Chapter 3: Like an Official Going Down to the Grassroots—Truly a Fine Example for the People!

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Outside the livestream.

Many viewers watching Logic’s stream had already been thoroughly won over. In fact, “won over” barely covered it—they were practically on their knees worshiping him.

Let me reiterate:

By the end of 2021, League of Legends players no longer needed tutorial-style explanations. On average, they were getting older, their hands were no longer quite as nimble, and many were no longer playing to climb the ranked ladder, but simply to have a little fun. Otherwise, there would not have been so many ARAM players.

But this grave-digging strategy was different!

From beginning to end, some people saw Janna exploiting a loophole in the bounty system. Others saw her and the enemy bot lane trading away their development. But what most people saw was that Janna’s strategy completely avoided laning.

That was right.

She did not need to lane at all.

The moment she reached level three, she simply left. From there, she either fought in bot lane or brawled in the lower jungle. Whenever there was no fight to join, she roamed around, invaded, and placed wards—or simply went mid to throw a shield and a slowing effect onto the enemy mid laner, making his life miserable.

This strategy was practically a divine blessing for the elderly veterans of the Rift.

And it was especially despicable.

Ten full minutes had passed.

They had not fought a single fair battle. They were always on the front line of outnumbered engagements. Put more plainly, they only fought when they had the advantage. They would not even bother if the numbers were merely even, let alone if they were down a player.

They simply loved ganging up on the outnumbered.

The harsher the barrage of doubts aimed at Logic earlier, the more devoutly the viewers now worshiped him. That was just how livestream audiences were, much like the veterans of internet forums.

Graphics Forum: “It’s not like you can’t use it.”

Hardware Forum: “You can use it, sure, but if you added a little more…”

Play with them for a few days, and you would discover that both groups were actually made up of the same people. The chat was no different, proudly demonstrating the freedom to change identities at will.

“No wonder you kept emphasizing that after learning this, we shouldn’t tell anyone we learned it from you.”

“This strategy is vicious.”

Though the match was incredibly satisfying to watch, every time XLB put himself in the enemy jungler’s shoes, he felt sick just imagining what it would be like.

If someone had done this to him, and he found out who had spread the strategy, he would absolutely have to settle accounts with the person who started it all.

Unless…

Unless he had a hand in such a disgusting strategy himself.

“Why do you think I established the gentleman’s agreement?” Logic replied calmly. “Because this strategy feels a little too ruthless.”

“And what if they break the agreement?” XLB continued.

“Simple.”

This time, Logic did not even turn his head.

“I’ll immediately update the title to ‘I Am Suffering the Worst Online Harassment in History,’ then see whether I can turn it into a ‘Don’t Laugh Challenge’ and make a fortune off the fans.”

The livestream chat: ???

Wait!

They were not even trying to hide the money-making anymore?

Throughout the first ten-plus minutes, Logic had used a roaming Janna to throw the entire game into chaos. Of course, he had not forgotten the enemy top laner, who had been farming alone in his lane.

A roaming top laner was like a student leaving home to work in the city. When he left, he was clean and innocent—but by the time he returned…

Wouldn’t it be appropriate to outfit him with all sorts of strange and fully upgraded surprises?

With that thought, Logic addressed the livestream chat:

“They’re coming, brothers.”

“As the saying goes, wealth that is not brought back home is like wearing fine clothes while walking at night.”

“We gave up the top half of the map for quite a while, so Darius is still only at his original level of development. But we’re different. Our growth has accelerated tremendously.”

“Mm. I mean our teammates.”

When Logic began marking the top lane, he was no longer returning alone. The mid laner and jungler were accompanying him, making three of them in total. After more than ten minutes of coordinated play, the random Ahri on their team had completely fallen at Logic’s feet.

Really—this Ahri player had never experienced such a comfortable game.

You think I’m going to fight you one-on-one?

Wrong.

The instant you got any crooked ideas, Janna would suddenly burst out of the river.

You think you can escape from just one Janna?

Wrong again~

Besides Janna, never forget that the jungler himself was a threat. And if things got even worse, the support from bot lane might come over and gank mid as well.

Poor Talon.

In this game, he had been caught so many times that he did not even dare use his E. He was terrified that after vaulting over a wall, he would land directly in front of three or four enormous men ready to perform a Sichuan opera for him.

At that moment, the Darius player still had no idea he was about to be wrapped up like a dumpling. He was fighting fiercely on the front line—not only against the enemy minion wave, but also against his own teammates.

That was right.

He had started arguing with them long ago.

Before the roaming Smite Janna strategy became widely known, nobody in the entire League community understood just how outrageous it was. Most people, upon seeing it for the first time, instinctively assumed it was merely a strategy for raising a hyper-carry.

