That day.
Before boarding the plane, the ZGDX team, along with their substitute players and coaching staff, gathered in the waiting area to take a group photo holding the Five-star Red Flag. Tong Yao, being the shortest, only stuck her head out from behind the flag, while Lu Sicheng and the other teammates stood in a row beside her. The coaching staff crouched in front of the flag. At the photographer’s cue, everyone flashed bright smiles—except for Lu Sicheng, who remained expressionless as usual— click .
After the photo was taken, Xiao Rui carefully folded the flag and put it away, muttering, “Keep it safe, keep it safe. We’ll take it out again on October 30th when we reach Los Angeles.”
Los Angeles was the host city for the 2016 League of Legends S6 World Championship finals, and October 30th was the date of the grand finals.
Before Tong Yao and the others boarded the plane, the photo of them holding the Five-star Red Flag was posted on the team’s official Weibo, sparking heated discussions across various platforms. Under the official post, someone commented: “Professional League is just a Club League. Stop trying to hype national pride to gain fans—it’s idiotic.”
In response, the official Weibo admin, for the first time, fired back bluntly: “I don’t want to curse, but let me remind you—at least during the S2 and S3 era, the jerseys of domestic clubs had the Five-star Red Flag embroidered on them.”
On the Forum, someone posted: “I can’t stand people who confuse Club Leagues with national leagues. Isn’t ZGDX’s official Weibo just being brain-dead this time?”
In response, the notoriously ruthless Forum moderator—who usually enjoyed roasting players and was nicknamed the “Esports Toilet”—suddenly stepped forward and issued a domineering reply:
“Since someone’s here Feeding, let me announce the latest Forum rules: During the S6 World Championship, this Forum prohibits any attempts to stir drama against the three teams representing our region. Normally, we can bicker among ourselves for fun, but at critical moments, we stand united against outsiders. If anyone dares to test this rule, I’ll chop off your Dog Head and throw you into the Cycle Black House—one for each offender, two for a pair.
Our motto is: Enjoy the grand spectacle of the tournament and cheer for the players representing our region!
Also, this is my Forum, and I’ll run it as a one-voice hall if I damn well please. If you want to complain, go somewhere else. If I don’t flex my authority, what’s the point? Stay mad!
The above rule remains in effect until October 31, 2016.”
Just like that, any brewing drama was swiftly crushed under an unexpected wave of positivity.
By the time Tong Yao and the others, exhausted, got off the plane, cleared customs, and boarded the team bus, Little Fatty opened his phone to browse the Forum. Half-asleep on the bus, he suddenly yelped in shock: “Holy shit, did we just fly to the U.S. or teleport to a parallel universe? Since when did the Esports Toilet turn into the Garden of Eden?!”
Hearing this, Tong Yao immediately struggled to lift her head from Lu Sicheng’s arms and reached for her phone. Lu Sicheng pressed her head back down: “You’re barely conscious and still want to gossip?”
Tong Yao swatted his hand away with one hand while grabbing her phone with the other: “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me—my hair’s so greasy.”
Lu Sicheng: “...” Tong Yao sat up slightly and opened the forum, immediately spotting a post with their silly group photo holding the national flag as the featured image. She clicked in and skimmed through the comments—most were cheering them on, but there were always one or two odd ones—
【Little Beard Twirl: …Hope I won’t get thrown into the Black House for saying this, but Smiling is so damn short!】
【Xie Xiaofang: Seconded. With Cheng Ge standing behind her, he looks like her dad. My eyes hurt.】
【Heh Heh Heh: HAHAHAHAHAHA did Tong Yao even go to the U.S. or was her head just photoshopped onto this pic HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!】
【Ouch: With that height in the U.S., Cheng Ge better hold her tight or she’ll get mistaken for a truant toddler and dragged back to kindergarten.】
Tong Yao: “…”
Furious, she turned off her phone and shoved it back into Lu Sicheng’s pocket. “What goddamn Eden!”
……
The hotel provided by the event organizers wasn’t ready for check-in yet, but the LPL region’s clubs had no shortage of money even if they lacked other things. After a quick discussion, the owners of the three clubs decided to book an entire floor in the hotel near the Group Stage venue in advance for their players and staff, ensuring they could rest comfortably without needing to relocate later.
This was a lesson learned from past World Championships—no one wanted headlines like "Player insomnia due to hotel change affects performance," "Player falls ill from adapting to local conditions affects performance," or "Player struggles with jet lag affects performance."” Besides the hotel, the dedicated player training rooms were already open. After resting and eating for a day, Tong Yao and the others took a bus to check out the training facilities—only to find that teams from other regions had also arrived, with only the Wild Card teams from Russia and Turkey still missing.
