'd just heard a joke, and his smile grew even wider. "You're thinking pretty far ahead. Take a look at that big guy behind you."
Su Zhe turned around and saw a man at least 1.9 meters tall, bent over as he focused on the screen.
He turned back, puzzled. "What about him?"
"He gets the best results in our regular evaluations, but he's been in Youth Training for two years already."
"What? That long?"
Xiao Zhou pursed his lips. "That's normal. The Main Team has six players just on the bench. It's not that easy to get promoted from the youth squad."
"If you perform well, the club will most likely sell you to another team. But there aren't many CSGO teams in China these days, so it's not easy to find a buyer."
"If you'd come a few months earlier, there'd have been a lot more people here. A lot of them have been transferred to the Valorant division."
Su Zhe fell silent. This wasn't how he'd imagined things.
Unwilling to give up, he pressed on. "Are there no exceptions? Like someone who does exceptionally well in Youth Training and goes straight into the Main Team as a starter?"
Xiao Zhou thought for a moment, then said, "You know Danking, right?"
Su Zhe nodded. "Yeah. He's really good. I ran into him on the Ladder once."
Xiao Zhou continued, "He had the best stats among the domestic snipers, and he was great at streaming too. He was promoted straight from Youth Training to the starting lineup."
Su Zhe asked, "How long was he in Youth Training?"
Xiao Zhou replied, "Two or three years? I'm not sure, but it definitely wasn't any less than that."
Su Zhe fell silent again. Danking was already extraordinarily talented and skilled, and people online called him "Asia's Number One Sniper." Even he had spent two or three years in Youth Training?
Still unwilling to give up, Su Zhe asked, "What if someone's really good? Couldn't there be an exception?"
He had the system. If he got a spot in Youth Training and worked hard for a few months to improve, it shouldn't be difficult to make the Main Team as a starter within a year, right?
Xiao Zhou shook his head. "Pretty much impossible. What good is it if you're great in regular games? The coach doesn't look at that. You can't play in matches without Match Experience, and the club cares about results too."
He chuckled. "Not that we've had any results in ages, but they still won't let a rookie play. Maybe there was a tiny chance before, but now there's none at all."
Su Zhe picked up on that and asked, "What happened now?"
Xiao Zhou looked surprised. "You didn't hear? Tianlu just acquired the 5yclone team a few days ago. They flew to Shanghai this morning to compete in CAC."
"Those guys have been playing in tournaments for years. They've even competed in all kinds of S-tier events. There's no way they'd suddenly replace one of them with an inexperienced rookie."
Then Xiao Zhou joked, "Even if you had Zai Wu's talent, you might still have to stay in Tianlu Youth Training for a year or two before you got a chance to compete."
"By the way, aren't you going to warm up? They're about to arrange your trial."
"Oh! Right! Thanks!" Su Zhe's mind was in a jumble. He mechanically plugged his own peripherals into the computer, then started adjusting his settings.
Two or three years... How could he wait that long? The system's Countdown had just over 300 days left... Once it was gone, could he get far in a professional career through his own efforts alone?
Su Zhe pressed hard on his temples, trying to push his restless thoughts down.
I'll take it one step at a time. First, I'll focus on the trial ahead...
After Su Zhe had killed five or six hundred bots, the youth coach returned to the Training Room and began arranging his trial.
The coach even let him choose the three active maps he was best at, then randomly picked nine youth trainees to join him in a custom lobby.
The trial lasted a little over two hours, with a total of 36 rounds played.
The scrims were played in halves: 12 rounds on one side, then they left the match and switched sides for another 12.
The coach stood behind him, constantly writing notes in a notebook.
When the scrims ended, Su Zhe felt a little dizzy. After 36 rounds, he felt like he had the first time he'd played ranked on S: completely out of his depth.
The pace was too fast! The communication was too fast! The slightest mistake gave the other side an opening.
He'd forgotten that every one of the youth trainees here was among the best on the Ladder. They could reach Demon King S every season without breaking a sweat, and they'd also received systematic training.
Su Zhe was barely at Gold S level. His performance in the scrims could only be described as terrible.
Everyone who made it here was a Genius Youth.
He finally understood something Semper had once said: "Geniuses are only just beginning to see the threshold."
It was arrogant, but in that moment, he understood exactly what it meant.
The coach closed his notebook and said, "Come with me to the office. Let's talk."
Su Zhe murmured, "Mm," and stood up. Xiao Zhou gave him an encouraging gesture as he rose.
When they reached the office, Su Zhe had already prepared himself to be told to leave. Instead, the coach smiled and said, "Have a seat. You did pretty well today."
"Huh?" Su Zhe thought he'd misheard. His KD had been negative in all six halves. He hadn't been able to keep up with his teammates at all.
The coach sat down, seeming to see what Su Zhe was thinking. He picked up the cup on the desk, took a sip of water, and said:
"It's normal not to perform well. If you'd been killing everyone in the scrims, that would mean I'd wasted all that time training them!"
"But you had some bright spots too, so don't lose heart. I heard you've played less than a thousand hours. It's already impressive that you have the foundation you do."
"If you join our youth squad and settle down to train hard, you'll definitely surpass them someday."
As the person primarily in charge of Youth Training, he'd been in this position for years and knew how to handle young people whose confidence had taken a hit.
Then he pulled a contract out of his desk drawer and smiled. "Congratulations, you passed the trial. Sign this, and you'll be a member of Tianlu."
Su Zhe took the contract and looked it over. It was complicated, but he got the gist.
It was a five-year Youth Training contract. Tianlu had the right to sell him, and if he wanted to switch teams or leave early, he'd have to pay a huge penalty.
After reading it carefully, he asked hesitantly, "Um... could I sign a shorter contract? Maybe six months or three months?"
The coach laughed. Tianlu's club had been losing money for a while, but it wasn't a charity. Why would they sign such a short contract and train a player for someone else?
He shook his head. "All Youth Training contracts are standardized. There are no exceptions."
Su Zhe continued, "If I improve quickly, how long before I can become a starter on the Main Team?"
The youth coach painted him a rosy picture. "Hard to say. If you perform well and work hard enough, you might get a chance in a year or two."
Su Zhe sighed to himself and placed the contract back on the desk.
"I'll think it over..."