Chapter 6: Fairness! Fairness! And fucking fairness!

After the match against RA, the next team on V5's preparation schedule was TES, their former Demacia Cup opponent.

Although they had already defeated TES once, facing them again left everyone on the team except Lu Ji feeling somewhat uncertain, especially during scrims.

JackeyLove had accidentally let something slip, mentioning that they had prepared a huge surprise for V5, which scared Nofe into pulling all-nighters for days straight to rehearse tactical counters.

In stark contrast, Lu Ji appeared remarkably calm.

He maintained his routine of daily practice and solo queue, possessing a mental fortitude that left his teammates in absolute disbelief. Xiao Yan, in particular, noticed after leaning in closely that during the late-night RANK queue wait times, Lu Ji even had the spare time to manage his WeChat.

"What are you doing here?"

Seeing a whole album of private photos of "Likes Eating Coriander" on Lu Ji's phone, Xiao Yan's eyes widened with envy.

"Oh, just some artistic photos they sent me privately. I'll let you guys appreciate them after I curate the collection."

As he spoke, he singled out a few girls who hadn't been proactive in sending photos and directly deleted them from his friends list.

Xiao Yan: !!!

"Wait, why did you delete them?"

"Why not?"

Lu Ji cast a somewhat peculiar glance at Xiao Yan and said,

"I'm running a bottom-elimination system."

"Think about it. If you only have one girl on your phone, she might feel like she's just your backup option. But when you have a sufficient number of girls on your phone, they won't even care why there are so many others; instead, they'll focus on whether they are the most special one."

"Though I have no intention of dating any of them, they provide a steady supply of high-quality lewds."

"Since they're posting to external sites anyway, posting to me is just as easy. Sending them to me even lets other people in the scene see them, which boosts their transfer success rate. Why shouldn't I profit from this?"

"Besides, there are way too many players wanting to transfer. Without a bottom-elimination system, I wouldn't be able to keep up with them all by myself."

For a moment, Xiao Yan was profoundly shaken, followed immediately by the look of a man whose soul had been crushed.

Although he had already decided under Lu Ji's guidance not to pursue a relationship before winning a championship, the budding urges of youth still led him to deliberately manage his own social accounts.

Yet...

All his hard work couldn't hold a candle to the casual bottom-elimination system Lu Ji had whipped up.

It felt remarkably similar to watching a *Uma Musume* anime episode, where a certain horse girl gets all fired up, only to be effortlessly outrun by someone else, leaving her standing there in a daze and utterly heartbroken.

It was simply too devastating.

"What's wrong with him?"

Karsa had just finished a solo queue match, took off his headphones, turned around, and asked upon seeing Xiao Yan's soul-crushed expression.

"His mentality probably shattered, probably because he's not as handsome as me," Lu Ji replied, not entirely certain either.

"It shouldn't shatter this late in the game."

"It's just how late-night hours are. After feeling randy and realizing all the surrounding males are desperately trying yet unbeatable, he gets all EMO. If these symptoms hit any later, listening to a couple of NetEase Cloud Sad Songs before bed will fix him right up."

Xiao Yan's EMO phase was merely a minor interlude.

Men, after all, understood these things.

If a guy didn't smoke, didn't drink, and had no eccentric hobbies, that person was usually up to no good in the worst possible way.

The key was whether one could control those desires.

Over the past few years, due to certain irresistible factors, everyone found it hard to go outside and clear their minds. Everyone was heavily suppressed and needed some special medium to vent.

At least in Lu Ji's eyes, his strategy of wielding "photos" to command the "court officials" was going swimmingly.

If you wanted to see the good stuff, you had to be obedient. With obedience came high team execution, which led to a high match win rate. A high win rate brought immense traffic, and massive traffic ensured a continuous, endless stream of "photo" sources for him. This directly achieved a sustainable and virtuous cycle between team strength and "resource" acquisition.

He truly was a genius.

Meanwhile...

The V5 crew was burning the midnight oil preparing for the match.

And on the other side...

TES was genuinely preparing their ultimate trump card for V5.

Substitute Top Laner—Wayward (Wei Yan).

During the transfer window, TES welcoming back Zoom was initially thought to be a reinforcement for the team. However, veteran Zoom's attributes had declined significantly across the board due to age. Having him play a blue-collar facilitator was fine, but expecting him to create chaos in the top lane was honestly asking a bit too much of the old man.

Yet...

The top lane in Season 12 was exceptionally isolated as an island. At this point, unless one could pull off cheesy tricks like Lu Ji to stir up trouble, the only way out was to play late-game scaling heroes.

Thus...

Zoom's starting position turned into a rotation, and substitute Wayward successfully stepped up. Not even Lu Ji could have anticipated that, catalyzed by his own butterfly effect, TES would prematurely initiate their [Permutation and Combination] strategy this year.

