On the final day of the regular season, amidst the match against the North American team TANK, the God of Support, Little Fatty, made his return to the stage—even though many were still reeling from yesterday's loss to the Taiwanese region. Yet, it was a comfort that ZGDX Team had already secured their spot in the Group Stage with a record of four wins and one loss!
A victory against TANK today would ensure ZGDX claimed the top spot in Group B, allowing them to avoid the already-confirmed Group A leaders TAT Team and Group D leaders RP Team—both Korean squads—in the regular season.
This was undoubtedly great news—
The haunting memory of all three LPL teams failing to advance past the quarterfinals in previous years lingered. Though everyone joked, "If we don’t win the championship, we’ll swim back," deep down, they knew: at least a top-four finish this year would be something!
Just as fans silently prayed for ZGDX to secure first place in their group, Lady Luck indeed extended her favor—C Team, who had only lost to ZGDX in the first round of the regular season while dominating all other matches, had a chance to snatch the top spot in Group B after defeating ZGDX yesterday… But to everyone’s shock, on the final day of the regular season, right before ZGDX’s match against TANK, the Taiwanese C Team actually suffered an upset loss to the Wild Card team bear!!!!
The crowd was stunned.
This year’s Wild Card region was truly formidable—shedding their old image as the "S Series redemption squad," they had fearlessly traded blows with Group B leaders ZGDX despite a 10,000-gold deficit, then mercilessly handed C Team a crushing defeat!
The match against C Team was bear’s final game of the Group Stage. When it ended, commentator D stood up, adjusted his microphone, and announced to the crowd: [Ladies and gentlemen, let’s give it up for bear Team from the Bear Country! Like true hunters, they’ve fired an arrow into the abyss of the heavens that has left the world in awe: at dawn, we witnessed the unyielding spirit of the Wild Card region!]
With the last match of the regular season concluded, though bear Team had already been eliminated, when they and C Team walked to the front of the stage, the five burly men of bear—each a full head taller than players from other regions—stood shoulder to shoulder, bowing and waving goodbye to the audience. The entire arena rose to their feet, chanting bear’s name in unison. Overwhelmed by the cheers, the players bowed again and again, their eyes glistening with emotion… [Thank you, bear Team! Wishing them Hao Yun! Thank you for showing us the indomitable, never-say-die spirit of esports at this World Championship—this, I believe, is the true meaning of the S Series Finals. On the path to victory, every one of you shines equally—]
[...Equally radiant, like dazzling stars!]
Thunderous applause erupted.
The ten players from the Wild Card squad and C Team joined hands for one final deep bow before leaving the stage…The final match of Group B's Group Stage concluded amidst this fervent atmosphere. While the crowd cheered and sent their blessings to the Wild Card team, the members of ZGDX could be clearly seen on the big screen as they filed onto the stage and took their seats.
When Tong Yao and Little Fatty emerged from the player tunnel, chatting and laughing, then turned to sit at their respective Mid Laner and Support positions and put on their headsets, the audience erupted in excitement—
Commentator D: ["Oh! Look at that! It's our Smiling! The queen of the Mid Lane has finally returned to her rightful position—the APCARRY role where she dominates the lives of her enemies and the outcome of the match!"]
Commentator E: ["We can see a smile on her face. She must be breathing a sigh of relief right now... 'Beep beep (censored), I never want to build Sightstone again!'"]
Commentator F: ["Hey, you two, can you stop focusing solely on the girl? The one everyone’s missed dearly after two days away from the stage is clearly ZGDX’s Support, Pang..."]
Commentator D: ["Yes, yes, of course we deeply miss Pang’s meticulous ward placements and macro play—he always manages to light up the entire enemy jungle with just four vision tools!"]
Commentator E: ["Welcome back! Daddy Pang! ZGDX can’t afford to lose anymore!"]
Commentator F: ["…………………………"]
The players naturally couldn’t hear the commentators’ relentless banter, as they had already entered the Ban & Pick Phase—
Lu Sicheng: "Their Mid Laner isn’t that strong. It’s a Top Laner carry team, so let Old Cat pick Mid first. What do you want, dummy?"
Tong Yao: "Something that can kill! Something that can kill!"
Lu Sicheng: "..."
Laughter erupted in the team voice chat. Little Fatty sighed: "This Mid Laner is bloodthirsty today."
Old K also sighed: "To prevent her from getting camped into oblivion, I’ll be camping Mid today. The rest of you are on your own..."
