His Riven Was Flying Through the Air

"Damn, if you're going to play like that, I might as well pay you 100 yuan not to go up there and get beaten down." Despite what Uzi said, he obediently clicked into the room.

Some time ago, there had been a famous and hilarious esports meme: "TheShy eliminates the three pests."

Uzi and Rookie, two old teammates, had been guests on Zz1tai's stream. On a whim, Zz1tai had invited TheShy to play 1v1 with them, originally intending to recreate the famous Vladimir-versus-Ryze moment from back in the day.

But after Zz1tai got beaten down for several games, the three of them took turns playing solo against TheShy, only for him to hand them a crushing 0–16 record.

Because of the players' high profiles and the dramatic entertainment the stream provided, viewers jokingly dubbed it "TheShy eliminates the three pests."

The stream also offered an indirect look at the three players' mechanics and solo abilities.

In fact, Rookie and Uzi had come very close in several games during that stream, but that was often how it went with top players.

"Which champion should we solo with?" Lin Heng turned and asked.

"Yasuo. Didn't you want someone with mechanics?" Uzi said with a grin.

"Uh... save Yasuo for Worlds. Lucian would be better for our solo." Lin Heng clicked twice on the champion list.

"Damn, what's that supposed to mean? You look down on my Yasuo? My Yasuo's amazing." Uzi talked tough, but he had already locked in Lucian.

"I already told you to save him so you can shine at Worlds, and you still say I look down on your Yasuo? Nobody believes in your Yasuo more than I do," Lin Heng said, half joking.

Uzi froze. Hearing Lin Heng's half-serious tone, he suddenly felt a little unsure.

"You're joking, right? Don't mess with me. Yasuo support really isn't much use, is it?"

"Hahaha."

Everyone laughed, and the game began.

Both took Flash, Barrier, and Press the Attack and headed bot. Today's solo was a test of mechanics, so they had chosen the same champion.

Lin Heng naturally wanted to use intense solo matches to absorb the five attribute points he had allocated as quickly as possible.

Of the solo matches he had played earlier, only the one with Rookie had involved any real display of mechanics. The others had been a little too one-sided.

But as soon as this match began, the intensity was clearly different. Uzi lived up to his reputation as a former solo tournament champion, and Lucian was a champion he knew extremely well.

Right off the bat, he landed two consecutive Qs through minions on Lin Heng. The angles were extremely tricky, and both came while Lin Heng was auto-attacking minions, leaving him no way to dodge.

The guys watching let out one cry of surprise after another.

"Uzi's really just getting older. High-intensity matches are a little tough on him, but he's still really dominant in short solo games like this," Rookie commented from behind them.

"Yeah. Sometimes after playing two games in a match, you're not as mentally focused as you were at the start," Wei said.

"I'm telling you, we really need to learn Faker's meditation. Every time he finishes meditating, his energy and concentration really do recover quite a bit, and the tense atmosphere is gone too," Ning said at once.

"It's not that I don't want to. The main thing is, if I do it, I'm afraid people will say I'm dead," Rookie said with a laugh.

"Damn, you're making fun of my brother Hu again." As General Hu's number one enforcer, Wei immediately spoke up in protest.

"Come on, you watch the games too. When Faker meditates, the chat spams 'scared to tears,' but when anyone else closes their eyes, it's all 'dead,'" Rookie said with a helpless laugh.

As they laughed and chatted, they noticed that the two players had already decided the match.

After several consecutive Qs landed, both players' health had dropped below half. At level three, they both chose to go All-in without a word.

Their trades had been about even, so it came down to the mechanics of the final exchange.

After exchanging a full set of abilities, they used Flash at almost exactly the same time to dodge each other's Q damage.

What followed was an exchange of the most precise spacing at the limits of their attack ranges. Lin Heng came out slightly ahead, landing one extra auto-attack as they maneuvered and ending the solo with a 50-health advantage.

"You're really good. That last bit of spacing—it's a shame you don't play AD." Uzi was extremely confident in his control of attack range, so losing to Lin Heng in that exchange shocked him.

"You want me to take your job that badly?" Lin Heng joked.

Lin Heng, meanwhile, was also astonished by Uzi's mechanics. They really weren't something a person who hadn't competed for several years should have been capable of.

His training had been very intense since he came back, but in his current form, even if he wasn't quite at his own peak, he was at least at ninety percent of it.

If Uzi had really been at his peak, Lin Heng felt he definitely wouldn't have won that game.

A single solo really did take a completely different toll on an old man than a full Bo5. Even in the second game of today's final Bo3, Uzi's concentration hadn't been as sharp in the late game.

He had nearly given away a few opportunities later on, but fortunately his teammates had stepped in to save things in time.

With Uzi down, only one person remained.

"Damn, kid, you're trying to eliminate the three pests too?" Ning slouched in his gaming chair as he watched.

"Time for the boss fight." Uzi put down his headset and walked over behind Lin Heng as well.

By then, TheShy had returned to his computer and accepted the invitation.

"What are we playing?" TheShy asked.

"How about Riven?" Lin Heng asked.

"Oh? I don't know how to play Riven," TheShy said.

"?" Lin Heng was speechless. "Guess whose videos I watched to learn Riven?"

"That champion's too old. Haven't played her in ages. Can't play her now." Despite what TheShy said, he still found Riven and clicked her, then silently switched his skin to the Championship Blade.

Flash, Teleport, Conqueror. After choosing identical summoner spells and runes, they entered Summoner's Rift.

When they reached lane, the two emerged from the brush the moment the minions met, each carrying three stacks of Passive. They were perfectly in sync.

It was a basic trick for holding Passive stacks that players in Silver and Gold knew. In the early days, Riven players had been practically unstoppable with it in solo matches.

Unfortunately, Riven's Passive bar was now displayed directly beneath her health bar, making little tricks like that harder to pull off in low ranks.

A solo wasn't the same as laning. There was no need to worry about the jungler or how to win the game as a whole.

So the two began trading fiercely right away. Riven's abilities were already well suited to trading, and in the hands of two players with outstanding mechanics, they were even more dazzling to the people watching.

At first, TheShy came off a little worse in the trades, but after two or three exchanges, he seemed to have familiarized himself with Riven's abilities, and his trades grew better and better.

He controlled the minion wave in his own distinctive way. Whenever he went in to trade, he did so while Lin Heng's minions were attacking, so he didn't immediately take too much damage from them when he withdrew after his combo.

Lin Heng, on the other hand, took damage from the enemy minions several times when he chased after him to trade.

Both had started with a Long Sword and three health potions. By the time they had used all three, TheShy's mechanics had grown increasingly sharp and precise.

Lin Heng recalled a saying.

"A kid came to Team WE's base. His Riven was flying through the air."