Chapter 67: Within Three Steps, I Will Guard Your Path Forward!
Within three paces, I am bound to protect you as you forge ahead!
The low-health support retreated to the safety line, and Caitlyn and Rakan boldly stepped forward.
Both sides reached level 2 at almost the exact same time.
After waiting for a long time without any movement, Liu Qingsong grew a bit impatient.
"To be fair, this low-health support is way too tempting... Who can resist this?"
"Wait a second longer... I have a bad feeling about this guy..." Lwx remained cautious.
Shaqima had left a deep impression on him throughout these matches, mostly known for all sorts of bizarre playstyles, yet performing with ghost-like ferocity at critical moments.
Liu Qingsong endured and endured, but alas, this flirtatious little support was far too alluring, dangling her low health bar right in front of his face, shaking it right before him.
Just shaking it!
She was practically like the top hostess of a Kabukicho brothel, waving at you with barely any clothes on.
Come play with me, little brother.
The very next instant! Liu Qingsong charged out!
Rakan shot forward like a violent arrow, directly flashing in with his W.
And that Teleport...
"It's the support!! Shaqima's support just backed, came out of the fountain, and teleported straight to top lane!! Good grief!! Is that how you're supposed to use your Teleport?! A level 4 support playing across two lanes?! Brother Ma plays double jungle and double top lane every day, and now we have a double support?!" While Jester expressed his astonishment, the director also shifted the camera to give a close-up of the half-health support standing in the fountain.
Three sentences that made his teammates mentally spam eighteen thousand question marks.
Both of them huddled beneath the tower, meaning that no matter how much Cheng Xian's skill level improved, it was out of reach.
After a brief 1.25-second delay, the deep purple stellar barrier on the ground flared with brilliant light, erupting into a vertical beam shooting into the sky.
The target was precisely the erratically swaying support!
Grand Entrance!
Pressing B to recall.
Mid lane didn't use Teleport.
However, hidden in the top-lane middle bush observer ward that no one was paying attention to...
"No! I'll find my own opportunity! I'm definitely killing this bastard!" There is usually a designated shotcaller within a team, typically shouldered by the jungler or support.
"Someone teleported! Someone teleported behind us! Whose Teleport is that?" Nuguri shouted, reporting the current situation.
Chasing any further into the defense tower would likely spell danger.
"Shy bro!!"
"Flash!!"
"Yeah," Lwx nodded in response.
Cheng Xian uttered the third sentence that left Wink fluttering in the wind.
Communication within the FPX team was equally rapid.
AP surged to 55 points!
With the W skill's already existing 0.7 AP scaling, a single cast was enough to restore over a hundred health to Lucian.
Since his own teammates felt confident, he simply went along with it.
After a brief delay, the support's E skill would trigger its second phase, dealing damage and rooting the opponent.
He decided to slaughter this support!
Kaisa was comfortably enjoying the soothing sensation of the fountain flowing all over her body, browsing the shop while waiting to reach full health.
"Don't enter the tower! Flash right into my face!!"
He and Jayce had chased Lucian quite deeply. If a Teleport dropped behind them at this moment, they would be facing a half-health Jayce and an Elise who was in an unhealthy state after clearing jungle camps.
Flash into the support's face...
The AD didn't have Flash either.
The health bar was plummeting at a ferocious rate!
"TheShy got greedy in this skirmish, his health instantly got chunked down, and Elise still has her Rappel ready. He probably can't get away this time, and at most can only absorb the damage from Elise's spider-form Q and A," 米勒 (Millet) said, looking at the OB perspective on the screen switching to the top lane.
"There's a Teleport! Whose is it?!" The casters' eyes quickly scanned the map for the Teleport destination.
"Stay steady, you must stay steady! Wait for me to finish clearing the top jungle and I'll come back to help you gank," Tian said in a deep voice within the team: "This game really leaves us with no way out."
"Push out this wave of minions and recall to resupply." Wink's mana had also been depleted through multiple minion pushes and minor trading, so after consulting with Cheng Xian, he quickly cleared another wave of minions.
Because these two positions didn't require last-hitting, they could spare more mental energy to observe various lanes, calculate Summoner Spells, and so on.
His 'God of Taking Beatings' state for this game meant that the lower his health, the more ferocious his plays.
A full rotation of skills triggered his passive, Plasma.
The Murder Ring had stacked one kill early on, and combined with the amp tome purchased during this recall, his dual adaptive forces were fully maxed out.
The jungler didn't have Teleport.
Rakan, having flashed into the fray, was unable to retreat swiftly even after the root ended.
Besides, the enemy support was at low health and shouldn't be able to turn the tides.
"Watch me, watch me! I'm going in!" Liu Qingsong shouted.
"Here!!"
