Yan Shu took two steps back, only to realize he had nowhere left to retreat. He quickly shook Changfeng’s hand and sprinted off the stage a full stride ahead of schedule.
“Huh?” This time it was Changfeng’s turn to be stunned. Before he could even say anything, why had that person run off?
Could it be that he really was…
Changfeng had followed the GPL for a long time. He always felt that this new player from the SR team bore a striking resemblance to someone in his facial features and eyes.
That talented clash-laner who had been engulfed in a scandal long ago.
Yan Shu ran without looking back, completely unaware of Changfeng’s puzzled expression.
Could he really be discovered right now?
Yan Shu was not yet ready to face the public with his true identity, and he felt deeply anxious.
Upon entering the lounge, Yan Shu anxiously grabbed his personal shoulder bag, unzipped it, and frantically rummaged through it again and again.
Where was the medicine? The medicine…
When Yan Shu finally realized the medicine was gone, his panicked hands slowly came to a halt.
His head was spinning so badly, and breathing was becoming so difficult. Yan Shu crouched in a corner, too miserable to stand up. He took huge, desperate gulps of air, forgetting that he also needed to exhale to breathe normally.
“No… there is still a match…” Weak all over, Yan Shu still forced himself up by leaning against the wall. He went to the restroom to splash cold water on his face, then replaced his soaked mask with a fresh one.
None of the team members noticed Yan Shu’s abnormality; only Yan Shu knew that without medication to control it, he was still going to have an episode.
Before the second match began, Qi Le brought some fruit in from next door, scurrying eagerly to Yan Shu’s side and urging him to take a bite before heading out.
The fruit was an orange, which shared a homophone with success in Chinese, symbolizing a wish for Yan Shu to succeed. Qi Le poked a plump piece of flesh with a toothpick and held it out right in front of Yan Shu.
“Moon God, eat up. Take off your mask first, eat a couple of bites before going back up to play.” Qi Le chattered excitedly while praising Yan Shu’s several clutch rescues from the previous match.
Yan Shu couldn’t take off his mask at all. He knew how ghastly his complexion was and couldn’t afford to scare the kid in front of him.
After finishing his nonstop stream of praise, Qi Le noticed that Yan Shu was completely unresponsive. Taking a closer look at Yan Shu’s face, he saw beads of fine sweat dotting the great god’s temples.
It wasn’t even hot out yet, so where was all this sweat coming from?
“Moon God, are you feeling unwell?” Qi Le took a step forward, raising a hand as if to pull off Yan Shu’s mask.
Startled, Yan Shu jerked his shoulders and quickly raised a hand to block Qi Le’s reach.
“I am fine. It is time to go on stage, let’s move.”
Noticing the movement between the two, Luo Yan sneered from nearby, “Oh, look at that, is our sickly little patient falling apart already? He’s like this after just one match, what a disgrace.”
Zhuoyue cracked his wrists and walked toward the lounge door. “Let’s go, onto the stage.”
“Oh.” Luo Yan finally dropped the matter.
Entering the competition arena, Yan Shu felt slightly better as he sat at his station. The battlefield had no room for him to be frail and delicate, so he had no choice but to grit his teeth and push through.
The match began with the coaches shaking hands, followed by the drafting phase.
During the draft for game two, the opposing AW team was clearly playing for real.
AW, on the blue side, started making their picks after the initial bans.
Both coaches traded blows in the draft, neither giving an inch.
The AW team picked Zhao Huaizhen for the jungle, Guoya for the farm lane, and Ox-Demon for support. Their mid-laner was Yixing, and their side-laner was Yalian.
Judging purely from this hero lineup, AW was geared up for a direct, face-to-face team-fight dive.
Meanwhile, the SR team opted for a hyper-carry marksman composition. This time around, Zhuoyue didn’t pick his signature assassin jungler; instead, for the sake of the team’s strategy, he locked in Agudo.
Their mid-laner was Shen Mengxi, their side-laner was Guan Yu, and their farm lane featured Galo paired with a Smite Zhang Fei.