Tong Yao: "Let me see... Leblanc is perma-banned, Kassadin is boring, Ekko ends up being forced to build tank items—what other assassins can I pick?"
Ming Shen: "Respect the meta. Jayce, Lissandra, Aurelion Sol, Syndra..."
Tong Yao immediately cut in: "Ahri! Give me Ahri! I want a Penta Kill!"
Lu Sicheng: "Can you even play Ahri?"
Tong Yao: "Is there an assassin Champion I can’t play? Give me Ahri."
Ming Shen: "...You do know that if word gets out about ignoring the Data Analyst’s advice and making arbitrary Ban & Pick decisions on stage, you’ll get flamed to death, right?"
Tong Yao tugged at her headset and, this time, didn’t ignore Ming Shen. She chuckled and said, "I’ve been holding it in for two days, almost suffocating in the Bot Lane... Playing Lulu for two days, my Highlight Reel was just stealing First Blood’s 400 gold from the Captain and stealing his Penta Kill. While you guys were killing, I was stuck in the back going 'Polymorph!', 'Wild Growth!', 'Whimsy!'... Polymorph my ass! Wild Growth my ass! I want to kill people too!"Amid Tong Yao's incessant muttering like Xianglin's wife, Ming Shen patted Old Cat's shoulder with an exasperated expression, signaling him to lock in Ahri for Tong Yao—this was the first time Ahri made an appearance in this World Championship. The moment she was locked in, the crowd erupted into cheers and applause once again for Tong Yao, who had returned to the Carry Position.
Tong Yao seemed to sense the atmosphere: "Even though I can't hear it through the noise-canceling headphones, the casters and audience must be discussing how my champion pool is bottomless right now."
Little Fatty: "I think they're cheering for the return of your Fatty Lord."
Old K: "The one who ate hotpot until he landed in the hospital, causing the team to pull off a 10k gold reverse sweep against a Wild Card team and then crash against Taiwan... You really think they're cheering? Yesterday, I saw a post on the Forum where one of your female fans turned into a hater, saying you might as well eat yourself to death."
Little Fatty: "Seriously?"
Old Cat: "Of course not. Since when did you have female fans?"
Little Fatty: "..."
Hearing this, Lu Sicheng actually glanced up at the audience seats and lazily remarked, "They do look excited... Just not sure if they're marveling at your bottomless champion pool or questioning why you first-picked an off-meta Ahri that no one bans or picks because it's trash."
Tong Yao narrowed her eyes slightly and shot Lu Sicheng a look: "Lu Sicheng, even though I'm not playing Support anymore, I can still walk my two legs from Mid Lane to Bot Lane to steal your kills... Ahri runs pretty fast."
Lu Sicheng: "Oh, I'm so scared."
Ming Shen smacked Tong Yao on the head with his clipboard from behind: "You guys are really happy about securing the knockout stage, huh? Doesn’t matter if we lose to TANK Team and end up as group second, facing TAT Team in the quarterfinals, right?"
The mere thought of A Tai, TAT Team's Mid Laner, made Tong Yao clench up in nervousness, shutting her mouth instantly... Lu Sicheng noticed the sudden silence around him, as if they'd stepped into a graveyard. He scoffed and lowered his eyes, speaking calmly: "We were bound to meet them eventually. What’s there to fear?"
As they spoke, the Ban & Pick phase smoothly concluded. The players confirmed their champions, and the loading screen appeared—the game began.
—Little Fatty wasn’t wrong. Tong Yao was bloodthirsty today.
With Ahri in hand, she bullied the enemy Ekko all over the map. At three minutes, she coordinated with Old K to force Ekko to burn his Summoner Spells and recall, missing a huge wave and falling hopelessly behind. By five minutes, she hit Level 6 first, flashing in with her ultimate and Ignite to unleash a full combo, securing First Blood!
...Meanwhile, the enemy Ekko was still only halfway through Level 5.
Another wave crashed into the tower, and Ekko missed every bit of experience, forced to let his Jungler take the massive wave of gold and EXP—at the same time, Old K spotted the enemy Jungler covering Mid, so he immediately ganked Top to help Old Cat stabilize the lane. TANK Team's Top Laner was a veteran, and the team had made it to Worlds largely thanks to his carry potential. Rumor had it there wasn’t a single Top Lane champion this guy couldn’t play... Some even called him the North American version of Jin Yuguang.
