Still very unfamiliar.
That was what Chu Bai felt as he pushed open the door.
Expressionless, he looked around.
The buildings of varying heights, arranged with a certain order, were already a little familiar.
The small convenience store brimming with the air of daily life, along with the Xin Xin Internet Café not far away, entered his sight.
Quite a few teenagers, dressed in what looked to him like hopelessly outdated clothes, were walking out in twos and threes, laughing and joking.
Chu Bai seemed to let it go.
He closed the door again, sat back down on the bed in the rented room, irritably ruffled his hair, and let out a breath.
“So I really did transmigrate…”
The year 2014 displayed on the computer actually wasn’t fake.
And this so-called panel in front of him probably wasn’t fake either.
【The Strongest Player System welcomes you】
【Current Evaluation Version: S4】
【User: Chu Bai】
【Age: 14】
【Mechanics: 5/20】
【Reaction: 9/20】
【Experience: 1/20】
【Champion Pool: 0/20】
【Development: 7/20】
Overall Score: 22
Evaluation: Under normal circumstances, beating Diamond would count as a success, but circumstances generally aren’t very normal.
【??: ????】
【Warm Reminder: You ignite the fire that leads to the sky, you hold aloft the aspirations of ten thousand, you sit upon the supreme throne, you are the undefeated legend】
Chu Bai: Psycho.
At the very bottom was a quest bar, with only one entry inside.
Beginner Quest: Reach the top of the Chinese server Rank ladder
Quest Reward: One champion at top professional level
Three days ago, Chu Bai had just finished his stream and stepped out of his bedroom when he heard a strange voice.
【Do you wish to become an undefeated professional player?】
At the time, Chu Bai was busy heading out to KFC to get some fries.
He impatiently waved his hand, meaning: go back to wherever you came from and stop bothering me.
【As you wish】
—And then he transmigrated.
The instant he stepped through the door, he immediately felt his field of vision drop by a chunk.
His lower abdomen, which had already gone flat from neglecting exercise after graduation, had also returned to the abs he had once trained back in middle school.
—He had returned to his teenage years.
And the time displayed on the computer had changed from 2026 to 2014.
【I should’ve had incognito mode on in my browser, right?】
That was his first thought after transmigrating.
【Fuck, I waved my hand to tell you not to annoy me, not to agree!】
That was the thought that followed right after.
Over these three days, he had already walked in and out countless times, all to see whether he could transmigrate back.
Clearly, he could not.
He collected himself, sat down in front of that old, shabby computer, and pressed the power button.
There was no helping it. It seemed impossible to just go back like this.
Then he could only brace himself and do the quest.
As a former small streamer on a certain Maoya platform, Chu Bai was rather special in a certain sense.
【The best League of Legends player in the looks section, and the handsomest guy in the League of Legends section】
Relying on daily, unbroken, corporate-slave-level streaming, he had accumulated more than 288,000 followers, of which female fans made up as much as 70%.
Although he himself had always had no damn self-awareness and thought he was a proper skill-based streamer, in reality, even his Master-tier rank had been hand-carried up by female fans.
As long as he didn’t show his face, his stream’s popularity was pure roadside trash.
But no matter what, I was still a Master in S16, right?
With a cheat on top of that, getting rank one on the Chinese server should be easy, shouldn’t it?
With that thought in mind, Chu Bai registered a League of Legends account and smoothly typed in his former ID:
【Level Eight Gale】
Although he had no idea where someone from another world like him got an ID card and several thousand yuan in savings, he was too lazy to bother with system-related matters.
It was also fortunate that registering a Penguin account nowadays didn’t require a phone number. Otherwise, his grand undertaking really would have died halfway before it even began.
The beginner tutorial had already been forced to start, and the loading was fast.
“This really is… crappy enough.”
Chu Bai looked at the scene before him, clicking his tongue a little.
The dim visuals, the ancient UI design, the map that still pursued a realistic style, the defense towers and Nexus rich with the flavor of the era, and the bizarrely shaped champion models.
When he had gotten into the game, it had already been S11. He genuinely had never played such an ancient version.
But he vaguely remembered having watched some archaeology videos before. League of Legends had indeed undergone several map updates.
Forget it. He’d finish the beginner quest first.
Chu Bai completed the beginner tutorial according to the prompts, and his mood improved slightly.
Although he still couldn’t adapt to the art style, fortunately, the underlying operating logic was still there, just like the White Mask, and it wouldn’t affect his performance too much.
Ranked showed as unavailable.
He opened the shop and spent a round, buying a few cheap champions, as well as several days of double experience and gold.
—Although he had not given up these past few days, it wasn’t as if he had just been lying stiffly in bed every day either.
There were many beginner guides for getting into League of Legends on Baidu Tieba. When he had nothing to do, he would read them and had made ample preparations.
Tieba in this era really did have substance. The most classic saying was: go to the Lin Chiling bar, and you might actually run into Lin Chiling.
And the first goal next was naturally to level up to thirty.
He clicked matchmaking, and in less than three seconds, it instantly succeeded.
“Damn, this popularity?”
Chu Bai was a little emotional.
Before he transmigrated, even matchmaking on the Ionia server on a day off would take half a minute.
