Chapter 8: I Twist and Turn, You Vanish in a Flash

Hahaha~
Sweating bullets now. When did that E skill even get cast?
Whenever I play Irelia, my Bladesurge is always so slow. Why is his as smooth as Dove chocolate? Where am I actually going wrong?
Gnar's world is ending. He couldn't even beat her in the first place, and now the enemy is calling for backup. How cheap can you get?

Throwing out an E skill right in the middle of a dash left the audience outside the venue completely stunned.
It wasn't even all that profound of a technique.
Everyone knew that Irelia's core lay in her E skill, and the basic combo was Q-E-E. Because Q's flying displacement was the slowest speed—slower than both E and R—the advanced combo was actually Q-E-Q-E. That was the sequence where the player zipped through the minion wave while the E skill was launched with absolute precision.
Practicing it was simple enough, too.
Everyone knew how to spam QQQQQQ, right? You just pressed the first Q and the first part of the E at the exact same time, kept Q-ing through minions, and flicked out the second part of the E whenever it felt right. After practicing in a custom game for a bit, it became muscle memory.
The difficulty of this combo didn't lie in the mechanical proficiency required.
It lay in the fact that once you got older, it became a lot easier to lose track of where your mouse actually was.

For the vast majority of spectators, the scene unfolding before them was simply something they hadn't witnessed on the pro stage in far too long. Suddenly encountering someone casting blade gleams so rapidly gave them an inexplicable sense of awe, feeling powerful even if they didn't fully understand the mechanics.
"Looking good, Mebius."
"Where'd you get that from? It's all thanks to Karsa's great help. Without you showing up, where would I be today?"
"Then should I come over again in a bit?"
"No, no, no. How could I keep troubling an elder like you? You've already helped me out once; if I still can't handle him after that, I wouldn't just be spanking my own backside—I'd be slapping your face!"

Listening to Luo Ji's banter,
down in the bottom lane,
Xiao Yan, currently locked in the matchup, drew in a sharp breath.
No wonder some people could get famous so fast while he was left acting as JackeyLove's background prop. Just with that silver tongue, he could play pro for a hundred years and never learn it.
Even though it was obviously heavy flattery,
the smile on Karsa's face was impossible to hide. He was beaming from ear to ear.
"Listen carefully and learn well. If you can pick up even a fraction of Mebius's tricks, there won't be many teams in this league where you can't survive in the future."
PPGod offered some empathetic consolation to his lane partner.
Nothing could be done about it.
Even if the words sounded a bit harsh, this was motherfucking raw talent. Moreover, after the alert sound for a successful top lane kill echoed, he proactively pulled Xiao Yan back to begin retreating.
Tower plating?
Just let them have a single layer of it.
As a duo that had already suffered firsthand under TES's bottom-lane dive system back during the Demacia Cup, they harbored zero wishful thinking in their hearts at this moment. When you needed to play like a coward, you played like a coward. If the enemy really dared to dive them under tower, his Rakan combined with Aphelios offered very few ways to pull off a counter-kill under the turret.
Rather than losing minions, losing kills, and losing plating all at once, losing only a single plate was the lesser evil. PPGod still possessed the judgment to weigh those scales.

Observing the movements of the V5 bottom lane duo,
Tian, who had already been walking down toward the bottom lane, was now forced to redirect his path and invade the jungle instead.

In the TES lounge,
White Moon drew a group of data analysts together to watch the live stream, the light of inquiry in his eyes growing steadily brighter.
"They're improving so fast."
"This V5 squad is very strange. Their execution doesn't look anything like a newly rebuilt roster. Up until now, we've only ever seen execution of this caliber from JDG during scrims, but you know how it is—JDG's coach is Homme."
"Karsa and Rookie are understandable. The key is the top and bottom positions. Why are two rookies capable of such strong execution?"
"Perhaps this is what they call driving lower-tier patterns through higher-tier regularities?"