Judging by early-wave clearance, SR held the advantage.
However, a hyper-carry like Galo required a scaling phase, and once late-game hit, positioning was critical to avoid getting assassinated by the enemy backline.
“07, come mid at the start, then rotate toward the farm lane,” Zhuoyue commanded.
Lin Qi felt somewhat nervous. Having heard that the enemy marksman was a veteran who had stepped down from the Summit team, his heart was beating wildly.
As the support, Yan Shu sensed the marksman’s tension and did his best to offer comfort. “I will protect you, don’t worry.”
“Oh.” Lin Qi muttered a casual acknowledgment, but hearing Yan Shu’s words actually touched him somewhat. After all, when Xu Ya was supporting him, his average death rate hadn’t been low at all.
The match began with both sides clearing waves and rotating lanes.
As a tank support, roaming to clear waves and secure vision early on was essential for Yan Shu.
During the first two waves, both sides safely secured their gold and experience.
Rotating from the bottom lane toward mid, Yan Shu noticed the enemy mid-laner’s vision vanish, only to reappear in the river near his own jungle entrance. Up in the clash lane, Ye Xuanqing traded blows with the enemy Yalian without gaining any advantage.
“Watch out, the enemy might invade our red buff,” Yan Shu rushed toward the red-side jungle preemptively, discovering sure enough that all four enemies were squeezing into his team’s jungle.
Zhuoyue frowned. He had clearly sensed the enemy’s obsession with his jungle from the previous game; it seemed his jungle was going to get invaded again this round.
“They are all here.” With his nerves taut and having analyzed the situation, Yan Shu still decided to defend the jungle.
Zhuoyue moved from mid-lane toward the red-side jungle. Just as he reached it, he decided to give up his own buff and instead counter-invade the enemy’s red buff later. After all, with Galo as their marksman, entering the red jungle should—
“First Blood!”
Before Zhuoyue could communicate further, Yan Shu was swarmed and killed, and the red-side jungle couldn’t be defended either.
“Support, you…” Zhuoyue swallowed the anger rising to his lips. “Stop acting on your own initiative.”
Yan Shu didn’t understand. That wave could have been defended. With his Smite on Zhang Fei this round, securing the jungle monster shouldn’t have been difficult.
“Why didn’t you come? I could have done it.”
“Are you stupid? Unless your Zhang Fei hits level three with an ultimate, I’ll call you a genius. Trying to defend the jungle with zero combat power early on, I’m seriously done with you,” Luo Yan chided sarcastically. He hadn’t bothered backing up Zhang Fei at all earlier, heading straight toward Lin Qi’s side after clearing the mid-wave.
Since Yan Shu had given away first blood in that wave, it looked like his fault no matter how anyone spun it. Left with no choice, he could only let his teammates blame him and silently shoulder the blame.
Four minutes later, locking his eyes on the enemy marksman’s movements, Yan Shu hid inside a bush.
“Lin Qi, I’m going to pop my ultimate in a moment, kill Guoya directly.” Without waiting for the enemy support to catch up, Yan Shu directly cast his ultimate from inside the bush.
The enemy marksman had zero room for counterplay. Following up with output, Lin Qi directly gunned down the enemy Guoya.
This wave instantly shattered the tempo of the enemy’s farm lane, and Yan Shu rotated alongside Lin Qi, preparing to make a play in mid-lane.
The early disadvantage in the jungle was gradually clawed back piece by piece by Yan Shu.
However, AW remained brimming with momentum. After claiming a Tyrant, they immediately turned around to harass Zhuoyue’s jungle once more.
This time, Yan Shu chose not to defend the jungle because the enemy’s initiation capability was simply too strong. A head-on clash was guaranteed to fail, making it far wiser to ensure Galo’s farming instead.
“We can’t defend it, we can only flank to pick off their backline or clear waves to push down their tier-two tower,” Yan Shu urged.
