Chapter 22 The Three-No Principle

Early the next morning, Lu Ji appeared at the Shanghai airport. Accompanying him were a club-assigned driver and the assistant coach, Zero.

Of course, he didn't strictly need to come; this itinerary hadn't originally included him.

However, as an adult, Lu Ji knew deep down that you must first show others respect before they will show it back to you. Before long, amidst the bustling crowd at the exit, they finally spotted the person they were waiting for.

"Excuse me, are you motherfuckers my master?"

Although Lu Ji didn't understand Korean, he figured that was roughly what the other person meant, though he wasn't entirely sure.

It wasn't until he saw Lu Ji looking over with a face full of question marks that GimGoon realized he was no longer in his home country, and quickly switched his speech back to the Chinese channel.

He opened his mouth and said:

"Nee-hao! I am GimGoon."

"Brother Goon! I'm your fan!!"

When that clumsy Chinese came out of GimGoon's mouth, that familiar figure from his memory finally began to overlap with the man standing right before him.

Yes.

GimGoon was the very person Lu Ji had invited to accelerate his entry into the professional scene and help him farm achievements.

Looking back at the past World Championship winners, if one were to rank them on a tragedy scale, the top spot should probably belong to Crown, the S7 Samsung championship mid laner. He had clearly locked down Faker's mid lane using Malzahar, but because both sides were playing such parasitic, wave-clear champions, he was mocked relentlessly after the tournament.

To the point where his mental state broke down directly, reaching the level where he needed to see a therapist.

And the second one was GimGoon.

As the S9 championship top laner, GimGoon's contributions to FPX were visible to the naked eye.

Yet the club management proved somewhat heartless; not long after winning the championship, they benched GimGoon and welcomed Khan back from a foreign region.

As time passed, GimGoon gradually faded from the professional arena.

Until today.

Prompted by Lu Ji's suggestion, he was welcomed back into the club once more.

Not in the capacity of a player, but rather similar to how TES brought back Xiye to mentor Xiaohao—his role was much the same, acting as Lu Ji's assistant coach.

"Brother! Whether I can smash AhBin in the new season, kick TheShy, and brutally beat Zeus and Faker at the World Championship depends entirely on you."

"No problem, you fucking top laner, under my guidance, we'll blast them all to pieces!!!"

Upon meeting, GimGoon, seeing how enthusiastic Lu Ji was, became quite excited as well.

He was immensely confident.

As an unretired yet unwanted esports player, in the original timeline, GimGoon didn't surface until S13 to announce that he had given up his player dreams and hoped to transition into coaching with some team.

But by then, it was already too late. In the time between winning the championship and S13, he had merely maintained a lukewarm streaming career.

Yet now!

The timeline had changed!

V5 wanted him to pass on Lu Ji's most lacking asset: top lane competitive experience. Moreover, he was cheap—assistant coaches didn't make much money—and the trade-off was that while teaching Lu Ji, he could also participate as the deputy coach's assistant to learn how to be a coach.

As for GimGoon, he desperately needed such a stable job.

Not only did he have a steady income, but he could also learn how to be a coach, while piggybacking on V5's current skyrocketing popularity. The slickest part was that once Lu Ji truly matured, he could also take a slice of the traffic pie as his mentor.

This.

It was an absolute win!

Winning across the board!

Driven by even this sliver of a possibility, he would carry Lu Ji to become the number one top laner in the LPL, even if it killed him.

After returning to the club together, the V5 players, one by one having just crawled out of bed, greeted him in succession.

The news of GimGoon coming to V5 was something they had known since the Demacia Cup ended.

V5 currently had a few issues:

The top laner's competitive experience was too shallow. There was no helping this; it required a sufficient number of experienced matches, or someone to provide divine enlightenment, which was why GimGoon was here.

The jungler, Karsa, was relatively fine.

Normally, every time the game's version updated, top-tier junglers might fall while lower-tier ones soared; this was the connection between playstyle compatibility and the patch.

But Karsa was different. He was an honor student of the patch. The only thing worth discussing regarding him was how to reduce the frequency of entering his "pizza" state.

In the mid lane, Rookie's playstyle still needed to transition, slowly shifting from a resource-starved, utility-farming mid laner into a standard mid-lane hyper-carry. He was working hard.

The bot lane went without saying.

Currently, V5's breakthrough point was the bot lane, though Xiaoyan's talent was also slowly being unleashed, it simply required the accumulation of time.

GimGoon's arrival.

