Faced with the sheer strength sask had just displayed, mlxg was utterly dumbfounded.
While clearing jungle camps, he tried his hardest to search his memory for keywords regarding his old teammate.
Though "Jiaoshen" had originated from the way Sion destroyed turrets back when sask played him, mlxg knew that when his old teammate first started out, the mainstream champions he played had nothing to do with clunky tanks like Sion.
In his early years, sask loved playing highly aggressive champions like Ekko, Fizz, and LeBlanc.
He knew how to play a vast champion pool, even if he wasn't a master of all of them.
Several times this game when mlxg had glanced at the mid lane, he had this inexplicable feeling that this LeBlanc's proficiency was remarkably high.
League of Legends was a rather peculiar game: when players pulled off a sudden outplay on their own, they would feel like they looked absolute gods in the moment.
Yet if they were to rewatch it in a replay—viewing their own plays with the critical eye used to judge the operational fluidity of professional players or top-tier streamers—they would often feel that it was just mediocre.
If you really brought out a magnifying glass to pick faults, there were probably more than a few places that could have been done better.
Therefore, operations that genuinely looked smooth and cool from a spectator's perspective were the real deal.
Xiangguo felt precisely this way.
Li Yao's solo kill kept replaying in his mind.
In truth, there were no flashy mechanics, such as extreme reaction tests or pure hand-speed to dodge skills.
Yet for mlxg, whether a player was good or not didn't depend on mechanical flashiness, but on clarity of thought.
When all was said and done, League of Legends was also a game of the mind.
Calculating the remaining cooldown of his W and the exact duration of crowd control he could inflict on his opponent, he decisively initiated the moment an opportunity for a kill arose.
At the same time, he used his W's cooldown to bait his opponent, accurately reading their psychology.
Such psychological warfare was countless in top-tier matches. For ordinary players, playing this way might be exhausting and mentally taxing, but for professional players and true high-tier masters, these habits seemed to have become second nature, if not outright muscle memory.
Every single detail could trigger them to consider their next move.
Of course, the prerequisite for all of this was maintaining a sufficiently clear and calm mind.
At that moment, Xiangguo truly began to doubt the identity of "sask."
He hadn't been particularly impressive before, and after going so long without playing, could he really operate at this level? He simply didn't believe it.
Taking advantage of the gap while recalling to base, mlxg sent a WeChat voice call to sask.
The ringtone went on for a long time before it was finally answered.
"What do you want?"
Hearing the familiar voice, lazy yet tinged with a hint of annoyance, coming through the receiver, mlxg understood.
So, who on earth was this?
mlxg wasn't someone particularly prone to gossip.
Harboring this curiosity, he didn't press the matter directly and simply continued playing the game.
The champion LeBlanc had distinct strengths and weaknesses.
Her advantage lay in immense laning pressure; utilizing her terrifying burst damage, she could roam in the early-to-mid game to help her teammates or herself snowball.
Once she secured an item advantage, a mid-game LeBlanc became the epitome of an assassin.
The timing of her initial engagement, the precision of her skillshots, and the mastery of her positioning during skirmishes defined LeBlanc's upper limit.
Conversely, the champion's weaknesses were equally glaring.
If she failed to suppress her opponent in the laning phase, roaming to the side lanes became extremely difficult.
If she abandoned minion waves to roam and failed to secure any kills, she would fall behind in experience and levels, turning this LeBlanc into little more than a flying scout drone.
Secondly, her margin for error in the mid-game was abysmal; if she squandered the early lead even once, the tables could instantly turn, and her impact would plummet by several tiers.
Many hyper-aggressive champions suffered from this exact same flaw.
Yet clearly, none of these weaknesses manifested in this particular ranked match.
Following the solo kill on Twisted Fate, and with Twisted Fate falling severely behind in items, Li Yao began his roaming phase.
Teaming up with mlxg's fiercely aggressive Lee Sin, they applied pressure to the bot lane time and time again.
After Kalista died three consecutive times, Samira snowballed out of control. At that point, Twisted Fate was in an extremely awkward position; due to his terrible items, his combat power was pitifully weak, and flying down with his ultimate only provided a single instance of crowd control.
Meanwhile, his team's damage-dealing options were completely locked down by both LeBlanc and Lee Sin, rendering Dopa's successive support attempts practically useless.
Rumble's level fell too far behind, and in his desperation, he forced a gank on the top lane only to be outplayed and killed under the tower by Viego. By this point, all four lanes of the blue side, including the jungle, had completely imploded, resulting in a GG in under twenty minutes.
Such a smooth victory felt rather unaccustomed to mlxg, who had been constipated with miserable losses all night.
Moreover, winning this match didn't feel satisfying enough.
In his losses, he had been constantly tortured, struggling for a chance at a comeback while the game state seemingly dangled glimmers of hope before him, only for someone to drop the ball in the end.
And yet, this game was won because the opponents simply surrendered?
Where was the esports spirit?!
"Again?"
mlxg typed out tentatively.
"Sure."
Li Yao replied.
If nothing else, just that first counter-gank signal from the Lee Sin was proof enough that this gentleman had real talent.
The subsequent matches featured random solo-queue players as teammates and opponents.
Li Yao also discovered that in matches of this caliber, he felt zero pressure, especially with the jungler heavily favoring his lane; even if he wasn't entirely dominating every game, the performance was close enough.
After stringing together four consecutive victories, Li Yao rubbed his stomach and checked the time—unwittingly, it was already past eleven.