When it came to accommodations, players from other regions couldn’t hide their envy. The captain of FZ, the first seed from the Taiwan region, was a chubby guy who often played Scrims with ZGDX Team and was quite familiar with them. Now, he was complaining bitterly—they had arrived two days early but were stuck in a place an hour and a half away from the training rooms.
“It’s brutal. We have to wake up early and just stare blankly in the car for an hour and a half every day,” grumbled the FZ Team’s Top laner and captain, whose in-game ID was “Pikachu.” “And that’s not even the worst part. We thought coming early would give us a chance to cozy up to the strong teams for Scrims, but they completely ignored us—only doing internal region practices. We’re a first seed pool team, damn it! Our pride is in shambles!”
As he spoke, he kept glancing pointedly at the three training rooms reserved for the LCK Korean region. The hallway was filled with players from other regions—some drinking coffee, chatting, or even coming out to get a closer look at the girl who had made it to the World Championship. The atmosphere was generally relaxed and friendly.
Only the Korean region was dead silent. Every single one of them sat neatly in their training rooms, wearing headphones and playing Scrims, with coaches and supervisors pacing behind them.Tong Yao stood on tiptoe and glanced at the solemn atmosphere from the Korean division. "The Koreans don't arrange scrims with other regions?"
Pikachu: "Maybe they think we're not worthy. You could ask Xiao Rui to try—who knows, it might be different. After all, you're the Mainland Communication Team... Anyone who's seen you play knows you're freaking awesome!"
At the time, Tong Yao didn’t take Pikachu’s words to heart, assuming the Korean division refused scrims with them to avoid exposing their tactics... Pikachu told Tong Yao and the others that Team FZ had spent the whole day begging the gods and managed to secure only about seven or eight scrims with six teams combined. They even threw a tantrum to squeeze a scrim slot from Xiao Rui—meaning before the first round of the Group Stage ended, they’d only have these few scrims to practice with.
Xiao Rui expressed deep sympathy.
After exchanging pleasantries with the two teams from the Taiwanese division, Tong Yao stood outside the training room and endured the stares from players of other regions—the moment Pikachu walked away, those who had been watching from afar, practically lining up for their turn, eagerly swarmed over. As a result, Tong Yao ended up greeting over half of her future opponents one by one...
【You’re Smiling!】
—Yes, hello.
【Look, another world-class 'Smiling'! Unbelievable, a little girl!】
—Haha, I’m honored to return to the world stage under the name 'Smiling,' here to fulfill what Gao Xucheng couldn’t back then.
【Ohhh, my little sister looks just like you—she’s fourteen this year.】
—I’ll be twenty soon, actually. Thanks.
【Smiling, are you really an adult? Really? Oh my god, your captain, Chessman—is he your boyfriend? He’s definitely committing a crime.】
—I am an adult, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t committing a crime.
【Hey, Smiling, I’ve watched your match replays—you’re strong! Such a powerful, resilient soul and strength in such a small body! Looking forward to facing you on the battlefield!】
—Thank you, I look forward to our match as well.
...
Half an hour later, Lu Sicheng finally couldn’t take it anymore and dragged Tong Yao back into the training room by the collar—"Didn’t know your English was that good."
"How are you, how are you, thank you, nice to meet you too? Small talk doesn’t require fluency."
"You were practically about to whip out a pen and sign autographs for them."
"Your jealousy makes no sense."
"You were nearly buried under a pile of men." Lu Sicheng leaned in, sniffed, and said childishly, "You reek of strange men."
Tong Yao grabbed his hand and rubbed it all over herself. "Here, let me transfer some of the scent to you... We’re in public, for goodness’ sake—don’t just lift your leg and mark me like a territorial dog."
Lu Sicheng yanked his hand back, giving her a haughty sidelong glance. Ignoring him, Tong Yao tossed his hand aside and queued up a few Ranked Games to warm up.About two or three hours later, Xiao Rui returned. Judging by the fully packed scrims schedule in his hands, he could be said to have returned with a full haul. Apart from Lu Sicheng’s former team, the Meme Team, which refused to practice with them on the grounds that their scrims were already fully booked, he had managed to schedule matches with almost every other team in the first and second seed pools—prompting Tong Yao to tease Lu Sicheng: "Your old team isn’t giving you any face."
Lu Sicheng: "They wouldn’t give Li Junhe any face either. Just wait and see—we won’t be able to schedule with YQCB either."
