Chapter 588: What a grudge!

Liang Yan's maneuvers were fluid and graceful, a pleasure to watch.

Smeb hooked the wall and flashed out of the jungle exit, but since he wasn't targeting any enemy, he didn't trigger the double distance effect of his second-stage E dash.

Green Steel Shadow didn't pull far away, and Liang Yan followed up with his spear.

In the midst of his busyness, Smeb glanced at the minimap; the crocodile had already pushed the minion wave into the tower and was now flanking from this side.

"……"

Smeb felt a surge of frustration, but having no recourse, he abandoned the idea of retreating to the first tower and instead stepped a few paces into the second tower to hide.

Seeing this, Liang Yan raised his hand to signal the enemy's first tower, indicating that Fu Lan Duo need not come over, and he himself marched over with his spear.

The LCK commentators, watching this scene, couldn't help but wail.

"Oh no! Song Jinghao can't get back!"

"How annoying! Why won't this guy go home?! What on earth is he trying to do to the gods and demons?! He's been bullying our Jinghao!"

"What should we do? The top lane looks like it's about to have its tower taken down!"

"Pawn has respawned, Gao Dongbin is on his way over; maybe we can hold, but not necessarily..."

"Ah, damn..."

"Defend?"

"Mang Seng, still not level six at eight minutes, what can he defend with!"

VG's two jungle players simply stood behind the tower and were tearing it down, directly blocking the path that KT's two players would take from the jungle back to the first tower.

Score, warding and smashing explosive fruits along the way, hurriedly eventually met up with Smeb; the two approached hesitantly.

Fu Lan Duo then stopped tearing down the tower, walked to the edge of the defense tower's attack range, and stood there like a roadblock tiger, glaring at the two KT players.

Meanwhile, Liang Yan's spear-wielding champion continued to tear down the tower.

After a brief stalemate, the defense tower's remaining health had dropped below one-third.

This amounted to giving KT an easy way out—since its health was low anyway, losing it wouldn't matter much, so they might as well let it go.

Score turned around directly, launched a Heavenly Sound Wave into the jungle, then followed with a double-leg kick that struck the Magic Swamp Frog. To be safe, he aimed to clear the upper-jungle monsters before VG's two players finished tearing down the tower, otherwise there was a risk of the spear-wielding champion bringing the crocodile to counter-jungle.

But doing so meant that this blue buff would be unavailable to Pawn, who had just returned to lane and taken over the wave Easyhoon had pushed; he could not temporarily leave mid lane, or else even the first mid tower would be at risk of being pushed down by Easyhoon.

When KT's first tower fell, VG began actively swapping lanes; all players on the three lanes recalled to base and then departed with newly assigned lanes.

Liang Yan finally returned home as well; the snowball had already started rolling, so there was no need to continue with an extreme build path, and he then pulled out the green jungle knife.

Moreover, he produced a level-three jungle knife in one go.

"Nine minutes or so, a level-three jungle knife plus two longswords on the spear-wielding champion! Jiao Shen's development this game can only be described as terrifying!"

"Jiao Shen has taken off; now I feel at ease."

"You feel at ease, right?"

"Completely at ease."

"Better days are still ahead!"

"Hahaha..."

The spear-wielding champion (take-off version) headed out toward the lower half of the map, helped Easyhoon grab a blue buff while clearing the lower-jungle monsters, then entered the river, slipped past the sleeping little dragon, and placed a ward through the wall into KT's red-buff jungle area.

Liang Yan crouched at the bottom of the little dragon pit, waited a few seconds, saw no one, then immediately flashed his spear over the wall, hit an explosive fruit to vault over, and landed in the Stone Armor Beetle camp.

At that moment, Smeb, who was also following VG's lane swap, stood in front of the tower waiting to receive the lane.

"Is Jiao Shen simply coming to counter-jungle, or...?"

"This guy, he wouldn't be going after Smeb again, would he?!"

"Sheng Qiang Ge is pushing the lane, and Jiao Shen's ultimate is ready too, so it's possible. However, Smeb has flash and his ultimate... feels not so easy to catch."

"I want to ask the factory chief: if it were you right now, what would you choose?"

The factory chief thought for a moment, then slowly said:

"The spear-wielding champion's equipment is quite luxurious; his damage is actually sufficient. As long as the crocodile can land a red-anger W first to bite down and prevent Camille from shielding, we can burst him down with a full combo."

The crocodile's quick lane-push action alerted Smeb; before the minion wave reached the tower, Smeb went out and placed a ward in the Triangular Grass.

However, at that moment the spear-wielding champion had already cleared the Stone Armor Beetles and was crouched in the broken-wall grass behind KT's second tower.

Smeb's ward turned out to be lonely.

Afterwards the minion wave entered the tower, and Fu Lan Duo paced back and forth in front of it, waiting for Liang Yan's command to engage.

Liang Yan remained silent, still observing.

Because Mata's Galio had roamed to mid lane, already reached level six and had his ultimate ready; at this point it looked like he might be moving down to assist.

Although the combined damage of the spear-wielding champion and the crocodile is indeed enough to burst Green Steel Shadow in one combo, if Smeb were to proc his passive and then flash away, this play could go badly wrong; and if Green Steel Shadow were to snag two kills instead, the situation would be even worse.

Liang Yan did not let the preceding smooth sailing cloud his judgment, nor did he lose his reason because victory was in sight; instead he maintained due caution.

Moreover, the wave Fu Lan Duo had pushed was large, even including a siege cannon that could soak up damage for a long time, so Liang Yan fully possessed sufficient patience.

When Galio disappeared from the vision of the mid lane minion wave, Easyhoon, at Liang Yan's behest, swiftly entered the river, stood behind the blue side's F6 camp at the jungle exit, took a glance, and confirmed that Galio was not heading down.

Mata returned to the top lane.

Having confirmed this information, Liang Yan then placed the engage signal on Green Steel Shadow's head.

At that moment, on the bottom lane, the front-line minions and siege cannon of the wave that the crocodile had shoved into the tower had just been cleared jointly by Smeb and the tower, leaving only a few ranged minions.

Smeb had not yet seen the spear-wielding champion appear in the vision of the Triangular Grass ward, and gradually relaxed his vigilance; even though the crocodile was still loitering in front of the tower, when the tower's shot blasted a ranged minion down to low health, Smeb still stepped forward to land the last hit.

As Green Steel Shadow lunged a kick at a minion, the crocodile, stationed not far behind the minion's back, suddenly surged forward with a first-stage E, auto-attacked Green Steel Shadow once, and the rage that had just dropped refilled to half—half a bar of rage, i. e., one red-anger's worth.

Smeb jumped, thinking the spear-wielding champion was hiding in the side grass behind the crocodile, and instinctively pulled back.

However, there was no movement at all.

The crocodile seemed merely to want to top off his rage while also draining a bit of his health; he didn't even cast Q, just came in with E, auto-attacked once, and then left.

He didn't even use the second stage of E, so the tower still blasted him with a shot; this action further confirmed Smeb's judgment that the crocodile was only trying to refresh his rage.

Then Smeb relaxed, not retreating but advancing, and with a single tactical sweep he swept toward the crocodile that had already walked out of the defense tower.

At that moment, a sudden change occurred.