It was time for lunch.
"I'm going to eat. Play in the afternoon?"
After sending a message to his duo partner, Li Yao logged off.
mlxg originally intended to agree, but as he reached to type, a wave of dizziness washed over him.
The sequelae of pulling an all-nighter were kicking in.
Having pushed through the morning's sleepiest hours, the morning would briefly offer an illusion of high energy.
By noon, however, the exhaustion came crashing down.
"I'm passing out, cya."
With that brief reply, mlxg collapsed and fell instantly asleep.
Right before drifting off, he was still trying to guess Li Yao's true identity.
Across four ranked games, Li Yao had played four completely different champions: LeBlanc, Fizz, Sylas, and Azir.
Throughout, mlxg had been closely observing his proficiency and performance on each.
LeBlanc and Fizz had earned extremely high praise from him. Of course, given the elo they were playing in, mlxg wouldn't recklessly presume to fully judge Li Yao's absolute skill level, but he felt that the core essence and intricate details of these two champions—nuances that ordinary players struggled to master—were executed flawlessly by Li Yao.
Sylas and Azir, however, gave him a completely different impression.
Compared to LeBlanc and Fizz, Sylas lacked a certain soul. It wasn't that he played poorly, but rather that it didn't feel thoroughly mastered; compared to the Sylas played by some of the top professional players he had encountered, it always felt like something was missing.
As for the Azir in the final game, that was the champion that left the deepest and most unique impression on Xiangguo.
League of Legends assigned a specific role to every champion.
Some champions were tanks.
Others were fighters or assassins.
While these labels couldn't represent a champion's absolute attributes, at least the vast majority of players developed playstyles that closely aligned with these tags when figuring out and advancing their mastery of those champions.
What kind of champion was Azir?
This was evident just by looking at his Worlds skin owner, Easyhoon.
Tags like "late-game hypercarry," "mage," and "steady" hovered constantly around Azir.
These labels represented Azir's attributes; it seemed that in Summoner's Rift, this champion was meant to farm safely in the early game and take over matches as a late-game hypercarry.
To put it more bluntly: he was supposed to weather early-game pressure, let teammates shoulder some of the burden, and wait until his item build was complete to use late-game scaling to repay the teammates who had carried him through the early phases.
Yet... Li Yao's Azir gave Xiangguo an impression entirely contrary to these conventions.
It wasn't as if mlxg had never seen an aggressive Azir before.
Rookie's Azir could exert dominant pressure even when laning against champions whose early-game attributes ostensibly outmatched Azir's.
That was a matter of individual player style.
Perhaps because of this style, the usage of Rookie's Azir ultimate often seemed somewhat inferior compared to many of his other champions.
Yet the vibe Li Yao gave mlxg was subtly different from Rookie's Azir.
mlxg couldn't quite put his finger on the exact difference for the moment; he had too few matches to use as a reference, and the quality of the games wasn't quite high enough...
harboring these lingering thoughts, an overtaxed and overloaded mlxg drifted into a deep sleep.
***
Inside the WE base.
While washing up and brushing his teeth, sask irritably answered his phone and mumbled thickly, "Hello?"
"Did you lend out your Korean server account? Who did you lend it to?"
A familiar voice came through the other end of the line.
sask paused, feeling a sudden thud in his chest: *Could this brat have been AFK-flaming people?*
Outwardly, sask kept his cool, rinsing his mouth before replying, "Yeah, my neighbor kid's Korean server account got banned, so he temporarily borrowed mine to play a few games. What's wrong?"
"Oh... I figured it definitely wasn't you."
The knowing tone on the other end made sask inexplicably uneasy. "Daiwang, out with it already! Why are you beating around the bush?"
"Nothing much. Xiangguo was duoing with your account, absolutely slaughtering it in Diamond I and Master tiers. An OBS streamer happened to catch it, and I was wondering when you picked up the habit of waking up early. How old is your neighbor's kid? Treating Dopa like a farm animal—pretty decent skills there, huh?"
"Wait... hold on... give me a second..."
sask felt his brain short-circuit for a moment.
His understanding of Li Yao was limited to that Master-tier account with a 52% win rate on the Korean server from three years ago and a handful of rank games they had played together.
Naturally, because their preferred roles overlapped when they duoed, sask usually played mid lane while Li Yao filled top or jungle.
As for Li Yao's mid lane proficiency, sask didn't really know much about it.
Thus, WeiXiao's words left sask momentarily dazed.
He knew who Dopa was.
The Twisted Fate player.
His profound understanding of the game had once shattered the mental fortitude of sask back when they faced off during their professional player days.
He couldn't be suppressed in lane, nor could he be out-roamed after level six; once Dopa snowballed, you couldn't even match his impact in team fights.
Yet coming from Li Yao, how did it sound like he was the one bullying Dopa?
This wasn't right—something was seriously wrong here!
"Still, I think you should get him his own Korean server account. The club should have spare ones with decent hidden MMR. Using your own account easily draws attention, and if the Korean server notices your account was lent out, it'll probably get banned real quick."
WeiXiao continued on the other end: "Of course, you don't have much clout to begin with; the attention this time is mostly because you were duoing with Xiangguo..."
*Pfft...*
sask felt another arrow pierce straight through his chest.
Hanging up the phone, sask found Li Yao in his WeChat contacts and frowned in deep thought.
"Could it be... this neighbor of mine has even greater talent than I do?"