While China Telecom was set to face CK Team in the semifinals, neighboring YQCB also confirmed their semifinal match against Red Arrow to determine who would advance to the finals—though Red Arrow was a strong team that had narrowly missed the S-series finals for several years, the current YQCB was no longer the struggling relegation team from the Spring Split. They were now a squad capable of giving Operator Team a run for their money… Naturally, people assumed Red Arrow wouldn’t pose much of a threat to them, so the focus of debate shifted entirely to the semifinal clash between Operator Team and CK Team.
—At least, the general public agreed there was plenty to watch in this semifinal.
First, the bot lane: CK Team had been a cohesive unit for two seasons, with no glaring weaknesses across all five roles. Their AD carry, Hu Die, might be slightly inferior to Lu Sicheng—let’s call it a 70-30 matchup—but with a stronger meta champion duo, their bot lane might not lose to China Telecom’s.
In the mid lane, if Tong Yao faced Xiao Hua, both excelled at assassin-type champions. Xiao Hua’s champion pool didn’t strictly follow the meta, so Tong Yao, with her deeper pool, likely had the edge—let’s say 60-40.
For top lane, CK Team’s Hao Yun Lai specialized in tank champions with refined mechanics, while Old Cat was a jack-of-all-trades, decent at everything. He might not carry games, but unless he and Old K were busy bickering mid-match, China Telecom’s top lane rarely collapsed—steadfast as Mount Tai. So let’s not assign odds here. When two top laners both pick tanks, they might slap each other around for a full minute and still have two-thirds of their health bars left.
As for the jungle, Tong Yao believed Old K and Yang Shen were a 100-0 mismatch, while most viewers saw it as 50-50 or even 40-60, with Yang Shen being more aggressive in enemy territory…
The LPL had always been famous as a brawling region, with the server’s ethos being, “Screw macro, let’s fight.”
That said.
After this analysis, people couldn’t help but worry: If China Telecom’s bot lane underperformed and failed to suppress CK Team’s Hu Die and Lao Wang, and if their mid laner was the steady Lu Yue, they feared the first 20 minutes of the game might not even see a single kill, with neither side crossing the river.
……………………This wouldn’t do.
Not only was the LPL’s style all about fighting, but its audience also loved watching fights.
In the days leading up to the match, calls for Tong Yao to start grew louder. Lu Yue, displeased, spent his streams arguing with fans… The night before the match, as Tong Yao drifted past him with a glass of milk, she overheard him still bickering with his viewers—
“Whether I play tomorrow isn’t certain… What do you mean ‘don’t play’? I can use carry champions too. Did you not see my Aurelion Sol last week? Remember that Twisted Fate? The last card of the LPL…”
【？？？？？？？？？】
【??? Wasn’t Smiling the last card of the LPL?】
【…Stealing someone’s starting spot and now their title too, 66666, e-sports green tea bitch Lu Xuan Shou】
【Cheng Ge said that Aurelion Sol was picked with a gun to your head, and now you’re bragging about it?】"What's wrong with snatching her title? She even snatched my brother—my own flesh and blood who I grew up with for nineteen years!" Lu Yue slammed the table, his voice booming loud enough for the entire team headquarters to hear as he argued with live comments and clashed with fans. "Now the official Weibo is flooded with demands for that shorty to play. Where are my fans?! Don’t you know how to fight back and insist that I’m better than that shorty? Just watching me get bullied by her fans and still calling yourselves my fans? Get out, all of you. I don’t believe it!"
Tong Yao: "...I don’t have fans."
Lu Yue: "Neither do I. China Telecom’s Mid Laner has no fans."
Tong Yao: "..."
Tong Yao carried her milk back to her seat. Lu Sicheng was sitting at his spot, head lowered as he analyzed data. She held the milk cup under his nose. He sniffed without looking up. "Move it. Drink it yourself. I won’t stop you from chasing your bright future of reaching 160 cm."
Tong Yao pulled her hand back and watched as Lu Sicheng grabbed a draft paper to calculate something. She took a sip of milk. "What are you calculating?"
"The importance of tomorrow’s match—first place in the Spring Split is worth 300 points, second place 200; first place in the Summer Split directly qualifies for the S-series World Championship, second place gets 300 points, third place 200. So if we win against CK tomorrow and make it to the Summer Finals, even in the worst-case scenario where we lose to YQCB and take second place with 300 points, plus the Spring Split points, we’d have 500 total. Then if CK defeats Huawei and takes third place with 200 points, we’d tie with CK Team in total points and have a tiebreaker for the top spot—giving us one more chance to qualify instead of just relying on the Gauntlet. But if we lose tomorrow, we’d have to hope CK Team beats YQCB to win the championship, and we’d enter the S-series World Championship by having the highest year-round total points. Otherwise, we’d have to fight through the Gauntlet..."