On the stage,
Although he hadn't secured Gnar's head, following the kill, he had shoved the wave into the tower, which undoubtedly gave him a massive lead in experience over Gnar. He was even directly up a full level in the matchup.
When it came to skill leveling,
Luo Ji didn't hesitate in the slightest, choosing to max Q first!
In professional play,
the more renowned Irelia players fell into two distinct camps. One camp included players like TheShy, Duke, and Nuguri; their Irelias all maxed Q. Maxing Q had one major advantage: the Q skill made it very easy to secure last hits on minions. However, precisely because it was so easy, it tended to make players unconsciously adopt a reckless playstyle.
The other camp was led by Doinb alongside other Irelia players who favored maxing W. They focused on safety in laning and teamfights, essentially playing like disruptive troublemakers.
Right now, the advantage was his.
And his opponent was just another newcomer belonging to his own generation, not some crusty veteran.
So why the hell would he play like a coward?
Time to fight, and it felt amazing!

With the advantage of a level lead,
in the lane,
Wayward started finding it harder and harder to handle Luo Ji's Irelia.
It wasn't just because of champion counters.
It was also because the opposing top laner had suddenly completely changed his temperament. Whenever an opportunity presented itself, he would charge forward to trade health without the slightest hesitation, acting just like a motherfucking mad dog.
Of course, this didn't mean Luo Ji had suddenly undergone a personality shift.
It was because down in the lower jungle, Karsa was utilizing his own methods to aid the top lane—namely, by forcefully exposing his own position in the bottom half of the map and frequently showing his face.
Who was the absolute core of TES?
White Moon had stated it before: JackeyLove, a point universally acknowledged within the TES roster. Building upon that foundation, no matter how good the top lane opportunity looked, as long as Karsa kept lingering around the bottom lane, Tian—acting as a protector of the water—naturally had to stay down there as well.
And that was pure bliss for Luo Ji in the top lane.
The enemy mid laner wasn't level six yet and couldn't roam, the enemy jungler was staring down his own jungler in the bottom lane, and both bottom lane duos were passionately brawling on the opposite side of the map. This vast, expansive top lane literally had no room for a third party to exist.
This was truly,
magnificently wonderful!

Especially since Irelia hadn't even burned her Flash during the previous play. That piece of information made Wayward feel unsafe even beneath his own tower, let alone pushing the wave out.

"Bro, can you come up and help me out for a bit?"
"No problem, hold on."
"Bro, is it safe to come yet? The pressure top is so high."
"Rest assured, would I lie to you?"
"Bro?"
"On my way, turning the corner now."

You could only say that
in the esports circle, everything operated in a grand cycle.
During the Demacia Cup, Tian had constantly urged the Duke to generate advantages and pressure health bars; come the regular season, it had instead reversed into Wayward badgering the jungler to come for a gank.
In the top lane,
watching his own jungler linger in the lower half of the map, doing nothing except clear camps and practically never coming near the top, Wayward expressed that his soul had gone numb.
In truth,
it wasn't that Tian didn't want to gank.
It was simply that the bottom lane fights were happening far too frequently, and he couldn't get away.
On the S12 TES roster, unless Prince 369 was occupying the seat, everything operated with JackeyLove designated as the highest priority protection target. Coming to gank the top lane...
It wasn't that it couldn't be done.
It was just that executing a top lane gank required drafting a proposal, holding a seminar, calculating the budget, sorting out the workflow, formulating a contingency plan, preparing emergency supplies, determining personnel assignments, finalizing the specific gank scheme, and analyzing the feasibility and risk factors.
And only then would the gank actually commence.
During the gank, they had to guarantee the safety of life and property while logging the entire process. After the gank concluded, they needed to write a summary report followed by post-gank reflections, and subsequently establish targets for ganking in the next quarter.
In short, the administrative process was terribly cumbersome, so you'd better just wait; your turn would come with an automated notification message eventually.

While Wayward was still agonizing over his bitter struggle in the top lane,
Luo Ji had already quietly set his sights on Wayward's head.
Opportunities like this were rare.
It was true that solo kills were hard to come by on the pro stage, but it all depended on the circumstances. Take this game for example: his level advantage allowed him to hit level six first, the enemy jungler was visibly tied down in the bottom half of the map due to Karsa's harassment, and the opposing Wayward was a rookie whose laning wasn't entirely seasoned.
The scales of victory were right before his eyes.
If he didn't find a way to pull off a flashy play here, he would feel he was doing a disservice to Karsa's earlier trip to the top lane.
So, time to give it a try!?

