You promised a top lane tutorial, but you're just using Worlds as material for your videos?

Chapter 531 So you're the real master of playing dumb!
Ultimately, TES lost to JDG 1-2 in their first regular season match after the Intercontinental Cup.

Interestingly, in both games that JDG won in this BO3 series, the MVP was JDG's top laner, Zoom.

After watching the entire game, if we were to award an MVP, it would definitely go to Zoom.

Since JDG's "black eight" upset of the eighth seed in the Spring Split playoffs this year, Zoom, as the biggest contributor to the "black eight" victory, has been firmly established as one of the top-tier top laners in the LPL.

However, in the fourth game of the Intercontinental Cup finals a few days ago, where LPL lost to JDG in the match against DWG, Zoom's performance was completely inferior to that of Nuguri, the relatively unknown top laner of DWG, which lowered some viewers' evaluation of him.

Of course, one game is not enough to judge a player.

Sure enough, after Zoom won against TES with an MVP-caliber performance today, his reputation outside the arena immediately rebounded significantly.

But as I said before, one game doesn't prove anything, and neither does a best-of-three series of games.

The sudden surge of praise for Zoom after the game is naturally because the vast majority of them have ulterior motives.

They just wanted to take the opportunity to kick Zhou Dian while he was down.

During the post-match group interview, when it was Zoom's turn to answer questions from reporters, he was asked a very "tricky" question.

"Zoom, we all know that Zhou Shen was loaned to the TES team a few days ago. Before the match, were you looking forward to the possibility of facing Zhou Shen today?"

Compared to many "internet addicts" in the LPL, Zoom is relatively more mature.

Moreover, besides playing games, Zoom is also a long-time internet user, so he is very aware of all kinds of trends.

He immediately understood the sinister intentions behind the question.

Regardless of whether he answers yes or no, he will inevitably be followed up by reporters asking for his reasons.

Then his words will be maliciously manipulated and dictated by people with ulterior motives.

"Damn it, you news guys are disgusting! You dragged a nobody like me into a battle of titans, how am I supposed to handle this!" Zoom thought to himself.

While Zoom was struggling to decide whether to answer "yes" or "no," he suddenly had a flash of inspiration.

Damn it, why should I listen to you reporters?

I could have easily given an irrelevant answer!

"Zhou Shen is an outstanding player, he is my idol!" Zoom said from the bottom of his heart.

It can only be said that Zoom has a natural talent in this area, having mastered the most advanced skill when facing reporters without any formal instruction—answering irrelevant questions.

Zoom's words left the reporter completely bewildered.

He had prepared questions for the next two directions, so he could immediately ask follow-up questions regardless of whether Zoom answered yes or no.

He didn't expect that Zoom would do things differently!
The reporter froze, and it was clear that no one would give him another chance.

Time was of the essence, and other reporters immediately began asking questions.

After a short but rather grueling post-match group interview, JDG's players and coaches left the media room.

After leaving the media room, Zoom immediately wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and let out a long sigh of relief.

That was close, I almost fell into the pit.

JDG's mid-laner, Toothpaste, who was walking next to Zoom, immediately understood why Zoom was behaving that way when he saw Zoom's actions. He laughed and said, "What, you almost peed your pants, didn't you!"

"Screw you!" Zoom immediately retorted. "But then again, Yu (one of Yagao's nicknames), if you were asked this question, how would you answer?"

"Huh? What's wrong? I was sleepy and fell asleep just now, I didn't hear you!" the toothpaste said casually.

Zoom was absolutely stunned.

So you're the real master of playing dumb!
However, Zoom clearly underestimated the limits of the internet.

If you want to smear someone, fabricating charges is an easy task; you can come up with anything on the spot.

Although Zoom's answer was irrelevant, he still mentioned Zhou Dian in his words.

Naturally, it was then subjected to various malicious interpretations and manipulations, with some even fabricating additional statements that Zoom never actually made.

In short, having been caught up in this incident and sandwiched between Black Week and White Week, Zoom has been subjected to a lot of online criticism for no reason.

Of course, if you're in the esports scene, you have to be prepared to be criticized.

If no one even dares to curse anymore, then you're truly just a nobody on the street.

Zhou Dian was completely unconcerned about the controversies and arguments that had happened to him in the past few days.

Having joined a new team with a fairly good lineup, Zhou Dian regained his fighting spirit and devoted himself wholeheartedly to training.

