Chapter 53: Double Collapse! How Dare You Contend with EDG! [5K, 1/3]

"Here it comes, here it comes, Yone's ultimate battle!" Xika couldn't help but chime in, "Though it looks like both sides are playing it super safe at level one with no cheese, and honestly their compositions don't really allow for any fancy early tricks either..."

"Wait? Why didn't Yone buy items?!" Kid suddenly widened his eyes, as if wanting to say something.

"Hold on! Rookie didn't buy items either!" Sun Yalong's face was full of confusion, "What are these two doing!"

The compositions on both sides clearly lacked reliable level-one hard engagement, making any early fight practically impossible, so both naturally opted for conservative positioning.

Ye Bo walked alone to the mid lane, hoping to catch a glimpse of Galio's position and confirm his starting items.

Of course, he hadn't actually forgotten to buy items.

Even though he could see that Galio was running the Predator rune, this was a professional match, not solo queue. Starting with just naked boots would significantly increase laning pressure, and every player made different choices in every single game.

Among the "welfare legacy" Ye Bo inherited from the old-timer, Galio was prominently featured.

Although the old-timer's mastery level was barely at level five, his fundamental understanding of the champion was undoubtedly ingrained, which was more than enough to handle the matchup.

However, when he saw Galio walking out from the mid lane as well, Ye Bo was dumbfounded!

"Wait, no, why didn't he buy items either?!"

"Hoh, as expected of Rookie, could it be that he calculated this?"

Glancing at the time in the upper right corner, Ye Bo had no choice but to immediately walk back and recall.

After some deliberation, he chose to purchase a Dagger and a Refillable Potion, trying to outsmart the opponent's likely Boots and Refillable Potion start.

This was a personal insight Ye Bo had developed through his mastery of these two champions.

The biggest problem with Yone was actually his early-game weakness—more precisely, hitting his crucial item breakpoints.

As long as he could get Berserker's Greaves, Yone's laning capability would instantly jump to a whole new level, at least keeping laning and wave-clear pressure manageable.

Therefore, if he could confirm that Galio was adopting a roaming, utility-focused laning strategy with a boots start, Yone buying a Dagger wouldn't hurt his combat power all that much.

Compared to purchasing the Doran's items, this saved a full 450 gold in economic progress!

"Oh, I get it. He probably wants to rush attack speed boots to push and roam! Wait, does this guy even think about roaming when playing Yone!?" Sun Yalong speculated after seeing Yone purchase the Dagger.

"Ooh!!" Kid suddenly wore a look of sudden realization, "That makes total sense!"

"Rookie is definitely doing this on purpose, he's just baiting!"

"My deepest memory is from those two games against KT and EDG previously—he didn't buy items either, and yet he still ended up out-csing UCAL and Scout, and they won both matches! This is all part of Rookie's calculation!"

Galio, standing under the tower, was dragging the map to communicate tactics with his teammates, seemingly completely unaware of anything unusual.

Fortunately, Karsa had a small habit of constantly pressing the TAB key to check the scoreboard during games, tapping it out of habit whether there was anything to see or not.

And when he pressed it once more, the radar alarm went off.

"Hey Yijin! Why didn't you buy items again?!" Karsa's Taiwanese accent sounded a bit anxious.

"Ah, ah, ah..." Rookie glanced at the time in the upper right corner and scratched his head somewhat awkwardly, "My bad, my bad, but it should be fine, I can still make it."

Due to the slightly delayed recall, the minion waves had already spawned.

Seeing this, Rookie very naturally chose to buy boots and head out to speed up his arrival in lane.

The broadcast desk naturally caught the unusual behavior of both mid laners.

"Wow, wow, wow, it feels like the two mid laners just played a subtle game of psychological warfare!" Wa Wa speculated as well.

"The tempo of the mid and jungle will be crucial in this game, because both the top and bottom lanes are the kinds of matchups where it's hard to get a real fight started!"

"That's true, on V5's side, they're probably relying heavily on this Predator Galio for mobility, right?" Miller analyzed along with him.

The minion waves met in the middle.

Upon checking his inventory, Ye Bo finally let out a sigh of relief.

It was the exact matchup he had anticipated.

The two began playing a spatial game of movement the moment they laid eyes on each other.

Galio held onto [Colossal Smash], looking for an opportunity to auto-attack minions and shock nearby enemies, but Yone consistently maintained a safe distance from the wave.

However, Song Yijin's laning experience was unimaginably seasoned.

He noticed that Yone had started with a Dagger, which meant his raw brawling power wasn't particularly high.

Therefore, Song Yijin immediately changed his plan. Instead of waiting to auto-attack the first three melee minions as usual, he actively stepped forward, looking to auto-attack the caster minions to force a push.