Inside the TES clubhouse...

The players, coaches, and analysts stared earnestly at Huang:

"In the match against V5 in a few days, do you know what your mission is?"

"Huh? I have no idea."

Huang shook his head somewhat blankly.

After all, having just arrived at TES, his inner troll hadn't fully manifested yet, and Huang still appeared quite shy to the outside world.

"Alright, then I'll tell you. You only have one mission. Do you see the image on that projector?"

Huang looked in the direction pointed by White Crescent's finger.

Right there...

Hanging squarely was Lu Ji's promotional photo for the new season.

"You, go take him down."

Huang pointed at Lu Ji on the screen, then pointed at himself, and finally looked over at Zoom sitting by the water dispenser, his face filled with sheer disbelief.

A rookie that even the team's veteran big brother couldn't handle?

The coach expected him to go take down the opponent?

How the hell was this any different from sending a Tarnished from the First Step to fight the Tree Sentinel?

"Believe in yourself, Huang."

Seeming to sense his confusion, White Crescent firmly grasped his hand.

"He's a rookie, and you're a rookie too. But there's only one of him, while you have me, and Zoom right here to guide you."

"Believe in yourself, you have that talent."

"Even if you don't believe in yourself, surely you believe in me?"

Feeling White Crescent's burning gaze, Huang was clearly somewhat hoodwinked. He began to wonder if he really did possess that so-called talent, and subconsciously nodded.

Little did he know...

At the exact moment he was successfully hypnotized, almost every player in the room couldn't help but purse their lips to suppress their smiles.

Ah, rookies.

They really were damn easy to fool.

A dual top lane rotation—this was the permutation and combination method TES devised to change the team's current predicament.

Zoom himself knew he was an aging veteran who truly couldn't play those aggressive champions; his twilight years were looking a bit inauspicious. Therefore, he had no objections to rotating with Wayward. As long as he still had meals to eat, he could casually pass on some experience to the newcomer.

One could only say...

Esports players were still far too pure.

As the saying goes, teach the apprentice and starve the master. In the original timeline, after Wayward stole trade secrets from Zoom alongside the later-arriving Qingtian, Zoom instantly transformed into the Water Dispenser God of War.

He completed the perfect transition from the Duke to Tart Chef 258.

Take the stage?

You wouldn't even have a spot on the substitute roster.

The day before the match...

Both teams even played a couple of scrims in their respective clubhouses.

Although both teams featured many newcomers, several of the veterans were old acquaintances. Seeing that the scrims were about to wrap up, JackeyLove took the initiative to open a chat window for a private conversation.

TES丶JackeyLove: If this is the top laner you picked, Lao Song, tomorrow I'll show you what my picked top laner looks like.

V5丶Rookie: New top laner? You cheating? What about Zoom then.

TES丶JackeyLove: Cheating my ass, he's rotating with Zoom. Both of them are my wings.

V5丶Rookie: Tsk tsk tsk, you really know how to play.

The day before the match, official accounts would release the roster for the upcoming game. Knowing he couldn't keep it under wraps any longer, JackeyLove stopped hiding it—it couldn't be concealed anyway.

As for Lu Ji...

Summoned over by Rookie, he wore a very calm expression as he looked at their chat.

"What do you say? Feeling any pressure?"

"Pressure? Nonexistent. I've known all along that their ultimate trump card was Wayward."

Lu Ji stretched lazily.

If history had changed and TES had dug up some unfamiliar rookie top laner he'd never heard of, he might have exercised a bit of caution.

But Huang?

That was like Hannibal meeting LGBT—specializing in encountering rainbows and eating them whole. The joke level was no different from a math teacher telling you today's class is getting harder, only to pull out the Beijing gaokao exam paper.

One must admit...

In the realm of esports, League of Legends was still relatively fair.

Over the years...

How many galactic battleships soared during the transfer window, only to crash halfway through the regular season and perhaps even miss the playoffs entirely? This proved that regardless of market value, any team and player possessed the potential to pull off an upset.

Unlike *Three Kingdoms Kill* (Sanguosha).

*Three Kingdoms Kill* was exceptionally fair: as long as you pumped money into it, you were guaranteed to beat someone who didn't spend a dime.

Wayward's market value would undoubtedly be higher than his. As fellow rookies, TES was far more willing to spend money than V5.

The reason he was promoted to the starting lineup was also very simple: the emergence of Hullbreaker Graves made more and more teams in the region notice which champions were actually the meta top laners for this patch:

Graves, Tryndamere, Gnar.

Any of these three could split-push all the way down a lane, breaking their own isolated island effect in the top lane through split-pushing.

Coincidentally...

These were all items within Wayward's champion pool.

The next day...

When the players from both sides arrived at the match venue, online public opinion had reached its peak for the Spring Split so far.