After that "pretentious" attitude disappeared, and after regaining my footing.

In just one week, after dozens of training matches, Zhou Dian has completely won over his new teammates and coach.

On the evening of July 18th.

TES training room at the base.

We just finished our last training match of the day.

In this training match, after Xx helped Zhou Dian at level three, Zhou Dian completely dominated the opponent's top lane within ten minutes.

The opponent also directly typed AG.

Of course, time's up, there won't be another match, and today's training match is over.

As soon as he logged out of the game, jungler Xx immediately took off his headphones, looked at Zhou Dian beside him, and said, "Damn, Zhou, your Jayce is still as ruthless as ever. If I help you, you'll definitely carry."

Before Xx could finish speaking, he immediately felt a sharp pat on the shoulder, and the rest of his words were swallowed back down.

As soon as Xx turned his head, he saw the head coach glaring at him, then making faces and coughing.

After much thought, Xx finally understood what the white crescent moon meant.

I really shouldn't have said what I just told Brother Zhou: "I'll help you, you'll definitely win."

In this particular training match, Zhou Dian happened to be playing Jayce.

When Xx said this at this time, it was suspected that he was alluding to 369.

After all, his famous line to 369, "If I help you, you won't carry; if I don't help you, you'll definitely explode," came after 369 played a game of Jayce.

But actually, Xx had no intention of implying anything about 369 at this point.

That's just how he is; he sometimes speaks and acts without thinking, just doing whatever comes to mind.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have been reported by a swarm of fans for his sudden, inexplicable laughter before entering the game during the match against RNG, which led to him never daring to laugh casually in future matches.

After seeing Xx's loose tongue, I stopped talking.

White Crescent then turned its gaze to Zhou Dian beside it and nodded with great satisfaction.

Is this what it feels like to have a max-level character?

"Damn it, I feel like I've achieved a grand slam by coaching LGD in S7. You got lucky, kid!" White Crescent teased his old friend in his mind.

Afterwards, White Crescent gave a brief summary of the training matches today.

After the debriefing, it was free training time, and the players could practice their heroes by playing ranked games on the Korean server.

At this moment, Zhou Dian said to White Crescent Moon, "By the way, Coach, you know I can't play in tomorrow's match, right?"

"Huh? What's wrong?" Upon hearing this, White Crescent paused for a moment.

In the match against JDG a few days ago, I didn't want you to play, but you wanted to play anyway, although you didn't end up playing.

Why are you not going to take the lead now that it's your turn?

The white crescent moon was a little dizzy. "Didn't Brother Hao tell you?" Zhou Dian raised an eyebrow. "It's like this, when I was loaned here, Brother Hao and I agreed that I wouldn't play if we faced LGD in the remaining matches of the Summer Split!"

Tomorrow's match will see TES face LGD, Zhou Dian's former team.

Strictly speaking, LGD is still Zhou Dian's current team.

After all, Zhou Dian's contract still belongs to LGD. The contract to loan Zhou Dian is essentially between the two clubs, TES and LGD, and has nothing to do with Zhou Dian himself.

Since he can still be considered a member of LGD, then during the loan period, if LGD doesn't play, it can be seen as Zhou Dian's last act of respect and gentleness towards LGD.

Anyway, there's only one regular season BO3 match against LGD tomorrow.

After Zhou Dian left, LGD has virtually no chance of making the playoffs in the Summer Split.

Therefore, after tomorrow, TES will not be able to face LGD again this season.

After hearing Zhou Dian's words, White Crescent nodded: "Oh, it's okay, I won't play tomorrow, I'll play in the next match against the Snake Team!"

According to White Crescent, LGD is now completely powerless without Zhou Dian, and TES will definitely win tomorrow.

As expected, at 7 pm on July 19th, in the match between TES and LGD, even with Moyu starting in the top lane, TES still managed to defeat LGD 2-0.

Both games were won relatively easily; TES didn't put in much effort.

Xx casually helped Knight in the mid lane early on, and Knight started getting kills.

After watching both games, it's clear that Wei Shen is no match for the left-handed player.

Indeed, the decline in the past two years has been too severe.

If the mid and jungle lanes have an advantage, as long as the side lanes can hold their ground, winning the game will be a breeze.

Conversely, if the mid and jungle are at a disadvantage, the other lane needs a significant advantage to win the game.

Unfortunately, the map design of League of Legends dictates that the mid and jungle positions are the two most influential on the map.

Apart from some malformed versions.

