Chapter 103: Verifying the Results

The LPL playoffs began the day before yesterday.

Today is the day the Snake vs. IM match begins.

From the day we started practice matches with Snake by coincidence, up to today, over two months have passed.

Over the past two months, in practice matches against Snake, in WeChat chats with Fu Lan Duo and Shuijing Ge, and in countless subtle details unnoticed by others, many efforts Liang Yan made to change the course of certain events are hidden.

Liang Yan is not the type to enjoy teaching others, nor does he like manipulating people's fates to gain some perverse sense of achievement.

He simply wants to make up for a certain regret in his heart.

— In Liang Yan's view, Snake of the S6 season is fully qualified and capable of entering the S6 World Championship.

The LPL's third seed for the S6 World Championship should be Snake, not IM, which after entering S6 would pick some retro lineups like playing monkey and then inevitably get crushed by LCK and North America.

IM's advancement to S6 is a miracle in LPL history, no doubt, but if they had a choice, they might be willing to give up that spot, because the S6 journey would be pure torment for them, and their player lineup is destined to be unable to adapt to that version.

In contrast, looking at Snake, from that historic qualifying match it's clear their version understanding was fine; at the time their champion selection already showed a tendency toward S6 strong lineups, and even at the final moment, exhausted, they were still trying to adjust their lineup, yet they ultimately lost—not due to a skill gap, but because of Bo10.

All of Liang Yan's efforts are aimed at preventing Snake's Bo10.

As for whether this might cause other teams to fall into the Bo10 trap, Liang Yan doesn't care; he just wants to see, if Snake were sent to S6, what their performance would be—nothing more.

Today is the time to verify the results.

After Liang Yan entered the training room, he sat silently before the computer for a long time, doing nothing, just closing his eyes to rest his spirit; occasionally fragments of his memories of the past two months with Snake flashed through his mind, and these fragments ultimately summed up into a conclusion.

Liang Yan believes in himself.

So he also believes in Snake.

Will win…

After telling himself this answer in his heart, Liang Yan opened his eyes, turned on the computer, opened a webpage, entered the LPL English-stream live broadcast, and put on his headphones.

The electronic clock on the wall just hit 7:00.

Back home it was 1:00 p. m.

The two English-stream commentators chatted for a while, then the pick-and-ban phase began.

Liang Yan doesn't recall the lineup Snake used in this match in another timeline, but at this moment, in the first game of this Bo5 underway, the lineup Snake has picked is already very close to the perfect answer of the First Blood Tower version.

And after the match began, Snake's tactical choices made Liang Yan's eyes light up.

……

Around nine o'clock, G2 team members gradually arrived at the training room.

As soon as everyone entered, they saw Liang Yan wearing headphones watching the match, feeling somewhat puzzled; Liang Yan watched intently, so they didn't come over to disturb him.

Even Ka Lao Si, who usually starts shouting as soon as he walks in, today deliberately lowered his voice and spoke softly; only when it was getting close to ten o'clock did Liang Yan take off his headphones, and then everyone became lively again.

Lao Zhang knew Liang Yan was watching Snake's match, and asked with a smile:

"How's it going, who won?"

"Snake, three to one."

Liang Yan answered with a smile, his eyes flashing with bright light.

Yes, we won.

Snake successfully advanced to the LPL playoffs semifinals.

This means that even if Snake loses the upcoming semifinals and even the third-place match, they are guaranteed to secure the World Championship points for fourth place in the summer split, plus the points from fifth place in the spring split, totaling 150 points in hand.

This also means that in the future qualifiers, Snake will at worst secure a spot to compete in the second round, without needing to start from the very first match on day one.

That nightmarish Bo10 has completely disappeared on this timeline.

More optimistically, if Snake loses the semifinals but wins the third-place match, they would earn 200 points for third place plus 60 points from the spring split, bringing their annual World Championship points to 260, meaning the qualifiers would require only a single Bo5.

Regardless of future outcomes, Liang Yan is very satisfied with today's result.

He has flapped his wings so many times, finally stirring up a gale strong enough to alter the entire course of history!

……

The next day, the Europe playoffs began.

The Europe region has fewer teams than the LPL, so the playoff slots are also fewer; only six teams qualify for the playoffs, all matches are best-of-five single elimination, and the entire schedule, including the third-place match, totals only six games.

And as the team with the highest regular-season points, G2 has the right to skip the first round in the playoffs, directly awaiting a challenger from the two winners of the first round in the second-round slot.

According to the playoff advancement rules, the team challenging G2 must come from the regular-season fifth or sixth place, namely either GIA or UOL.

The match between GIA and UOL is also the playoffs' opening match.

In the eyes of the G2 team, the match between those two teams is hardly different from chickens pecking at each other; nobody had any interest in watching the livestream, and Ka Lao Si and Tang Anna felt the same, so that day's team schedule proceeded with training as usual.

Liang Yan took a moment to open the match livestream and check the first game's pick-and-ban, discovering both teams were still using the regular-season BP system, so he also lost interest in continuing to watch.

Of course, this doesn't rule out the possibility that the two teams have hidden tricks, so Liang Yan also checked the fourth game's pick-and-ban for both teams; seeing no change, he utterly couldn't be bothered to look again.

It's not that he looks down on them; for a team that, even at this life-or-death juncture, is unwilling to bring out something new, there's really no need to look further.

Even if they have hidden tricks, at least they should practice them in a real match to see the effect; otherwise, when they reach a crucial game, do they really have the courage to pull it out? Even if they dare to use it, they probably lack confidence in their own hearts.

The opening match ultimately ended with UOL defeating GIA three to one; as the victor, UOL will challenge G2 in the second round of the elimination bracket.

Three days later, the result of the other first-round match also came out.

H2K swept FNC 3-0 to send them packing.

After the match, FNC fans fell silent, pretending to be dead, while H2K fans rejoiced wildly, brushing up their presence online; for a moment, the clamor for H2K to win the championship surged.

G2, however, made not a sound.

Even Ka Lao Si stopped posting on Twitter; the training schedule was entirely delegated to Tang Anna, while he himself each day buried himself in that notebook, which contained his own musings, Tang Anna's analytical conclusions, the teammates' conjectures raised in meetings, and Liang Yan's occasional input of ideas and suggestions.

Days passed one by one.

The bustling outside world and the quiet G2 base were like two separate worlds.

And after August 20th passed, finally no one online mentioned H2K winning the championship.