As a professional top laner, no matter how young Wayward was, he could still recognize the exact timing when Irelia was about to hit level six. Before Luo Ji reached six, Wayward had already proactively distanced himself from the minion wave.
Luo Ji wasn't in a rush either. Seeing no immediate opening, he didn't attack right away upon hitting six.
He was waiting.
Waiting for the arrival of the right moment.
Luo Ji mentally counted down the time, then pretended to go warding, walking directly toward the river in full view of the minion wave.
Although the risk of Irelia suddenly turning around and charging forward still remained, this subtle action subconsciously eased Wei Yan's state of mind just a fraction.
Until...
the exact moment Luo Ji walked into the maximum Q range of the nearest minion.
Q - [Bladesurge]! x3
Using the furthest minion as a stepping stone, stacking passive charges off the lowest-health minion at the top of the wave, and immediately afterward, dashing directly toward the minion closest to Gnar.
The entire sequence flowed like drifting clouds and running water.
Almost in the blink of an eye, relying on the minion wave as conduits, Irelia slid along a nearly ninety-degree right-angle arc.
"Oh no!"
Wayward's heart tightened, and he instinctively mashed his E skill to leap backward.
And right at that moment—
the exact instant he took flight, Irelia successfully used a minion as a medium to Q right to the landing spot of his leap. Simultaneously, that familiar blade gleam lit up once more.
E cast at maximum distance, aimed squarely at the predicted landing point of Gnar's E skill!
A prediction!
The split second he touched down, the familiar [Flawless Duet] snapped upward in a perfect line.
Stunned!
Three consecutive Q displacements, dropping the first part of the E right upon landing the third Q, followed by a fourth Q to close the distance and snap out the predicted second part of the E. The entire process took barely two seconds as Luo Ji manipulated Irelia to execute a triple-layer maneuver: gap-closing displacement, blade-gleam stun control, and fully stacked passive.
Immediately following that was the flawless execution of the ultimate, [Vanguard's Edge]!

It's over.
The moment he saw himself successfully stunned in place by Irelia, Wayward's eyes turned thoroughly ash-gray. An Irelia with four passive stacks dealt damage comparable to a patch's numerical monstrosity, and with him having neither Flash nor movement abilities while the enemy still held Flash—
in this scenario,
even escaping had become nothing more than a pipe dream.

V5.Mebius has slain TES.Wayward!
A solo kill!
Successfully executed~!

[Ah???]
[Mommy Yasuo/Fiora/Riven charming moment.]
[Luna: Under this moonlight, shall I string you along?]
[You toss and turn through space, I vanish in the blink of an eye; Grandma always told me to borrow 300 bucks.]
[If this were live on stage, I'd admit you're strong, but since this is just a stream, I'll have to say you need more practice.]
[This got my blood boiling. Forget it, League of Legends, boot up!]

The moment the kill notification triumphantly echoed across the venue,
down below,
JackeyLove and Knight stared at each other in blank bewilderment.
That wasn't right, was it?
Weren't they told before taking the stage that Wayward's trio of signature picks were Tryndamere, Gnar, and Graves? And looking at how proficient he was playing them in private, it really did look solid.
Then why?
Why was it that this hidden weapon of mass destruction hadn't even reached his power spike yet, and he was already dead twice in the lane, practically on the verge of complete collapse?

Unlike the silence over at TES,
over at V5,
the entire roster instantly burst into cheers and popped champagne!

"666666"
"God! He can actually solo kill him right in lane like that! Absolutely divine!"
"Lmao, is that really the top laner JackeyLove chose? Why does it feel like he's not even as good as Zoom?"
"It's not that the opponent is too garbage. You have to look at it from another perspective: this clearly proves that over on our side, Mebius is just way too strong."