Made the already noisy training room grow even more boisterous. Immersing himself in this atmosphere, GimGoon actually looked thoroughly and utterly satisfied.

Right!

Oh, so right!

Back when he was in FPX, he felt this exact vibe. He hadn't expected to feel the exact same thing upon coming to V5; everyone here was a talent, and they all spoke so nicely—he loved it here!

With a joyful mood, he resolutely turned to Lu Ji and asked:

"What is your biggest problem right now? Spell it out, let me hear it, and I'll figure out how to help you."

"A problem?"

Lu Ji pondered for a moment, his eyes lighting up.

He spoke up:

"Well, it's like this. Didn't we play against WBG some time ago?"

"At that time, I casually added TheShy as a friend, and then arranged a custom 1v1 Solo with him. But I don't know why—clearly in the match I could use Akshan to kite his Graves, but during the Solo, when I played Jayce, I couldn't beat his Jayce."

"Teacher GimGoon, can you help me?"

"Wait, you said you Soloed with whom, playing what?"

"TheShy, playing Jayce."

"!!!"

What the hell, he Soloed with TheShy.

Even if the man was getting older, he was only prone to giving up opportunities and getting ganked in the laning phase; his individual out-play and laning mechanics hadn't deteriorated.

Considering he had only joined V5 on the first day.

The Korean man still managed to suppress the urge to shout "Shibal" at the top of his lungs.

He corrected:

"I know you want to defeat TheShy, but that is not something you should be considering right now. Your strength does not lie in your laning prowess—perhaps it will in the future, but right now, you should be honing your advantages."

GimGoon clearly had done his homework.

The fact that no team wanted him and he wasn't a pro player anymore didn't mean he had stopped watching professional matches.

Lu Ji's playstyle and philosophy looked very familiar to him; calling it a carbon copy of his own wouldn't even be an exaggeration. The only difference was that when he played professionally, he was purely absorbing pressure.

While this rascal.

Always managed to use some weird tricks to alter the countered matchups in the laning phase.

"Do you know why back then, so many top laners had higher tactical priority than me, yet their ultimate results were far inferior to mine, and even teams with TheShy lost to me?"

"Why?"

Lu Ji put on a look of a curious baby.

Tournament details and such could be taken step by step. Since he was already his assistant coach, there was plenty of time. Right now, the priority was listening to him flex and building a better rapport.

Besides.

What if there was actual useful substance hidden within his flexing?

GimGoon tilted his head up.

He began:

"The reason they lost when they laned against me wasn't because I played better than them, but because their passive play wasn't pure enough, and their carrying wasn't thorough enough."

"Wanting to play passively yet unable to swallow their pride, wanting to carry yet lacking the actual strength."

"Clinging to that mindset, they naturally and inevitably became the breakthrough point for their team."

Lu Ji paused as he listened.

Though no names were mentioned, it felt like every single word was pointing a finger. Wasn't this implicitly alluding to 369, who went off to JDG to study under Homme? He had a bit of execution, but you could tell he was unwilling to be a pure utility player, yet his own strength fell just a bit short.

Stuck right in limbo.

And what was GimGoon under the perfection template?

Top-tier resource starvation, utility generation, and teamfighting capabilities. His strength lay in the fact that no matter how much pressure he absorbed in the early game, he always made his presence felt in late-game teamfights. His ability to farm back up and dish out damage was absurdly strong, and his anti-gank capability was so potent that even peak TheShy couldn't pierce his defenses. A Gangplank eating zero side-lane resources dealt the highest damage in the entire game.

Just imagine.

In a professional match, there was a top lane that was constantly targeted, laning against none other than peak TheShy, yet despite a -1000 gold deficit in the matchup, he managed to pump out the highest damage in the entire game, accounting for 50% of his team's total damage share.

This wasn't human anymore.

This was Deep Blue itself taking human form to play a match—the true embodiment of both advancing and retreating, rather than a mere shield, nor simply absorbing pressure. It was dodging the enemy's sharpest edge and striking back from a position of weakness.

Even 369, after watching his S9 performance, couldn't help but exclaim: "Good lord, that's the me from my dreams."

Meanwhile.

The news of GimGoon joining the V5 club was also leaked online by some anonymous bystander, instantly triggering massive discussion.

Soon, V5's official statement arrived.

Acknowledging GimGoon's entry into V5 as an assistant coach to help the team grow.

The moment the announcement dropped, everyone was dumbfounded.

[Who! You said who? Brother Goon?!]

