Inside his college dorm room in Seoul, Korea, Coff had gone beyond mad. He’d transcended raging. Right now, he was pure unadulterated fury at the world. <b>Bang! </b>There were no words to express or vent this fury that he was feeling, so he resorted to smashing his mouse down on his desk. But it wasn’t enough. He let go of the mouse and balled his fists. <b>BANG! BANG! BANG! </b>Coff started pounding on his keyboard with both fists. The irony of the situation that waspletely lost on Coff was that the action was simr to Alistar’s Pulverize. But he didn’t notice, and continued to smash down on his keyboard. Sadly, it was not enough to vent the fury that coursed through both his mind and body.
“FUCK!” Coff screamed out loud. <i>That… I never expected anything like that! This was the most infuriating game I’ve yed in a long time. I literally cannot remember another one that made me rage this hard. How did an Alistar stomp all over my Yasuo?!</i>
Coff took a beat to focus, and reyed the entire game in his head. All of the blood that rushed to his head and face drained, and his face turned pale as he understood. Coff clenched his jaw as the truth dawned on him. <i>There’s no way around this. I hate to admit it… but that Alistar was really good. Way better than me…</i>
“Dammit! I thought the Chinese server was supposed to be full of scrubs!” Coff screamed, cursing the universe and his own misfortune.
From a zoomed in perspective, it was easy to think that Coff had truly terrible luck and managed to run into Lin Feng on his first game. But that was far from what was happening in reality. If one zoomed out and looked at all the Korean yers who had attempted to invade the Ionia Server to avenge their honor, Coff was not the only yer who was experiencing fury and failure. It was truly unfortunate that none of the invaders were aware of amon saying in the Chinese Leaguemunity. “On the Ionia Server, high tinum and low Diamond are much more frightening than Master and Challenger.”
It was an intrinsic truth of the ELO system on Ionia Server that all Chinese yers hade to understand after ying for many years. A curious quirk of the region that was created by abination of circumstances, and only known to the yers of China. That truth was that on the Ionia Server, the waters of high tinum and low Diamond ran much deeper than Master and Challenger. This situation was created by the fact that this particr rank division was simply too chaotic to urately state the abilities of the yers within it.
High tinum and low Diamond was full of both seasoned yers, top professional yers, and absolute noobs. When one walked into the solo queue on the Ionia Server and started a game created by the match-making system, there was no way to tell how the game would go if you were in this rank division. One could end up on a team with professional yers who were smurfing a second ount, or with a seasoned yer who was attempting to raise an alternate ount to Challenger, or with aplete novice who had paid to have their ount boosted to tinum or low Diamond to brag to their friends. Or a true noob to League of Legends who had paid to purchase an ount in tinum/low Diamond because they had no understanding of the game and their own abilities.
For the Chinese yers who yed at the tinum/low Diamond division, it all came down to luck of the draw. If they managed to high roll, they got a smurf or two on their team and that was something worth celebrating. If they low rolled and ended up with a few boosted yers who could notpete at that level of y, it meant helplessly epting a loss at 15 minutes. They had long since be ustomed to the state of things, and it no longer affected their mental state. The rough approximation that most yers understood was that about a third of the yers in the high tinum and low Diamond ELO didn’t actually belong there. They could be from a higher rank or from a lower rank, but one never knew what their teammates would be like.
But this was something that the Korean yers attempting to invade the Ionia server had no idea about. And the reality of the situation hit them like a sack of bricks and brought them untold misery. Their experiences during this doomed invasion gathered together made a tale of tragedy.
One of the most tragic tales involved a Diamond 4 Korean yer. He was a Jungler, and he’d just gotten into a game where he managed to lock in on his main champion. Lee Sin. He was nning on roaring out of the gate strong and solo carrying the entire game. In his mind, he was salivating at the thought of stomping on all 5 of the Chinese yers on the opposing team and giving them a taste of the true strength of the Korean server. He genuinely had no doubt in his mind that everything would go in his favor, and it did not matter how strong the opposing team was at all. He knew, for sure, that as long as he was ying Lee Sin, he could carry the game for his team!
The first 3 minutes of the game went fantastically for this Korean Lee Sin. Then things turned horribly wrong. Before Lee Sin even had a chance to clear his Red and Blue Buff camps, the announcer’s voice rang out.
