LOL: What does it mean to torture players?

GEN started attacking Baron, and EDG grouped up to go there. When Twisted Fate activated his ultimate, they found that Baron still had a lot of health.

Then don't rush to start a team fight; let the other side continue fighting.

Once the enemy's health was reduced by Baron Nashor, Pantheon used his ultimate, bringing Shen into the fray.

GEN was trapped in the Baron pit and ravaged. With a 10,000 gold lead and the Baron's assist, EDG won this team fight very easily.

After winning the team fight, EDG chose to push down the mid lane and end the game.

The commentators cheered: "Nice! EDG is about to end the game in one fell swoop! They've secured their ticket to the quarterfinals at the last moment. EDG has created a miracle once again!"

The chat in the official live stream exploded:
"EDG! Charge! Charge towards the championship!"

"Plans have changed; the goal is to win the championship!"

"EDG did it! Congratulations to EDG!"

"Everyone doubted you, but you proved them wrong!"

After the match ended, the EDG players stood up to celebrate, looking very excited.

After watching the game, Su Mo put away his phone and prepared to leave. Just then, he noticed a waiter standing in front of him, looking a little reserved, as if he had something to say.

Seeing Su Mo looking over, the waiter said, "Brother Mo, can I take a picture with you? I'm a fan of yours."

"Yes, no problem." Su Mo nodded and stood up.

The waiter then approached, carefully took out his phone, and took a photo with Su Mo.

After the photo was taken, the waiter said, "Brother Mozi, I've noticed you come here to eat and watch the games every day..."

The waiter stopped midway through his sentence.

Su Mo then asked, "What do you want to say?"

The waiter continued, "Then why retire?"

"I was just asking casually. If you don't want to answer, that's fine too."

Su Mo replied, "Perhaps they're tired of it and want to seek a new beginning."

"So this is ah……"

Su Mo left the restaurant and prepared to return to the lounge.

Just then, Abu made a phone call.

Su Mo answered the phone: "Hello?"

"Xiao Mo, thank you, thank you! We won! We've advanced to the quarterfinals!"

Su Mo teased, "I didn't expect that just advancing to the top eight would make you so happy."

Abu gave an awkward laugh: "There's nothing I can do, things aren't like they used to be... This is all the strength we have. Anyway, thank you for your help. I've been quite busy lately, but I'll treat you to a meal when I have time."

After exchanging a few pleasantries, the two ended the call.

Soon, Su Mo received messages from other people.

UZI: "Brother Mozi, I bet you're involved in EDG's lineup. Did you suggest they play it this way?"

Jackeylove: "Brother Mozi, you must have made a move, right? This feeling is so familiar."

Chovy: "Mo, I thought you were the one playing in that match just now, hahaha, don't mind me, I just wanted to share my feelings."

Su Mo was not surprised. Since he left EDG, the team has become less and less innovative in terms of tactics and draft picks, and has become more and more conservative, unlike before when they would often come up with some amazing lineups.

This sudden turn of events will make anyone familiar with EDG feel something is amiss.

Immediately afterward, Su Mo received a message from Rekkles: "Mo, was it you? It was you again? Our FNC got eliminated, did you do it?"

Su Mo readily admitted, "I did offer some advice."

Rekkles: "Aaaaaah! Why did you do this to me?! Aaaaaah!"

Rekkles seems to have suffered a major blow, probably from being cyberbullied by fans. After all, being eliminated in the group stage is quite embarrassing.

Although Su Mo helped EDG defeat GEN, it was FNC that was eliminated.

The following day was the final day of the group stage.

After getting off work, Su Mo went straight to check the results.

#A huge upset, TES suffers a crushing defeat against FLY
#The qualification situation in Group D is unclear
#DRX may be eliminated in the group stage.

Su Mo glanced at the situation in Group D.

It really is.

After TES lost to FLY, DRX and FLY are now only one point apart.

Now TES is about to play against DRX. If TES wins against DRX, then DRX will need to compete with FLY for second place in the group.

Meanwhile, the comments under this trending topic are all:
"It feels like TES did it on purpose; they just didn't want DRX to advance."

"GEN deliberately lost to FNC yesterday, trying to sabotage EDG."

"We should reciprocate each other's hospitality; who's afraid of whom?"

"Is it possible that we really can't win? You can't let conspiracy theories get the better of us?"

Su Mo entered the live stream room; the match had already begun.

In this match, Chovy picked Galio, while Knight chose Orianna.

Top lane: 369's Vladimir, facing Doran's Ornn.

Judging from the situation on these two lines, DRX will definitely support its parent company.

They are all heroes that make it very comfortable for the opposing team to develop.

