YQCB lost the third match ten minutes later. This time it was because the substitute couldn't keep up with the rest of the team. Those who had made a fuss about "Ai Jia the noob" "Ai Jia's the cancer of the team" "what's the use of this mid" "the team would be better if they replaced Ai Jia" finally had to shut their mouths-- --
Some of these people would still struggle to add: However, it didn't make sense for Ai Jia to take Lulu in the last match, he should at least take the blame for that one?
Tong Yao looked at all those comments and thought: He shouldn't.
She didn't know whether it was Ai Jia who refused to play the third match or the club had made the change. She was so worried that she was still exchanging WeChat messages with Jinyang seconds before her own team's match-- --
[Nighttime angler - the crazy fisherman: I'm still trembling, I thought this silly guy's long forgotten wolf spirit had re-awakened…...It took me so many years to tame the wild wolf into a husky, all that effort almost crushed by that girl.]
[ZGDX, Smiling: Uh, how's he? He won't be punished, will he? How about you?]
[Nighttime angler - the crazy fisherman: He's fine. He didn't do anything to that girl, how can they punish him? They can't ban him just because he spoke a bit harshly, right? If that's the case, how would Cheng Ge survive?]
[ZGDX, Smiling: ......…...You can still make fun of our captain, I guess you two are alright now ( ` - ` )]
[Nighttime angler - the crazy fisherman: En. Don't worry, focus on your game!]
Tong Yao could set her mind at ease a little bit after reading Jinyang's assurance…...She put away her cell phone and looked at her teammates who were standing up to walk out of the break room. Little Fatty and the others were discussing what would be a good lineup for today's match. Tong Yao was the last one to walk out. When she stepped out of the room, Tong Yao abruptly said in a small voice: "Can we try 4 protect 1 again?"
Lu Sicheng was walking at the front but he had heard her. He turned around to look at her and stopped to ask her: "Your reason?"
Seeing the serious look Lu Sicheng was giving her, Tong Yao realized that Lu Sicheng at this moment wasn't the boyfriend who had let her hug him in the hallway just a little while ago, he was the captain of ZGDX now…...Tong Yao straightened her back and nervously said: "Not really for any reason. It's just now there is a lot of controversy about 4 protect 1. They said that any team that insists on playing it would never win this season…...But last time when we played Huawei, we used it very well in the second match against them. So I want to try it again to see whether it can be used or not-- --Isn't there a saying that practice is the sole criteria for examining the truth."
"You want to take Lulu."
"..."
Tong Yao was a bit embarrassed that Lu Sicheng had seen through her true intention with a single remark.
Tong Yao slightly blushed, lowered her head to stare at her toes, and didn't want to admit that besides wanting to give 4 protect 1 a try, she had other hidden motives…...However, before she could say anything, Lu Sicheng suddenly said: "I think it can work."
…....Hum?
Oh?
Tong Yao was taken aback and looked up somewhat in shock.
" Pope's like a non-stick pan; no matter how badly he plays, there's always people who will whitewash for him." Lu Sicheng moved his wrist and said flatly: "Let him open his eyes and see how 4 protect 1 should be played. Making him lose a couple nights of sleep isn't a bad thing. So, I agree."
Tong Yao: "..."
Lu Sicheng turned to walk to the stage-- --Aside from Yong Yao and himself, there was support, top and jungler. ZGDX was a team with three nuclei. Each lane, top, mid, and bot, was able to carry the game. But generally, it was the mid and bot who took control of the game. It wasn't unusual for Old Cat to take a tank champion as top. Now Tong Yao had given up the chance to carry the match on her own, he didn't have any objections.
Old K: "Arlight, alright, alright. It'll do. I'll get Kindred later, let's play it like back in the spring season."
Little Fatty: "You guys take outdated champions regardless of the game version anyways, plus use outdated strategy regardless of the game version. You guys are really over your heads. Why do I get stuck with such a screw around team."
Old Cat: "You screw around too, with your Luxanna."
Lu Sicheng: "Well said, Old Cat. Let Fatty take Luxanna to support you at top. I'll be on my own this round."
Old Cat: "..."
ZGDX's players walked up to the stage still engaged in a lively conversation. Tong Yao sat down next to Lu Sicheng, took a deep breath, and put on the headphones-- --With the headphones on, she was cut off from the noise coming from the audience. She put her mind into the ban & pick phase of the first match against the team Doomsday Orcs.