<b>《</b><b>First Blood!</b><b>》</b>
Lee Sin started to frantically scroll across the map to see what happened. That’s when he saw that in the Bot Lane, his team’s Ad-Carry had given away first blood. Then the announcer’s voice rang out again.
<b>《</b><b>An ally has been in!</b><b>》</b>
Lee Sin did not need to search for what happened this time. He’d watched it happen. The Support yer on his team had also died. Both yers on his team’s Bot Lane had been killed three minutes after the game started.
<i>How!? This quickly!? </i>The Korean yer was in disbelief, but he quicklyposed himself. <i>It’s fine. Bot is easy enough to gank. I’ll just go over and help them get the advantage back.</i>
The Lee Sin yer resigned himself to the fact that he’d have to try a little bit harder, and focused. He cleared out both of his buff camps a minuteter, and was charting a path to the Bot Lane for his first gank. Right as he was about to ping his teammates to let them know he was on his way, and what his entry point was going to be, the announcer’s voice rang out again.
<b>《</b><b>An ally has been in!</b><b>》</b>
Lee Sin had to scroll again to see what happened. He was sure it wasn’t the Bot Lane, because he was watching what was happening there. This time, it was his team’s Toner who had been killed. The Lee Sin yer clenched his teeth and decided he was going to first help Bot Lane, and then go up Top to set things right. With the n set, he started to walk towards Bot Lane when the announcer’s voice rang out yet again.
<b>《</b><b>An ally has been in!</b><b>》</b>
This time, it was the Miner who had been routed. As it currently stood, only four minutes had psed since the start of the game and the only yer on his team who had not been killed was the Lee Sin yer. He understood, then, that there was no hope. In a matter of mere minutes, all three of thenes on his team hadpletely copsed. There was no way for Lee Sin to prop them all up at the same time.
The Diamond 4 Korean yer was about to lose his mind. <i>How am I supposed to y like this!? Why did all threenes lose so badly? Why is there such an insane skill difference between the teams?</i>
Unfortunately, Lee Sin couldn’t see what the opponent was typing in their team chat.
「<i>Looks like topne got boosted to Diamond.</i>」
「<i>Mid too.</i>」
「<i>Damn, really!? Bot too! Both the Ad-Carry and Support are trash!</i>」
「<i>Hahaha! Lucky! It’s a freelo game!</i>」
While the tragic tale of the Korean Lee Sin was terrible to the yer who experienced the whole thing, it was moreical to those who heard about it. There were other Korean yers who ended up in situations that could only be described as heart-rending. And genuinely unlucky. An example of this was what urred to a Diamond 2 Korean yer who had joined in on the invasion of the Ionia Server.
This particr Korean yer was a little bit more clever than the average bear. He’d heard what happened to other Koreans, and quickly understood that there were quite a few yers in tinum/low Diamond who were boosted. So he started checking to make sure that none of his teammates fell into the boosted category before starting the game. If he discovered any yers who were boosted or that he had doubts about, he would immediately dodge out of the game. Then, finally, he found a game where he had determined that none of the yers on his team were boosted. Relief washed over his heart, and he steadied himself to stomp all over the Chinese yers.
This particr Korean yer was a Toner, and his main champion was Fiora. He’d yed hundreds of games with Fiora, and knew her as intimately as one could know a MOBA champion. There were nights where this yer had dreams in which he’d gotten to know Fiora far more intimately than that, but that isn’t relevant to this story. This particr Diamond 2 Korean yer knew that as long as his teammates didn’t feed, he could crush hisne opponent with Fiora and carry his team to victory!
Unfortunately for him, that was not how the game went at all. In the first 10 minutes of the game, the Korean Fiora had already died to the opposing Toner, a Riven, three times. After watching his screen turn ck and white again, the Korean yer rubbed his eyes in utter disbelief. <i>I-I died again!? I’m a Diamond 2 yer on the Korean server! What is even happening? How am I getting crushed this badly in Ionia?! And I’m getting stomped by someone who is only tinum 1! How is this even possible? How is this Riven only ranked tinum 1? What? Why? How? Why? Why? Why? Why? THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE! </i>
In the gaming house of a certain LPL team, a young man leaned back in seat with a toothpick in his mouth. He rolled his eyes and said, “This Fiora. What. An. Idiot. He’s still trying to fight me when he’s behind. Doesn’t this guy know how scary a fed Riven is?”
On another nearbyputer, a teammate turned to look at the young man and smiled. “Ah! You winning, son?”