If Yone wanted to turn and trade auto-attacks at this moment, Galio could drop an AQ (Auto-Q) and use his movement speed from the boots to create space, while Yone clearly lacked chase potential at level one.

True to expectation, Ye Bo chose to back off, avoiding taking full poke damage.

He didn't even use his Q to poke.

Song Yijin understood his opponent's reasoning here: throwing out a Q would draw minion aggro from the melee minions and mess up the minion wave equilibrium.

"Pretty detailed play..." he thought to himself.

Galio didn't mind, marching forward on his own to trigger his passive shockwave, then adjusting his angle to fire a Winds of War covering all six minions, before leisurely stepping back.

At the same time, while waiting for his Q cooldown, Galio deliberately positioned himself parallel to the melee minion wave, boldly auto-attacking to maintain push momentum.

Even though Yone's Q range was quite long, allowing him to space properly and poke the melee Galio with a free Q.

Galio could exploit the exact same mechanic by using his own body to draw minion aggro and manipulate the wave!

This method of rapidly taking control of the minion wave often worked wonders when trying to reverse the natural disadvantage of a "short-range champion against a long-range champion" dynamic.

This was Song Yijin's response, backed by his many years of rich laning experience.

However, Song Yijin was about to miscalculate this time.

Because he didn't know Yone well enough.

Although Yone did step forward as if trying to Q through the minions, and Galio even deliberately gave him the angle.

Yet, the moment Yone thrust his Mortal Steel, hitting both the front-line minions and Galio simultaneously.

The minions did not switch their aggro!

"Huh?"

Song Yijin acutely sensed something was off right away, but Galio's level-one Q had an 11-second cooldown; he couldn't just walk up and auto for his passive right now.

Refusing to believe it, he adjusted his position.

Three seconds later, another Mortal Steel thrust went out, hitting both champion and minions alike.

And yet, minion aggro was drawn just as expected!

Song Yijin was a notoriously diligent player. Although he didn't play Yone very often, he had practiced him properly.

He clearly remembered that when he played Yone, poking with Q would definitely draw minion aggro, because Yone's Q was fundamentally treated as a basic attack!

As everyone knew, whenever you used basic attacks or targeted spells on champions, minion aggro was immediately triggered.

Song Yijin's understanding of Yone's Q was only half right.

The Q skill indeed possessed the properties of a basic attack.

However, the tooltip description of the skill clearly stated: *{Applies on-hit effects to the 'first enemy' hit}*.

This meant that if the Q hit multiple targets simultaneously, only the very first unit would be subjected to the single-target attack effect, while the rest were treated as secondary targets, enjoying the natural AoE properties of the attack.

Simply put, if Yone needed to Q a minion first, and then hit the champion with the extension.

He wouldn't draw minion aggro, allowing him to freely poke through the minion wave from a 450-unit range!

This single interaction directly meant that Galio couldn't step up to auto-attack minions while his abilities were on cooldown, forcing him to stand behind the minion wave and honestly wait for his passive and Q cooldowns to tick down before stepping up.

In an instant, Yone's early-game struggle for wave control was completely overturned!

Bolstered by the attack speed from the Dagger, Yone had a Q every 3 seconds, a tornado every 9 seconds, and could even continuously auto-attack to push the wave.

Compared to Galio's 11-second Winds of War, there was simply no way he couldn't out-push him!

And that wasn't all.

Upon reaching level 2, the advantage of the Dagger became even more pronounced.

At a glance, a Dagger's combat power seemed far inferior to Doran's items.

In reality, however, a 300-gold Dagger could reduce his W cooldown from 12.7 seconds down to 9.8 seconds!

A single W could almost entirely mitigate Galio's Winds of War poke, and its cooldown was even shorter!

How could Ye Bo fail to see that a Predator Galio would inevitably want to make plays in the early game?

Therefore, starting with a Dagger wasn't just about rushing Berserker's Greaves to quickly transition into his comfortable phase; more importantly, it allowed him to hold onto wave priority as much as possible during the most vulnerable first six levels.

Of course, this required Galio to similarly purchase boots that offered zero laning power, otherwise, whether starting Doran's Ring or Corrupting Potion, the laning phase would carry immense pressure and force an early Teleport, backfiring completely.

Furthermore, Rookie could clearly feel as he lased against him.

The opposing Yone's actions and micro-details possessed the fluidity and natural rhythm of someone who had truly gone through thousands of hours of practical combat, as if it had all become ingrained muscle memory...

The observer camera switched to the mid lane.

