Tong Yao still remembered how she felt the last time she sat on the substitute bench—watching her teammates on the stage, a mix of unwillingness, frustration, restraint, blessings, and worry. Worry that Lu Yue would perform too well and replace her, worry that Lu Yue wouldn’t perform well enough and cause the team to lose… So many negative emotions, some positive ones too, but all of it was a state of complete detachment from herself.
Back then, she thought she could never accept sitting on the bench as a substitute, watching the "water dispenser." But now, a miracle had happened. She sat shoulder-to-shoulder with Ming Shen in the backstage lounge, tilting her head up at the match screen, a notebook resting on her knees for taking notes, her entire body tense—it felt completely different from before.
It was as if there were now six people playing on that stage. Tong Yao suddenly found it impossible to detach herself the way she used to. Her eyes were glued to the yet-to-begin Ban & Pick screen, her mind racing: What will Jin Yuguang pick this game? How will he play? Will he pull off those impossibly refined and precise plays again like last game? His form today is really good… As for Lu Yue, she didn’t think about him much at all.
Not to mention, Ming Shen was currently chattering in her ear: "Watching the match from below earlier, I was so anxious. You can’t play so aggressively against Jin Yuguang—didn’t we already prepare the data and tell you? He’s the type who excels at counterattacks, preying on reckless players like you… Before that first gank, I refuse to believe the captain didn’t tell you to pull back your minion wave."
Tong Yao: "He did, he did."
Ming Shen: "Then why didn’t you?!"
Tong Yao: "Couldn’t help it, couldn’t help it."
After a moment’s thought, Tong Yao let out a whine: "But it’s Jin Yuguang—the moment I see him, my brain goes blank. All the talk about staying calm and not getting excited before the match just vanishes. The aggressive blood in me boils, and all I can think is: Fight him! If I kill him, I’ll be the world’s number one mid laner! Mid king of the world!"
Ming Shen: "..."
Tong Yao: "It’s like Gollum obsessing over the One Ring—I was possessed by the madness of ‘I must solo kill Jin Yuguang.’ But now that I’ve cooled down, I’ve deeply realized my mistake and stupidity. I was wrong."
Ming Shen: "..."
Ming Shen: "Is this some kind of curse or voodoo? Whatever, I’ll just categorize it as the unique phenomenon of masters meeting on the World Championship stage and feeling like it’s too late to fully appreciate each other—actually, you’re not the only one. A lot of players lose their heads when they see Jin Yuguang, going crazy like they just want to brawl on sight, and then OP Team capitalizes on it… Is this some kind of aura buff Jin Yuguang has?"
Tong Yao rubbed her chin: "Not everyone’s like that, though. Some keep their cool."
Ming Shen paused: "Who?"
Tong Yao tilted her chin toward the live broadcast screen in front of them: "Player Lu Yue."
Ming Shen looked up just as the camera cut to Lu Yue, who had just taken his seat on stage. He was currently lowering his head, playing with his nails with the intense focus of a child with a learning disability… Ming Shen sighed, patted Tong Yao’s shoulder, stood up, and hurried out of the lounge to handle Ban & Pick on stage.
A few minutes later.On the competition stage, OP Team noticed ZGDX had made a substitution. Clearly aware that Lu Yue's Champion pool was comparatively limited, they targeted the Mid Lane during the Ban phase. Lu Yue's Azir, Twisted Fate, and the meta-dominant Vladimir were banned consecutively. Left with few options and his Champion pool nearly drained, Lu Yue turned to his teammates and said something before reluctantly picking the more support-oriented Mid Laner, Karma.
Tong Yao guessed he probably said: "If I'd known this, I wouldn’t have recklessly showcased Twisted Fate during the domestic league matches."
Meanwhile, Jin Yuguang unexpectedly picked Corki.
Tong Yao lowered her head, faintly sensing something amiss. She began flipping through her notes frantically before suddenly stopping, pressing down on the notebook with a deep frown. It dawned on her—during the Summer Split Finals review, the casters had once remarked: ["By the time you reach the World Championship, you’ll face a wider variety of professional players. Just from what I know, in the Korean and European regions alone, there are more than two high-caliber players who can seamlessly blend the playstyles of both Smiling and Ai Jia. What will ZGDX do then? Field Lu Xuan Shou or Smiling…"]
Tong Yao: "…"
Now vaguely understanding the source of her unease, she opened the Forum on her phone. Sure enough, posts were flooding in—["666666666 Jin Yuguang picked Corki!"]
["Weren’t they having a blast playing defensive counterattacks last game? Why pick Corki this time?"]
["Congratulations to ZGDX for summoning Jin Yuguang Type 2 with their Mid Lane substitution: Aggressive Jin Yuguang."]
["Jin Yuguang’s out for blood. It’s over."]
["This game’s gonna be tough for ZGDX again… If they want to win, they can’t keep fixating on the Mid Lane. No offense, but this substitution doesn’t mean much. Jin Yuguang can handle any type of player—they should’ve just let Smiling, who’s already warmed up, finish the series."]
"…"
Right.
Jin Yuguang was indeed—
An all-rounder. Aggressive or defensive, flashy or resilient—he could do it all.
Tong Yao closed the Forum.