The youth looked up at his teammate. “Of course! You think I’d lose in a game like this?”
The teammate smirked, “Yeah yeah. Hows about you say stuff like that when you can actually get to Diamond, yeah?”
The young man grimaced, as if he’d had cold water dumped on his head. “God dammit! Why you always gotta hit me where it hurts!?”
In the Chinesepetitive scene, there were top LSPL or even LPL yers who were brilliant on thepetitive stage. But for some reason or another, they would have the worst luck in solo queue and could never climb higher than high tinum and low Diamond.
This young man was a prime example of that. In fact, he’d had such a hard time getting out of tinum that he’d earned himself the nickname of China’s #1 tinum Gatekeeper.
In other words, the unfortunate Diamond 2 Fiora main from Korea had collided with a steel wall!
The mostmon misfortune that the Korean invaders on the Ionia Server experienced was running into Chinese yers who were all significantly better than their rank and profile history implied. All of them were unanimously at the level of Master or Challenger. And they all shared a unique quirk. Their Summoner Tags always had the same two Chinese characters followed by a series of random numbers. None of the Koreans knew what the names of these yers meant, but they all started to understand that running into them as opponents meant that they were in for a truly terrible time. All sorts of theories ran through the Korean forums about these yers. The prevailing one was that this was a guild of Chinese yers who hade to defend the Ionia server from the Korean invasion.
This theory was, interestingly enough, notpletely wrong. The Chinese yers whose names started with two characters and then a series of random numbers did belong to a guild of sorts. But they were not there to defend the Ionia server. Nor did they particrly care about the Koreans attempting to invade. Their presence and names was something every Chinese yer knew about and did not find even a little strange. The two Chinese characters that their names started with was the word for “Booster”, and the string of numbers that followed was the booster’s QQ number. They were advertising their services to any yer who might be interested!
On the Ionia server, the boosters were unquestionably the most frightening yers toe against. They were ungodly skilled and absolutely ruthless. Not because they wanted to ruin the fun of any other yer, but because they were working to fulfill the demands of their clients, and that was paramount. Those unfortunate enough to run into a booster on the enemy team knew that they would be in for a terrible time. Their presence on the Ionia server was begrudgingly epted, because everyone had to earn their bread somehow. And for a great many yers, the boosters had be something of an aspirational job. They all secretly dreamed of the day they’d be good enough at League to be a booster, and earn money by ying the game they loved.
For Lin Feng, the presence of the boosters was something he didn’t particrly mind. He enjoyed the challenge of having to y against someone with that much skill and experience. Besides, he understood that he was also somewhat of a booster himself for Su Xue. Every game he won boosted her rank. And he took some joy in joining up with the rest of the professional boosters to make life a nightmare for the Koreans who had shown up on the Ionia server. As a booster, Lin Feng had done a pretty good job. Since he started streaming in the morning and ying on Su Xue’s ount, he’d won every game he yed. By the afternoon, he’d boosted Su Xue’s ount from Diamond 5 all the way to Diamond 3!
After ending the stream for the time being, Lin Feng turned to Su Xue in the bed and yelled, “Su Xue, I’m hungry!”
Su Xue got up from the bed and rubbed her eyes, nodding sleepily. ‘Oh, alright. I’ll start making food.”
Half an hourter, the table was lined up with steaming hot dishes. Lin Feng started digging in right away. Su Xue, on the other hand, was not eating. She picked at her food, but brought none of it to her mouth. She just continued to stare at Lin Feng in a daze. Not because she was sleepy. Not at all. Su Xue was fully awake. She was lost in her own mind because she started thinking about Lin Feng’s identity and past once again. Even after she’d thought about it for an entire sleepless night, she really did not know what to think about Lin Feng or how to face him at all. So much had changed since she figured out that he was not lying about everything he’d told her, and she could not get a handle on the emotions swirling through her heart.
After a while, Su Xue opened her mouth and asked, “Lin Feng?”
“Yeah?”
“So, you’re really that Maple? The one that was China’s number one Miner back in Season 1?”
“Yeup!” Lin Feng said, scarfing another heap of rice into his mouth.
Although Su Xue had already confirmed it yesterday, after hearing it again, the truth still sent shockwaves through her heart. She took a deep breath, calming herself down, then asked the next question. “So, does that mean you… well, did you actually go toe-to-toe with Rake? And you were just as good as he was back then?”