DRX can only win this match by relying on their jungler and bot lane.

The early laning phase was relatively peaceful on both sides, with no kills occurring.

Thanks to their fundamental skills, DRX gained an economic advantage of over a thousand.

However, once team fights began, DRX's lack of damage output became apparent.

Especially after Galio and Ornn's initial control and engage, if no kills are secured, DRX simply cannot win subsequent team fights.

Galio can no longer use W-Flash, giving him a lot more initiation potential than before. Meanwhile, Ornn's ultimate is very unreliable, and with TES's lineup being more flexible, DRX is too passive.

Just as Su Mo expected, a team fight broke out in the mid lane about twenty minutes later.

After DRX used up all their ultimate abilities without securing a kill, the two sides disengaged.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, TES launched a counterattack, and DRX was powerless to resist, losing three members and the Baron.

"This version isn't really suitable for Chovy, it doesn't feel like it'll go far, DRX," Su Mo muttered.

This patch, Chovy has very few meta heroes to pick, even fewer than last year.

As expected, TES won the match and secured a double victory over DRX!

The live stream chat exploded instantly:

"Champion's look! Brothers, let's take off!"

"This year's championship is a sure thing, Top Esports is awesome!"

"Is this all the LCK's second seed is? Can't you put some pressure on us?"

"It felt like an adult hitting a child, it was too easy."

"I already said that losing to FLY was intentional, just to cause trouble for DRX."

Soon, the TES group chat became lively.

369: "Brother Mozi, are you watching the game? How did we do?"

Yuyanjia: "Do we have the makings of a champion?"

Su Mo: "You played very well!"

Jackeylove: Aren't you guys getting a little too cocky? You're already talking about the championship?

Knight: "Keep it up!"

369: "Haven't you guys noticed that Chovy seems to only play 'troll' heroes? He keeps using all sorts of 'troll' heroes."

Knight: "This version isn't very friendly to his hero pool."

Yuyanjia: "I feel like he's just a foodie."

Knight: "Actually, he's quite skilled and has a solid foundation."

369: "Left Hand, that's not right. You're just praising him on purpose to make yourself look good, right?"

My left hand was so badly injured that I was speechless and didn't say a word.

Soon, the match between DRX and Fly began.

However, what most people expected did not happen. DRX easily defeated FLY and secured the second place in the group, thus qualifying for the next round.

This determines the eight qualifying spots across four groups. First, the top teams from each group are: SN, DWG, GEN, and TES.
Then there are the four second-place teams from each group: G2, JDG, EDG, and DRX.
After the Group D matches concluded, the draw ceremony followed.

Inside EDG's hotel room, the EDG team members were waiting for the draw ceremony to begin.

Abu then remarked, "It seems like the top teams from the other three groups won't be easy to beat."

Meiko smiled wryly: "I suddenly realized that the group leader in our group, GEN, is the weakest of the four group leaders, but we can't be drawn with him."

Jiejie said, "It doesn't matter who we play against. If we want to win the championship, we must have the strength to beat all the teams."

Upon hearing this, the EDG players fell silent.

Win the championship?

How could they even think about such things?
Aodi said inappropriately, "Winning the championship? I think making it to the quarterfinals would be a great achievement."

However, after saying that, he realized something was wrong.

EDG has won three consecutive championships in the past three years!
He just wasn't there at the time, so his feelings were different from those of the veteran EDG players.

Just then, the lottery ceremony began, and the host took the stage to introduce the rules of the lottery ceremony.

It's simple: the first-place team in a group plays against the second-place team, and the first and second-place teams in the same group avoid each other.

The guest who was drawing the prizes took the stage and walked in front of him. In the first pool in front of him were four small balls, each representing the first place winner of one of the four groups.

The guests drew their names one by one to determine the order of first place in each group.

TES, SN, DWG, GEN
Next, the guests walked to the second pool, which contained the four second-place finishers from each group.

This is the key point; it can directly determine the outcome of the match.

The guest reached in to draw lots and took out the first ball.

The EDG players held their breath.

Meiko prayed, "It wasn't us, it wasn't us!"

If EDG is drawn, then it will be TES vs EDG!

This is absolutely hellish difficulty.

TES is currently receiving a lot of attention and is considered the biggest favorite to win the championship.

Nobody wants to face TES head-on!

"JDG!"

When the EDG members saw the letters JDG, they breathed a sigh of relief!

"Hahaha, it wasn't us, it wasn't us, it was JDG, they're in big trouble! Hahaha!" Aodi laughed like crazy.

The others also breathed a sigh of relief.

Then I felt a little sad.

