The barrage in the 6657 livestream went completely insane the instant Meng Lang pulled off that heaven-defying 1v2, three-bullet, one-tap double kill!
“Holy shit! Instant headshots!”
“That ONE TAP! I’m actually stunned!”
“He even whiffed the opener to show he had room for error!”
“That AK single-tap positioning is practically comparable to ScreaM back in the day! Pure aiming machine!”
“Dupreeh and Magisk got deleted so hard they must be numb. They’re probably dumbfounded, right?”
“That laugh from Dupreeh at the end… it really felt like he’d made peace with it…”
“They double-peeked and got positioned on twice in one second and one-tapped. What else can you do but accept it? If it were me, I’d accept it too!”
“Damn, that actually sounds right! Gods of the old era, running into a lock from the new era! Nothing to say!”
“.”
Back in China, in a dormitory at Jianghai University.
Li Shan watched Meng Lang’s earth-shattering three-shot positioning on the screen, so excited that he hammered his own thigh hard. He immediately sent a “Love Dark Rocket” in the 6657 livestream, while his fingers flew across the barrage box: “HATERS, SPEAK UP!!!”
Then he leaned back tactically!
Satisfying!
After sending the barrage, Li Shan still hadn’t had enough. He casually opened the fan group he had created, named “The Dark Demon King on the Road to Goat.”
This group had been created yesterday during the match against Liquid. Li Shan had gone around promoting it in all the major CS communities, and now there were already more than a thousand people inside.
Sure enough, even in the middle of the night, the group had long since exploded.
Messages refreshed so quickly it was dizzying!
“Holy shit! That AK! Is Dark God even human?!”
“So good, so damn good! This is ultimate single-tapping! This is the violent aesthetics of the AK!”
“Dark God’s three one-taps just made me climax! Staying up tonight was worth it!”
“Those three shots! Fuck! Confident! Powerful! And so damn fast and accurate! I can’t take it! I think I’m about to become a fan of Dark!”
As soon as this message appeared, someone in the group noticed something was off!
“Wait, bro, the way you said that… isn’t this already a Dark fan group?”
“Hold on! @StrongHandSplitsTable, you weren’t originally a Dark God fan?”
“Fuck! If you weren’t a fan, why did you join the group?”
That StrongHandSplitsTable immediately became a little bashful. “Uh, to be honest, I saw the group number on Tieba and came in planning to troll Dark…”
“???”
“You son of a—!”
“.”
Group owner Li Shan watched the conversation in the group, the corner of his eye twitching despite himself.
But for some reason, deep down, he felt rather pleased!
After all, he himself had been completely conquered in a single match by Meng Lang’s unreasonable marksmanship and high fighting spirit.
Now it seemed that the player he liked really was powerful. He could even conquer trolls who had originally come in to mock him!
Didn’t that prove Li Shan had excellent judgment?
The group was still discussing things in full swing!
“Fast and accurate? This reminds me of Dark God’s style back when he was slaughtering second- and third-tier teams in the early days!”
“He’s back! It’s all back! He’s still that pure rifler!”
“The key is, he’s still playing with bandages wrapped around his hand! This is too terrifying! He’s carrying a built-in debuff and still this fierce?”
“If he’s already this fierce while bandaged, once Dark God’s hand injury fully heals… won’t he just take off?”
“Stop fantasizing about the future for now. I feel like after Vitality got overturned like this in two key rounds in a row, they’ve been completely smothered. G2’s momentum is about to rise!”
“It’s getting good, it’s getting good!”
“.”
At this moment, on-site at the Antwerp studio, the atmosphere at Vitality’s player booths was indeed exceptionally gloomy.
Even apEX, who had always boosted morale with his “mad dog” attitude, was a little muted at this moment.
What else could he say?
Two meticulously planned attacking tactics!
Perfect coordinated executes!
After successfully planting the bomb, they even had the numbers advantage for the post-plant!
Victory had been right before their eyes, only for that monster on the other side named Dark to use an AK and almost brutally destroy it all without mercy!