When they finished banning, Twisted Fate, Syndra, Viktor, LeBlanc, Vladimir, and Ryze had been banned. Tong Yao took a look at the list and couldn't muffle her chuckles. It also stirred up some commotion in their voice chat-- --
Little Fatty: "Wow, all six are mid champions. They didn't let LeBlanc, Syndra, or Twisted Fate get by. The other team is prepared to give you a hard time, little sister."
Ming god: "We also banned 3 strong mid champions ourselves. Now there aren't many good mid champions left. Doomsday Orcs's mid doesn't have a deep champion pool and we'll see who'll suffer."
Tong Yao took a glance at the opposite team and as expected, she saw their mid had already frowned and was biting his fingers.
Tong Yao took her eyes away: "The bullet comments on the stream right now must be bustling right now."
Lu Sicheng: "You care about that?"
Tong Yao: "I do."
Lu Sicheng: "It'll explode after you finish choosing your champion."
Tong Yao: "..."
As they were talking, the other team took some time deliberating before picking Lissandra, then Karma-- --Lissandra could be used at top or mid. Karma could be a support and was a good choice for mid as well. Doomsday Orcs took away two popular champions for mid, though it wasn't clear how they were going to use those two champions, their intention to block Tong Yao was obvious...
Evidently, Doomsday Orcs had given some thought and played a little trick in the ban & pick phase…...But Tong Yao and her teammates hadn't planned to pick regular mid champions in the first place. When it was ZGDX's turn to pick, Old Cat immediately picked Lulu for Tong Yao-- --
Tong Yao and her teammates couldn't hear the reaction from the audience. If they had taken off their earphones right then, they would find the roar from the audience was enough to blow the roof off-- --
Commentator A: [Lulu again! My goodness, what's happening to all the teams today!]
Commentator B: [Hahahaha, probably Smiling was influenced by that YQCB match-- --You wanted to take Lulu? You couldn't make it work? Alright, I'll take Lulu too and teach you how to play Lulu!]
Commentator A: [It doesn't make sense.. Smiling can't play this kind of champion better than Ai Jia. If she really thinks this way, then she's really inflated herself.]
Commentator B: [I'm just saying! Look, the lineup now, Old Cat took Trundle. Hrm, ZGDX is going to play 4 protect 1! !]
Commentator A: [What's wrong with 4 protect 1?]
Commentator B: [Just now, YQCB used 4 protect 1 to protect Pope but failed. What do you say about that? That's Pope, he's as good as Cheng Ge.]
Commentator A: [...You can eat whatever you wish but you better watch your words. Hehe, don't say I didn't remind you not to talk nonsense. Wait till after the game, you can go take a look at your Weibo account then you'll know what it's all about.]
Commentator B: [......]
Commentato B imagined how he would be dissed by both ZGDX and YQCB fans on his Weibo account and hurriedly changed the topic-- --From their conversation, it was obvious that these two commentators didn't really understand why Tong Yao wanted to take Lulu and ZGDX wanted to play 4 protect 1.
Then the match officially started.
Doomsday Orcs' bot wasn't even a close match for Lu Sicheng and Little Fatty-- --Lu Sicheng's Sivir worked with Little Fatty's Bard to pressure the enemy Kalista from the very beginning. With low health, Kalista had to back away and was unable to even farm minions, missing 4 or 5 of them in the first wave.
With such a start, Lu Sicheng believed the enemy's bot was pretty much over.
Lu Sicheng was the first one to reach level two. Tong Yao pinged that the enemy's junger had shown himself in mid lane. Lu Sicheng cleared the minions immediately then pushed the other team's support and AD back to their own turret. They could only farm under the turret and were being harassed from time to time, messing up their ability to farm.
Lu Sicheng and Little Fatty had utterly neutered the enemy bot. Within the first ten minutes, Old K carried out the 4 protect 1 strategy every second he could. He would pass by bot lane from time to time, causing Doomsday Orcs' AD to only farm a little over 40 minions in those minutes. Doomsday's AD and support died twice, with Lu Sicheng and Old K each getting two kills each...
In the mid game, Doomsday's top, playing Ekko, wanted to hit Lu Sicheng from behind. But whenever he got to hit Lu Sicheng, the very next second Lulu would cast her ultimate on Lu Sicheng's Sivir, followed by all sorts of protective abilities-- --
Li Sicheng was well developed and well protected.
