Chapter 159: [Project: CODE]! Hidden Variation!

"Congratulations to EDG!" Wawa's face was flushed red with excitement: "A winning start! In the very first game, they completed a Red-side victory over Blue, seizing the first win of the semifinals!"

"Ye's signature Sylas produced countless crazy, ingenious ideas throughout this match!" Miller chimed in passionately from the side.

"In contrast, GEN's strongest defensive shield, Chovy, was completely silenced in this game!"

Guan Zeyuan paused for a moment before quickly recovering with a smile: "Actually, it feels like the result was already decided from the moment the first tower fell before nine minutes. For a scaling composition like GEN's, that first tower was too important."

The cheers and screams at the State Farm Arena were relentless.

Spectators carrying EDG's black-and-white knight flags were waving them vigorously in the stands, shouting their support!

Many domestic fans had traveled thousands of miles across the ocean today to watch this semifinal match in person.

And EDG had started off with such a hearty and refreshing debut, taking the victory with unstoppable momentum from GEN, the widely recognized favorite to win the championship!

Winning the match in such spectacular fashion was the best reward for the fans!

Before stepping off the stage, Ye Bo heard the sky-filling shouts from the audience, smiled, waved to them, and left the stage alongside his teammates.

They walked into the backstage corridor.

Ming Kai, who had been waiting for a long time, was beaming with unstoppable joy, hugging each teammate with great enthusiasm.

"Great! Great, you played well, brothers!"

Ming Kai was so happy not just because his team had taken the first game.

Seeing Peanut, who had been reduced to such a miserable state by "EDG's Jungler" in the first game, he couldn't help but feel a secret, inexplicable sense of satisfaction—what was that about?

"Holy cow! Buddy, I stole the MVP!"

Jie Jie jumped up, pointing at the screen broadcasting in the backstage area.

"Oh my, Jie-ge, you really are the true Saint of Thieves; you even managed to steal this one from Master Ye!" Flandre said, shaking out his wrists to relax, teasing him.

"What do you mean? What do you mean! Isn't mine just Master Ye's~"

In fact, looking at the voting results, the Graves only had one more vote than the Sylas.

But the World Championship broadcast directors always prioritized stats, and in this game, the Graves' stats were undoubtedly more luxurious.

After all, throughout the entire game in the jungle, Graves had been running rampant as if he were "bullying" the opponent.

Of course, even without looking at the stats, Graves had participated in several key tempo plays, and combined with the crucial level-one invasion design and the outrageous jungle matchup gap, it wasn't too excessive to give him the MVP.

But the main thing was—the foreign broadcast directors didn't know the specific designs and other orientations within the match.

The live chat, however, had some experts.

【Is this director a poet? How could they not give this to Sylas?】

【Purely rigged!】

【Indeed, not giving it to Sylas in this game confirms the director only looks at stats. After watching those plays, anyone who can resist playing two games of Sylas is a god!】

【I don't even need to guess that level-one design; it's definitely the "Azir" behind the scenes—can only say it doesn't matter, giving it to the sand soldiers or Azir is the same!】

【MVP doesn't matter, hurry, hurry! I want to see the post-match stats! Show me the post-match stats!】

The sensitive live chat had already guessed something.

Everyone knew that in a game with such an obvious gap, especially with such an outrageous matchup disparity, some very outrageous numbers were bound to appear.

That was how the legendary classics of the past were born!

Sure enough.

When the overall post-match stat panel was revealed, the live chat exploded instantly, uniformly filling the screen with a string of mysterious numbers!

Sejuani's stats, unsurprisingly, became the focus of the entire match.

The bright red 【2198】 number stood out behind Sejuani's damage column!

Throughout the game, Sejuani had been driven out of the jungle, only having a few confrontations in the early game. From the mid-game onwards, it was basically a "turtle" game, and a Sejuani with abysmal farm naturally couldn't deal much damage.