After entering the game, before he even had time to pick a champion, interaction had already begun in the lower left corner.
【My Luv U Dun Undrstnd】: 1F top, I’m invincible
【Pink Fuzzy Bunny】: 2F jungle, if you don’t give it I feed
【Society’s Brother Long】: What are you two dumbasses acting for? Feed if you’ve got the guts
Chu Bai was amused.
This experience was rather novel to him. After all, when he got into the game, pre-select was already a thing. Although there were people who fought over roles, they were very few.
As expected, Chu Bai, on fifth pick, directly became support.
Who told him his level was the lowest?
But it didn’t matter.
Although he mainly played mid, he had plenty of experience filling other roles too.
There’s no way I can lose this, right?
Thirty minutes later, he was speechless.
He really was fucking about to lose!
To summarize this game in one sentence:
Aside from him, not a single one of them was human.
Chu Bai roamed the whole map, maxing out the tempo.
His Blitzcrank hooks landed every time. Against the backdrop of the enemy’s garbage positioning, it looked like scripting, to the point that people in all-chat had already begun suspecting him of using a program.
But they were still at a disadvantage.
Because however big of an advantage Chu Bai could create, they could throw away just as much tempo.
Watching super minions from all three lanes flood into their base, Chu Bai scratched his head.
Doomed. Next game.
All-chat was already scrolling with the opponents’ mockery.
“Trash support, still gonna smurf?”
“Still coming over to gank me, hahaha.”
“So damn bad, don’t even dare to talk, hahaha.”
Chu Bai was a little annoyed, but he simply pretended he hadn’t seen it.
He was used to it.
This is just what the quality of us League of Legends players is like.
But still always better than those Valorant juniors, y’know.
Chu Bai was a little curious.
The 【Warm Reminder】 clearly said he was an undefeated legend, but wasn’t he obviously about to lose here?
Where was the undefeated part? Where was the legend? Where was the awesomeness?
The Nexus’s health grew lower and lower. Chu Bai, who had no habit of surrendering and would never click yes, watched quietly.
But at the moment the Nexus’s health completely hit zero and it exploded…
—Everything froze.
The next second.
In Chu Bai’s eyes, the entire world turned gray-white.
The dust suspended in the air began to flow backward. The Nexus that had already exploded on the screen suddenly restored itself to wholeness, its health instantly returning to full.
The three destroyed inhibitors suddenly recovered. The game timer in the upper right corner began spinning backward madly, until it returned to 0:00.
The records in the chat box flipped upward one line at a time, and finally, with a flash, the screen turned into the loading screen…
The next moment, the world returned to color.
The time in the lower right corner also began reversing madly, finally stopping before the start of the game.
And in the lower left corner of the chat box, a line of speech appeared prominently.
【My Luv U Dun Undrstnd】: 1F top, I’m invincible
Chu Bai stared blankly at that message, his entire mind going empty.
For some reason, he thought of that 【Warm Reminder】:
【You are the undefeated legend】
“So that’s how it is…”
He gradually understood everything.
So this is Reborn as Natsuki Subaru, huh?
Other people rewind when they die, while I rewind when I lose?
Then let me ask you this, let me ask you this.
Where did my Rem go?
Fuck you, System. Speak!
No matter how inconceivable it looked, everything was telling him:
Perhaps as long as he lost a match, he would fall into a time rewind.
No wonder the prompt said he was an undefeated legend.
—If he lost, he would fall into a time rewind, and time would only continue flowing forward once he reached the moment of victory.
Chu Bai understood very clearly.
The system really hadn’t lied. In a certain sense, he was indeed already invincible.
But the bad news was:
If one day he ran into an opponent so strong that he could never win, he would be like Diavolo in JOJO, forever unable to arrive at the truth of the next second.
Chu Bai hated endless cycles, and he hated dull repetition even more.
And that was the cruelest punishment in the world.
So—
【Level Eight Gale】: 5F mid, main account Diamond, just lie down
【Level Eight Gale】: Don’t waste my time. Pick already
Chu Bai did not hem and haw. He instantly locked in 【Talon, the Blade’s Shadow】, nicknamed Male Blade.
Before matchmaking, he had looked over the skills. There wasn’t much difference compared to later Talon.
Most importantly, the legendary 【silence】 mechanic still existed.
—Chu Bai really had never played Talon with silence before.
He was a little curious.
Lock in Talon first, state the rank of his so-called “main account” to intimidate his teammates, and then show an impatient attitude to increase his credibility.
Chu Bai did not want to rewind another game.
Playing League of Legends with these insects was worse than going next door to the MYGO set and forming an Issenni Band with those godlike Japanese JKs.
Chu Bai’s smooth little combo was clearly quite effective.
His originally lively teammates silently picked the remaining positions, no longer as active as last time.
But Chu Bai knew very well that this was only temporary.
If he failed to show the strength that a 【Diamond】 should have, then he would be met with fierce counterattacks from his cheap teammates.
League of Legends players were all chameleons by nature.
If a teammate plays well, I’m meek and mild. If a teammate plays badly, I strike with heavy fists!
But would Chu Bai mess up?
The black-haired youth before the screen habitually adjusted the left side of his headset, his bright eyes without the slightest ripple.
The game began!