Naturally, the Darius player believed he was the one being raised.

More than ten minutes of peaceful farming, combined with taking every plate from the outer top turret, had inflated his confidence to absurd levels.

What?

You say I failed to hold top lane, causing the rest of you to get destroyed?

What did that have to do with him? He had not been the one raising the carry in top lane.

The Darius player declared that he made his way through the Rift by relying on five principles: betray everyone, sell out his brothers, stab his allies in the back, frame others for his own mistakes, and take care of his brothers’ widows.

His teammates might not have been enjoying particularly comfortable lives, but his own development had been thoroughly satisfied.

That was enough.

At worst, he could turn everything around during the team fights.

Thinking this, the Darius player was about to continue split-pushing when, in the next instant, he spotted the enemy Janna suddenly emerging from the shadows of the jungle a short distance in front of him.

He checked the levels.

He was level ten. Janna was level six.

Then he looked at their items.

He had a mythic item. Janna had nothing but a pile of worthless components.

What was there to think about!?

Charge!

Without the slightest hesitation, Darius began pushing forward.

When Darius successfully closed the distance, Logic was not nervous in the slightest. He first used his Q to knock Darius into the air, then followed with his W to slow him and widen the gap.

But he did not widen it too much.

Instead, he deliberately paused for a few moments. Once Darius recovered and resumed his pursuit, Logic activated his ultimate and knocked him away again.

It looked as though he had made a mistake and used nearly all his control abilities.

In reality, this was precisely the product of Janna’s calculated manipulation.

“Watch closely, brothers.”

“This is what you call kiting. It’s like a temptress stringing along a backup boyfriend. If you stay too close, the other person feels you’re too easy to obtain and suspects a trap. If you stay too far away, he feels there’s little hope and gives up on his own. But if you remain just out of reach, looking as though you’ve revealed every card in your hand and are practically begging him to attack, you completely ignite his fighting spirit.”

“I’ll count to three. One… two… two and a half… three!”

“See? Didn’t the enemy Darius fall for it perfectly and use Ghost?”

As Logic continued interacting with the audience, they saw Darius get knocked back by Janna’s ultimate once more. This time, he seemed to have been remotely controlled. Without the slightest hesitation, he activated Ghost and charged toward Janna.

At that moment, everyone watching the stream clearly understood that ninety percent of humanity’s problems came from the conflict between our primitive brains and a rapidly changing society.

What did that mean?

It meant their brain CPUs had crashed.

[Th-That works too?]

“Think about it. Janna used all her defensive abilities, she’s three levels below you, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone else nearby. Wouldn’t you go in?”

[Holy hell, so the Rift has honey traps too?]

[Darius got matched into a nightmare this game. He tried to lane seriously and got attacked by his own teammates. Then, when he finally made one serious attempt, the streamer made him lose so completely!]

The successful bait immediately made XLB and the random Ahri eager to act.

They were just about to make their move when Logic’s danger signal appeared on their screens, stopping them in their tracks.

“Don’t rush, Dragon Brother.”

“We already baited out his Ghost, so there’s no need to worry about him escaping. Let him come in a little farther. Don’t worry—he won’t run.”

“A Darius who has activated Ghost won’t retreat. He’ll find a way to throw his life away himself.”

XLB: ?

He would throw his life away himself?

Sure enough, the moment Darius activated Ghost, it was as though all reason had been emptied from his mind. He did not merely fail to check the minimap for danger—he began diving the turret with an arrogance that knew no bounds.

And so, naturally…

When Ahri and Kindred appeared afterward, the enemy Darius gave everyone a heartfelt demonstration of the absolute lower limit of a Darius player’s margin for error.

“A feast for all directions, an empty-stomach assault, merciless feeding, the Noxian all-you-can-eat buffet.”

“I will not tolerate the serving of leftovers!”

“Only I can lead you all to the feeding grounds!”

From beginning to end, Darius did not even manage to touch the hem of Logic’s clothes. After Ahri’s E provided the initial control, Janna’s abilities—now off cooldown—followed up in succession.

But where did his true talent lie?

In the fact that he missed nearly every ability, took a beating until he had used everything in his kit, and only then died heroically beneath the combined assault of the three opponents.

By then, how could he not understand that he had fallen into a trap?

Unfortunately…

He had realized it far too late.

With another kill notification, the blue team’s morale was completely shattered along with Darius’s death.

Random friendships in ranked games were fragile.

The bottom half of the map had already been ruined beyond recognition, making the blue team reluctant to continue. They had initiated a surrender vote early on, but Talon hesitated, while Darius rejected it without the slightest hesitation.