This was not merely losing rounds.
It was a blow to their mentality and their feel for the game.
When apEX thought of how the AK Dark was using to slaughter everyone had been “given” to him by his own hands, he wanted nothing more than to slap himself twice across the face!
What a sin!
Most fatally, after losing the previous round, Vitality’s economy completely collapsed.
In the following sixth round, Vitality, with no money to buy guns, could only choose a pure ECO.
G2 gave them no chance and took it easily, completely evening the score at 3:3.
From this moment on, the momentum of the match was completely reversed.
In the next few rounds, Vitality’s players truly seemed to have had the feeling in their hands beaten out of them by Meng Lang’s two godlike retakes!
Cold!
Their aim really was damn ice-cold!
Apart from ZywOo, Vitality’s rifling began to deform a little.
Although they tried to avoid the areas Meng Lang was defending, the problem was that CT-side caller Little Li had already raised Meng Lang’s tactical priority—as the B-site rotator, Meng Lang now had an extremely high degree of freedom. He could push mid at any time or support other positions.
Thus, the audience saw Meng Lang’s ID constantly flooding the kill feed.
At times, he pushed mid to pick people off. At times, he rotated quickly back to B and filled the feed. Occasionally, he would even slip over to Long A and coordinate with Niko.
That AK in his hands!
It was as though it belonged to a wrathful king looking down on all!
Judging everything!
Destroying everything!
Vitality’s attacks were frustrated again and again.
The more they played, the colder their hands became.
Their mistakes also began to increase.
On the other hand, for G2, Meng Lang’s performance made his teammates’ hands heat up more and more.
Even old Ni, who had just slammed his fist onto the desk on Nuke in Map 2 and made the pinky of his right hand go numb, was now fiercely taking fights at Long A!
Kid transformed into a yellow flash!
Holding Lower Tunnels from mid, holding Short A with the AWP, holding A doors from the blue car… that big sniper rifle landed no matter how he flicked, and he basically never missed a shot!
Once he built up confidence, he would even push forward!
And so, the remainder of the first half almost became G2’s showtime!
When the notification sound signaling the end of the final round of the first half rang out, the numbers frozen on the scoreboard made every spectator suck in a cold breath:
G2 11 : 4 Vitality
In other words, ever since the fourth round was overturned by Meng Lang in earth-shattering fashion, throughout the entire latter half of the first half, over a stretch of eleven rounds, Vitality had only managed to struggle out a single point!
And Meng Lang’s stat panel was even more exaggerated, so much so that it left people dumbstruck:
【G2-Dark】
K/D: 23/7
ADR: 143.8
Rating: 2.47
Fifteen rounds in the first half!
Twenty-three kills!
Average damage per round as high as 143.8!
A terrifying rating of 2.47!
Especially his individual kill count.
It was even higher than the total number of kills from the entire Vitality team on the other side!
In the 6657 livestream, Wanjiqi, who had been casting with all his strength, took advantage of the halftime break to glance at the stats, and he was instantly stunned!
“I called Dark a ‘true Dust2 emperor’ and some people still argued with me! Look at these stats! These stats are just damn outrageous, all right!”
“Seriously, brothers, from the moment apEX ‘gave’ Dark that AK in the first half, look at his kill distribution! B tunnels, mid, Short A, Long A… he’s everywhere! He really is constantly looking for people to kill, and every single one is an absolutely super dry peek!”
“Can you even understand that?”
“He’s purely gliding like a dragon all over Dust2!”
The viewers in the livestream were shocked too. They even stopped spamming cabinet-bullet barrages!
“Good lord! 23 kills in one half! Rating 2.47! This is a Major match?”
“As expected of CN CS’s rifler! Dust2 is just fierce when he plays it!”
“So satisfying! This is the battle high I wanted to see!”
“ZywOo only had 8 kills in the first half… the contrast in Map 3 is too brutal.”
Of course, there was no shortage of explanations and helplessness from Vitality and ZywOo fans:
“Sigh, his teammates aren’t human. Big Sweet Potato is going to be imprisoned again!”