And as if it were a predestined fate—it was exactly half of the number he had played against "that man" six years ago!

【Peanut? Little Peanut! 4396 looks higher the more I look at it!】

【Don't overhype it, it's just exactly half, at most I can only give you a "Dagger".】

【Why is everyone focusing on the jungler? Did no one notice how useless this Azir is? In a game like this, he could only farm 200 creeps in 24 minutes, and looking at the damage, he only dealt a little more than Peanut! Combined, they aren't even worth a hair of Sylas!】

【Can only say, if the mid-laner in that game six years ago had been Master Ye, the legendary classic would have become the opponent's!】

【Hehe ^. ^ So the question arises, who was the EDG mid laner six years ago?】

【#Querying Scout's facial expression】

On GEN's overall damage chart, it wasn't just the jungler who looked bad.

A small problem with the turtle shell composition is that it is destined to have no damage output before reaching its power spike, not to mention that there is always someone drifting on the edge of the mortal world.

Sejuani, with double-digit farm, dealt 2000+ damage.

But that Azir with 200 farm actually only dealt 6000+!

Looking at the other side, Sylas was far ahead, even higher than the Graves, who was clearly better at dealing damage.

Both people on the LCK commentary desk turned their heads away, unable to bear looking at the chart.

"GEN needs to adjust their tempo quickly. EDG's early-game offensive is too fierce. If they continue to take early-game weak compositions, it will be very difficult to cope!"

"But EDG's level-one design, this must be defended against! Really, really cannot let them do what they did in the last game again!"

The Roaring Emperor changed the subject, starting to look forward to the next game.

He turned to Ambition, who was sitting next to him with a gloomy face and furrowed brows.

"Ambition, do you think GEN should consider picking some early-game compositions in the next game?"

Ambition adjusted his mood before slowly speaking: "I don't think so."

"Change is definitely necessary, but to abandon what you are best at to pick what the opponent is best at and go head-to-head, this kind of on-the-spot response is definitely the worst strategy."

The GEN members backstage thought the same.

By the time they walked back to the backstage lounge, everyone still hadn't fully recovered, each of them looking gloomy and dejected.

The moment the game ended, Chovy didn't stand up like the other teammates, still sitting in his seat, staring at the screen, not knowing what he was looking at.

Peanut's lower lip was still pale even now.

In contrast, Ruler's face was pitch black, scaring Lehends, who was beside him, into silence, fearing he might invite disaster.

To be so easily defeated in a Red-side victory over Blue, and in a game that was clearly "abnormal," was hard for anyone to accept!

Silence reigned backstage for a long time.

Until the extremely frustrated head coach, Score, spoke in an unfriendly tone.

"What should we talk about first?"

Score only felt he had lost face.

As the head coach in charge of such a "Galactic Battleship," everything had been smooth sailing from the summer season this year until the World Championship before this match.

Who would have thought that in the first highly anticipated key semifinal match, they would be hit with a heavy blow and beaten so miserably!

Score didn't think it was a problem with their system.

In his view, the problem was entirely with the in-game content!

The GEN members were silent, not a single person daring to speak.

Score stood up, pacing back and forth backstage with his hands behind his back like an officer lecturing, his eyes squinting at the players who were all keeping their heads down.

"Park Jae-hyuk!"

"Here!!"

Ruler, who had been called out, responded as if triggering a racial instinct.

But he didn't know where to start.

After all, looking at the last game, it seemed to have nothing to do with his bot lane!

The laning phase was going fine, the jungle was gone, the mid tower was gone, and the mid-laner was missing... How is an AD carry supposed to reason with that!

However, since he had been called out, Ruler still bit the bullet and respectfully said a few words; at the very least, his attitude had to be perfect.

"If I have to say, the problem in the last game was that the mid lane issue happened too quickly, and then our bot lane might need to pick some heroes that can fight early..."

Although Score's face remained displeased after hearing this, he nodded with satisfaction.