Tong Yao: "..."
Before Tong Yao could even mock the competitive nature between Lu Sicheng and Li Junhe, who had to one-up each other in everything, reality quickly proved Lu Sicheng right. Around dinnertime at seven in the evening, the manager of the neighboring team knocked on the door of ZGDX’s training room with a troubled expression, asking if they had any free slots for scrims.
At the time, Tong Yao was standing by the water dispenser drinking water. She glanced at the schedule in the YQCB manager’s hand and noticed it was sparsely filled with only two or three team names, the rest left blank.
Tong Yao froze, putting down her cup: YQCB couldn’t even schedule scrims?
Was this for real?
Even FZ Team managed to book seven or eight matches!
In the midst of her shock, the manager from CK Team also showed up. The moment he saw the YQCB manager standing at ZGDX’s training room door, he immediately wore an expression that said, "I know what’s happening—same here."
YQCB manager: "I thought it was because of our relegation in the Spring Split that ruined our reputation, making everyone think we’re too weak to bother scrimming with…"
CK manager: "At least you managed to book a scrim with the Korean Operator Team."
YQCB manager smiled bitterly: "That’s only because their bot lane took a liking to ours and insisted on a match before agreeing."
In other words, it was only because of Li Junhe’s reputation that they got the scrim.
CK manager: "I only managed to book a few teams from Europe and North America. I didn’t even bother asking the Korean region—so much for being the second-best region in the LPL, huh?"
The YQCB manager shook his nearly blank scrim schedule and glanced at the CK manager: "I heard a big reason for our region’s collapse in S5 was internal competition—teams refusing to scrim to avoid leaking strategies?"
The CK manager immediately understood his meaning: "So, we rise from where we fell?"
The two managers exchanged a determined look, shamelessly squeezed a few scrim slots out of Xiao Rui, then left arm in arm like brothers…
Tong Yao: "…What’s the meaning of this?"
Xiao Rui: "Probably means that before the first round of the Group Stage ends, CK and YQCB will be scrimming so much they’ll want to vomit at the sight of each other’s IDs."
Tong Yao put down her water cup, crumpled it, and tossed it into the trash: "But why can’t they schedule scrims?""Need I say more? LPL's performance at the World Championship hasn't been great these past years. We used to punch North America, kick Europe, and openly challenge Korea... But now? In recent international tournaments, even the 'noobs' from Europe and America that we used to mock occasionally get to call us noobs instead," Xiao Rui stroked his chin. "It's normal for weaker teams to struggle scheduling scrims before Worlds. Look at our Wild Card brothers—they don't even bother coming early."
Tong Yao: "..."
So infuriating.
Tong Yao: "I really don't think Korea's RP Team is that much stronger than YQCB. This year at MSI, CK Team even had a perfect first-round record in Group Stage, beating LCK teams, let alone other regions—without even facing them directly, how dare they..."
Xiao Rui: "Yeah."
Tong Yao: "?"
"So this situation will probably only last until the first round of Group Stage ends," Xiao Rui shook the scrim schedule in his hand. "After October 7th, everything will reshuffle—whether my schedule stays as packed as today depends entirely on your performance."
Tong Yao was still fuming over the other two LPL teams being unable to schedule scrims—she knew LPL's recent results weren't ideal, but she never expected the situation to be so openly and brutally exposed... Worse treatment than even the Taiwan region!
Seeing the girl's flushed face, Xiao Rui patted her head and sighed.
"Respect isn't given—it's earned. Whether we can slap the 'noob' label back on them depends entirely on us."
...
That night, news about CK Team and YQCB failing to secure scrims somehow leaked, causing another earthquake across domestic esports platforms!
However, after two major gaming forum moderators implemented rules like "Only praise allowed, report toxicity for rewards—everyone's responsible," the sarcastic trolls vanished. The community displayed unprecedented unity—[What the hell! Who do these bastards think they're looking down on?!]
[LCK looking down their noses is whatever—they're actually strong. But what gives these EU/NA noobs the right to act high and mighty? Let's crush them! Go YQCB! Go CK Team!]
[Ugh this makes me so mad qaq How dare they disrespect my adorable relegation team!]
[What's wrong with a relegation team making Worlds? Have a problem with my poor scrub team?!]
[Rooting for my Yang Shen to farm both pigs and Chinese Sturgeons in their jungle!]
[Time to firmly return the 'noob' hats they wore back in S2—don't worry, LPL! Brawling Region! No fear, just fight!]
OpenNovel