“What the fuck are you even supposed to say after that?”
“Bro, those flicks and that aim—you're telling me that was a hand wrapped in bandages?”
“Stable and accurate! Fucking brutal!”
“Basically hacks! He was fully flashed at the end and still headshot him!”
“Ridiculous! Since when was Dark’s Deagle this vicious too?”
“Did he actually just reach enlightenment?!”
“No, wait—bro, are you Niko?”
“Cold fact: Xiage already gave his approval just now.”
“Hot fact: Dark withdrew Xiage’s approval!”
“I once swore I would never shed tears for a man again, but today, when Nini fell and Dark exploded to avenge Nini, I cried my makeup off.”
“CP shippers, get out of CS!”
“.”
In the 6657 livestream chat, some people were marveling, some were spamming rotten memes, and of course there were also antis and Liquid fans who refused to accept it.
“No, I’m just thinking, wasn’t this round just Liquid’s own gunplay turning to shit?”
“Seriously, not a single Liquid player looked human that round!”
“That AK spray from Jige didn’t kill Dark—he’s committing a crime at this point.”
“.”
Wanjiqi looked at the few questioning comments drifting across the chat, smacked his lips, and responded:
“I’m seeing some people in chat saying Dark got that Deagle five-kill because Liquid whiffed. No, bro, you’re seriously losing it! Is that wrong? Of course Liquid made mistakes there, but to put it bluntly, which iconic highlight on the CS pro stage isn’t built on the opponent’s mistakes? As long as you’re human, you’ll make mistakes. Your form will rise and fall. But you can’t use that to deny the highlight someone else just pulled off!”
“I’m not speaking up for Dark just because we’re on pretty good terms,”
Wanjiqi paused, then raised his voice.
“But think about it—isn’t that the logic? In pro matches, what you’re fighting for are those fleeting opportunities and the opponent’s mistakes!”
“Dark seized it, so he’s fucking amazing!”
“And some people are saying the last two shots—killing Jige while turned from the flash, then blind-firing nitr0’s head off while fully flashed—were luck? Uh, if you put it that way, there’s nothing wrong with it. Those two shots from Dark did have some luck involved.”
“But then again, back in that Blast match in January, when Dark missed his AWP shot and got AK-headshotted by Jige’s freak shot, that wasn’t how we talked about it! Back then, everyone was saying ‘Jige is insane’ and ‘that’s the luck of the strong!’”
“You can’t say it’s pure skill when Jige kills someone, but when Dark gets a five-kill it’s just good luck, right? There’s no logic in that!”
Wanjiqi’s machine-gun barrage of rebuttals was clear and organized, instantly silencing the antis and some of the Liquid fans in the livestream chat.
In a dormitory at Jianghai University.
Listening to Wanjiqi’s words, Li Shan felt incomparably vindicated. His fingers clacked rapidly across the keyboard. “Some people have been kneeling so long they can’t stand up anymore. When white players kill someone, they’re strong; when our own player gets a five-kill, it’s luck? What a bunch of double-standard dogs!”
After sending the comment, Li Shan felt refreshed. He quickly opened WeChat again and messaged several classmates who were also watching the match:
“I made a fan group for Dark. The group name is ‘The Dark Demon King on the Road to GOAT’! Cool as hell! I just posted the group number on Tieba. Hurry up and join!”
Not long after the message went out, QQ began dinging nonstop, group-join requests coming one after another.
Watching the number of people in the group continuously rise, Li Shan felt an inexplicable excitement in his heart, as if he had somehow done something monumental.
That’s right!
If one day Dark really could catch s1mple and surpass ZywOo!
Then by that time, he would be a “founding elder” of the fan group!
Just thinking about it was exhilarating!
At the same time, in the Antwerp arena studio.
At the G2 players’ area.
Only now did Meng Lang, whose adrenaline had surged through the roof in that instant, slowly breathe out a turbid breath. His heart was pounding violently in his chest, and the hand gripping the mouse was trembling slightly.
But that trembling was not from lingering fear.
It came from extreme excitement, and an indescribable feeling of… conquest!
He had done it!
On a true competitive stage,
with a Deagle, he had completed a nearly impossible 1v5 eco comeback!
And,
in a direct matchup, he had executed EliGE!
The man who had once nearly beaten him into retirement!
Although there wasn’t much expression on Meng Lang’s face at this moment, if you asked him whether he felt good inside, then of course he felt damn good!
“NICE!! Bro!!”
“Holy shit! How did you do that?!”
“Unbelievable! What the f**k was that!!!”
The instant Meng Lang’s fifth Deagle shot rang out, G2’s players’ area completely exploded. Cousin and Little Li were both stunned!
