The last day of the group match, the god of support, Little Fatty, returned to the stage for the match against TANK, from the North American region. Though some of the fans were still mulling over the loss to the Taiwan region the day before, it was comforting to know that ZGDX had already qualified for the quarter-finals with 4 wins and 1 loss in the group!
ZGDX would even take the first place in B group if they could beat TANK today. Then they would be able to avoid going against the two Korean teams in the quarter-finals which had both won first place in their respective groups.
This was definitely good news for LPL fans--
Though the fans were saying that the players should swim back to China if they didn’t win the championship, they were actually very aware of the reality and thought: at least get into the semi-finals this year!!!
As the fans were praying that ZGDX placed first in the group, ZGDX got lucky, just as they had wished-).
Originally Team C was also the possible contender for first place in B group since they had only lost to ZGDX in the first round and had an undefeated record for the second round. But before the match between ZGDX and TANK, on the last day of the group match, Taiwan’s Team C, quite unexpectedly, lost to the wild card team Bear!!!!
It was a jaw-dropping defeat.
This year’s wild card teams were truly different from the other years. Bear not only had a 10,000 gold advantage over ZGDX in one of the matches, now they also were able to defeat C!
The match against C was the very last match for Bear. When the match was over, Commentator D stood up and announced to the audience: [Ladies and Gentlemen, let’s thank Team Bear from Russia! As a true archer, they shot an arrow straight into the universe and let everyone witness the perseverance of the wild card region!]
After they finished their last group match, Bear didn’t qualify for the quarter-finals. Yet when they walked to the front of the stage with Team C to bow and wave goodbye to the audience, the entire audience stood up and chanted their team name in unison--
The cheering surprised and delighted the five Bear players. they bowed one after another until their eyes began to moisten.
Thanks to Team Bear! Wish them good luck! Thank you Bear for letting us witness the esports spirit of perseverance and never giving up at this year’s world competition -- --I think this shows the importance of holding the S series competitions. All of you are on the same path, chasing after victory, all of you are the same-- --
……
The same brilliance, like bright stars!
The applause was as loud as thunder.
The players of Bear and C, all ten of them, held hands and bowed 90 degrees before leaving the stage.
……
Amid all the bustle, the very last group match for B group was about to begin. While the audience was cheering for the wild card team, they could clearly see the players of ZGDX walking up to the stage one by one and sitting down in their positions.
Tong Yao and Little Fatty walked out from backstage while chatting and laughing. They turned to sit down at the positions for mid and support and put on their headphones. There was another commotion among the audience--
Commentator D: Awww! Look what I saw! Our Smiling! Our mid queen is finally sitting back at the position she’s best at. The AP carry position that dictates the life or death of their enemies and the outcome of the match!
Commentator E: As we can see now, there's a smile on her face. She must be feeling quite relieved at the moment……“*bleep* *bleep* *bleep*, I’ll never buy sightstone again!”
Commentator F: Hey, you two, can you not just focus on the girl. What we miss the most obviously is ZGDX’s support Fatty who was missing from the arena for two days.
Commentator D: Yes, yes, we certainly missed a lot of Fatty’s exquisite way of placing wards and his map awareness. He always seems to be able to make full use of the 4 ward items available to illuminate the enemy's whole jungle!
Commentator E: Welcome back! Fatty daddy! ZGDX can’t afford to lose again!
Commentator F: ..................................
The players naturally couldn’t hear the teasing from the three commentators. At the moment, they had already entered the ban & pick phase of the match-- --
Lu Sicheng: “The other side’s mid isn’t very strong. They are a top carry team. Let’s take the champion for mid first. What do you want, silly?”
Tong Yao: “Someone who can kill! Kill!”
Lu Sicheng: .......
Tong Yao could hear her teammates giggling in their team chat channel. Little Fatty sighed: “All she could think about is killing today.”
Old K also sighed: “I’m going to stay at mid today so she won’t get attacked too badly. The rest of you, you’re on your own……”
Tong Yao: “Let me see. Leblanc is out of the question. Don’t want Kassadin. Ekko isn’t fun when you guys ask me to go tanky as we play-- --What other assassin champions are there?”