Browsing the posts had wasted some time, and by now, the Ban & Pick phase was nearly over. Both teams’ ten players entered the loading screen. The Forum comment ["Jin Yuguang’s out for blood"] left Tong Yao restless. As the camera cut to Lu Yue, she mentally drew countless crosses for him, praying for a peaceful laning phase… Just as the minions reached the lanes, Ming Shen pushed the door open. At that moment, the broadcast showed Lu Yue getting aggressively poked by Jin Yuguang at level one, forcing him to back off with a Health Potion—Ming Shen: "Holy shit, what happened? The idiot’s already at half health right after the game started!"
Tong Yao: "…Jin Yuguang Type 2 is terrifying."
Ming Shen sat down beside Tong Yao. She jotted down a few stats in her notebook while half-listening to the casters’ commentary. When she looked up again, the game was at the four-minute mark. Lu Yue had barely stabilized, but he was constantly harassed by Corki’s auto-Q-auto combos while farming. Whenever Lu Yue tried to retaliate, Jin Yuguang would instantly W away with lightning reflexes. Forced into a passive, defensive stance, Lu Yue endured a suffocating laning phase—though his CS deficit wasn’t too severe yet.
Tong Yao: "If it were me out there, there’d probably be seven or eight kills by now, all concentrated in Mid Lane. Either he’d be dead, or I would."Ming Shen said, "If he were to fight you, he definitely wouldn't play like this—against a fully defensive player, you have to be aggressive, harass his farming... Right now, Jin Yuguang isn't intent on killing. If he really wanted to kill, he would've called the Jungler."
This match, OP Team's Jungler had been focusing entirely on the top lane.
First Blood also erupted in the top lane. Old Cat and Old K had actively camped OP Team's Jungler, attempting a tower dive only to get counter-camped. Old Cat escaped quickly, leaving Old K to be chased down and killed under the enemy's second tower... At this moment, Ming Shen sighed and patted Tong Yao's shoulder. "Think about how to play the next match. This game, the Mid Laner held the pressure well. Learn from Lu Yue's resilience, then figure out how to find opportunities while enduring pressure—don't end up like Lu Yue, who's as stagnant as if ZGDX didn't even have a Mid Laner... We can't always let OP Team dictate the pace."
Tong Yao nodded.
Her eyes were fixed on the mid lane, scrutinizing every minor detail of Lu Yue and Jin Yuguang's movements, afraid she might miss something—she was nervous.
Watching a match was more exhausting than playing in it. When she played, her focus was solely on Jin Yuguang, but from the sidelines, she could see much more—Lu Yue had endured the pressure, preventing mid lane from becoming a bloodbath, but he was completely shackled to the lane. As a supportive Mid Laner, after reaching level six, he used all his ultimates solely to escape, never leveraging Karma's high mobility to assist his teammates. In contrast, Jin Yuguang always found opportunities, using Corki's package to roam top or bot, securing kills or assists to help his team snowball... Because she was observing from the side, the impact of a Mid Laner's proactivity or passivity on vision control—and thus the entire game—became starkly clear...
The second match lasted nearly fifty minutes. When ZGDX's team headquarters was destroyed, the rest area fell into momentary silence—the score was now 2-0, pushing ZGDX to the brink of elimination.
Beside her, Ming Shen sighed. "The S-series quarterfinals are nothing like scrims or even the Group Stage. I don't know if this kind of live coaching is even useful at this point..."
Tong Yao lowered her head, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. After a moment's thought, she murmured an "Mm." On her phone's live-streaming platform, comments like "3:0," "GGGGGGGG," and "Congrats to ZGDX for winning the quarterfinals" had already flooded the screen, obscuring the players' faces... Tong Yao couldn't even see her teammates' expressions right now.
After a while, footsteps echoed outside the rest area—
The first to push the door open was Lu Yue, his brows furrowed. As he entered and locked eyes with Tong Yao, his expression froze, whether from frustration or embarrassment, it was hard to tell.Before Lu Yue entered the room, Tong Yao had indeed agonized over how to face her undoubtedly disheartened teammates—imagining possible awkwardness, joining them in their gloom, or desperately encouraging everyone not to give up. But in the end, when her eyes met Lu Yue's, she unexpectedly felt the weight in her chest suddenly lift. Watching the other teammates file in behind the young man—Little Fatty rubbing his waist and grumbling, "Damn it, OP Team didn't play CK like this in the Group Stage"; Old Cat and Old K discussing how the first failed tower dive and counter-gank happened because their vision control wasn't tight enough; Lu Sicheng bringing up the rear, stepping into the room, glancing at Tong Yao before walking straight up to her... He lowered his head, instinctively wanting to reassure her, considering her tendency to crumble under pressure during tough games. But before he could utter any comforting words, he suddenly noticed the person sitting in the chair, looking up at him, break into a smile.
Lu Sicheng froze.
In that moment of his hesitation, Tong Yao took his hand and rubbed his slightly cold fingertips.
"It's fine. We'll win the next one."
This wasn’t just empty comfort—
After being trampled over her and Lu Yue's corpses, ground into the dirt for two straight games, she now felt she finally understood how to take on OP Team.
Author's Note: Next chapter, OP Team gets taken down!
OpenNovel