You've only been playing for half a year, and you've already reached the finals?

After twelve hours of fermentation, the rating post has basically reached its final form, with the number of comments exceeding 20,000, a number of comments that was only seen in previous S finals!

Very quickly, Ming Jing clicked on it in a flash.

Clicking through and sorting by popularity, I saw my own makeup photo at the top.

[A truly legendary BO5! Fei Shen's performance today was impeccable!]

[This is really alarming! I thought Fei Shen had a mild case based on his symptoms, but it turns out he also has a high fever of 39 degrees Celsius!]

I tested positive for COVID-19 two months ago, with a temperature of 39 degrees Celsius. I was bedridden for two days. Fei Shen was still able to play in the game; he's truly amazing.

[The claim that Guodian is the last pillar of the company is no exaggeration; even with its own problems, it still holds up the sky for Guodian!]

Once you've recovered, I don't know how GEN will beat you up.

That's hard to say, GEN's mid laner DaChao is still pretty strong.

[Is Da Chao considering taking advantage of Fei Shen after reaching the semifinals once? Reaching the quarterfinals every year is a bit ridiculous.]

Although it was a narrow 3-2 victory, it was still a great win, and even the most aggressive fans praised the EDG players.

Viper, in particular, who performed poorly, was given a perfect score by the forum users, who hope that Viper will make a comeback as the Dragon King soon.

The most fun part was Zeka's floor.

Zeka was heavily criticized by fans during the Summer Split due to his poor performance.

But now, seeing Zeka's winning performance, countless netizens who had criticized him have suddenly realized their mistake and are now flooding his comments with "I'm sorry," with thousands of comments neatly arranged, creating a very entertaining scene.

Ming Jing smiled and continued scrolling down, then saw Scout's photo.

Once you get to this floor, the aggressiveness of the forum members is perfectly displayed.

[Poet, hold on! Your performance ruined the efforts of four teammates.]

[Xue÷ is truly the most disgusting player I've ever seen. Look at how you played today! Do you even deserve to be a professional player?]

[When you returned to LCK, you said in an interview that coming to LPL was a last resort, and you were happy to return to LCK. Are you still happy now?]

[What a complete ingrate! If EDG hadn't discovered you, did you really think you could have found a good job? You went back and then secretly sabotaged people; you deserved to be fired.]

[Holding onto the coattails of the Flying God is a dream come true for many players, but you insisted on competing with him for a spot. Now you only have yourself to blame for this predicament. You'll have to suffer the consequences.]

It's shameful enough that he couldn't beat the sick Flying God, but he was also solo-killed three times by a substitute. If this kind of person can still find a job next year, then I'm truly speechless.

After so many years of LOL competitions, there are very few people who can evoke such strong dislike from all sorts of haters, supporters, and trolls on the anti-League forum, and Scout is now one of them.

Simply put, what Scout has done in the last two years has been far too abstract.

He made so much money in the LPL, but when he returned to Korea, he didn't appreciate it at all. He even said that he was forced to come to the LPL in the first place. What a strange person.

In addition, there is Deft's floor.

This time, the forum users didn't have anything nice to say about Deft either.

After all, in the last two games, Deft's performance against Mingjing was simply not up to par.
Especially the last one.

While Scout being repeatedly solo-killed was the main reason for the loss, Deft's inability to contain Jinx with two marksmen was also a crucial factor.

Fans have every reason to believe that if the two sides swapped heroes, Deft would definitely die under the tower.

However, considering that Mr. Dai lost by default today, and that he is also a veteran in the twilight of his career, the attacks from the netizens were only to a certain extent.

Ming Jing happily read through the ratings from ten people, then returned to the homepage to refresh it again, wanting to see if there was anything else interesting.

Soon, a post caught my eye.

Here are some comments from Korean websites.

This is exactly what everyone wants to see. It's just an ordinary repost, but it has already received over a thousand replies and an extraordinary number of over ten thousand likes!

DRX is just the fourth seed from LCK, with little influence, and given EDG's poor performance, DRX has been burdened with undue expectations.

Now that the game has been lost, all those expectations will turn into insults and be directed at DRX!

It's important to know that South Koreans are known for their exceptionally high level of aggression, comparable to, if not stronger than, that of members of the Anti-Japanese War forum.

Koreans really do send dead rats and even send truckloads of wreaths.

[You bastard! I told you long ago, players who have been to the LPL are a no-go. Now you know why?]

[We hope Scout's account will be thoroughly investigated to see if he has any other unknown transactions with EDG!]

Do you really think EDG needs something like this to beat DRX?

When will you guys finally realize that Scout isn't just acting, he's genuinely bad at the game?