However, no one paid any attention to the result of this match.

Perhaps the officials received advance notice that Zhou Dian would not be playing in this match.

Perhaps it's because matches with such a clear disparity in strength and skill level are simply not worth watching.

In short, the LPL officials did not promote this match at all beforehand, and did not use gimmicks such as "Zhou Shen's first match against his former team after leaving" to attract viewers.

The haters don't pay much attention to this match either.

In their view, LGD has now promoted their second team top laner to the first team, so it's no big deal for them to dominate the second team top laner during the week-end competition. TES will win this match easily!

There's nowhere to smear it!

What's the point of watching then?

However, when TES's official Weibo account announced the roster for the match before the game, and Zhou Dian was still not on the list, the haters got excited.

The match result of TES easily sweeping LGD 2-0 was hardly newsworthy.

The topic of "Zhou Dian has not yet played for TES" has been stirred up by haters.

Of course, it wasn't very popular.

Even casual viewers know that against the current LGD, what difference does it make whether Zhou Dian plays or not? Does it make any difference?

So no matter how many lies the haters make up, they can't really sway the narrative.

To put it bluntly, the number of genuine haters is actually not that many, regardless of the player.

Often, the reason they make such a big splash is because they've lured a large number of uninformed bystanders into the mess.

Since it hasn't attracted any casual viewers, it naturally doesn't generate much buzz.

Less than two hours after TES defeated LGD, TES's official Weibo account posted a message about Zhou Dian.

The content states that "Zhou Dian will play as the starting top laner for the TES team in the match against Snake on the 22nd."

As a result, the small group of haters who were still stirring up trouble over the TES vs. LGD match have temporarily fallen silent.

They were all eagerly anticipating the TES vs. Snake match three days later.

I'm all ready to take a magnifying glass and observe Zhou Dian closely.

Meanwhile, these people were also praying that Snake Team would step up their game and beat TES, which would be a real treat.

Ideally, Flandre should perform well and completely dominate Zhou Dian.

That was absolutely a carnival!

On July 22nd, at 7 PM, the regular season BO3 match between TES and Snake began.

As it was announced a few days in advance, Zhou Dian will play in this match.

The LPL officials also did some work, promoting Zhou Dian's TES debut.

This resulted in the number of viewers in the LPL official live stream room already being comparable to the number of viewers in the live stream rooms of popular teams like IG and RNG during their matches, even before the match started.

Black pieces, white pieces, onlookers watching the spectacle, and passersby simply drawn in by the excitement of the match.

Backstage, in the TES team's rest room.

Guo Hao looked at his phone screen, which displayed the official LPL live stream.

Looking at the number of viewers in the upper right corner of the live stream, and then at the barrage of comments that were refreshing like crazy.

Guo Hao thought to himself, "Damn it, who said I'm a complete traitor! Even without Zhou Shen's commercial contract, just look at the viewership of this competition. I wouldn't lose out just by generating traffic! Besides..."

When the two teams officially announced the loan of Zhou Dian, the information disclosed by various sources was only the relevant content of the loan contract.

But there is another secret that only Zhou Dian and Guo Hao currently know.

That is, Zhou Dian promised that after his contract with LGD officially expires at the end of this season, he will give priority to signing with TES.

"With Zhou Shen's promise, this loan deal is definitely worth it!" Guo Hao muttered to himself.

In Guo Hao's view, although he did spend a lot of money on this loan.

Even for the remainder of this season, Zhou Dian is unlikely to perform at the same top level as he did in the previous two years.

But as long as Zhou Dian signs a contract later, he believes that Zhou Dian will definitely be able to return to his peak form in time.

As long as we continue to strengthen the team's personnel.

When that time comes, it will be the time for TES to achieve great results.

As for winning the championship this year, Guo Hao really didn't dare to think about it.

All I can say is that he lacks courage and vision!

At 7:10 PM, the players from TES and Snake, one team on each side, had already taken their positions on either side of the player tunnel.

Once the host on the main stage gives the signal, the two teams of contestants will file in.

While waiting to go on stage, Snake's top laner Flandre, also known as Saint Gun, shouted "Zhou Shen!" across the not-so-wide player tunnel.

Upon hearing this, Zhou Dian turned to look at Saint Gun Bro, a slight look of confusion on his face.

Before Zhou Dian could speak, Holy Gun Bro chuckled and said, "Zhou God, go easy on me during the match!"

(End of this chapter)