There have always been certain evergreen questions in the League of Legends player community:
Can three Challengers beat five Silvers?
Can a full-rune Silver beat a pro?
If a Diamond player from today traveled back to the past, could he slaughter everyone?
For the first two, Chu Bai could only offer the high-quality answer of “I don’t know,” but the third one he truly did know.
—The answer was no.
A Diamond was, when all was said and done, just a lousy Diamond, just like a rotten orange would always be a rotten orange.
Even if the current Diamond level on the Chinese server looked very low in Chu Bai’s eyes.
Whether in mechanics or game sense, they were far worse than players of later generations.
But the problem was, Chu Bai’s own specs were also very low.
In terms of hand speed, he was only at an ordinary person’s level, and the experience he had accumulated was almost useless because the patch was too ancient. His only advantage was his broader way of thinking.
After all, S4 had no such things as Dragon Soul or Atakhan, and Chu Bai did not even recognize many champions’ skills in the current version.
He finally managed to reach level thirty, only to get thoroughly disgusted by the enemy mid-lane Lulu in his very first ranked game, forcing him to spend his second rollback.
He had never even seen this thing before.
But its lane pressure was unexpectedly high.
Especially since the current Chu Bai could only pick Talon. The lane matchup was unspeakably bad.
Normally, even running into Lulu would have been fine. After all, it was only his first ranked game, so the opponent’s strength shouldn’t have been too high.
But Chu Bai’s account was not normal at all. It was a genuine “premium account.”
All the way until he started ranked, his win rate had been 100%.
On top of that, every game had been a carry performance, causing his hidden MMR to soar into the heavens.
—His first game was already at Diamond I.
This was a very terrifying thing.
One had to know that it was currently the start of the season, just after New Year.
Before this year, there had been no Master tier above Diamond I. Each server only had fifty Challengers.
Anyone who could reach Diamond I was absolutely top-tier among solo queue players.
Although their level was still inferior to Chu Bai’s, the gap between them really was not that large anymore.
Chu Bai was only ahead in some understanding of minion waves. In terms of mechanics, he could not gain much of an advantage at all.
Add to that the fact that his teammates were not pulling their weight, and spending his second rollback became… very natural.
After rolling back again, Chu Bai changed his playstyle.
He no longer pursued solo-killing his lane opponent, and instead began using his relatively superior awareness to set the tempo.
As for laning?
Leave it to the jungler.
Develop steadily in the early game, call the jungler more often, and make it through the difficult early-to-mid game transition.
Don’t ask why the jungler came whenever he called. It was actually very simple.
Even if you didn’t understand the art of speaking, it didn’t matter.
As long as you typed the mysterious code DIE into chat, the jungler was guaranteed to come.
This made Chu Bai sigh at the simplicity of the era.
If this were S16, even if you called DIE, the jungler might not come. One could only say that people’s hearts were not what they used to be.
Alas, the times!
In this era, if you really called someone, they really would come.
Under this kind of play from Chu Bai, the enemy mid laner directly started spamming question marks, angrily denouncing Chu Bai as “a thing without a mid laner’s soul.”
It was just a damned ranked game, and the enemy mid laner was just sitting there farming and scaling. Who wouldn’t get annoyed?
Chu Bai’s old face barely reddened for one second.
But he knew that very soon, the one sweating buckets would be the enemy mid laner.
As the early game passed peacefully, Chu Bai’s Talon began to exert his strength.
At eight minutes, he was 0/0, standing there like a lackey.
At eighteen minutes, he was 4/0, his score luxurious as hell.
Not a single solo kill. All of it relied on the enemy bot lane’s contributions.
When in doubt, gank bot and kill the support.
How deranged was he?
After ganking bot, he directly invaded the enemy jungle, then halfway through, blocked the enemy bot lane again.
Mid-lane minion wave?
How much was that worth?
After this game ended, if anyone asked the enemy bot lane whether dragons truly existed in this world,
the answer would definitely be yes, because he had just been given Chu Bai’s full dragon-service package.