Tong Yao held her milk cup, listening intently for a long time before raising her eyes to see Little Fatty also dropping his mouse, looking utterly confused at Lu Sicheng’s explanation... Dizzy, Tong Yao waved her hand. "So basically, we must win tomorrow and can’t afford to lose, right?"
Lu Sicheng: "I don’t like leaving my fate in another team’s hands."
Tong Yao let out an "Oh" and sat down. Lu Sicheng asked again, "Did you understand any of what I just calculated?"
Tong Yao answered honestly, "No."
Lu Sicheng: "..."
After sitting down, Tong Yao checked the time—it was already 10:30—so she decided not to play Ranked Games for practice. Instead, she flipped through her notes and reviewed CK Team’s recent matches, studying Yang Shen’s jungle pathing...
Lu Sicheng leaned over and glanced, noticing Tong Yao’s eyes fixed on the minimap in the bottom right corner of the match replay. Her notebook was filled with entries like "X minutes X seconds, clears Wolves" and "X minutes X seconds, clears F4." Frowning slightly, he tossed aside the folder he was holding, reached over, and pinched her chin to turn her face toward him. "What are you looking at?"
"Match replay," Tong Yao muttered, her eyes still straining toward the edge of her vision to keep watching the screen. She patted Lu Sicheng’s hand. "Let go, I can’t see..."Lu Sicheng let go, lowering his gaze to stare at the person rubbing their chin while still glued to the computer screen: "That interesting?"
"Pretty interesting. This match is CK versus Red Arrow. Red Arrow's jungle got completely dominated by Yang Shen—it's essentially a game won in the jungle. So I wanted to see how Yang Shen played this one..."
"......"
Lu Sicheng raised an eyebrow.
He realized that the word "Yang Shen" became grating when it appeared more than once in a sentence. And the way Tong Yao unconsciously praised Yang Shen with such sincerity was... particularly irritating to watch.
Before he even realized what he was doing, he reached out and pressed the power button on Tong Yao's computer. The sudden black screen made her freeze for a moment before she hissed and turned to glare at the man beside her—but by then, he had already turned away with an indifferent expression, continuing to flip through his folder. Sensing her furious glare, he calmly patted her head without looking up. "Go to bed early. I'll join you after I finish this."
Tong Yao blinked. "You're still coming to my room the night before a match?"
Lu Sicheng paused his scribbling on the folder. "Problem?"
Tong Yao pursed her lips and emphasized, "......It's a match tomorrow. Didn't you say it's important and you don't like leaving fate in another team's hands...?"
Lu Sicheng glanced at her. "I won't do anything tonight."
Tong Yao thought for a second, then muttered an "Oh" and sat back, hugging her knees as she flipped through her notebook. Meanwhile, Little Fatty blinked in confusion. "What do you mean 'won't do anything tonight'? What do you normally do then?"
Old Cat lazily glanced at him. "Shameful adult things, probably."
Little Fatty: "......"
An eerie silence lasted five seconds.
It was broken by Lu Sicheng's sudden scoff. Tong Yao shot up from her seat, angrily smacking the man's head with her notebook before storming upstairs, her face red, and slamming the door shut—plunging the team headquarters into momentary silence. Under the judging gazes of his teammates, the man calmly picked up the half-finished glass of milk Tong Yao had left behind, downed it in one go, then stood up. He walked to the kitchen, washed the glass, placed it back on the rack, turned around, and waved his folder at the room full of single men. "I'm going to bed. All of you should sleep early too."
With that, he strode off.
Upstairs.
He knocked on Tong Yao's door. "Open up."
A minute later, the door grudgingly cracked open, and Lu Sicheng slipped inside before it shut with a click.
Team headquarters: "……………………"
And so.
On the eve of the semifinals—which the captain of the China Telecom Team had described as "arguably more crucial than the finals"—the team headquarters was filled with a harmonious and cheerful atmosphere.
......
Lu Sicheng was a man of many tricks and even more schemes. His only redeeming quality was probably that he kept his word—when he said he wouldn't do anything that night, he truly didn't. After climbing into Tong Yao's bed, he chatted with her for a while before simply holding her as they slept.
It had been a long time since Tong Yao experienced the comfort of "light sleep." Ever since a certain someone had gotten a taste, she felt like she wasn't falling asleep every night—she was passing out.So after a rare good night's sleep, she felt particularly refreshed the next day.
...Except when changing into her team uniform, she discovered suspicious red marks in inconspicuous places below her ears and on her neck—probably left by someone while she was asleep. Just as Tong Yao calmly tried to cover them with concealer, someone grabbed her hand: "Mosquito bites, why cover them?"
Tong Yao: "Do you think I'm stupid?"
Lu Sicheng: "Trying to hide only makes it more obvious."