[He was originally a player kicked out of EDG, so only DRX was eager to sign him.]

[I heard DRX abandoned Zeka and chose Scout instead? That's hilarious!]

[You guys don't really have high expectations for them, do you? Does being the fourth seed mean they've already succeeded if they don't reach the quarterfinals?]

But they definitely had a chance to win! If we don't capitalize on EDG's weakness, are we just going to wait for them to recover and crush us?

The opportunity has passed; now, just wait for Phi+Viper at their peak to crush GEN.

[This is disgusting! Can we petition the Blue House to ban this guy from the competition?]

Never mind, I'll send them some gifts first!

As expected, the Blue House petition and the truck carrying a dead rat wreath finally arrived, albeit belatedly.

Ming Jing smiled and closed the forum. It was only then that he finally got up and stretched his stiff muscles.

There was a grilled meat and pasta brought by the staff of the Fist League at the door of the room. Ming Jing heated it up briefly and then stuffed it into his mouth.

At this point, several teammates had probably woken up as well, and the EDG team's group chat became active. Abu took on the role of safety inspector and immediately began asking about the status of the five starting players.

"Not bad," Ming Jing typed quickly. "Feeling much better."

As the food transformed into energy and flowed into his limbs and bones, Ming Jing could clearly feel his condition gradually improving.

If things continue at this pace, he should be fully recovered in just a few days.

Viper also gave similar results after a day of intravenous treatment.

It can only be said that EDG's schedule this time was really not friendly.

If the competition had been delayed by just two days, it wouldn't have been this difficult.

"That's not bad!" Abu nodded. "Take a good rest these next few days. After the next three games, you'll be more or less recovered, and then we'll start training again."

Having overcome this difficult hurdle, everyone on EDG had a smile on their face. However, they also understood that the threat of COVID-19 was not completely over. What EDG needed to do was to be extra careful and do their best to ensure the safety of the three uninfected members.

However, Saint Gun is always full of creative ideas. He glanced at the schedule and came up with a brilliant suggestion: let the three uninfected people go out for a run and, with nearly ten days left before the semifinals, quickly infect them.

To be honest, Abu was almost swayed by the suggestion, but ultimately shook his head and rejected it.

This is absolutely ridiculous. You can't joke around with an athlete's health under any circumstances.

They wouldn't be this unlucky forever. After Ming Jing filled his stomach, he played a few ranked matches to warm up, and soon it was 5 p.m. local time.

The second quarterfinal match has officially begun.

Today's match is T1 vs. DK in the lower bracket.

Mingjing had just finished a ranked game and connected to EDG's voice chat for watching the game.

He is paying close attention to the matches in the lower half of the draw.

Especially today's match.

Because DK was EDG's opponent in the group stage, Mingjing had a general understanding of DK's strength.

Ming Jing knew clearly that the team he had fought against for many years had not declined as much as he had imagined, and was still in contention for the championship.

That's why Mingjing needs to assess the strength of the T1 team based on the result of this match.

Because T1 was in the same group as the sick JDG, they didn't show their true strength at all. Mingjing always felt that this team was not simple.

that's the truth.

The result of today's match was a huge surprise to Ming Jing.

It seems that yesterday's decisive game between EDG and DRX inspired them.

In just the first game, T1 directly pulled out their Varus and Ashe double marksman combination, which they often used in the summer split.

The laning strength of the T1 duo is unparalleled in the LCK; they have never found a match in terms of lane dominance.

DK's bot lane duo of Deokdam and Kellin are not exactly strong laners, and given that they also chose a late-game focused combination, being pressured in lane was inevitable.

I just didn't expect that DK's bottom lane would be pressured so much.

That is, control the dragon in five minutes, kill the enemy in seven minutes, and control the vanguard in eight minutes.

Deokdam was sweating profusely under pressure, quickly falling behind by a full thirty CS and even losing a tower, but when he looked up, the game had only been going on for ten minutes.
"Wow!" Meiko exclaimed in the voice chat, "T1's bot lane is pretty strong."

“Indeed.” Ming Jing nodded. “They fought much better than those two from yesterday.”

Mr. Dai's laning phase was passable, but Genshin Impact's brother is not known for his laning skills, so even if the two of them picked two marksmen, they could not pose much of a threat to Ming Jing.

But if we replace them with the two bot laners from T1, and Mingjing puts it in their place, it doesn't feel quite right either.

Based on his condition yesterday, it would be very difficult for him to hold on.

Moreover, T1 isn't just bad at the bot lane.

Zeus on the top lane is also showing his disrespect to Nuguri.

Nuguri has been the undisputed best top laner in the world for the past two years and is considered to be the super top laner who has inherited TheShy's mantle.