Ming god: “There are quite a few: Jayce, Lissandra, Aurelion Sol, Syndra……”
Tong Yao quickly said: “Ahri! Give me Ahri, I want to get a penta-kill!”
Lu Sicheng: “Do you know how to play Ahri?”
Tong Yao: “Are there any assassin champions that I don’t know how to play? Give me Ahri.”
Ming god: “......You know they’ll chew you out if they find out that you ignored the opinion of the data analyst and just did the ban & pick willy nilly?”
Tong Yao pulled off her headphones. This time she didn’t ignore Ming god but said to him: “Hehe, I’ve been bullied for two days and was almost suffocated at bot. I played Lulu for two days and the only glorious moments were when I took our Captain’s first blood for 400 gold and snatched our Captain’s penta-kill. You were all killing enemies while I could only hide in the back to “polymorph into sheep!”, “become big!”, “run fast!” To hell with polymorph! To hell with becoming big! I want to kill the enemy too!”
Amid Tong Yao’s ranting, Ming god patted Old Cat’s shoulder and let Old Cat lock in Ahri for Tong Yao-- --This was the first time Ahri was used in this year’s world competition. The moment Ahri was locked in, there were cheers and applause from the audience to welcome Tong Yao back to the carry position!
Tong Yao seemed to feel the vibe in the arena: “Though we can’t hear it with the headphones on, the commentators and the audience must be talking about how deep my champion pool is.”
Little Fatty: “I feel like they’re cheering for my return.”
Old K: “You went from eating hot pot to checking into the hospital and caused the team to lag behind a wild card team by 10,000 gold and a loss to Taiwan…… Are you sure they’re cheering for you? Yesterday, I saw a fangirl of yours on Tieba who has turned into an anti-fan. She said why didn’t you eat till you’ve died?”
Little Fatty: “Is that true?”
Old Cat: “It certainly isn’t true. When did you have fangirls?”
Little Fatty: .........
Listening to his teammates, Lu Sicheng looked up to glance over the audience, then lazily said: “They do look quite excited. Don’t know whether they’re talking about what’s wrong with your brain to choose Ahri which no one would bother banning or fighting for or praising your deep champion pool.”
Tong Yao slightly squinted her eyes and turned to give Lu Sicheng a glance: “Lu Sicheng, though I’m not playing support now, I can still walk from mid to bot to snatch your kills. Ahri runs rather fast.”
Lu Sicheng: “Oh, I’m so scared.”
Ming god pat Tong Yao’s head from behind with his clipboard: “You guys are happy that you’re already qualified for the quarter-finals, hum? Losing to TANK means you’ll get second in the group and you’ll meet TAT in the quarter-finals, does that matter to you guys?”
Tong Yao thought about Ah Tai from TAT and shut her mouth as a sudden wave of nervousness washed over her. Lu Sicheng noticed the sudden silence over the headphones and hissed. He cast his eyes down and said leisurely: “You’ll meet him sooner or later, what’s there to be afraid of?”
As they were chatting, the ban & pick phase finished, the players locked in their champions and the game officially began.
Little Fatty was right saying that all Tong Yao was thinking about today was killing.
Tong Yao’s Ahri chased after the other side’s Ekko all over the place. Three minutes into the game, she worked with Old K to force Ekko to use up both of his summoner abilities and go back to base, losing a large wave of minions. Five minutes into the game, Tong Yao reached level 6 and used flash and ignite to kill Ekko, taking the first blood of the match!
The other side’s Ekko was only at level 5 and half.
Another wave of minions arrived but Ekko couldn’t get any experience from it. All the experience and money was given to their team’s jungler. Old K noticed that the other side’s jungler was helping with farming at mid. He took the chance to go to top, helping Old Cat hold his ground--
TANK’s top was a veteran player. The team relied on their top to carry the team to the world championship. It was said that there was no top champion that this player couldn’t handle. Some even said that he was the North American version of Jin Yuguang.
