Who Was Carrying the 0.18?

Who Was Carrying the 0.18?

Look closely. This guy's name is Xiao Shuai...

He had just finished a scrim, and a bright smile gradually spread across his face.

"GG!!"

Jiang Yang took off his headset and heard Ma Xixi shout excitedly, "With the crack of the Big Sniper, the game is over! Let's congratulate Helmet on taking Ancient Ruins."

"That means Helmet's boys have beaten Too Regular 3–0 across these three maps today, securing a complete sweep!"

As Helmet's coach, Ma Xixi was grinning from ear to ear.

Helmet's win reflected well on him, too.

Yangyang had really come through!

[This cousin is ridiculous. He farms noobs on the ladder, and now he's farming them in pro scrims too.]

[Laughing so hard. Too Regular weren't satisfied after the first two games, so they asked for another one—and got stomped three games in a row.]

[Before this, Helmet and Too Regular were pretty evenly matched. It mostly came down to the map pool, but Xiao Jiang is seriously carrying.]

[So this is what 500 hours of pro experience gets you?]

[He's not even an adult yet. That's the craziest part.]

[His AWP really has that kennyS feel—fast and steady.]

[Stop saying kennyS. K himself has turned into "fast and fast" these days.]

The viewers in the livestream were amazed, and Helmet's players were just as thrilled in their voice chat.

It was only a scrim, but the domestic Counter-Strike scene was small. These streamer teams had been playing each other for a long time, and most of them had some lingering resentment toward one another.

Today, they'd handed the other team a 3–0, leaving them completely dazed. The whole team felt fantastic.

DD, who was always straightforward, spoke up first. "Little Brother played great. Your AWP is way better than Liu Ke's!"

The voice chat erupted in laughter.

On Ancient Ruins, the third map, MO had tried a double-AWP setup. During a clutch, he'd missed four shots in a row, and everyone had seen the whole thing.

The group burst into laughter again.

MO's face darkened. "Oh, get lost. I'm not a dedicated AWPer. How can you even compare us?"

If there'd been no one to compare him to, it wouldn't have been a big deal.

But Jiang Yang's AWP accuracy was absurdly high.

Whenever his AWP went off, it practically meant a kill.

And he hadn't missed many of the truly crucial shots, either.

By the end of the game, whenever he needed an AWP, the old guys on Helmet's team would go out of their way to pick one up for him.

That was the confidence Jiang Yang had earned with his performance.

Ma Xixi joined the TS Voice channel and asked, "MO, how did the tryout go?"

MO answered at once. "It was great! Seriously great!"

"I finally know what it feels like to get carried."

MO was growing fonder of Jiang Yang by the minute. The kid was skilled, and he knew how to respect the in-game leader.

Whenever Jiang Yang wanted to make a risky call, he'd ask MO what he thought first.

That was the kind of respect an in-game leader deserved!

MO felt like he'd never seen such a beautiful start to a game.

The other guys on the team just did whatever they wanted. Sometimes, MO had to repeat an order over and over before they listened.

Xiaosage chimed in, "Before we started, I figured that if Cousin didn't play well today, I'd have to say a few comforting words to the kid. I didn't expect to get carried instead."

In today's match, Jiang Yang's AWP had tipped the scales in their favor.

The players on Too Regular simply had no answer for him.

To be fair, Too Regular weren't individually that strong, but they played a structured, European-style system. They gave away very little information during a match, and they still applied plenty of pressure.

Jiang Yang was facing that sort of system head-on for the first time. Normally, he should've been taught a lesson, then gradually adapted and started playing better.

But Jiang Yang seemed completely unaffected.

He kept firing his AWP and kept making plays even on ECO rounds.

It was like this wasn't a scrim at all, but just another ladder game.

He was playing incredibly relaxed.

Just then, Mingri Qing, the natural-born Jia Zi, reminded them in voice chat, "The post-match stats are out. I sent them to you."

Ma Xixi raised an eyebrow and immediately pulled up the stats image from WeChat.

The first thing he saw was the combined stats for all three maps.

"Whoa, Yangyang, you really can rack up kills!"

The first thing everyone noticed was the conspicuous ID at the top of the list.

ID: Ma Xixi I'll Top Kill You

Kills/Assists/Deaths: 79/9/38

Average damage: 127.1

Rating: 1.46

[Well, would you look at that. Cousin really did come here to farm noobs.]

[I thought we'd gotten some nepotism hire, but turns out we got a carry.]

[Who hired a ringer with a 1.46 rating?]

[He dominated on two of the three maps and still put up those numbers. Cousin's the real deal.]

[He's got 20 more kills than DD.]

[Cousin's got serious skill.]

Jiang Yang saw his stats, too, and smiled. "They're all right. The whole team was playing well on Dust II, and we completely crushed them. Dust II is also one of my signature maps, so the numbers seem pretty normal."

This was his first proper pro scrim, and he'd felt some pressure.

If he played badly, he'd make his cousin look bad, too.

So he'd taken the match seriously, and he'd been in good form. That was why he'd ended up with a decent performance.

The old guys on Helmet's team could hear nothing but confidence in Jiang Yang's voice.

But that was only natural.

If you weren't cocky, what kind of young guy were you?

Ma Xixi scrolled down to check the stats for each map. Jiang Yang had topped the board every time, putting in a consistently outstanding performance.

