“I think I could have become famous much earlier, but I was too young back then. My personality held me back.”
“When I first started playing professionally, I didn’t really know any better. If I’d been a little more mature from the start, I might have been playing in the LPL as early as Season 3. It feels like most of my time was buried by my own hands. It’s a real shame.”
These were the words Wei Zhen, whose pro ID was GodV, said at the end of a certain show after retiring.
At this moment, he was proud and unruly. Even describing him as “looking down on everyone” would probably be putting it mildly.
Forget Chu Bai—even starting mid laners from top teams like Wuwukai and Ruofeng were people Wei Zhen dismissed all the same.
And he did indeed have the right to be proud.
Wei Zhen’s talent was extraordinarily outstanding. It could even be called exaggerated.
After playing League for one month, he reached Challenger on the Chinese server. After three months, he topped the Korean server.
By the end of his professional career in 2017, he was already riddled with injuries, and the LGD he played for had been forced into the relegation tournament.
Thus, Wei Zhen, who was only Diamond II on Ionia at the time, faced off against Knight, the rising star with a promising future who was ranked second on the Korean server.
Everyone was waiting to laugh at him, waiting to see how this once-genius mid laner would be thrashed by his opponent.
But the result disappointed everyone.
Even when he was already on the verge of retirement, Wei Zhen still brutalized Knight, using a cruel 3-0 to send this new-generation genius mid laner, the Korean server’s number two, back to the LSPL. He even completed a solo kill.
If one had to use a single sentence to describe this player, then no sentence was more fitting than this:
Whether you loved him or hated him, it had nothing to do with him.
The game began at that very moment.
After both mid laners arrived in lane, they hovered near the middle of the lane, yet neither was in any hurry to push. They simply maintained distance.
“Tch.”
Wei Zhen scoffed aloud, but in his heart, he grew slightly more serious.
Both sides had taken Flash and Ignite. Their killing intent was extremely heavy.
But precisely because of that, the first two levels had to be handled even more carefully.
Why did Dian Gun often say that if you didn’t handle levels one and two well, the game was over?
Because in high elo, when the two sides’ skill levels were not that far apart, mishandling levels one and two basically meant you would be suppressed for the entire lane.
Talon’s level two was a strong point. Logically speaking, Chu Bai should push the wave.
However, if he really pushed this wave, then once he failed to get a solo kill at level two, Talon would go straight to jail during levels three to five.
The act of pushing the wave would bring unnecessary offensive pressure to Talon.
For an outstanding mid laner, offensive pressure was like Occam’s razor.
Unless it had reached the point where not stepping up would most likely mean losing, it had to be avoided as much as possible.
After all, when it came to the role of mid lane, at the end of the day, it was still the team’s core damage source and carry point.
Roaming and tempo came after that.
—If it was a four-protect-one composition, then pretend I didn’t say that.
Chu Bai understood this very well, so he was extremely rational. He didn’t touch the minion wave at all.
Wei Zhen understood it very well too.
So he smiled and began pushing.
This was the Wei Zhen of the present.
He knew pushing this wave would put him at a disadvantage, but so what?
I’m pushing it anyway!
He had complete confidence that even while disadvantaged, he could still obtain lane priority and even score a solo kill.
However, this time, he miscalculated.
Three minutes later, both mid laners reached level three at the same time.
Wei Zhen’s body had unconsciously sat upright, and the hand gripping his mouse had tightened slightly. In his originally sharp eyes, a trace of confusion appeared.
In his memories, he tried hard to search through every Talon specialist he had ever encountered.
In the end, he confirmed that he truly had never run into such a person before.
“But why…?”
Wei Zhen was very puzzled.
He could clearly tell that his opponent’s hand speed was inferior to his, and that his mechanics and reactions were also slightly behind.
And yet, even so.
Talon’s positioning remained exceptional. Who knew how many times he had dodged Wei Zhen’s meticulously designed Qs by the narrowest of margins?
On the contrary, his Zed had been harassed badly.
Was it luck or skill?
What a joke. Such a question had never once appeared in Wei Zhen’s mind.
I don’t care what it is. I’ll win first and talk later!
Along with the death of a melee minion not far away.
Zed, who reached level four first, made his move.
At this moment, Talon did not have the advantage in health.