Seeing Yone step forward wielding a tornado, denying Galio any perfect angle for his Q, while also using aggressive positioning to draw minion aggro and manipulate the wave, and then following up with a W to perfectly mitigate the initial damage of Winds of War for a lossless trade—

"Rookie looks like he's getting pressured!" Xika let out a howl, "Who was it that said Galio counters Yone? This doesn't look like a counter to me at all~"

"Hold your horses! Getting slightly pressured early on as Galio is completely normal; this champion wasn't picked to win lane!" Kid argued back defensively, sounding quite anxious.

At the 3-minute mark.

Galio was forced to surrender lane priority before level 3, and the minion wave was continuously controlled by Yone just ahead of the center point.

Yone seemed utterly unbothered by a potential gank from Poppy, moving with an arrogant swagger that actually made Rookie suspicious.

Karsa glanced at the movement in the mid lane and decided to stick to his own plan.

"Yijin, I feel like Sejuani might be doing F6, do you think you can come if I counter-jungle?"

"I can! At least I can arrive around the same time as Yone!"

Poppy might look like a tanky frontline champion on the surface.

In reality, her 1v1 potential in the jungle was not weak at all; in fact, her solo-kill rate was exceptionally high!

The reason for this lay in the jungle walls, which offered much tighter spacing for E wall-stuns compared to the wide lanes, allowing her to easily dump her massive burst damage.

And to top it off, her opponent here was Sejuani!

Karsa earned the nickname "Radar Bro" because he could inexplicably discover the opposing jungler's location without any vision.

Of course, this ability wasn't some form of mysticism; it stemmed from Karsa's extraordinarily rich jungle matchup experience as a veteran, combined with his dedication to studying opponent VODs before matches to analyze his rival's jungle habits.

The timing was immaculate.

Right as the level-one river ward expired, Poppy slipped straight through the river, hugging the wall line to slink into the F6 camp.

Even the path Karsa chose was based on his discovery that when Jiejie played Sejuani, he had a habit of using his Q skill to dash directly through the outer wall, a quirk that weakened vision at the entrance and allowed for a clean infiltration!

As a herbivore jungler, Sejuani would naturally opt for a standard full-clear route unless there was a specific setup requiring otherwise.

And right then, from the God's-eye view—Sejuani was indeed doing F6!

"It's Karsa again! Here we go, stealing camps!" Sun Yalong shouted loudly.

"Looks like Jiejie is about to be in big trouble!"

Seeing Poppy appear behind him, Sejuani felt a chill down his spine.

However, Poppy had crept in hugging the wall and was already well within her E stun range!

Poppy slammed Sejuani into the wall with an E, then dropped her Q [Hammer Shock], smashing down on both man and chickens alike!

Smite slammed down, instantly executing the large Raptor.

"Damn it!" Jiejie watched the large bird he had worked so hard to chunk get smited away, feeling a deep pang of heartache.

Yet he knew he had to run first.

"I'm coming, Jiejie!" Seeing a conflict erupt on the mini-map, Ye Bo instantly abandoned his minions and moved out, farming a Q tornado to keep in hand before leaving.

Song Yijin started moving half a step earlier to follow.

Poppy's full combo dealt absurdly high damage, with the dual max-health percentage ticks from her Q combined with the double-hit damage from a successful wall-slamming E, chunking Sejuani down to half health in one go!

More importantly, because Sejuani had used her Q to enter the F6 pit, she didn't have her Q available at all!

Jiejie made a decisive split-second decision and flashed over the wall.

"Can we fight this, Master Ye? But Poppy still has her W!" Jiejie asked anxiously and urgently.

Ye Bo analyzed the situation rapidly in his mind.

Although Sejuani had taken a full combo and was left low on health, Poppy had essentially blown all her cooldowns as well.

If they backed off right now and waited for Poppy's abilities to reset, there was zero doubt that at least the red buff would have to be handed over on a silver platter.

The jungle would become immensely uncomfortable after that.

Ye Bo knew very well how important the Sejuani-Yone duo was as their tempo engine in this match.

Although the "Pig & Blade" combination was a synergy they hadn't practiced for long, they had already accumulated plenty of experience with it.

If they were going to fight, it had to be right now!

"We can fight, follow me in first!"

The Predator boots were blazing, and Galio was already hurrying over from the side.

At the same time, more importantly, Poppy was lurking menacingly inside the F6 wall.

Poppy held [Steadfast Presence] in her hand, ready at a moment's notice.

"What is he doing! Does Yone actually want to fight this?!" Kid shouted excitedly.

"He's going to get pinched by the mid-jungle duo like dumplings! This is the power of Galio's roaming support!"

Whether Yone used his Q3 or the dash from E1, both would be blocked by Steadfast Presence, plunging him into the grounded state. If he used one, he wouldn't be able to use the other.