Even though it was all nonsense, at least the attitude was good; this kid really knew how to handle things.

The others on the team were too young and lacked experience in social interaction!

"We are still on the Blue side next game, so the BP issue isn't a big deal."

"Now there is only one problem: this Sylas, should we let it through or not."

GEN had already prepared for this game, at most leaving one ban slot for Akali in the mid lane—after all, DK had already proven to them that banning more mid-lane heroes was useless.

But the problem was that the impact this Sylas had brought them in the first game was truly impossible to ignore!

To let such a hero out again for Ye Bo, who was in such hot form, just didn't feel right.

The key was that Chovy's Sylas could only be described as average, especially after seeing the opponent's performance in the last game; it was hard to say his mentality wouldn't be affected.

This was a bit of a dilemma.

Fortunately, GEN wasn't without capable people.

Assistant coach Mafa stepped forward.

As the actual person in charge of BP for S8 IG, Mafa's BP ability was clearly not weak.

It was just a pity that he had gone to serve in the military after that, only returning to the competitive scene at the end of last year, so he could only temporarily settle for the position of GEN assistant coach, acting as an assistant to the "highly respected" Score.

"Everyone, don't take the first game too much to heart. In the first game, the main thing was that we suffered from a misjudgment."

"Looking at it now, the quarterfinals weren't them suddenly finding a new system; it was just an expedient measure for the team's state at the time, or perhaps a temporarily practiced system."

Yes.

In fact, GEN had always thought before the match that today's EDG would still play the same system as in the quarterfinals, with a mid-lane farming hyper-carry as the core.

After all, EDG's performance in the quarterfinals was bright enough, and no matter how you looked at it, it didn't look like something they had just practiced on the spot.

But now that he thought about it.

That system didn't have anything special at all, and in terms of operations, it was actually very different from their turtle formation—it was entirely because Ye Bo's performance in those three games had been bright enough.

So it ultimately led to the "Turtle Race" they were looking forward to inexplicably turning into "The Tortoise and the Hare"!

And an ultimate rocket hare at that!

But if they reached this judgment now, they could make some changes in the BP.

"Doran, if there is a chance in the next game, we'll have you fight for Aatrox; if not, grab Renekton... Anyway, you can definitely do it, right?"

"Don't forget, you're the man who crushed Zeus!"

Hearing this, Doran immediately raised his head, understanding the assistant coach's meaning.

Like most people's views.

The mid-jungle duo, the bot lane kings—it seemed the "shortest" board of this EDG was the aging Flandre in the top lane.

GEN wanted to find an early-game power spike, and after thinking about it, the top lane was the most likely place to achieve it!

But Doran actually had slight hesitation in his heart.

After the laning phase of the first game, he had already felt the steadiness of Flandre's laning style; even Nuguri didn't have confidence, and he didn't dare say how much confidence he had.

But at this moment.

Doran keenly glanced to the left and right—instantly receiving the dual gaze of the head coach and Ruler!

His posture instantly straightened, his silly, dazed face filled with seriousness: "No problem! Leave it to me!"

Score nodded with great satisfaction, standing up with his hands on his hips.

"Good! Very spirited!"

He called everyone to the center.

"As the LCK's number one seed, we cannot accept falling here! You must win back the score in the second game!"

"Whether it's for the glory of our LCK, for the development of your careers, to prove yourselves, or for your first World Championship... even if it's just thinking about your former teammates!"

"Now, go take this game!"

Score's BP ability was average.

But as someone who had also just finished military service, he clearly had learned not only the core "cultural essence" but also quite a few motivational speaking techniques.

A passionate speech accurately hit the inner needs of everyone at GEN.

Instantly raising the morale of the entire team!

Especially the last sentence, "Think about your former teammates."

It is worth mentioning that the top, mid, and support players on this GEN team were all players and teammates who debuted together on that Griffin team in 2019!