Tong Yao: "What nonsense is that?"
Lu Sicheng: "Or are you afraid CK's jungler might see them?"
Tong Yao put her hand down, finally realizing that this man's jealousy could last an entire night, holding grudges like a true Scorpio... and equally demanding in certain aspects. She lowered her hand and asked the person behind her in the mirror: "Are you a Scorpio?"
Lu Sicheng paused while unfolding his team uniform: "How did you know?"
Tong Yao curled her lips slightly: "You fit the type."
Lustful, vengeful, combative, rarely letting loose—but once they do, not even eight horses could rein them back.
"You girls love reading into such trivial things," Lu Sicheng snorted as he put on his uniform. "By that logic, the world's population is divided into just twelve types?"
"At least you're the textbook example of one of those twelve."
Tong Yao said expressionlessly, standing up. She and her team captain continued discussing zodiac signs as they went downstairs, hastily ate a few bites of the breakfast prepared by the auntie, then boarded the van with their teammates—still arguing:
"By your logic, a clean and good-looking man like me could also be a Virgo."
"Maybe your rising sign is Virgo? Honestly, when you nag and fuss over trivial things, you really do resemble one. What's your birthday? I'll calculate it for you."
"...Talking about Virgos like that will get you killed."
"I'm complimenting you. Did I deny that you're good-looking?"
Still bickering, the two moved in perfect sync to the van's back row and sat down. Little Fatty glanced back at his team's dual carries and asked after a pause: "Is this what dating is like?"
Tong Yao froze, swatting away Lu Sicheng's hand as he reached to touch her face: "What do you mean?"
Little Fatty: "Endless meaningless chatter, yet you both sound so enthusiastic."
Tong Yao: "Yep."
Little Fatty perfectly equated "dating" with "wasting one's life."
...
An hour later, they arrived at the competition venue.
After submitting their equipment for inspection and getting prepped backstage, Tong Yao—who hadn't competed in a while—felt unusually nervous. Gone was her talkative self from the ride over; she became unexpectedly quiet.
Lu Sicheng noticed but said nothing. Only when stepping onto the stage did he take her hand: "Nervous?"
Tong Yao turned with a stiff face: "Yeah."
Lu Sicheng: "Legs weak?"
Tong Yao: "Huh?"
Lu Sicheng: "Want me to carry you up?"
Tong Yao: "..."
Ignoring the teasing smirk on the man's face, she silently shook off his hand, almost as if afraid he'd actually sweep her up onto the stage. She quickly scrambled up and rushed to her seat...Sitting firmly and patting her chest, Tong Yao instinctively looked up and noticed directly in front of her—at eye level—a massive glowing cheering banner with the words: "Go Smiling, in the name of ‘:）’"… Fans held it up high, and Tong Yao squinted slightly, seeing the clear smiles on the girls' faces beneath the black banner, their eyes reflecting the stage lights.
Their eyes seemed to hold stars.
Just like the promise they had once made to her: No matter where you are, whether you play or not, we’ll always be there.
Tong Yao’s expression remained calm, yet she could almost feel her heartbeat pounding in her chest… She lowered her head, glanced at the keyboard in front of her, put on her headphones, and spoke a single sentence before entering the first Ban & Pick phase of the day.
She didn’t know when the nervousness had settled. By the time she realized it, listening to her teammates and Ming Shen discussing in her headphones, she had already become unnervingly composed…
"…………The enemy picked Leblanc, damn, Xiao Hua’s really going for it, huh? Tong Yao, you see that? Xiao Hua’s trying to slap you in the face—can you take that?"
"They left Syndra open, let’s grab Syndra. I didn’t even notice they didn’t ban Leblanc…"
"Yang Shen picked Kindred, nice, that’s peak survival instinct—what’s his zodiac sign?"
"…Can we drop the zodiac talk for now, Captain? Save the jealousy for later. Can Syndra even lane against Leblanc?"
"If Syndra’s ID is Smiling, then yeah."
"Wow, that’s some big talk. Tong Yao, our captain’s really forcing you into a corner here. Sing us a hero’s anthem, one, two, three— The great river flows eastward… "
" The stars above tremble like the Big Dipper! "
"You guys really wanna make it into Tournament Quotes again, huh?"
Amid the chaotic chatter buzzing in her ears, the Ban & Pick phase was about to conclude—
China Telecom Team Picks: Rumble, Rek'Sai, Syndra, Sivir, Thresh.
CK Team Picks: Gnar, Kindred, Leblanc, Lucian, Alistar.
Both teams entered Summoner’s Rift.
In the arena, the commentators took their positions, and a unified, thunderous cheer erupted!
Thus, the 2016 League of Legends Pro League Summer Split semifinals—ZGDX Team vs. CK Team—officially began.
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