More importantly, if Yone tried to unleash his Q3 directly into the wall, he would just be blocked right outside!

This meant Yone could only cross paths with the Predator-activated Galio and choose to run around the wall together.

That was how it looked to everyone watching.

"We can turn and fight Yone first, Sejuani has no health and no threat, even burning her flash is fine!" Karsa had also spotted this opening, his eyes locked onto Yone's movements.

Yet, the person outside the wall made a bizarre move.

Yone took a single step back, then faced the direction of the wall and stubbornly unleashed his Q3 wind slash.

Karsa naturally couldn't fail to react, popping his anti-dash aura right against the wall!

However, the wind slash didn't just stop there.

The spirit retreated, squeezing his physical body backward. Under the propulsion of this two-stage movement, the initial single dash was compressed and fused into two distinct phases!

The Yone who should have been abruptly blocked was forcefully "squeezed" right through the wall by this unstoppable secondary push!

And because the tornado of the wind Q had already been released, it wasn't interrupted, causing Poppy to immediately eat the knock-up and damage right upon landing!

A frost mark appeared on Poppy.

Yone followed up with an auto-attack, W, and another auto-attack, instantly stacking three layers of frost passive onto Poppy.

"Come on, Jiejie! Get Poppy!"

Sejuani's Q was still on cooldown, but Jiejie, who had been fully prepared, tossed out his W ice chains from behind, instantly finishing the passive stacks.

Then he threw out his E to secure the stun, stepping up to break the freeze!

Both Sejuani and Poppy were champions who could dish out considerable damage if they managed to land their full kits, and both had the potential to solo-kill each other.

The difficulty for Poppy lay in landing the wall-slam.

The difficulty for Sejuani lay in fully stacking and breaking her E freeze passive.

This was precisely why the "Pig & Blade" combination was born!

Yone's basic attacks and Q could both stack the freeze condition, and because of their "on-hit nature," his Q could even hit multiple targets in an AoE to stack it on everyone simultaneously!

And because Yone had forcefully squeezed through the wall, he skipped a lengthy detour.

Even with Predator's movement speed bonus, Galio could only arrive a step late.

The Colossus spread his wings to channel, but seeing Poppy's health dropping into the danger zone, a panicked Rookie could only use a short-channeled W before kicking off for his step-kick!

"Karsa, run! I can get out!"

"Head toward the river, Kennen is coming from the top side!" top laner Rich issued a warning from his route down.

Karsa didn't hesitate, using Galio's brief taunt control to immediately flash toward safety.

But Ye Bo had no intention of letting him walk away.

Galio's short W only controlled for 0.5 seconds. Watching Galio charge in with a kick, Ye Bo didn't release his E at the very first moment.

He was waiting for that dashing punch.

Yone blocked the front of Sejuani, taking the brunt of the punch—only to instantly recast his spirit back!

If that punch had hit Yone, the brief knock-up duration would have been more than enough for Poppy to escape into the river.

And if Yone had recast his E early, he still could have hit the nearly parallel Sejuani, using the knock-up to secure the kill with Winds of War's lingering percentage damage for a 1-for-1 trade.

Song Yijin had calculated it perfectly.

Yet that perfectly timed spirit recast neutralized the crowd control, shattering both potential outcomes!

Galio tried to turn back to save him.

It was already too late.

The moment Yone landed, he decisively flashed to chase, denying Poppy any breathing room to space out, and delivered a maximum-range Q.

It pierced straight through Poppy's chest!

"A flash forward Mortal Steel! Pizza gets taken down!" Sun Yalong's expression flipped instantly, "Holy shit, Master Ye is the clutch player, he just saved the jungle's life right there!"

"Rookie should be able to get out..." Kid muttered anxiously, his heart in his throat.

[The Pizza delivery has begun, screwing over my chicken overlord!]

[EDG suffered a massive loss. Why a massive loss? Sure, they got a kill, but I gotta ask: where's the chicken?! Where's the chicken?!]

[Are you nuts, Pizza, how dare you?! Don't you know the rules of the streets?! Do you know what happens to people who steal EDG's chickens?!]

[You little punk, watch your account! You're finished!]

[Karma will get you! I have a feeling Pizza is going to die 7 times this game!]

Apologies, brothers, I'm a bit late.

I have to admit, my mindset was affected to some extent, so I spent quite a bit of time tonight adjusting.

But now I'm fully recovered!

No big deal~

We all have our own lives, playing games, watching streamers—we don't watch them just for the sake of the matches, right~~

Reality has its regrets, but I hope little Ye Bo's world can bring everyone a bit of happiness.

Today is another wonderful day!

Here's the first chapter at 5K words!

I'm still coding the rest. As promised, 15K words today without fail, I will finish this match!