Xu Junyan's duo queue with an unknown LCK pro began quite abruptly.
Just as expected, both of them gave it their all, and their duo queue went exceptionally smoothly.
By the end of the first day, they had not lost a single game. They won fifteen straight, gained a furious 210 LP, and Xu Junyan officially became a thousand-point Challenger. After duo queuing with that unknown pro for a day, Xu Junyan also discovered something surprising.
It felt amazing—so damn amazing!
This nameless LCK pro had serious skill. Playing mid-top synergy with him was easy, comfortable, and downright enjoyable. Winning games was as simple as eating and drinking.
Xu Junyan had matched with countless pros on the Korean server lately, including plenty of professional mid laners, but without exception, none of them had been as intuitive as this want to breathe.
The two of them had not even used voice chat. It was just a simple duo queue, no different from playing with a stranger, yet their mid-top coordination was unbelievably smooth. It felt far better than solo queue!
After that day, Xu Junyan quietly began guessing the identity of this unknown LCK mid laner.
The LCK currently had twelve teams in total, but there actually were not that many mid laners who could truly be called outstanding.
KT's Pawn, General Fat, who had only returned home last year, counted as one. SSG's mid laner Crown counted as one. KZ's rising ace Bdd counted as one too.
Of course, there was also SKT's Faker. As a legend of the mid lane, he definitely counted too. However, Xu Junyan ruled Faker out first. Everyone knew Lee Sang-hyeok was a reserved, introverted guy with a hidden romantic side. He had bottled up a crush for a full three years without daring to mention it, and even after Enjing left the LCK, he was still holding it in! There was no way he would take the initiative to ask someone to duo queue. Besides, this want to breathe had practically begged him to duo queue like a piece of sticky plaster. That was obviously not Faker's style.
Crown had to be ruled out too, because he had just gone emotionally shut down after winning the championship... Yes, it sounded bizarre, but he really had shut down because he won the title.
He had carried throughout the entire S6 season, only to fall at the very last hurdle before the finals, leaving him regretful and upset. In the s7 season, he had clearly become a passenger, yet somehow won the championship instead. After the victory, the cheers offstage were everywhere filled with his opponents' names. Anyone would feel down for a while in that situation.
Therefore, Crown could be ruled out.
That left only two people: General Fat and Bdd.
After thinking it over carefully, Xu Junyan ruled out General Fat as well. The man had played in the LPL for two years, so while his Chinese might not have been amazing, he surely knew some. He would not have kept communicating with him entirely in English.
So, Bdd?
Xu Junyan smiled faintly. He had already reached a conclusion, but he did not expose the other man. He went out to grab a cup of instant noodles, filled his stomach, then went to sleep.
Over the following days, Xu Junyan got up at noon every day and duo queued with an LCK mid laner who was unwilling to reveal his name until three in the morning.
Their climbing efficiency was extremely high. On their best day, they gained a terrifying 234 LP! Of course, they had also played for a full sixteen hours that day, leaving them too exhausted to get out of bed the next morning.
The ultimate goal he had set of competing for Korean server rank one after half a month was about to be achieved. After all, in just one week, he had already reached 2400 LP.
Korean server rank one was at 2742 LP. Gaining another 300 to 400 LP over the remaining week was perfectly reasonable—hardly excessive at all.
The only issue was that now that his rating had climbed, queue times had become painfully slow. Sometimes a game only lasted twenty minutes, but the queue alone took half an hour, greatly lowering Xu Junyan's climbing efficiency.
Their duo queue win rate was also extremely high, reaching a terrifying 91%. It was only one percentage point lower than the Rek'Sai win rate of Cuzz, once the world's number-one Rek'Sai player. It was terrifyingly absurd.
However, their planned duo queue climb to rank one ultimately did not happen, because want to breathe told Xu Junyan that he needed to play scrims. From then on, he would only have a brief window to duo queue in the early morning.
Xu Junyan found it somewhat regrettable, but he understood. The LCK Spring Split started earlier than the LPL's every year. If his guess was right, the LCK would officially fire the first shot of its Spring Split in no more than a week.
His days simply returned to the old solo queue routine. During queue times, Xu Junyan did not play any other games. He merely browsed the countless private messages from little Royal Hooligans on Weibo now and then to pass the time. Then, a few days later, something finally caught his attention.
While mindlessly scrolling Douyin, he suddenly came across a video. The creator ranked several powerful climbers recently dominating the Korean server's top-tier high-elo games. Sitting firmly in first place was none other than him, ID: minnaaQAQ. The creator even speculated that in at most three more days, Xu Junyan would completely conquer the Korean server and claim the throne of rank-one Challenger!
If that had been all, Xu Junyan naturally would not have paid much attention. He had been playing so fiercely and so aggressively on the Korean server that attracting attention was perfectly normal.
What interested him was that the Royal Hooligans had exploded in the video's comments section!
"Are you fucking stupid? Isn't this guy a griefer?"
"Creator, are you kidding me? You ranked a griefer first? Hope your mom drops dead."
"Xiaohu has matched with this guy before. He's fucking disgusting, a piece of trash with character so awful it's beyond words!"
"What the hell is this? Any freak can be ranked number one now? Is something wrong with you?"
"I feel sick just looking at this! Why isn't this guy dead yet?"
"You let this kind of bastard climb to Korean server rank one? Is there nobody left in Korean high elo? Where are all those Korean Challengers? Are they all dead?"
The Royal Hooligans were brimming with hostility. Judging from their comments, they had accumulated deep resentment toward minnaaQAQ and practically hated him to death.
Xu Junyan found it immensely entertaining and muttered to himself, "I just love seeing you little Royal Hooligans get all red-faced and tilted. So fucking adorable."
A plan suddenly began to take shape in his mind.
Come to think of it, ever since he had matched with those two worthless, ungrateful bastards from RNG, he had never run into them again. That really was a pity.
If he could not run into them, he had no way to retaliate against them. And if he could not retaliate, his system would not give him explosive titles.
"I've been taking it easy for too long. It's time to make a move myself and hit them with something big."
Thinking this, Xu Junyan opened Tiger TV's livestream page. It was nine at night, and as expected, three RNG players who were good at marketing were all streaming!
His primary targets, Xiaohu and Letme, were both among them. Their stream titles all said they were playing ranked on the Chinese server. No wonder he had not matched with those ungrateful bastards again. They were too scared to play on the Korean server and had retreated to the Chinese server's ranked queue.
Xu Junyan sneered and entered Xiaohu's stream, first giving the chat messages a quick glance.
Good. The little Royal Hooligans were loyal enough and eager enough to suck up. It seemed no one dared bring up the Douyin incident in the stream, or perhaps the video was not popular enough yet to reach this place?
Then he would help add some fuel to the fire. Time to cast the line! Xu Junyan typed and sent a chat message:
Tiger God, what do you think about that griefer you ran into a couple days ago, 'MinnaaQAQ,' about to become Korean server rank one? /scratching head curiously
Before you continue