“Is this Astralis championship core even going to work or not?”
“Dust2 is just like this. Once a rifler gets his hands hot, it’s very easy to snowball.”
“Hope they can win the pistol round in the second half. Otherwise it’s really over.”
“.”
Wanjiqi looked at the barrage, smiled, and concluded, “All right, all right, brothers, stop arguing. Stats don’t lie. Dark’s first half was a god among gods. No debate. Of course, CS is a five-man game. The reason Dark could play so comfortably in the later rounds of the first half is also because G2’s overall defensive coordination and utility support really improved a lot compared to the opening.”
“Right now, the players on both sides are on halftime break, adjusting their mental states and tactics. There’s still suspense in Map 3. Vitality still has a chance.”
“But in my opinion, that chance depends to a large extent on how Vitality’s pistol round goes in the second half! If they win the pistol round, there’s still something to talk about. If they lose the pistol round too… then I’m afraid there really won’t be anything left to say, all right.”
“Then again! Ever since this Major began, G2’s pistol-round win rate has been a bit too miserable to look at! I feel like it’s pretty uncertain… All right! No more nonsense! The pistol round has already begun. Let’s first see what happens in this round.”
“.”
What happened?
One could only say that Wanjiqi was still Wanjiqi, a true expert.
Forty seconds later, G2, on the attacking side in the second half, lost the pistol round.
ZywOo’s USP farmed three kills!
Little Li held his forehead and smiled bitterly.
In a pistol round, where there wasn’t much in the way of tactics or utility coordination, if you lost, there really wasn’t much to say.
Meng Lang, however, looked at the kill feed in the upper right, silently pondering.
In pistol rounds, his room to perform was too small. On CT side, he could buy dualies. As long as his hand speed was fast enough, at close range he could directly use the dualies like an AK, madly tapping and spraying between targets.
But at mid to long range, dualies simply couldn’t touch a USP at all.
Just now, he had been headshot by ZywOo from sandbags, through B doors. It would be nice if one day he could fuse with the remnant body of a USP master…
Meng Lang did not dwell on it too much.
After losing the pistol round,
the score between both sides came to 11:5.
At the G2 player seats, Little Li looked at their economy and fell into a brief silence.
By conventional logic, with such a large score advantage, they should choose a steady ECO transition, save money, and play the next full-buy round.
But…
His gaze involuntarily drifted toward Meng Lang beside him, whose expression was calm. In his mind, he instantly flashed back to Map 1, Inferno, where that figure had picked up a Scout in an ECO round and started wildly picking people apart!
“Why not… gamble again?”
A bold thought rose in Little Li’s heart.
He looked at Meng Lang’s side profile, gritted his teeth, and ultimately decided to do it!
“Force-buy! We’re playing this round!”
Immediately afterward, Little Li himself only bought an unarmored Glock, while using the money he saved to buy Meng Lang a Scout. Meng Lang himself bought full armor and utility.
In the 6657 livestream.
When Wanjiqi saw G2’s force-buy setup, he was instantly shocked:
“Wow! A Scout! God Li directly handed Dark a Scout, it looks like! Then G2 are playing this round very tough! They’ve directly chosen to force-buy! This is very risky!”
“Let’s look at the start! God Li throws a Long A set-up smoke. Old Ni and Cousin first go Long A to execute and apply pressure. Kid bought a Deagle; he still wants to save for an AWP, and now he’s going to do a default solo B.”
“What about Dark?”
“Oh! He’s taken the Scout and jumped down into Lower Tunnels! Does he want to take a shot?”
“Hehe, Vitality knows G2 has no money, so they’re being a little disrespectful this round. They didn’t even smoke mid doors. apEX directly goes for a jump across.”
Before Wanjiqi had finished speaking!
“Bang—!”
A crisp Scout shot rang out!
【G2-Dark killed Vitality-apEX with a Scout wallbang headshot!】
apEX: ???
He subconsciously turned to look at ZywOo, thinking his own tollbooth operator had run over to the other side.
ZywOo’s expression darkened!