Chapter 9: The Advantage Is Mine

「WeletoSummonersRift！」

Having grown accustomed to the Chinese version's "Welcome to Summoner's Rift," the English version's opening line also sounds quite distinctive.

White light beams wrapped around the heroes, birthing them in the sacred spring.

Liang Yan opened the shop, bought a jungle knife, spent the remaining money on a bottle of reusable potion, equipped the accessory 【Ward Totem】, and stood by the barrier waiting.

At the start, no one gave directions; after the barrier disappeared, Liang Yan headed out toward the lower jungle.

Two from the bottom lane followed him, standing on the riverbank slope in front of the F4 camp, dazed.

Such an opening defense was full of holes; Liang Yan pinged the triangular grass in their bottom lane, but no one responded, so he ran there himself.

The two from the bottom lane followed him.

Liang Yan suddenly had three question marks pop up in his head, and he couldn't help but ask:

"Why are you following me?"

"Return to lane." Said Begta, the AD of the second team with a fighting-nation bloodline, coldly.

"I'm protecting the AD..." said the Asian substitute support, presumably of Southeast Asian appearance, speaking halting English weakly.

Liang Yan was speechless.

He had no choice but to return, going to the spot where the two had been dazed earlier to stand guard.

When the jungle monsters were about to respawn, the two from the bottom lane silently ran back again, apparently intending to help Liang Yan start jungle.

Liang Yan went up and punched to awaken the red buff, then began jungling with the duo's damage support.

Fortunately, the two weren't so outrageous as to leech his experience; they knew the basics of helping jungle—only hit the big monsters, not the small ones—and after helping to bring the Scarlet Mark treant down to around 500 HP, they stopped and left.

Liang Yan fought while switching screens to observe the enemy's movements.

The enemy's top and mid laners had already appeared, but the bottom lane had not.

In such a situation, the opponent had no need to deliberately deceive; Long Gui was likely to start with blue.

Liang Yan made a preliminary judgment about the enemy jungler's opening and began to formulate the next step plan.

With a basic attack plus Smite, he slew the jungle monster, recovered a large chunk of health, and simultaneously obtained his first red buff; after clearing the two slag monsters (red buff minions), he leveled up to 2 smoothly, then ran toward F4, taking a jungle route that heads to the upper half of the map.

The duo returned to lane, and the enemy duo appeared almost simultaneously in the bottom lane.

Bo Bi's red and blue bars were each a little low, obviously from using abilities while helping jungle; moreover, due to poor execution, he drew aggro from the blue buff and got punched.

Liang Yan confirmed his judgment that Long Gui would start with blue, and simultaneously shared this information with his teammates via ping.

As expected, he received no response from his teammates.

The headset was silent.

The training room was also quiet.

The members of the second team really wanted to stay and watch the excitement, but they were kicked back to the first floor early by Ka Lao Si; after Ka Lao Si left, the second-floor training room now had only six people—aside from the five players, the team leader Biman was also present.

The atmosphere felt somewhat suffocating.

Within a day, the team underwent a drastic change; Biman's heart was filled with unease, but he was merely a minor team leader and could do nothing besides watching.

He thought for a moment, moved a stool and sat behind Liang Yan, thinking that with the boss absent, he should help sort out the lower ranks and such.

However, given his level as a European server Gold rank, he actually couldn't see much.

The team leader's main duties are unrelated to the game, so rank requirements are low; what matters is the ability to handle daily affairs, and whether one understands the game is irrelevant.

Biman had a clear understanding of his own role, so at this point he simply watched silently without interrupting.

Liang Yan was focused on the match, not noticing someone behind him watching.

Meanwhile.

Some things Liang Yan hadn't anticipated were beginning to ferment domestically.

The clip of him kicking someone was captured by a teammate's streaming camera; although it wasn't a domestic streaming platform, there were not a few overseas students watching Mouse Platform.

The recorded video was quickly forwarded by many people to domestic video sites.

First, it caused a small-scale stir on B Station.

Some marketing accounts caught the scent of manufacturing hot topics, spreading to other platforms and attracting attention with sensational headlines.

Given the popularity of LoL at this time in China, no major amplification was needed; the event quickly spread across the entire Chinese internet.

And as one of the parties involved, Lao Zhang also soon received the news.

Thus, thousands of miles away, Liang Yan's phone in his pocket began constantly chiming with notifications of new WeChat messages.

But Liang Yan had no time to look at his phone.

His game plan for this match was to play steadily, but that didn't mean he intended to abandon normal invasion.

Liang Yan's playstyle itself is highly aggressive.

Can the blind monk develop peacefully while fighting Long Gui?

Impossible!

After clearing the three wolves and leveling up to 3, his second Smite just finished cooldown.

Liang Yan didn't touch the nearby blue buff; leaving the three wolves camp, he took a turn, went through the jungle path, and headed straight for the river.

He also didn't ping the top lane asking for support or protection.

Nuo Shou versus the bird person is inherently difficult, and Kikis's laning skill is itself quite average; relying on a counter relationship to reverse pressure the opponent is impossible for him—right now he's standing properly by the defense tower, waiting for the bird person to push the wave.

AP's little fish person was indeed pushing the lane; seeing Liang Yan run toward the river, he thought he was going to eat river crabs and didn't say anything.

Until Liang Yan's blind monk waded across the river and entered the red side's upper jungle.

"What should the jungler do?" AP asked.

"Gank."

Liang Yan replied, sneaking from behind the enemy red buff camp toward the small dragon, hugging the wall, stepping deeper.

AP didn't speak again; Liang Yan didn't know whether he would support, nor did he care much; in any case, he prepared himself to receive no support.

Crawling out from the grass, I just happened to see a Long Gui with a blue circle on its body pulling a red buff running toward F4, and it's only level 2.

The invasion has clearly been detected.

But it doesn't matter; Liang Yan's positioning for this wave of invasion is resolute.

Taking Long Gui to jungle in this version is really not a smart choice, mainly because clearing jungle is too slow; even with teammates helping it's still slow, causing Liang Yan to have already cleared three sets of jungle monsters and arrived here, while Long Gui is still slowly clearing its third set.

Level 3 vs level 2, red buff vs blue buff.

No matter how you look at it, the advantage is mine.

Liang Yan aggressively moved in, unleashing a Heaven Thunder Break that hit two red buff minions, drawing their aggro, then followed with two punches and a kick to take out the two small ones.

Then he went up to auto-attack the red buff.

He has Punishment on him.

Long Gui naturally also has Punishment, unwilling to give up the red buff, gritting its teeth to contest the auto-attack with him, obviously intending to clash Punishment.

Uh……

Liang Yan felt a bit nonsensical.

You, a Long Gui without any execution means, what gives you the right to clash Punishment with me?

Who gave you the courage!