Old Cat, more accustomed to playing tanky, utility picks, struggled a bit against this type of Top Laner. At this point, the gold difference between TANK Team and ZGDX Team was only the First Blood bounty—because Old Cat’s deficit in CS mirrored exactly how much Tong Yao had suppressed the enemy Mid Laner!However, at this moment, no matter how strong TANK's top laner was, it didn't matter—because after their mid laner got solo killed once and lost two and a half waves of minions, the situation truly collapsed like a landslide. The bot lane, affected by the mid lane's disadvantage, didn't dare to recklessly push and could only play defensively under their tower. Apart from the top lane, the other two lanes clearly had no idea how to continue the game... By the 11-minute mark, Tong Yao solo killed the enemy mid laner again.
Almost simultaneously, two scenes unfolded: Lu Sicheng in the bot lane, with Little Fatty's Braum, landed a perfect ultimate to kill the enemy support Thresh—ZGDX secured the First Tower in the bot lane and then smoothly took the first Infernal Drake.
This Elemental Dragon determined the trajectory of the rest of the match. After Tong Yao secured her first Blue Buff, she and Old K began aggressively invading the enemy jungle, moving freely like a demon king, picking off anyone they encountered—everyone on the enemy team except the top laner had died at least once to her... At the 22-minute mark, Tong Yao killed the enemy jungler, and ZGDX grouped up for Baron, securing the first Baron of the game—then pushed down three outer towers with the Baron Buff. During the High Ground defense on the top lane, the respawned TANK jungler made a desperate all-in engage, but Ekko, who had been farming in the shadows for over ten minutes, was instantly pinned to the wall by Old Cat's Mega Gnar. Meanwhile, Lu Sicheng's Big Mouth spat out a torrent of acid, forcing the enemy team to scatter in panic with low health, and then the Fox dashed in to clean up!
From that moment on, the words at the center of the screen behind the Fox's portrait began flashing wildly—(Double Kill)!
(Triple Kill)!
(Quadra Kill)!
—(Penta Kill)!
(Ace)!
Finally, as the casters stood up in excitement, roaring in celebration of the first Penta Kill of this year's World Championship, the last message appeared behind the Fox's portrait: "Godlike."
Caster D: ["This is the LPL! The region known for its relentless fights! Today, we witnessed the familiar rhythm we've called for the past four years (since S1 when the LPL didn't participate): the LPL tempo!!!"]
Caster F: ["This isn't the outcome the North American team wanted to see. Right now, we can see the helpless expression on Crazy Horse's (TANK's top laner) face..."]
Caster D: ["Let's congratulate the LPL! Congratulations to ZGDX! With a sudden 27-minute teamfight ace against TANK, they've secured this match and confirmed their advancement from the Group Stage as the first seed of Group B!"]
...
ZGDX's final match against TANK was an exhilarating victory. When they destroyed the enemy Nexus, the audience in the venue was jumping up and down in excitement—until an hour later, their optimism came to an end.
By then, all Group Stage matches had concluded, and the quarterfinal draw began—at this point, CK Team had double-killed the Korean Operator Team, joining ZGDX as the two LPL teams with five wins each, dominating as Group Stage first seeds and advancing to the quarterfinals. YQCB, after losing to TAT, entered the quarterfinals as the second seed. Before the draw, everyone was thrilled: the LPL had actually secured two first seeds! They were on equal footing with Korea! Everything was stable!After the draw, no one was happy anymore because the results were as follows—CK Team versus G4, the second-place team from Group D in the European and American region;
ZGDX Team versus OP Team, the second-place team from Group C in the Korean Operator Team division;
YQCB versus RP Team, the first-place team from Group D in the Korean region.
Once the draw results were announced, the atmosphere in the Forum was gloomy—
[「Topic」Stay optimistic, at least we’re guaranteed three quarterfinal spots, which is already much better than last year.]
[「Topic」Let’s be real, CK is in such good form—taking down G4 and making it to the semifinals shouldn’t be hard, right?]
[「Topic」ZGDX must have used up all their luck in the Group Stage. Damn it, out of the four second-place teams, why did they have to draw OP Team out of the three possible choices?! AAAAAH!]
[「Topic」What are the odds between smiling and Jin Yuguang? After today’s Fox play, I’m feeling optimistic—maybe 40-60?]
[「Topic」This is intense. If CK had ended up as the second-place team, they’d definitely have drawn TAT too… Hmm, the finals starting early? I’m looking forward to it.]
Author’s Note: New contemporary romance novel Moonlight Serenade is up!
It’s a sweet story about a God-tier author and a little editor who transforms from a lamb into a big bad wolf!
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