Intent on carrying the entire team into the mid-to-late game, Zhuoyue flatly refused to give up jungle resources. “Defend the jungle. If I fall behind economically, what are you going to use to win?”
Yan Shu glanced at the enemy economy. “No, we can’t take this fight…”
Yet the other teammates refused to listen to Yan Shu and piled into the jungle anyway.
Ye Xuanqing’s Guan Yu had secured a positioning angle beforehand, attempting to block the entrance to the mid-lane bush, only for the enemy Yixing to interrupt Guan Yu’s horse charge.
Every time Guan Yu’s running meter neared full, it would get reset, leaving him zero opportunity to crowd-control the enemy.
With no other choice, even though Yan Shu knew they couldn’t win the fight, he had no choice but to follow his teammates to defend the jungle.
Just in case a miracle happened.
Zhang Fei’s ultimate successfully mitigated the losses from the jungle team fight.
Ultimately, the SR team’s jungler and marksman fell, trading only for the enemy mage, while the jungle resources were stolen away regardless.
Suppressing his rising fury, Zhuoyue knew that applying pressure on teammates during a match was strictly forbidden.
Luo Yan couldn’t keep his mouth shut, directly complaining that the support had arrived too late.
Completely immersed in the match, Yan Shu automatically tuned out Luo Yan’s words. Realizing the enemy was about to take the Overlord, he gravitated toward the dragon pit, only to spot the enemy team already working on the objective. “The enemy is taking the dragon.”
“We can’t contest this dragon, clear the lanes instead,” Yan Shu called out. Having just expended his ultimate, it was impossible to farm small jungle camps to recharge it in time; they simply wouldn’t make it.
Zhuoyue disagreed. “No way, we can contest this dragon, you have Smite. If we cede another dragon, we’ll fall completely behind.”
“But what if we can’t steal it…” Ye Xuanqing also felt the risk was a bit too high.
Ultimately, Zhuoyue insisted on securing the dragon, leaving Yan Shu with no choice but to contest it at the pit.
A Zhang Fei without his ultimate lingered helplessly around the dragon pit, and Guan Yu’s damage output fell short, causing Zhang Fei to fall before they could even contest the Smite.
Capitalizing on their minion wave and resource advantages, the AW team surged forward in an unstoppable wave, eventually marching right down mid to shatter the SR team’s crystal.
“Match over, let us congratulate the AW team on taking a point,” the commentator announced.
With his jungle continually invaded, Zhuoyue couldn’t help questioning Yan Shu, “Why didn’t you follow my call?”
“I…” Yan Shu wanted to explain that his decisions in those few waves were the correct ones, and playing with Zhuoyue’s lone-wolf mindset would only result in an even more crushing defeat.
Having always been the center of adoration within the team, Zhuoyue habitually trusted his own intuition above all else, completely blind to any flaws in his lone-wolf playstyle.
“Don’t forget who gave you the chance to play. Right now, it looks like Xu Ya is miles better than you as a support, at least he actually listens.”
“Did you hear that? Your awareness is outdated, this is all your fault, otherwise why would our captain have been at a disadvantage?” Luo Yan pointed right at Yan Shu and berated him angrily.
As the first-team members filed past Yan Shu one after another, Yan Shu felt as though every single glance directed his way dripped with distrust and disgust.
Having forced himself to sit through the match, Yan Shu collapsed the moment he stepped off stage, cold sweat breaking out continuously over his skin.
In the end, it was Qi Le who came out looking for him and propped him up.
“Moon God, what is wrong?” Qi Le was nearly terrified by Yan Shu’s pale complexion, using a tissue to wipe the sweat from Yan Shu’s forehead. “Are you feeling sick? Let me take you to the lounge to rest, let’s switch to the substitute, Moon God, don’t force yourself like this.”
“I am fine, I don’t want to step down,” Yan Shu dragged his weak body slowly toward the lounge. “My condition, don’t tell anyone else, I am fine.”
Looking at Yan Shu’s frail figure, Qi Le felt a sharp sting in his nose.