Even though Chu Bai had handled things extremely well, S4 Zed, as the final afterglow of the assassin era, still retained a fully coarse and brutal aesthetic in terms of raw numbers.
WEQ was practically a brainless trading pattern.
Q had a six-second cooldown at all ranks.
E had a four-second cooldown at all ranks, and hitting an enemy champion could likewise reduce its cooldown.
It was simply sinister to the extreme.
Wei Zhen’s Q didn’t even need to land. As long as his E scraped Talon twice, Talon would start having a hard time.
In the early era of League, it was just like the Arena mode that came out later.
There was no such thing as some towering, unshakable tree. The focus was one thing countering another.
Hero strength was hard to balance?
Designer: Eh! [glasses, big teeth, soybean]
As long as every champion was overtuned, and once they got going, they could all 1v5.
Then wasn’t that also a kind of balance, in a certain sense?
All one could say was that designers in those days truly understood games. If you got fed, you really could 1v5.
Zed, who had reached level four first, seized the stiffness from Talon last-hitting the low-health cannon minion. From maximum range, he instantly cast W—Living Shadow, followed by E—Shadow Slash twice in succession.
Wei Zhen’s proficiency was astonishing, and his control of distance was equally excellent.
Yet Chu Bai, whose health had dropped to half, did not panic in the slightest and did not retreat.
If he retreated now, the lane would truly explode.
Talon advanced instead of retreating.
His W simultaneously covered Zed’s body and shadow in front of him. While ensuring that Zed would definitely be hit by the skill, it also cleared two low-health frontline minions, making up the last bit of experience and allowing him to reach level four as well.
A Zed one level ahead would have 80 more health and 4 more attack damage. With neither side having recalled, Talon was at an extreme disadvantage.
Want to win?
Then one needed the courage to snatch chestnuts from the fire and seek life in the jaws of death!
And Chu Bai happened to have it.
Wei Zhen wanted to kill him. But how could he not want to kill Wei Zhen as well?
Wei Zhen’s eyes were calm. He immediately activated the second cast of W, swapping to Chu Bai’s front.
He landed an auto attack carrying 6% of maximum health as damage, and almost at the same time, placed Ignite on the low-health Talon.
Ignite’s damage at this time was terrifying.
At level four, Ignite dealt 170 damage. Even if Talon drank a potion, he absolutely could not withstand Zed’s next Q.
Before the durability update in the mythic item era, mid-lane assassin duels were all about instantly killing each other.
The instant Zed swapped in front of Talon, Chu Bai had already used the E in his hand, blinking behind Zed and applying Ignite.
His eyes were as calm as a deep, secluded pool.
“The third time…”
Almost at the same time, two bursts of golden light exploded!
The moment Talon’s E passed through Zed and arrived behind him, Wei Zhen’s Zed, right before the silence effect triggered, suddenly turned back with extreme hand speed and threw out a reverse Q!
Don’t misunderstand. He had not created that famous reverse-Q scene more than a year early.
In reality, this was an extremely outstanding prediction.
Not only that, in that instant, Zed also used the Flash in his hand.
Q-Flash!
It really was that backward-leaning jump shot!
While adding the final bit of damage, he pulled distance from Talon, not giving him any chance at all to trade kills.
Wei Zhen’s smile was almost about to surface, his brows lifting slightly.
—Won!
This counterattack was terrifyingly fast, the full embodiment of hand speed, mechanics, and judgment.
This time, it was checkmate.
However, his gaze gradually shifted from pride to astonishment. The corners of his mouth, which had been lifting, were silently smoothed flat, and the smile that had been there vanished completely!
“What the hell, why?!”
He subconsciously voiced a question directed at no one in particular.
Talon, who had used E to pass through Zed, faced the shuriken Zed had thrown with Q-Flash the instant he landed—and decisively flashed diagonally to the right.
Amid dreamlike shards of golden light, he dodged that lethal shuriken.
Actually, if it had simply been dodged with Flash, Wei Zhen would not have been too surprised.
So what if the other guy reacted a little faster? So what if the other guy predicted it? That was very normal!
The reason Wei Zhen was shocked was because the Flash position Chu Bai had chosen was equally ridiculous.
—He had flashed near the landing point after Zed’s Q-Flash.
That was the true reason he had been shocked into losing composure.
Talon landed. Q, auto attack, bleed triggered, and took him away.
