Chapter 491: No-name rookie

On the fourth day after arriving in Nanjing, the sparring partners also had a day off.

No choice, VG could only play ranked matches to keep their feel. Of course, EDG was the same in that regard. Fortunately, there weren't many days left, and as the finals approached, some non-match-related work also had to be done; starting on the 27th, VG members each afternoon had to set aside time to attend rehearsals, which were actually some necessary procedures before and after the match, such as the opening ceremony segment and the moment of victory.

As for EDG, rehearsing the moment of victory was a bit awkward. Although no one in EDG said it outright, everyone showed a spirit of hard training for the finals, but in fact, every EDG member knew deep down that this spring championship was practically already decided to go to VG.

So this victory rehearsal, EDG was essentially just a sparring partner; every time they thought of this, EDG members attending the rehearsal would feel awkward—acting as if they could really win, finding it funny themselves—wasn't this clownish?

But the procedures still had to be followed; however, EDG seemed a bit careless about them, and the event staff in charge probably knew as well, so they didn't voice any opinion about EDG members' lackadaisical attitude during the rehearsals.

Two days passed in a flash, and the finals day finally arrived.

Since there were no practice matches scheduled, on the day of the finals VG members woke up relatively late. When Liang Yan went downstairs to eat breakfast, he saw Mingkai sitting alone at a table eating breakfast; Liang Yan greeted him, picked a few items with his tray, and sat down beside Mingkai.

Mingkai casually brought up a topic and chatted with Liang Yan:

"The qualifying round started last night—did you watch it?"

"Has it started? I didn't notice; I fell asleep before 1 a. m."

Liang Yan shook his head, broke off a small piece of youtiao and stuffed it in his mouth, took a sip of millet porridge, then asked: "How was it? Any strong teams?"

Mingkai grinned and gave a four‑word evaluation: "Chickens pecking at each other."

Liang Yan also smiled and said offhand: "Looks like INTZ isn't around."

Mingkai's smile froze for a moment, but he quickly recovered, pointing his spoon at Liang Yan and saying: "You'll get your comeuppance."

Liang Yan lowered his head to drink the porridge, mumbled: "Then come invade my jungle."

Mingkai then fell silent.

They were talking about MSI.

The annual Mid-Season Invitational had already begun at 2 a. m. the previous night.

This event is organized directly by Riot Games, an international tournament second only to the year‑end World Championship; the first edition was in 2015, this year is the third, and as the tournament scale expands year by year, its prestige also increases—this year a qualifying stage was added, allowing more wildcard regions to participate.

What started last night was the qualifying round.

In the 2017 MSI main event (group stage) there were six spots total; the teams from the three regions that ranked highest in the combined results of MSI and the World Championship for 2015‑2016—EU, LCK, and LPL—did not need to play the qualifiers, while the other regions had to compete in the qualifying round to vie for the remaining three spots.

The qualifying round consists of two rounds; the first round has eight participating teams.

Group A

Ba Xi (CBLOL): RedCanids (RED)

Turkey (TCL): SuperMassive (SUP)

Oceania (OPL): DireWolves (DW)

Japan (LJL): Rampage (RPG)

Group B

Northern Latin America (LLN): LyonGaming (LYN)

Southeast Asia (GPL): GIGABYTEMarines (GAM)

Southern Latin America (CLS): IsurusGaming (ISG)

CIS (LCL): Virtus. Pro (VP)

The two wildcard teams that performed impressively at last year's World Championship, ANX and INTZ, were not on the qualifying round roster.

ANX lost its spot because its core players left, its regular‑season performance dropped, and it was defeated in the first playoff round by the season's champion VP, ultimately failing to secure its region's representative berth.

INTZ's situation was somewhat better than ANX's; it tied for first with RedCanids in the regular season of its league, advanced to the playoff finals, but lost the final to RedCanids, so it did not appear on this year's MSI qualifying roster—this gave Changzhang the courage to say "Chickens pecking at each other."

Continuing with the qualifying round format, after the two groups' internal Bo1 round‑robin ends, the top‑scoring team from each group advances to the second round of the qualifiers, which is a Bo5 elimination stage.

In the elimination stage, the two teams that advanced from the previous round will each face FW from the LMS region and TSM from the NA region; the four teams will compete under a double‑elimination format (a total of three Bo5 matches) to eliminate one team, ultimately deciding the three main‑event spots.

Nowadays, the only region whose global playoffs haven't finished yet is the LPL.

In other words, the MSI qualifying round has already begun, but the LPL region still hasn't determined its participating team.

Naturally, this LPL final has attracted extra attention from other regions, with everyone waiting to see which LPL team comes out on top and waiting for the final MSI main‑event spot to be decided.

Many foreign netizens who had never previously followed the LPL only found out now about the man who almost deserved the title of "the lone star" on last year's World Championship—

Firrrrrre,

He has actually joined an obscure LPL team: VG.

Out of curiosity, many foreign netizens looked up VG's team history and discovered that its previous best achievement was merely winning a single playoff round, yet this year it burst onto the scene with an undefeated regular season, and even more frighteningly, VG is only one Bo5 away from a flawless playoff run and championship.

If VG can win this Bo5 3‑0 against its opponent, it will become the third team in League of Legends history to achieve a "perfect championship" record, and prior to yesterday only one team—FNC—had accomplished that.

After that comes G2.

G2 is last year's World Championship champion, its prestige is now high, people aren't surprised that it could achieve this feat, and G2 is also one of the top favorites to win this year's MSI according to overseas mainstream predictions.

But VG?

Who is it?

No-name rookie!