Chapter 567

When the Qing Steel Shadow landed, Ryze's ultimate vortex appeared together in front of VG's mid lane first tower.

Surrounded on three sides, Xiao Duan directly used RE to give the team a speed boost, and the three grouped together and ran toward the bottom river direction.

The Qing Steel Shadow chased from behind, E-flash WE spanned over two thousand yards, the needle-sharp toe almost missed stabbing Karma who was running last.

However, the edge of the tactical sweep swept over Varus in front of Karma.

The Karma nearest to the Qing Steel Shadow only took a little damage, while Varus was afflicted with a slow.

"Brothers, run fast, don't worry about me!"

Gangzi knew he couldn't flash and would die, so he turned and cast a Corrupting Chain to try to hold someone, but ended up being dodged by the Qing Steel Shadow's ultimate.

A Hextech Ultimatum landed, Gangzi was left behind, and he also bounced Xiao Duan's Karma back, effectively holding two.

Fu Lan Duo's ultimate also landed on Gangzi at the same time.

Meanwhile, over a thousand yards away, Ryze had already emerged from the vortex with Mang Seng.

A 4v5 team fight, equipment disadvantage, summoner spell disadvantage, the outcome of this fight was already a foregone conclusion; although Liang Yan's mechanics were monstrous, as an underdeveloped assassin, in such a big team fight without teammates helping create kill opportunities, no matter how good his mechanics, it was hard to change the outcome of the team fight.

If one were to say the result differed, it would merely be a matter of how many could be traded or escaped.

After over ten seconds, VG suffered a crushing team fight loss, with the top and bottom three all dead, yet they only managed to trade for Smeb's Qing Steel Shadow alone.

Because Liang Yan was still alive, KT did not want to give him a chance to contest the punishment, so they incomparably cautiously gave up attacking the dragon—simply overly cautious; to someone with a god's-eye view, KT's decision this time to not attack the dragon was completely unreasonable.

KT chose to group up and push down two of VG's towers.

The middle first and second towers collapsed with a boom, and VG's early-game accumulated advantage vanished completely.

And what troubled VG most was that, in that recent team fight, VG gave up three kills, two of which were taken by Smeb.

In over twenty minutes, they would have to face an invincible, heavily fed Azure Steel Shadow equipped with Mercury Boots, Threefold, Giant Nine, and Revive Armor; Liang Yan also had no good options, could only try to stall as much as possible, attempting to find the opponent's opening and turn the situation around.

KT was very clear about where their composition's strength lay; the four of them basically gave no opportunity at all—whenever Azure Steel Shadow was laning, the vision in the half opposite to where they were laning would definitely be lit up by KT's dense wards.

VG could not possibly move against KT's remaining four, who were focused on defense.

As for catching Azure Steel Shadow, if the jungler went alone they would be giving up a double kill; they needed to bring another person to have a chance to beat him. But being able to beat him does not mean they could catch and kill him.

Azure Steel Shadow was simply too agile.

And Smeb's individual strength was also quite outstanding; he not only had extremely excellent mechanics, but also a very keen sense of danger. When VG's jungler and support disappeared simultaneously, even if KT's others gave no warning, Smeb could still sense the anomaly. Changing champions might perhaps allow a time-difference catch and kill him, but this champion, Azure Steel Shadow, could rank among the top five hardest-to-catch champions in the entire league.

Team fights couldn't get started, Azure Steel Shadow couldn't be caught, and the solo laner Fu Lan Duo put on a suffering mask; at nearly thirty minutes, Fu Lan Duo finally couldn't hold up, and after her health had been halved in the previous wave, Smeb landed a tower-diving solo kill on her.

Liang Yan couldn't blame Fu Lan Duo for not returning home at half health, because with Azure Steel Shadow's equipment, if Fu Lan Duo went back once she would lose a tower; therefore he could only hope Fu Lan Duo could hold out, and it was understandable if she couldn't—though frankly, being able to encounter such a rare opportunity to see Fu Lan Duo's true limits, Liang Yan was also very willing.

Fu Lan Duo's death this time cost VG a huge price.

KT still did not go for the dragon, but taking the opportunity they pushed down VG's remaining two second-tier towers in one go. By this point, VG's all outer towers were down, while KT's three second-tier towers remained completely unscathed.

With all outer towers lost, VG began to fall into a huge disadvantage in terms of vision.

Resources in Ye Qu were inevitably being devoured.

The three small dragons after the second also all fell into KT's hands. In this match there were four small dragons: two earth, one fire, one water. Liang Yan could not risk going to contest them, because he knew that if he fell, KT would surely take the dragon; thus VG only obtained the very first water dragon.

The economic gap kept widening, and by the forty-minute mark VG's economic disadvantage finally exceeded eight thousand gold. But they were still stubbornly resisting.

Until Liang Yan finally fell in a team fight.

The battle erupted on VG's high ground, KT's economic advantage having already surpassed ten thousand—although at this point, when both sides' three cores already had six items, discussing the economic gap was meaningless; VG had two lanes' high grounds broken by Azure Steel Shadow, and the third lane's high ground was about to be broken.

At the point where they could no longer stall, Fu Lan Duo took on the responsibility of initiating the fight, using E-flash to stab at the Azure Steel Shadow in front, hoping to concentrate all the team's firepower to instantly kill the Azure Steel Shadow that had lost its Revive Armor in the previous team fight.

However Smeb reacted in time, using his ultimate to dodge the taunt while simultaneously landing on Fu Lan Duo's head.

This was the final team fight for both sides, and the result was VG trading five for three.

The first dragon was still alive, the ancient dragon was still alive, but KT no longer needed to go for the dragon; the three surviving members directly pushed forward and flattened VG's Ji Di in one go.

The red side's Ji Di's large crystal exploded with a boom.

The prolonged battle finally ended, and everyone simultaneously let out a sigh of relief.

The duration of this match's combat was ultimately fixed at fifty-nine minutes and thirty-three seconds.

On the LCK commentary desk, the already hoarse-voiced Roaring Emperor Quan Yongjun excitedly jumped up, shouting loudly a few times like venting frustration, then embraced the other two LCK commentators, celebrating with wah-lah wah-lah, the three of them getting excited as if LCK had won the championship at the S tournament.

Actually it's no surprise; in the previous game VG 'speed-ran' KT in under thirty minutes, bringing them huge pressure, their hearts filled with fear of being swept 0-3 by VG—

But fortunately!

Looking at this game, VG did not have a decisive strength advantage over KT!

Just that, one thing the LCK commentators deliberately avoided mentioning was first brought up by the LPL commentators after the match, and they repeatedly pondered it.

Why didn't KT go for the dragon?

Guan Zeyuan frowned deeply:

"Well, congratulations again to KT for taking back a game; let's review this match. First, I have a question that I've mentioned multiple times during the just-finished match—I'm really, really curious: this match's duration is only less than half a minute away from one hour, breaking the record set by the TSM vs. FW match in the group stage, becoming the longest combat duration in this season's Mid-Season Invitational, yet what's very strange is!"

"In this near-one-hour epic bladder endurance challenge!"

"Both sides actually didn't even fight a single dragon!!"