But Zeus clearly didn't think that way; he wanted to steal the title of world's best player in this best-of-five series.

And he seems to have actually done it.

Every time the camera cuts to the top lane, you see Zeus' Jayce frantically whipping Nuguri's Aatrox with his spinning top.

This version of Jayce is definitely not easy to beat Aatrox, but Zeus can simply outplay him with pure skill!

DK was overwhelmed by the superior health of their top and bottom lanes, but fortunately Canyon had a keen sense of strategy and decided to go to the mid lane to secure the kill.

Faker seemed to be giving Showmaker a chance, directly giving him a kill.

But this did not prevent the DK's defeat.

The match went on for fifteen minutes. Although the kill score was a boring 1-1, T1 easily accumulated a 2.2K gold lead thanks to their huge lane advantage in the top and bottom lanes!
Later on, even Faker woke up. Taliyah used her W to lift up the two carries in the mid lane during a team fight, helping the team achieve a 2-for-5 exchange and instantly widening the gold difference to 4K!

The subsequent result was naturally without any suspense. T1 snowballed with the same sharpness as EDG, accumulating a 10,000 gold lead in just 22 minutes. Then, they forced a team fight at Baron Nashor and pushed to end the game!
Two words: massacre.

"This is a bit scary." Flandre stopped joking and looked serious. "I feel like they're quite suited to this version."

In terms of understanding the version, T1 is actually very similar to EDG, both prioritizing the early laning phase.

However, EDG usually sacrifices laning phase in the draft phase for the sake of team fight strength, and in rare cases, they may even choose a late-game composition to drag out the game.

In contrast, T1 is much more extreme. They seem to never consider team fights, mindlessly prioritizing laning and believing that as long as they have a large enough laning advantage, the opponent will have no ability to engage in team fights.

It can only be said that the World Championship is a time for teams to compete in terms of understanding. Although T1 and EDG are heading in the same direction, they are still on two different paths.

The second game began quickly amidst the discussion.

After losing the first game, DK seemed to be looking for changes. In the second game, they banned both Ashe and Heimerdinger and first-picked Caitlyn on the blue side to weaken the laning ability of the T1 duo.

However, the T1 duo employed a variety of tactics, directly targeting the Varus and Karma combination, still maximizing their strength.

Fortunately, DK had a new trick up their sleeve. After T1's jungler locked in Sejuani, they immediately picked Kayn as a counter-pick!

Canyon, as the world's top jungler for the past two years, also has its own solutions for this version.

This version has a decent amount of jungle resources, and Maokai and Sejuani have become popular picks after the patch.

When dealing with these herbivore heroes, it's as simple as riding on their heads!
Canyon's choice was definitely the right one.

Even though Kayn is relatively weak before transforming, he can still invade Sejuani whenever he wants.

Even invading is secondary; extracting energy from the old pig is the key.

Oner was completely overwhelmed by the counter-attacks and could only call for the laners to come and defend the jungle.

However, this weakens T1's laning dominance.

Thanks to Canyon's performance, DK did not fall behind significantly in this game, and were only down by 1,000 after 15 minutes.

Judging from the lineups of both sides, a deficit of one thousand is completely acceptable!

However, this did not change the outcome of the failure.

The greatest asset of the T1 team will never be the young and sharp skills of the four young players.

Rather, it is the experience and understanding that mid-laner Faker has accumulated over many years.

With the Shurima network activated, Faker commanded his four teammates as if he were controlling a sand soldier, and the five of them seamlessly split-pushed and moved into the vision.

In the subsequent dragon team fight, Gumayusi's Varus unleashed his ultimate, heading straight for Showmaker and successfully forcing him to use Flash.

Faker seized the opportunity and decisively entered the fray with WEQ, pushing both of DK's carries into his own ranks, helping his team secure a decisive team fight victory!

After falling into a 0-2 deficit, DK's overall awareness became increasingly scattered, and Deokdam seemed to be in a daze, completely unaware of what he was doing.

Keria is always good at ordering food. He analyzed the terrible state of DK's bottom lane almost instantly, so he went all out and used Lena to Q-flash forward to control her after getting her to level 2 first!
Without much communication, Gumayusi understood immediately. Kalista leaped forward and, with the help of the support's crowd control, easily secured a kill in the lane!

"First blood!"

With the emergence of the two-level kill, the outcome of the match became a foregone conclusion.

Another ruthless sweep, T1 took 27 minutes to deliver another crushing defeat to DK!
With a score of 3-0, T1 utilized their unique understanding of the current version to secure a decisive victory against DK in their first encounter, becoming the second team to advance to the semifinals! (End of Chapter)