Chapter 63: Accidentally Shattering the Esports Dreams of Five Young Men

"PE really wasn't lying. NXG is insanely strong, practically demonic."

In the backstage area, after wrapping up the brief opening ceremony of the pre-season, iG chose not to rush back to the small inn where the team was staying, opting instead to stick around and scout their opponents' true capabilities.

Yet, watching the match up to this point, everyone wore an expression of mild unease.

In terms of last-hitting, apart from the support, all five members of NXG seemed to be operating on roughly the same tier as WeiXiao.

Their vision control was executed with flawless precision, vastly superior to iG's own by countless folds.

Then there was the seamless inter-champion coordination and teamfight synergy...

XiaoShao, whose bald spot was becoming increasingly prominent, absentmindedly yanked at his hair again. "It's not just that JM kid who's strong. The other five guys on NXG are fucking top-tier talents too."

"Cube Dragon, aren't you just stating the fucking obvious? The stats are right there in front of us, you don't need to spell it out."

"Thank goodness we aren't in the same group as NXG for the pre-season. If we ran into them early, we'd probably crash and burn."

Previously, after adopting the strategy JM used in rank queues to counter WE, the results they achieved in practice fell short of expectations. Zz1tai and Shadow's mid-jungle duo could at best squeeze out a slight advantage against RuoFeng and Clearlove, and trying to directly snowball the game the way their opponents did was harder than finding a needle in a haystack a hundred times over.

From that perspective, that bastard JM's individual mechanical skill truly reached an incomprehensible level.

Of course, there were specific reasons why iG couldn't handle WE's mid-jungle duo.

Having journeyed all the way through Season 2, the two teams understood each other far too well.

If WE wanted to win, it meant mindlessly suppressing PDD's growth while ensuring CaoMei's ultimate pressure-absorption succeeded, and vice versa. Shadow and Zz1tai would exert maximum pressure on RuoFeng, followed by a mid-jungle four-dive-two into the bottom lane to prevent WeiXiao from scaling.

However, in terms of jungle experience, Shadow was far inferior to Clearlove.

Protecting the bottom lane seemed almost etched into Clearlove's bones.

On the contrary, that old schemer Clearlove would occasionally manage to counter-gank Kid in the bottom lane and set up a trap or two for iG.

"The early game collapsed completely. BLQG's ultimate-heavy composition has zero damage. There's just no playing this."

"If we run into NXG in the tournament, how do you think we can win?" PDD asked.

Within the iG roster, Kid and Zz1tai were still teenagers, and since Shadow wasn't particularly fond of talking, PDD's question was implicitly directed at the support, XiaoShao.

XiaoShao knew PDD was referring to the main tournament. Because iG finished third in the City Championship, they were seeded into the pre-season, automatically separated from the winners of the Server Championship and the Media Qualifiers. NXG was placed in Group A, while iG landed in Group C.

"It's hard to say right now. Those old foxes on NXG show completely different faces in scrims versus official matches. In scrims, they're recklessly aggressive, but the moment they step onto the official stage, they play as steady as a thousand-year-old turtle. Until we actually clash with them in an official match, there's basically no reference point."

"Forget it, let's not overthink it. Next round, we'll probably be playing LGD or someone similar. We just need to secure two straight wins and advance directly."

"Even if we do run into them, we aren't scared. We'll just take the fight to them."

"That's the spirit, Lao Pu. We're counting on you then; our bot lane is already prepared to get carried."

"Get lost. If you miss your ultimate again tomorrow, I'm reporting you to the League for match-fixing."

...

On the game stage, the match reached the seventeenth minute.

The score stood at 16:2!

The gold gap exceeded ten thousand, and all outer turrets across the three lanes had fallen.

The five members of the purple team had essentially become "acquaintances" with the gray screen, team captain NovaSlash most of all.

At this moment, the team leader—who had been brimming with bold confidence before the draft last night—had a vacant gaze in his pupils as he muttered under his breath.

"It's fine, we still have a chance."

"So what if there's a ten-thousand gold difference? Our teamfight composition scales well. Once the Jarvan and Kennen land good ultimates, we can turn this around."

"Captain..."

Beside him, the jungler, sweating profusely, couldn't bear to watch his teammate's inability to accept reality anymore and reached out to tug at the corner of his jacket.

Still have a chance?

Where on earth was the chance?

Did he mean the zero-kills-and-six-deaths Kennen, or the Twisted Fate who had only cast his ultimate twice all game and both times died the second he landed?

Or perhaps the Caitlyn who still hadn't managed to complete her second item?

With all outer turrets shattered, they barely had any terrain left to leverage, and the jungle was swallowed in absolute darkness. Their so-called "chance" was nothing more than self-deception.

Crucially, NXG didn't even grant them the opportunity to take a teamfight. From start to finish, NXG was either running around the map or on their way to run around the map. Anyone unaware might have thought the blue team drafted five Hecarims.

"The gap is just too massive..."

"How can a team make zero mistakes?"

"Heh... I feel like after this match, I should just go back to boosting accounts. Pro play and all that..." The BLQG top laner, whose mind had completely shattered from staring at the black-and-white television screen for nineteen minutes, even started harboring thoughts of immediate retirement.

Jiang Ming could never have imagined that his pre-match instruction for his players to perform with some flair would indirectly shatter a group of youngsters' esports dreams on the spot.

Yet, the cruelty of esports was precisely this: either possess extraordinary talent like the mid laner surnamed Lee across the ocean to shatter every barrier in your path, or pack your buckets and leave early to seek a livelihood elsewhere.

In truth, the match on stage could have ended long ago.

However, considering that today was the opening broadcast of the LPL Professional League Pre-season, having a double-digit kill differential and denying the losing team even a twenty-minute surrender window would look truly terrible for optics.

Of course, the current situation wasn't looking much better either.

Opening the official LPL stream on a mobile phone revealed a continuous stream of chat comments complaining about a "bot-level mismatch."

"Cough cough, the gold gap between the two sides has now reached a truly astronomical figure!"

"Fourteen thousand gold—that's equivalent to everyone on the blue side holding a three-thousand-gold major item lead over their counterpart."

"There's just no helping it. Look at the blue AD carry, he's directly leading by a whole Infinity Edge. His damage output is leagues above Caitlyn's. Even if that Varus just stood there auto-attacking without pressing any skills, Caitlyn wouldn't necessarily win a standing duel."

JianKun himself hadn't realized that he was mere years away from coining his own legendary quote.

Joker felt a secret chill in his heart.

His initial familiarity with NXG came from JM's streams while climbing to rank one on the Chinese super server via YY. At first, like many players, he believed that no matter how mechanically skilled a solo queue streamer was, if they fundamentally lacked an understanding of the core mechanics of professional play, blindly entering the scene would make it difficult to stir up any major waves.

Yet looking at it now, that assessment seemed drastically wrong.

The NXG before his eyes had swept all the way from the qualifiers to the current LPL Pre-season, and their performance upon stepping onto the professional stage was even more exaggerated than before.

"Viewed in this light, the rumored 'NXG Devil Training Schedule' circulating online must actually be true. I wonder if that routine could be applied to WE."

As the saying goes, even if business fails, goodwill remains. Joker knew very well that his current foothold in the caster circle was largely due to his identity as a former WE coach. He routinely directed traffic toward WE during his broadcasts, and seeing NXG in such terrifying form, he naturally and subconsciously began considering options for his former team.