And now…

After Darius died, unable to save face, he initiated another surrender vote himself.

But now the tables had turned. He was ready to admit defeat, while the three teammates from the bottom half all voted against surrendering.

You were the one who wanted to go to prison, so go to prison. Now you want out? Did you really think it would be that easy?

Of course, Logic’s team could not see any of this.

They could only sense that something was wrong from the empty map. When the surrender vote failed to appear for a long time, they concluded that the enemy team was probably engaged in an intense discussion at home over this hard-won team spirit.

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A few minutes later.

The Darius player began to despair.

He had farmed alone for so long, so why was the enemy carry better equipped than him whenever a team fight broke out?

And worse…

With Janna, Kindred, and Nautilus protecting the enemy carry, he had no way to deal with them at all.

He could not win a fight, could not escape, and the enemy had an absurd amount of crowd control. Once they began kiting him, it was nothing more than a dog being led around by its leash.

Finally, when the level-seven Janna, with a score of 1/0/12, led a group of level-ten-plus teammates onto the blue team’s high ground and demolished every defensive turret like a demolition crew arriving on-site—

Inside the livestream room, countless viewers stared blankly at the screen, unable to recover for a long time.

It was not because the scoreboard was especially terrifying. Rather, when the red team finally destroyed the enemy nexus, they had an advantage of nearly ten thousand gold—and only at that final moment did the map activate the version’s gift to the losing side: bounty objectives for the blue team.

An advantage of ten thousand gold, and only then did the losing side receive bounty objectives?

That single image alone was enough to make Logic’s top-lane Smite Janna strategy famous across the entire internet.

[A genius!]

[End the stream, please! Don’t let anyone else learn this strategy! Let us enjoy it first!!!]

[Like a government official going down to the grassroots—truly a model servant of the people! This Mengbius is overflowing with positive energy!]

[Master, rest assured. If your disciple causes trouble out in the world, I will never reveal your name. I’ll only give them your stream number and the name of your fan club. (doge)]

What was this?

Behind him, Coach Nofe, who had unknowingly watched the entire match from beginning to end, stood frozen in place as though he had attained enlightenment.

Sometimes, opening one’s mind required only a tiny spark of inspiration.

The bounty system had always been a headache for him. Because of its existence, even teams that managed the early game perfectly could easily be overturned in a single fight.

Yet most weaker teams and newly assembled rosters struggled to play the mid and late game before they had finished building synergy.

In other words, the current version had placed V5 directly over a bonfire.

But after witnessing this match, Nofe suddenly understood.

Prejudice was a mountain.

Before this livestream, nobody had ever considered separating the top laner from the rest of the team.

Only now did he finally understand.

It turned out that playing the game was not limited to battling the monsters on the board. You could also attack the opposing summoner directly from outside the board.

Since the designers’ balance changes had turned top lane into an isolated island…

Then why not imitate this livestream and let the top laner leave the island?

With that thought, he reached out and turned off Logic’s livestream.

“Coach?”

Logic looked utterly bewildered after the sudden shutdown. He had been wondering what he had done wrong. Why had the coach suddenly switched off the thing that earned him money?

“I’ve had an idea. I think you should have one too. Come on, work overtime with me.”

“Wait!”

Logic’s expression changed immediately.

He had finally finished the meeting and gotten to try out a new strategy—the very grave-digging strategy that had tormented him in his previous life. He had barely begun enjoying himself, and now he was being dragged into another meeting?

So he argued his case with complete conviction:

“Coach, it’s already the middle of the night. You’re exploiting an overworked wage slave. This is grounds for legal action. I cannot betray the proletariat!”

“Enough nonsense. I’ll pay you triple overtime.”

Nofe glared at him fiercely.

After spending more than a month together, how could he not know what kind of person this was?

In every other respect, Logic was excellent.

At eighteen, he even seemed unnaturally mature and sharp-minded. Much of the time, it was impossible to treat him like a player who had only just become an adult.

But he had one flaw.

He was greedy for money.

Extremely greedy for money.

As long as the overtime pay was high enough, he could train through the entire night without sleeping.

Sure enough, the moment he heard “triple pay,” the redness vanished from Logic’s face, his mouth stopped arguing, and even his attitude became considerably more obedient. He gave an ingratiating chuckle.

“You mean that?”

“Would a coach like me really cheat you out of such a tiny sum?” Nofe snorted. “Once I wake up tomorrow, I’ll talk to management. Don’t worry. If they refuse to approve the payment, I’ll drag Jingxie—Assistant Coach Zero—and sleep on the floor of their office every day.”

Logic: …

So you were not planning to pay it yourself after all?