And Viper on the opposite side was also a teammate who debuted with the three of them.

Of the five who debuted on Griffin back then, one was now a World Champion, even charging towards a second title!

The other four naturally found it hard to calm their hearts.

And for Chovy, beyond what the other two had, he also had a huge expectation from everyone outside, a motivation to urgently prove himself!

Thinking of this, Chovy's fists tightened.

He raised his head, revealing a determined gaze like ShowMaker's!

"Welcome back to this semifinal match! Currently, EDG is leading 1-0!"

"Coming to the second game, GEN still has the side selection right for this game. Having taken the Blue side again, they still send Akali to the ban list first!"

The BP panel appeared on the big screen.

Both sides made some changes to their BP in this game, especially GEN, whose changes were not small.

First round of bans—

GEN: Akali, Sylas, Fiora

EDG: Yuumi, Caitlyn, Lucian

"In the second game, GEN really chose to ban Sylas! This is what you have to respect!" Wawa said happily.

"The Blue side finally banned Fiora. Could it be they want to... really want to first-pick Aatrox?" Guan Zeyuan frowned: "Doran's Aatrox, he did play one game in the group stage, but the performance could only be described as average."

Miller noticed the first and second picks on the Red side: "This way, Azir is released. Let's see if EDG wants to pick it for Master Ye. His Azir performance in the last BO5 was truly stunning; it's definitely worth trusting!"

"Oh, EDG didn't pick it... They grabbed Sejuani and Renata Glasc!"

"Sejuani can be used as a top-jungle flex. This pick is also a very comfortable Red-side BP for EDG!"

This is the consequence when the Blue side is fixed by "signature heroes" taking up two ban slots.

It is also why GEN was originally determined not to give the mid lane extra ban slots.

If the Blue side doesn't have extra ban slots, it can't ban the few choices with the highest priority in the meta, leaving too many outside.

Then the Red side's counter-pick opportunity might even gain a BP advantage!

But fortunately, the GEN coaching staff guessed one thing right—EDG really didn't have the idea of picking Azir today!

The same as what Ambition said on the commentary desk just now.

This isn't a question of whether they can beat it or not, but that there's no need to force the use of what the opponent is best at to fight them, especially when there are clearly better ways to solve it.

"GEN counters by still picking Azir for Chovy, then picking Varus!"

"But on EDG's side, why did they ban Lucian and not Varus? Could it be they felt Varus didn't provide much deterrence in the last game..."

"Ah, Draven!?"

"EDG locks in Draven on the third pick! Looking at the composition, we know EDG is once again an extremely aggressive half-map fighting composition, still the same offensive tempo as the last game!"

Entering the second round of bans—

GEN: Viego, LeBlanc

EDG: Braum, Tahm Kench

Because EDG's Sejuani always has the top-jungle flex, and there is still Viego to cooperate, the second round of bans is still a bit tight.

"GEN chooses to ban the signature heroes of the mid-jungle, while EDG bans Braum, who counters Draven somewhat." Miller analyzed and thought.

"But Tahm Kench, actually, the performance in the last game..."

"Oh! Camille is picked on the fourth pick to lock down the target, so there's absolutely no problem with that!"

"GEN counters by picking Poppy, but there aren't many support choices left, and they finally pick Nami!"

GEN has also become honest, knowing that the bot lane cannot be beaten for no reason, and must pick a support with laning ability.

And Nami's buffing ability is different from Lulu's; it has good benefits for both of Varus's playstyles, won't bind the playstyle, and can be considered the most versatile soft support choice in the current meta.

Arriving at the final pick for the fifth slot.

A relatively rare hero appeared in EDG's avatar frame.

"Yone!!"

"Here it is, the classic Sejuani-Yone combo! Ye's Yone, dreaming back to the summer season!"

Ye Bo's Yone had left quite an impression on everyone during the summer season.

So when everyone saw this Yone, their first reaction was naturally to assume it was mid.