Then he looked at the stats for the second map and suddenly froze.

[QUQU, is that even human?!]

[Who's carrying the 0.18?]

[Coming from QU's side. Xiao Jiang completely destroyed him. Every round he tried to play standard, and every round he got killed.]

[By the end, he was so rattled he didn't even know what was going on.]

[Lol, with stats like that, I feel like even I could do better.]

QUQU's scrim results weren't looking good.

Before the match, he'd bragged that he was going to teach Ma Xixi's cousin a lesson.

But after a few rounds, his team had completely lost their bearings.

"Is that guy really at 500 hours?" QUQU asked in disbelief. "Could Helmet have hired a ringer? This makes no sense!"

"Let's go ask them in their voice chat."

Hearing that, 18YM and the others came along.

They just thought QUQU was talking nonsense after getting beaten around. After all, on the second map, he'd put up the absurd rating of 0.18.

They'd done a little better on the third map, but still lost.

Given the circumstances, it was only natural that QUQU was out of it.

And now that the BO3 was over, they wanted to find out who Ma Xixi's cousin really was.

The kid was genuinely fierce. They wanted to meet him.

So Too Regular's players flooded into Helmet's TS channel.

As soon as he joined the voice chat, QUQU spoke up. "I'm Z! Your stand-in today was way too strong. You guys completely wrecked us."

"That kid's AWP is about as good as mine was when I was young."

Most of the people in the voice chat were speechless.

Was he seriously trying to flatter himself? He'd found a way to make this about him, too.

QUQU was a former pro player, but he'd played CSOL when he was young and won a CSOL championship.

His skill level in CS:GO was nowhere near good enough.

Besides, he was the one who'd ended up with a 0.18 rating. Surely he knew that.

18YM asked, "Where's Boss Ma's cousin? Are you really only at 500 hours?"

Jiang Yang answered, "Yeah, I just passed 500."

"That's seriously discouraging," 18YM said sadly.

Someone with 500 hours had beaten a bunch of former pros with thousands of hours under their belts.

And they'd always thought they were pretty talented, even among ordinary people.

But compared to him, they'd been utterly crushed.

Still, after lamenting the gap, 18YM felt a little relieved. "Cousin really did play well. If he works hard and pursues a pro career, Boss Ma, do you think this kid of yours could really save CNCS..."

"On Dust II today, I was getting tilted. Your cousin played incredibly well!"

For these old guys, giving up had never been an option.

They still had the drive to keep competing.

Losing to a young player today had stung, but they were also glad to see it.

After all, young players kept emerging—that meant fresh blood was entering the scene.

Only if newcomers surpassed old guys like them could there be any hope of shining on the international stage.

And they had to admit, on Dust II, they simply couldn't beat him.

When Helmet attacked, Cousin had been like a Mud Truck, plowing right through them.

They'd been killed by his pre-aim, headshot when they fired first, or instantly taken out by his AWP as he swung around the corner.

He'd killed them in all kinds of ways. In the end, 18YM was completely rattled.

The old guys praised Jiang Yang and gave the newcomer a pretty good review.

After they left the voice chat, MO signaled for Ma Xixi to mute himself for a moment.

Then he spoke to Jiang Yang. "Xiao Jiang, first of all, you played incredibly well today. Even we'd have a hard time putting in such an outstanding performance."

"You're even more talented at Counter-Strike than we imagined."

Jiang Yang said, "Mm." He knew he'd played well today, and he had some confidence in that. The stats showed it, too.

Thanks to [Dungeon BOSS], he'd already adapted to more complex competitive environments. Now that he'd entered this kind of match, he naturally had nothing to worry about.

"I'll just go over a few of the problems you have. First, your pistol play needs work. You rush your shots too much, and you spray wildly a lot of the time, so it's hard to get kills..."

"Your rifle play is a little weak, too. You're fine in one-on-ones, but you're not great at chaining kills. You can ask DD about that—he's really good with rifles."

"And then there's your lack of tactical experience. When you have time, watch some top-tier matches... Actually, no. First, see if you can find recordings of Helmet's past matches. Get familiar with our tactics."

Jiang Yang listened quietly, but the voice chat was silent for quite a while.

Ma Xixi asked in surprise, "Anything else?"

"What else?" MO asked, puzzled.

"That's it?"

"That's it!" MO said, just as surprised. "So you still don't realize how talented your cousin is?"

"Most young prodigies have problems he doesn't. What he needs to work on is his mechanics and experience, and there's not even much advice we can give him."

Ma Xixi sucked in a breath. "He's that good?"

MO laughed at Ma Xixi's reaction. "Otherwise, why do you think Too Regular got beaten so badly today?"

He was amazed, too. In this scrim, Jiang Yang had shown no major problems with his aim, experience, or decision-making.

He'd been a little uncomfortable when the scrim first started.

But Jiang Yang adapted extremely quickly. The speed of his adjustments left MO stunned.

That was why Too Regular's formulaic strategies had failed to work against him.

"If I had to name another problem..." MO thought for a moment. "Cousin, you'll need to come up with an ID when you get back. I have to submit the roster for the IEM tournament soon."

At that, Jiang Yang's face fell.

Coming up with an ID? That really was tough.

There'll be another chapter later today.