At the 24th minute, ZGDX pushed into the enemy base. Facing Lu Sicheng who had 10 kills under his belt with 0 deaths and 2 assists, Doomsday didn't have any intention of dragging the match further. They let ZGDX destroy their nexus and prepared to play the next match.
Tong Yao took off her headphones, her palms were all sweaty.
She heard the commentators were talking-- --
[To be fair, this Lulu is still useful.]
[And, it seems Lulu is very useful...]
[And 4 protect 1 is still a workable strategy.]
[The key is whether the team is ZGDX or not?]
[Hahahahaha, so we all mistakenly blamed Ai Jia. Lulu is really a useful champion. Right-- --There's no rule that we have to be superstitious about whether a champion is outdated or not, right? The lineup is more important than that.]
Tong Yao stood up and a faint smile was showing up on her face.
After a ten minute break, the second match started.
The same 6 mid champions were banned again. ZGDX kept their 4 protect 1 lineup and Tong Yao still took Lulu-- --Tong Yao was kind of surprised at the start.
She couldn't believe why Doomsday Orcs would still let them play 4 protect 1. It wasn't until the game started that she realized that the other team also had brought their brains with them this time.
The three champions that Doomsday Orcs took in this match: Nidalee, Lucian, and Alistar, went to bot around three minutes into the game and successfully took down Lu Sicheng and Little Fatty. They went to bot again nine minutes into the game and ganked Lu Sicheng. Then at the 15th minute, they came by a third time and took their top with them-- --
15 minutes into the game, Lu Sicheng was at 0 kills, 3 deaths, 0 assists. His farm was behind the enemy by more than 20 minutes. The big screen showed that Lu Sicheng's economy was behind Doomsday's AD by about 1000 gold-- --
1000 gold is almost the cost of half of a large item. If it was in a normal ranked game, Lu Sicheng would go AFK by now.
He was in a very bad position.
In this situation, Tong Yao, with a champion that was unable to deal explosive damage, was showing the same fatigue that Ai Jia had in the previous match. She could only quietly farm and tried to develop more in order to get more items with more attacking power and cover some of the damage Lu Sicheng lacked. But since the team had decided to play 4 protect 1, the effect of her actions was minimal-- --
At that moment, ZGDX was behind in kills at 3 to 9. For Lu Sicheng, he was facing an even more serious upwards battle than the team!
Tong Yao was a little anxious seeing Lu Sicheng being picked on in such a frenzy. She had never seen him fall behind this much. Tong Yao began to make some mistakes with her movements and missed several minions under the turret.
"Take it easy." Lu Sicheng's calm voice came into Tong Yao's earphones: "We can still do it. Give me some time to develop."
"You're behind the other AD by half a large item."
"If I don't confront him directly, he won't be able to do anything to me even if he gets the best 6 items." Lu Sicheng said flatly: "You guys try to drag the game on, can't you do it?"
"...I'm not sure." Tong Yao was a little hesitant. "I'll try my best. Little Fatty, Old K, let's do it."
Those who were watching the game didn't know what Lu Sicheng had said in the voice channel. They all thought that Lu Sicheng was going to lose the match. Yet they found out that ZGDX had made a different choice from YQCB when facing the same situation-- --
YQCB chose to force a team fight, facing the enemy directly.
ZGDX, however, didn't do that. Tong Yao, after getting some items that could cause damage, took her team's support and jungler and roamed the jungle. They encountered the enemy's bot, support and jungler near the Dragon's Arena and engaged in a small scale team fight!
Old K had Kindred as his champion and Little Fatty's Bard already had his ultimate. This team fight lasted for quite a long time. They even struggled to take down two of Doomsday's players- ---At the same time, while Tong Yao and her teammates were fighting, Lu Sicheng was farming in a frenzy at top and mid lanes to make up for lost time.
The small scale team fights occurred several more times. Lu Sicheng was killed two more times during this period.
When the match reached the 32nd minute mark, Lu Sicheng, who's stats were now 0/5/0, killed Doomsday's jungler while farming at the bot-- --
The audience was in shock.
Everyone had a confused look on their face. They started to pay attention to Lu Sicheng who had been mostly hiding from the beginning up till now. The audience then noticed that he had pretty much gathered enough items by now and his farm…...He had 30 some more than the other side, coming back from a 30 to 40 deficit!
As the audience felt as if they had missed the entire match, the stat screen appeared on the big screen again. To their amazement, they found that Lu Sicheng's total gold, which had been short 1000 gold earlier, was practically at par with the enemy's ADC who had 3 kills already. It looked like Lu Sicheng would soon surpass Doomsday's ADC!