Very quickly, the enemy mid laner received doubts from his own bot lane.
“Can you control Talon in mid or not?”
The mid laner went numb. “Did you not see I’m almost thirty CS ahead of him?”
That bot laner also had something to say. “He’s been roaming nonstop. If you can’t get thirty CS up, that definitely counts as getting suppressed. Save us!”
The mid laner started sweating buckets. “Fine, wait for me to take his mid tower!”
[Force Eight Gale] has slain…
Bot lane: Mid laner, I ?@&%!
The two carries started arguing directly, and Chu Bai was delighted beyond belief.
A Talon who couldn’t get kills was no different from FW.
But before a Talon who had gotten kills, basically everyone was FW.
Stealth, silence, gap-closer.
Was there any assassin kit in the world more badass than this?
Once an assassin with silence got ahead, it really was pig slaughter.
When the game ended, Chu Bai’s score was still perfect.
14/1/7.
Other than one mid-game teamfight where he initiated first and got pinned down, he had not given them any chances at any other time.
Chu Bai continued playing until eleven at night before ending his campaign for the day.
Ten consecutive wins, placed at Platinum I.
It was not that Chu Bai’s hidden MMR was not enough to place him higher, but because right now, the highest placement possible was Platinum I.
As for the price…
He had spent two more rollbacks.
Facts proved that skipping class had consequences.
Chu Bai could indeed rely on outstanding awareness and tempo to forcefully avoid certain weak laning phases, but as his win streak grew longer and longer, the opponents’ overall lineup quality also gradually rose.
From initially one Diamond I leading three Golds, it quickly became every player Platinum and above.
By the time he reached his tenth placement game, the lowest-ranked opponent was already Diamond III.
Amid a sea of Diamond borders, Chu Bai, who had no rank emblem, was exceptionally eye-catching.
After entering the game, teammates who had checked LOL Box quickly exclaimed in surprise.
“Holy crap, 100% win rate up to now? That’s insane, damn.”
Another teammate was equally shocked:
“Awesome. A pro player’s smurf?”
And Chu Bai? Chu Bai said nothing and pretended to be an expert.
His laning in this game was exceptionally difficult, and his tempo also came online slowly.
Although the loss was not because of him, his performance was honestly not impressive enough either.
In the second attempt, Chu Bai bit the bullet and forced himself to lane against the opponent, discovering that he actually could fight.
But he still made many mistakes.
In a crucial teamfight, he was directly locked down by the enemy jungler and support, failing to enter the fight.
Without Talon threatening the enemy backline, the enemy double carries had an almost perfect damage environment and took the game very easily.
After the second rollback, Chu Bai became even more serious.
While laning properly, he also consciously avoided his own mechanical mistakes and searched for a better angle to enter the fight.
In the face of such meticulous preparation, he ultimately completed the task of cutting into the backline. After a triple kill, he completely gained momentum and began turning the game into a slaughter.
On the results screen, his score was still beautiful. He was the MVP without question.
His teammates also sent exclamations in the lower-left corner.
—As expected of a Talon one-trick, 666!
—So this is a hundred-percent win rate? Ridiculous!
—Too fierce, bro. Duo next game?
Chu Bai looked at these praises and froze for a moment.
In his teammates’ eyes, his mechanics were perfect and his thinking was clear, like a fierce man descended from the heavens leading the entire team to victory.
But in his own eyes…
He had already lost to the enemy twice.
And they had been ugly losses at that.
For the first time, he was not as happy as he had been after winning these past few days.
But as a former corporate-slave streamer who had streamed for free every single day without fail, Chu Bai had always had a firm grasp on regulating his mentality.
He only went emo for less than two seconds before sighing:
“Man, my cheat is really damn amazing. Jie jie jie!”
From the moment his parents had fallen to their deaths and the family property had been divided up completely,
Chu Bai had already understood one truth.
Between heaven and hell, we do not have the right to choose.
There is only the fate of being chosen.