A solo kill!
This was one of the most morale-boosting plays on the pro stage.
Even Karsa felt a rare surge of excitement. In reality, their lives down in the bottom half of the map weren't going all that well. During this period, Xiao Yan still hadn't managed to keep pace with JackeyLove; at best, his martial arts training only allowed him to master the Eight Extremities Open, so how could he possibly defeat the Grand Elder of the Yunlan Sect, Nalan Wenbo?
They had actually been eating small losses the whole time.
But looking at the top lane's scoreline—
it was steady!
Their hearts were finally at ease!
Even if the bottom lane "son" couldn't get rolling, up in the top lane, wasn't there a daddy right there~?

One could only say that
the path of competitive gaming was somewhat polarized to a degree.
For instance, some players could only try their absolute best and then cry by themselves, while other players only needed to exert a little effort and leave their opponents crying instead.

One assist and one kill drastically accelerated Luo Ji's item progression.
Of course, the key point wasn't just that; the crucial factor was that he had also taken Magical Footwear in his rune page this game, allowing his free boots to cash out even earlier.
And then,
he cast his gaze toward Irelia's core item—Blade of the Ruined King.
Right.
As mentioned earlier, whether Irelia was strong or not actually depended on the patch. As for what kind of patch that was, well, whenever Blade of the Ruined King was a strong item, that was the patch where Irelia was strong.
BotRK,
otherwise known as the ancestral launcher for Irelia.
After all, she was a champion who relied on basic attacks to deal damage, and BotRK was the ultimate item for amplifying basic attacks while providing a slow on-hit effect. The key point was that its stats were a seamless fit: attack speed, attack damage, and life steal were all attributes Irelia desperately needed.
As long as this item was strong,
playing Irelia meant
you could either pull off all sorts of fancy combinations and displacements to play the role of the Blade Dancer,
or you could rush a single BotRK into pure tank items with four passive stacks and simply demonstrate the sheer power of raw stats to fragile little backline targets.
If people previously claimed that Irelia's stat-checking ability fell short compared to most melee top laners, that was only because there were too many monsters in the top lane. But if she ran down mid to face mages and assassins, or went bot to face ADCs, her stats were absolute overkill: a skirmisher's frame, equipped with sustain, crowd control, damage reduction, and mobility—truly deserving to be called perfect.

Returning to the top lane once more,
Wayward's Gnar didn't even possess the courage to fight him head-on anymore.
And it made sense when you thought about it.
Anyone who played games understood that when an economic gap crushed you, skill stopped mattering.
Wayward simply started building tank items. Despite his 0/2 scoreline, if he was dead set on playing like a coward to survive, then Luo Ji genuinely couldn't find a way to deal with him.
In fact,
Luo Ji even started wondering if Wayward had awakened some kind of special talent as well.
Hiding away like a coward,
he was slowly beginning to brew a subtle veteran flavor out of nowhere—transitioning from getting his defense shattered to adapting, from adapting to understanding, and from understanding to indulgence.
Damn it.
Was he actually going to achieve sudden enlightenment from this beating and master the art of being a parasite right on the spot?

Outside the venue,
XLB and Cpt (Clozer/ShowMaker - translated as Cpt/Little ShowMaker contextually) sitting in the V5 lounge widened their eyes in tandem.
Ever since the Demacia Cup up until now, this was the first time they had seen Luo Ji play the top lane with such aggression—showing an even more reckless demeanor than when he played Aatrox against the Duke.
XLB asked with a trace of curiosity:
"How strange. Don't you get the feeling that he seems to go unnecessarily wild every time he plays against TES? But isn't he completely unrelated to TES?"
"Wait no, why does it feel like he's picking and choosing who to bully based on who they are?"
Little Showmaker pondered the thought carefully.
Zoom was a veteran whose engine was running out of fuel, while Wayward was a newcomer who had just debuted not long ago. Luo Ji specifically targeted the two of them to flex his plays, embodying a playstyle of bullying the old and kicking the young all at once, which reminded him of a certain time-traveling wizard.
Legend had it,
there was a temporal assassin in the Go community
who defeated the past female Go world number one and crushed the future female Go world number one, ruling supreme across all ages and spanning the long river of time.
Today, the similarity was uncanny!?