Buildup from Riot's official hype made the match heat between V5 and TES immensely massive.

Of course...

It was mainly concentrated on the former IG players and the old and new TES roster members.

Phonetic memes like Xiao P Medusa, Song Lao Nalan Wenbo, and the like were everywhere.

The most hilarious part...

Upon learning that the commentator for this series would actually be none of other than Remember (Guan Daya), the moniker "God of Demise Zeyuan" was promptly slapped onto him as well.

No helping it.

Among all the esports commentators, he was the only super-tier commentator.

Everyone else commented on match trends.

And him?

——He manipulated match trends!

[Do not bully a young man into poverty!]

[It's here, the pre-New Year esports Spring Festival Gala is here.]

[Truth be told, V5's roster and performance are genuinely solid. They took a sixteen-game losing streak bounty, cashed in for two 3-star 5-cost cards, and the remaining three aren't bad either.]

[Can they win? I'm just asking if Xiao Yan can defeat the Yunlan Sect today?]

[Wait, what the hell is this Wayward?]

LPL viewers were naturally filled with intense enthusiasm for today's match.

Though they had clashed in the Demacia Cup, the Demacia Cup and official matches were generally discussed separately. Strictly speaking, this was V5 and the regular-season TES's first intimate contact.

Furthermore...

The debut of rookie top laner Wayward brought numerous unknowns to this series. At the very least, quite a few clubs were wondering if TES was employing the strategy of "using the enemy's own methods to subdue them."

Using a rookie top laner to defeat a rookie top laner?

Incomprehensible, but respected and blessed.

This time...

Because they were facing TES in the regular season, Nofe had already pulled Zero aside in the dressing room early on to begin brainwashing the players.

The tactical core remained unchanged: focus on the bottom half of the map.

Unless the opponents presented an opening.

In that case, temporarily altering tactics wasn't out of the question; he left that for Karsa to improvise freely.

After all these days of synergy, the V5 players had all come to understand that there was no need to deliberately skew resources toward the top lane. The top lane would figure out how to break the isolated island effect on its own. What they needed to do was grant the top lane as much autonomy as possible when conditions permitted.

Regarding this...

Nofe had also patted his chest to guarantee there would be no issues.

Not only were the players pure, but coaches in the professional arena were also very pure. If you had the confidence to deliver results, you should go try it. Nofe had always been the kind of coach who gave players room to perform.

Of course...

Trust also had a limited number of uses. If results continuously failed to materialize during the period of trust, he would naturally retract that privilege.

"Right, Coach."

Seeing that Nofe had finished his brainwashing and finally found a moment of downtime, Lu Ji walked up with a mischievous grin and whispered,

"Today we're playing a powerhouse opponent like TES. If we win, is there any reward? I mean the kind that doesn't count towards KDA?"

In the professional arena...

Clubs generally had reward mechanisms for players, but normal reward mechanisms rewarded the post-match MVP, which gave Lu Ji a bit of a headache.

Under the isolated island effect...

Unless the opponents gifted opportunities, generating solo kills in a single lane was truly difficult. Moreover, this patch caused the jungler to constantly hover down below. When he played a top laner, he usually had to wait for resource teamfights or the mid-to-late game before he could scrap for kills. How could he possibly snatch them away from his own dual carries?

"No way, how many bonuses have you milked already, and you're still milking?!"

Nofe's eyes widened.

Ever since Lu Ji joined the team, the most frequent thing he did in management's office was write raise applications for this guy. It was utterly ridiculous.

"Hey! Wait a minute, I remember your salary shouldn't be low right now. Salary + bonus + streaming revenue, there's no reason why a kid like you should be broke."

"I am broke, though."

Lu Ji thought about his investments.

Ever since transmigrating, whenever he had a couple of coins in his pocket, he plowed them all straight into gold, opting to rough it out with all-expenses-paid room and board at the clubhouse. And this investment would continue indefinitely.

His strategy boiled down to: being strapped for cash in spring, empty-pocketed in summer, lacking financial resources in autumn, and saving up for the Chinese New Year in winter.

Anyway, he wasn't milking the coach's money, but the club's.

So...
Naturally, the more the better~

"Fine, fine."

Annoyed by the nagging, Nofe waved a hand dismissively.

"Just play your game. If you perform well, I'll go talk to the club again. If you can keep winning, I'm willing to keep writing applications."

"Is that true?"

"Would I lie to you?"

Hearing the coach's guarantee, Lu Ji ignited with passion!

Though his purpose for playing professionally was extremely vulgar, as Mr. Lao She put it, once vulgarity reaches a certain degree, it becomes the height of elegance.

For money, it wasn't shameful.

As for TES's supposed anti-him weapon, Wayward?

Then...
Excuse me, bro.

Heh heh heh~