Have they been this embarrassed during the quarterfinals draw in the past three years?

Although there are teams I don't want to encounter, it's not enough to make me so anxious.

"Sigh." Meiko sighed, feeling very uncomfortable.

"EDG!" Suddenly, the host's voice rang out.

Meiko quickly looked up and discovered that EDG had appeared on the opposite side of SN!

Civil war, against SN!

"Hmm! It seems like... a good choice, SN! Although it's a bit tough, it's much better than teams like DWG and TES."

Abu nodded: "Overall, it's much easier to beat them."

Meiko's eyes lit up: "I almost forgot, SN's core right now is Sofm. Clearlove has always been good at dealing with Sofm, right, Clearlove?"

Meiko looked at the factory manager, whose lips unconsciously curled up, but she still pretended to be calm: "Don't think about taking shortcuts, train hard."

After a pause, the factory manager added, "However, I do have unique experience when it comes to playing against Sofm."

Meiko glanced at him sideways and said sarcastically, "Mingkai, stop pretending. I know you're feeling pretty good right now, aren't you?"

The factory manager continued, "Xiao Jie, we'll start special training soon. If we want to beat SN, we have to keep Sofm under control!"

Jiejie nodded.

This is the biggest difference between the knockout stage and the group stage.

The knockout stage focuses on targeting a single team, studying only one team, finding unique playstyles and tactics, and exploiting their weaknesses.

Therefore, the knockout stage puts a team's foundation to the test even more.

Soon, the last two lots were drawn.

With this, the quarterfinal matchups are now completely set:
TES vs. JDG.

SN vs. EDG.

DWG vs. DRX.

GEN vs. G2.

As soon as this matchup was announced, the discussion went on like crazy that night:
"So many internal conflicts? There are two internal conflicts in the LPL, and the LCK is also an internal conflict."

"This is boring. I was hoping to see a China-South Korea match."

"SN got a great deal; EDG is probably the worst one among them."

"Top Esports and SN are definitely going to advance. The only question is whether GEN or G2 will make it."

After the groups were drawn, Su Mo immediately received the news.

Huanfeng: "Brother Mozi, we got EDG. What bad luck! We were hoping to play against LCK, but we can't help it. This guest's luck is just too bad."

Su Mo: "It's alright. From another perspective, this way we can at least guarantee that one LPL team will make it to the semifinals."

Huanfeng: "That's true, but Mozi, aren't you being too pessimistic? I feel that with the current strength of the LPL, it's possible that three or even four teams could make it in, if there are no internal competitions."

Su Mo: "Maybe."

After a while, Huanfeng sent another message:
"Brother Mozi, actually I also wanted to say that you... probably won't make a move, right? I think the reason EDG was able to beat GEN before was because you helped EDG arrange the tactics, that's what everyone said."

Su Mo: "No, I think you'll suffer a big loss if you underestimate EDG."

Huanfeng: "Hahaha, as long as Brother Mozi doesn't make a move, we'll definitely win, don't worry!"

Su Mo did not answer. SN's strength was indeed not weak, but it was hard to say what would happen if they faced EDG.

Perhaps it was fate that these two teams were drawn together.

The next three days are for rest and preparation for the knockout stage.

Three days passed quickly, and the first best-of-five series began!

TES vs. JDG!

The internal battles within the LPL attract a great deal of attention.

Currently, the most popular team to win the championship online is TES, followed by DWG and JDG.

DWG and JDG each had wins and losses in the group stage.

Therefore, most people believe that the two teams are about the same strength and both have a chance to challenge TES.

Other teams didn't even have the right to challenge.

The fact that TES and JDG are now facing off in an internal battle is very disadvantageous from the perspective of the LPL region.

Therefore, LPL fans are all posting online:

"JDG, be more self-aware. If you beat TES but lose to DWG, you will be the sinner of the LPL."

"Hasn't the Summer Split already been played? JDG is no match for TES, so let's not waste time on internal battles."

"If TES wins the fifth game, they will expose too many things, which will be a major benefit for DWG."

"TES fans, that's enough. They're already demanding a championship before the competition has even started, huh?"

"It's like TES is guaranteed to beat DWG."

The competition began in the afternoon.

Meanwhile, Su Mo also started going to work.

When it was time to leave work, I checked my phone.

#TES takes the first game

#JDG tied the score
#TES2:1JDG
#JDG tied again
#The TES vs JDG best-of-five series is currently airing.

These two teams are quite interesting; since the Spring Split, every time they meet, they have to play a full best-of-five series.
The difference is that JDG won the Spring Split finals, while TES won the Summer Split finals.

Who will win this time? (End of Chapter)