However.

When the positions were swapped.

Until the compositions were confirmed, everyone was shocked to discover something!

"Top lane Yone!? Wait, this is Flandre's Yone!"

The compositions were confirmed.

【Blue: GEN. G || Red: EDG】

【Top: Aatrox vs Yone】

【Jungle: Poppy vs Sejuani】

【Mid: Azir vs Camille】

【ADC: Varus vs Draven】

【Support: Nami vs Renata Glasc】

Flandre on camera seemed to be taking a deep breath.

"Relax, Flandre~~ Just do what we usually practice; fighting this Aatrox is definitely easy!"

Ye Bo, hearing the breathing sound from the microphone, said boldly, as if he had full confidence in him.

Flandre, hearing this voice, also smiled: "I'm not nervous, the Yone you taught me will definitely work!"

"Heh, that's right! My Flandre-ge taking beatings for a month couldn't have been for nothing!" Jie Jie took the opportunity to tease him back about stealing the MVP earlier.

In fact.

Although Flandre's operational level had declined significantly with age and injury, as one of the top laners with the deepest champion pool in the LPL, he really knew how to play Yone.

It was just that, originally, it was limited to "knowing how to play."

Practicing this hero is definitely not a simple matter; otherwise, throughout this month of the World Championship, there wouldn't still only be Zeus who could bring out Yone in the top lane.

But... what if he had started practicing it more than a month ago?

Aatrox vs Yone, Yone vs Aatrox, practicing both heroes together...

Don't forget, EDG has a Yone master on the team!

GEN's raw strength is definitely not weak. As the Red side, EDG couldn't completely avoid exposing their things, which is why Aatrox was specifically released in this game.

But at the same time, these things also need to be verified by the competitive stage.

After adjusting the runes.

Ye Bo began to carefully choose a skin—this had nothing to do with wanting to trigger a mission; it was just a small "ritual" he did before every game.

However, Camille only had four skins at this moment.

After picking and choosing, he finally chose the companion skin he used less often: 【Program】.

Unexpectedly, this time, the "Skin Vision," which didn't trigger very frequently, finally triggered again.

And this mission.

Seemed to be a big one!

【Skin Easter Egg triggered for this game!】

【Project: CODE】

【Mission Hint: Use this hero to perform 3 "Limit Plays" in this game, and obtain a total reward of no less than 30,000 experience points to complete the mission.】

【Mission Reward: If the mission is completed, the experience points will not be counted into the experience pool, but converted into obtaining level 5 proficiency for all heroes who own "Project" skins, and significantly increase the upgrade efficiency of practicing this hero—if the mission fails, the operation rewards will be settled normally.】

【Hint: You must use the "Project" skin when practicing to obtain the efficiency increase; it will automatically update with the version.】

"Oh my goodness!"

Ye Bo, seeing this easter egg mission clearly, instantly had his eyes shining with gold.

If he remembered correctly.

There were at least twenty heroes who owned "Project" skins!

Although there weren't many he could use, it was clear that if he could complete it, it would allow him to rapidly expand his mastery of a large wave of heroes.

Just the real consumption cost of this was far beyond the amount of 30,000 experience points!

Don't think that just level 5 proficiency is useless.

Just like the Graves in the last game, the small trick of using the recoil of R under the tower to hard-tank the snare and dodge the Tahm Kench W was a small detail Ye Bo didn't know at the time, but level 5 proficiency could exactly make up for it!

All heroes have countless such small details!

Similar effects include when Ye Bo stole Renata's R with Sylas earlier, and then used Gragas's R to predict and interrupt Renata's R-Flash, changing a comeback team fight...

Of course, the real point was actually "significantly increasing the upgrade efficiency of practicing this hero"!

This might be a rare opportunity for improvement in the future!

Ye Bo, filled with excitement, sat up straight.

For this easter egg mission, he was determined to win!

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 160 =====