TheShy froze for a moment, looking at Elise and Jayce forming a human wall in front of him, separating him from the support.
"Damn it! This bastard's positioning is way too nimble!" Liu Qingsong's face turned pale.
At that exact moment, a sudden crisis erupted in the top lane!
TheShy, accustomed to neglecting vision wards, got ambushed!
Greeding for one extra auto-attack during a trade, he was ambushed from behind by a long-crouching Elise.
Combined with the support's auto-attack-Q-auto-attack, and the minor damage dealt by the Aery rune she carried.
"Shpped! We've been tricked!" Liu Qingsong's expression shifted slightly, never expecting his lightning-fast combo to be dodged.
While Rakan was virtually immobilized, his health was instantly whittled down to a sliver!
Controlling Kaisa to charge forward, he executed A-W-A-Q-A.
With just a single heal, IG would have room for a counter-attack!
"We need to kill him!! We need to kill him fast! We can't give them a chance to counter-attack! There are too many variables!!" Seeing this, Tian clenched his teeth and aggressively mashed the E key, sending Elise up into the sky on her silk thread.
In solo queue matches, getting your skill dodged by micro-movement and then having the enemy flash their mastery emote to taunt you is a surefire way to tilt a player's mental state.
Let alone when the continuous viewer count for this match was still steadily climbing.
"Gorgeous! That positioning is insane, Brother Xian!" Wink growled lowly, seizing the opportunity.
If he returned to lane at full health... then he'd just be brain-dead again.
"Where is he flashing?"
"Mid lane doesn't have Teleport! Kill him, kill him!! I've got my eyes on him!" Doinb rapidly fed back the information.
Soon, the support's Teleport landed.
Even if Caitlyn pressed Heal, a level 2 Heal amounted to barely a few dozen health points.
Yet who would have thought that the enemy support's reaction was even faster? With a terrifyingly predictive movement, she twisted her body to dodge Rakan's W, and counter-attacked with an E skill, Astral Binding, landing squarely right beneath Rakan's feet.
No matter how strong your skills are, if you can't hit me, you have no combat capability!
Soraka's E skill carried a silence effect, preventing targets from performing any actions other than movement upon being hit.
For the next three minutes, FPX, having drafted Caitlyn, did not accelerate their pushing pace; instead, they controlled the minion wave right outside their tower range, farming carefully and cautiously.
Although the meaning of the support being at low health was unclear, as long as they weren't touched by the enemy, low health and full health seemed to be the exact same thing.
Just as Elise poked her head out for a gank, that hidden purple whirlwind rapidly coiled around the ward.
Light shot into the sky!
"Wait, Brother Xian, your health isn't even fully restored."
"Yeah..." Liu Qingsong replied with a pale face, offering no further explanation.
"Never mind! Ignore him for now! Kill Lucian first! Once Lucian is dead, it's a two-on-one for us, we can outplay them!!" Tian hastily yelled in succession.
And right now, all damage was being poured into Rakan.
Along with the white shield granted by Aery and the root from the E skill.
"???"
This was practically one of the few matchups where he could secure an advantage right from the start.
Even though TheShy pushed his mechanics to the limit, utilizing Lucian's E skill, Relentless Pursuit, to retreat and evade Elise's Cocoon crowd control.
He saw the support, whose feet had just touched the ground with a health bar hovering below 50%, eagerly darting out of the fountain.
"Let them be."
"Yeah, even though he has Flash, he probably won't use it. If he does, he'll still get pinned down by Elise's spider-form rappel. The rappel will draw tower aggro, but an Elise with relatively healthy stats can absorb the tower shots and walk away unscathed," Jester added in analysis.
And Liu Qingsong, acting as FPX's team shotcaller, also held the final authority.
Only Cheng Xian knew the real truth.
His landing spot: Lucian, who was about to enter the tower!
Cheng Xian also maxed out his mechanics, flashing forward to close the distance! His legs darted backward and forward with lightning speed, seeing nothing else in his eyes except the low-health Lucian.
A dash range of over a thousand units!
Kaisa's early-game burst damage wasn't weak, but her weakness lay in the difficulty of landing her full combo early on to trigger her high passive stacks.
However, Jayce had already switched to hammer form and lunged forward, unleashing a full burst of damage onto Lucian instantly.
Through Kaisa's subsequent chasing auto-attacks, they successfully harvested Rakan's head!
"F*ck!! Brother Xian is legendary!!" Wink shouted out in excitement.
Which meant he would deliver his own low-health self right into the faces of Jayce and Elise.
"Flash fast!! Elise is about to drop!!" Cheng Xian roared at top speed, his finger resting firmly on the W key, ready to strike.
His gaze burned like torches.
"Flash all you like! Within three paces, I am bound to protect you as you forge ahead!"