Old Cat was having a bit of a hard time facing the enemy top’s playstyle. In the early stage of the game, their economies were almost equal, the only difference was from the first blood. The reason being that Old Cat was behind in farming. His creep score was exactly the same as the enemy mid who was being suppressed by Tong Yao!
After TANK’s mid died and missed two and a half waves of minions, the team started to fall apart, not even their top could do anything to save it. Their bot could only stay under the turret. Except for their top, TANK’s other two lanes obviously didn’t know how to continue playing the game.
In the 11th minute, Tong Yao once again killed the opposing mid.
At the same time, Lu Sicheng worked together with Little Fatty’s Braum at bot to kill the enemy support, Thresh--
ZGDX took down the first enemy turret at bot and the first Infernal Drake.
Killing the Infernal Drake decided the direction of how the match would play out. After taking her first blue buff, Tong Yao worked with Old K and began invading the enemy jungle. They walked freely around TANK’s jungle and challenged any enemy they met there. All of TANK’s players, except their top, were taking turns dying to Tong Yao……
At the 22nd minute, Tong Yao killed the enemy jungler. ZGDX fought Baron as a group and successfully killed their first Baron. With the Baron buff, they were able to take down three of the enemy's outer turrets. During their defense of the top part of their base, TANK gambled on a teamfight when their jungler respawned. The first second Ekko moved in, Old Cat’s Mega Gnar slapped him into the wall. Lu Sicheng’s Kog’Maw kept spitting out slime. When the enemy all had a foot in the grave, Tong Yao’s Ahri arrived to reap the kills!
From that second onward, captions constantly appear with an image of Ahri at the center of the screen-- --
Double kill!
Triple kill!
Quadra kill!
-- --Penta kill!
Ace!
In the end even the commentators jumped up from excitement. They shouted in celebration of the first penta-kill in this year’s S series competition. On the screen, one last caption appeared next to Ahri’s image: “Godlike”.
Commentator D: This LPL! The region famous for picking a fight! Today we’ve seen the tempo we’re familiar with. In the past four years (the LPL region didn’t participate in S1), we’ve called this: LPL tempo!!!!
Commentator F: This isn’t the ending the North American region would like to see. As we can now see a resigned expression on Crazy Horse (top of Team TANK)......
Commentator D: Let’s congratulate the LPL! Congratulations to ZGDX! They won the match with the sudden team fight around the 27 minute mark and aced TANK. They will secure first place in B group!
……
ZGDX played the last group match with TANK quite smoothly. When they destroyed TANK’s base, the audience was jumping up and down in excitement--
About an hour later, the optimism ended.
After all the groups finished the group matches, the eight teams that qualified drew lots to decide on their opponent in the quarter-finals. The results of the other LPL teams in the group matches were: CK had defeated OP twice and qualified for the quarter-finals as first in their group like ZGDX; YQCB lost to TAT and qualified for the quarter-finals as the second place in their group.
Before the drawing, fans were quite happy. LPL had two teams that were first in their respective groups! They were tied with the Korean region!
After the drawing, fans couldn’t be happy anymore because the result of the drawing was-- --
CK would go against the second place team in D group, European region’s G4.
ZGDX would go against the second place team in C group, Korea’s OP.
YQCB would go against the first place team in D group, Korea’s RP.
After the drawing, the atmosphere on Tieba was miserable and gloomy.
(Subject) Be optimistic. At least we have three teams qualifying for the quarter-finals, much better than last year.
(Subject) Be reasonable. CK’s in such a good condition. It shouldn’t be too hard to defeat G4 to go to the semi-finals?
(Subject) ZGDX has used up all its luck in the group matches. Damn, how can YQCB get OP, ahhhhh!
(Subject) How will Smiling compare to Jin Yuguang? Her game with Ahri today makes me optimistic that they’ll probably have a four to six chance……
(Subject) Very nice, very exhilarating. It looks like even if CK was second in the group, they would’ve drawn TAT…… Hrm, have the finals started early? I’m looking forward to it.