[First Blood!]
[Force-Eight Gale has slain Wei Zhen Himself!]
Solo kill!
Yes, Wei Zhen’s ID on Server One was precisely [Wei Zhen Himself].
Although Chu Bai and Han Jin’s IDs already had plenty of style, Wei Zhen’s ID was in no way inferior. He could be considered the first person among LPL players to surf the internet under a real-name system.
“How is that possible…? He guessed that I was going to go in instead of just trade?”
“He guessed that I would Q-Flash?… He even guessed the Flash landing point I would choose?”
Wei Zhen sat back down, looking at the screen as he could not help but ponder.
The more he thought about it, the more absurd and exaggerated it felt.
It even gave him a feeling of gazing up at a towering mountain.
Muttering to himself, his entire person appeared somewhat dazed and dispirited.
“…He also had killing intent? In the span of just a few seconds, he had already figured out how to counter-kill me?!”
For a genius player like Wei Zhen, the thirst for knowledge regarding mechanics and decision-making was innate.
It was also precisely because of this that, all the way until the game ended, he remained somewhat distracted.
He no longer cared that much about winning this game.
Compared to winning the game, he wanted even more to know exactly how Chu Bai had done it.
Because for a genius mid laner like him, someone who could easily top the Korean server…
—LP was truly worthless.
In an interview, he had once said something that sounded unreasonable at first: “What use is LP?”
That was because he really could casually climb to rank one on the Korean server.
He had the thought of asking Chu Bai, but he also knew very well that his words could easily offend people, and he did not know how to open his mouth.
On the other side.
Watching the enemy nexus explode, Chu Bai finally let out a breath.
Five times.
To win this game, he had rewound time a full five times.
For the first time, Chu Bai felt what the oppressive power of a top-tier laning mid laner was.
After reaching Challenger, he had already gone several consecutive days without rewinding again.
Ordinary thousand-LP Challengers, as long as they were not playing their one-trick mains, could be slaughtered by him like pigs with casual ease.
Professional.
After the first rewind, Chu Bai had confirmed his opponent’s identity.
Only a professional mid laner could still bring him this much pressure at this point.
“What a pity…”
Chu Bai looked at the 10/1/7 on the scoreboard. There was no joy in his eyes, only a bit of regret.
He could clearly sense that Zed had been distracted in the mid to late game.
If he could play a full game against this Zed going all out, then after winning, he estimated that his Talon would be able to slaughter people freely even in professional matches.
In a certain sense, this guy was a genuine “high-grade evolution material.”
For Chu Bai, who rewound after losing, cutting corners was useless.
Whether he stuck his head out or drew it back, the blade would still fall.
In that case, he might as well use this Zed now to raise his own level even higher.
That was why he truly felt it was a pity.
Exiting the scoreboard, Chu Bai glanced at his own ranked position.
No. 4: Force-Eight Gale, Challenger, 1374 LP
Ahead of him, only three people remained.
No. 3: Shengqiang Ge, Challenger, 1391 LP
No. 2: Clearlove, Challenger, 1406 LP
No. 1: Please Give Me Mid, Challenger, 1425 LP
By now, Chu Bai had basically been matched with all the players at the top of the Chinese server.
During this time, he had also completely confirmed that he had not been reborn, but had physically transmigrated into a parallel world.
—Because all the players he knew were gone.
Chu Bai had also more or less come to know these three people.
Ranked third was a top-lane player who liked playing flashy tricks.
Ranked second was Mingkai, the EDG jungler whom Chu Bai had disdained a few days ago for only knowing how to jungle.
As for first…
He was a ranked monster who had used two accounts to dominate the top two spots on the Korean server.
Whether he was strong or not could be discussed later, but when it came to ranked, this person was truly fierce.
But…
Instead, Chu Bai smiled.
“Only like this is it interesting.”
He did not know why that mysterious system had chosen him, nor did he know what conditions were required for him to return home.
The more a tree yearned for the light above, the more its roots had to reach downward, toward the soil, toward the depths of darkness.
Only when its roots were planted firmly enough could they support the weight of belief and longing.
Chu Bai had already deeply realized one very important point:
When he had no choice but to walk onto this path of professionalism, a road covered in both thorns and flowers—
From that moment on—
His goal had only one thing left.
The championship.