Lu Sicheng began to join the team fights that followed.
His champion now was totally different from the one fifteen minutes ago-- --He was finally able to unleash Sivir's full power after she acquired all of her late game items. Tong Yao's Lulu after being powerless in the early game was able to take a more active role and successfully won two team fights back to back. ZGDX was able to come back and turn the game around!
ZGDX took down Doomsday Orcs with two wins!
When Tong Yao and her teammates took off their headphones and stood up after trashing the opponent's base, everyone looked quite happy-- --
Commentator A: [Do you think we've jinxed Lulu? We just said that Lulu is a useful champion and she didn't contribute anything when the team was at a disadvantage.]
Commentator B: [You can't say that Lulu didn't contribute anything. Without Lulu, how could Sivir come out in the late game and take control. Without Lulu, it probably would take much longer for him to join the team fight. With the game changing every second, who knows what would happen in the next second…...So we didn't jinx her, it's that we were wrong from the very beginning-- --A 4 protect 1 lineup depends solely on the AD. If the AD isn't good, then the mid isn't going to be of any use. Once the AD soars, mid becomes a bothersome tumor for the enemy...]
Commentator A: [What you mean is-- --]
Commentator B: [Ai Jia can reverse the verdict now. The one who should be blamed for that YQCB match is, cough.]
Commentator A: [I see it now. You really don't want to keep your Weibo account.]
Commentator B: [...]
Tong Yao didn't pay attention to the chatter between the two commentators. What she had noticed was that the cheers coming from the audience seemed much louder than usual. It was thundering!
"Your last play was really good!" The captain and ADC of Doomsday Orcs said to Lu Sicheng while they were shaking hands. "It's a textbook lesson for an AD in a disadvantaged position, Cheng Ge!"
"It's nothing." Lu Sicheng gave him a smile. "Our mid played like a support already. It would be too embarrassing not catching up in the late game."
Lu Sicheng turned to take a look at Tong Yao after saying so.
Lu Sicheng paused for a moment, wiped the smile off his face, then couldn't help but tease Tong Yao: "I'm not praising you, no need to blush."
Tong Yao: "..."
Tong Yao lifted her hand and slapped the back of Lu Sicheng, who was standing right in front of her…...When she put her hand down it was suddenly grabbed by the man in front who had brought an arm behind his back!
The hairs on her back almost stood up. She hurriedly looked around to see whether anyone had noticed it. Fortunately, they had just finished shaking hands and the players from Doomsday Orcs were all looking down busy packing up. At the same time, her other teammates were crowded together at the front of the stage to take a bow.
No one noticed them.
Tong Yao pulled with as much force as she could to free her hand, but wasn't successful. Lu Sicheng even shook her hand as he held it. When they were blocked by the chair of Doomsday's support to go forward, Lu Sicheng slightly turned to the side and bent down to whisper in Tong Yao's ear: "Without my brilliant performance in the last two matches to show everyone how to play 4 protect 1 correctly in both the best and worst scenarios, Ai Jia wouldn't be able to get whitewashed."
Tong Yao: "Oh."
Lu Sicheng: "How are you going to thank me?"
Tong Yao: "....I'll kneel down and kowtow to you."
Lu Sicheng: "No way."
Tong Yao: "..."
Lu Sicheng: "You're brushing me off again."
Tong Yao: "I'm not."
Lu Sicheng: "Yes, you're."
Just then, Doomsday's support, bent over to picking his equipment up, noticed that his chair was blocking the way. He apologized and moved the chair. Lu Sicheng acted as if nothing was going on, straightened himself, moving his face away from Tong Yao's ear, and released Tong Yao's hand before their secret interaction could be exposed in front of everyone's eyes.
Even if there was anyone who had fixed their eyes on them from the beginning, it would look like they were just discussing the match earlier in a low voice.
No one would know what had happened.
Tong Yao's heart was beating fast even after the team had bowed to the audience. Tong Yao turned to take a careful glance at the man next to him. As if he sensed it, Lu Sicheng also turned his head around and gave her a lazy smile.
Under the bright stage lights, his eyes seemed to each hold a light, that reflected her silhouette within them-- --
Someone once said that the meaning of falling in love was when a person suddenly appears in the world and can give you everything you want or anything he's capable of…...Anytime, anywhere, as if he were obliged to.