Coach XTQZZZ was the first to rush over from behind. He slammed both hands onto Meng Lang’s shoulders and, in his excitement, gave him a “premium edition” power shoulder massage!
m0NESY leaned over with an expression of disbelief, looking at Meng Lang’s screen, then at Meng Lang himself. “Bro?! So your Deagle was this insane all along? Last time we duo-queued, you were shooting it like a water gun! What happened? Did you secretly evolve?”
Meng Lang rubbed his shoulders, which had been pressed painfully by the coach, took off one side of his headset, and still wore a faint daze as if waking from a dream. He smiled, his tone still modest:
“Luck. Just good luck.”
But at this moment, the most excited and the most incredulous person was Niko, who was sitting right beside him.
After being blinded and smashed to death as the first victim, he had already switched to Meng Lang’s POV and witnessed this earth-shaking Deagle five-kill from start to finish!
Now, Niko turned his head, his mouth uncontrollably hanging open as he looked at Meng Lang. His eyes were filled with shock and a kind of… indescribable appreciation.
He knew
that this was definitely not just luck!
As a top-tier Deagle user himself, he could see it more clearly than anyone—Meng Lang’s Deagle and his own Deagle were two completely different styles!
The reason his Deagle was accurate lay in extreme pre-aiming and a stable rhythm. What he pursued was making every shot he fired have an extremely high chance of hitting.
But Meng Lang was walking an entirely different, wild path!
He almost didn’t rely on pre-aiming at all. He relied completely on that terrifying, extreme reaction speed and aiming precision after swinging out, forcibly “flicking” his crosshair onto the enemy’s head in an instant—the visual effect was practically like the mouse’s artifact spirit had seized control of the crosshair.
A thoroughly cheat-like playstyle!
And this kind of playstyle had a deadly flaw—it wasn’t stable enough. Once he missed or failed to instantly kill the opponent, losing his rhythm would put him in extreme danger.
But its advantages were just as obvious!
That was: no need for pre-aiming, extremely flexible movement, difficult to predict, and the chance to create impossible kills from impossible positions!
Just like a moment ago.
To put it plainly, this kind of playstyle depended far too much on talent and reaction speed!
Niko looked at Meng Lang beside him, who was excessively young, his eyes still carrying a trace of youthful greenness yet already bursting out with such energy. Then he looked at the equally young genius sniper m0NESY on the other side, and a complex emotion couldn’t help but rise in his heart.
CS, in the end, was still a battlefield for the young.
The meaning of time seemed so cruel in this moment, yet so full of hope.
Because
they were teammates!
In truth, bringing Meng Lang into the team this time had originally been a helpless move born of circumstance.
But Niko had never expected that after Meng Lang arrived on this Antwerp stage, he would give him huge surprises for two days in a row.
Thinking of how, in voice comms, he had anxiously shouted “Hide! Hide!” just now, telling Meng Lang to hide and wait for the retake,
Xiage couldn’t help giving a shy smile, revealing a mouthful of white teeth. He patted Meng Lang hard on the shoulder, his tone carrying unprecedented sincerity and admiration:
“Well played! Bro! That was really, really well played!” He shook his head, his face full of amazement. “I really didn’t expect… your Deagle to be this strong!”
If he’d known earlier, he would have simply let Meng Lang buy one.
As long as they could win the match, Xiage was never stingy with his star positions or hero guns.
Hearing this, Meng Lang turned his head, looked at Niko, and suddenly smiled as well. In a tone that was half-joking and half-serious, he said something rather mystical:
“It’s not that I’m strong.”
He paused, a trace of meaning flashing through his eyes that only he himself could understand.
He pointed at Niko,
then pointed at himself.
“It’s that we’re strong.”
“This round… was the two of us becoming one in spirit, slaughtering everything in our path.”
It was just that it had been you from five years ago.
The Deagle of 2017 Young Master Ni…
really was fucking insane!
Although Niko didn’t fully understand the phrases “becoming one in spirit” and “slaughtering everything in our path,”
he understood the real closeness and recognition in Meng Lang’s tone. In his heart, he guessed that Meng Lang must have watched his Deagle POV before—in fact, many professional players practiced Deagle this way.
But what he didn’t expect was that Meng Lang hadn’t just watched.
Meng Lang had directly “entered” it.
“Haha! No matter what, bro, you played amazingly! Keep it up!”
“I’ll do my best.”
The smile on Old Ni’s face became even brighter. Happily, he gave Meng Lang’s shoulder a forceful hug.
However,
the joys and sorrows of people are not shared.
At Liquid’s players’ area.
The members of Liquid, who had just been overturned in the opponent’s eco round by a single Deagle scoring five headshots,
were all silent at this moment.