[GimGoon ran over to coach Ultraman Mebius? The cheat code has arrived, huh? When is he unlocking Brave Form?]

[As if it wasn't disgusting enough already, they even assigned him an assistant coach like this?]

[It's over, the top lane really is the Wall of Sighs now.]

Over at TES.

Team manager Guo Hao stared at the announcement, completely bewildered on the spot.

What others saw was the combination of GimGoon and Lu Ji potentially forging a terrifyingly insidious top laner. But what he saw was that Lu Ji clearly already possessed a takeoff momentum worthy of being called perfection, yet still willingly intensified his studies to push himself even further.

How is that fair?

He racked his brain, working tirelessly year after year; it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say he was the one who poured the most effort into TES. He had managed to retain the TES twin stars, expecting to set sail in the new season.

Yet now, the club's record was sitting at fifty-fifty wins and losses, a 50% win rate.

And V5.

A broken, reassembled team that picked up scraps here and picked up leftovers there, and even randomly took in a few castaways, only for every single one of them to turn out to be uncut jade.

This made him couldn't help but doubt.

Was his management really worthless in the face of "pure luck and maneuvering"?

While V5 entered an intensive study mode, by comparison, the mood of V5's next opponent, RNG, was somewhat less than pleasant.

S12 was a season of a hundred flowers blooming.

Even for RNG, a team often labeled as a stubborn veteran squad, their roster for this year still had plenty of commendable points.

Top laner Bin, grouped alongside 369 and Breathe as the three major next-generation rookie top laners. High mechanical talent, dared to fight and show off, strong kiting abilities—except he lacked discipline, and his teamfighting was trash-tier. Most of the time, he relied on his teammates to hold the front line and only emerged to clean up once the dust had mostly settled.

Jungler Wei, a shot-calling jungler. At certain points in time, he could be considered a top-tier jungler, with the common flaw of being somewhat patch-reliant, fitting better into the "fasting" jungle metas.

Mid laner Xiaohu. Known as the Spring Tiger Emperor, he ushered in a brand-new "Tiger-style Triple Threat" set at this juncture. You could say he was weak internationally, but domestically he was genuinely ferocious. This didn't manifest as single-lane prowess, but rather in mid-jungle synergy, backed by exceptionally rich tournament experience.

Bot lane Gala + Ming.

Gala was not a laning AD; his laning prowess was medium-weak, but his teamfight awareness and execution were commendable. A literal Kaisa one-trick.

Ming went without saying—inconsistent as a ghost one day and a god the next. Without ever winning a Worlds title himself, he successfully squeezed into the World Champions' Thithtan Club, even securing an MVP-tier membership card within it.

You couldn't say this roster was bad.

You recognized everyone on it, and at a single glance, you felt this lineup would at least make the playoffs, and might even contest a Worlds ticket.

Yet you couldn't say the lineup was exceptionally good either; it felt weird, though you couldn't quite put your finger on what was strange about it.

"I never expected we'd be facing them so soon."

Tabe sighed.

Before the spring split began, even though V5 held the Demacia Cup championship, the major powerhouses only regarded V5 with ordinary attention rather than treating them as a genuine threat—after all, it was just the Demacia Cup.

However, following V5's sweeping win streak throughout the spring split, every team finally began treating them like an unstoppable flood dragon.

RNG was naturally no exception, and they had studied V5's system.

Normally.

With Bin on their roster, no matter what, opening up a vulnerability on the enemy's top side would be the most appropriate course of action. But the problem lay right there: they simply couldn't make heads or tails of the opposing top laner.

On top of an already tricky situation, your opponent's top lane gets reinforced by a championship assistant coach?

Well...

They couldn't possibly temporarily pivot their tactics to target V5's bot lane instead.

"Just let me play him. He only hired a championship assistant coach, it's not like he's already an S9 champion himself. I can handle him."

Bin, right in the prime of his career, was brimming with arrogance.

He had always disliked top laners like Lu Ji who played unorthodox, sideways paths. In his mind, a true man should engage in a pure 1v1 duel in the top lane.

"That still needs consideration; don't rush." Tabe rejected his proposal.

RNG had two sets of tactical approaches:

One was their most familiar mid-jungle synergy, but mid-jungle synergy meant that both side lanes had to play conservatively and hunker down. The bot lane would be fine, but the main issue was that Bin's top lane was prone to issues, making it rather difficult to manage.

The other approach was focusing heavily on the upper half of the map, leaving the bot lane to absorb pressure and farm, while Ming roamed when the timing was right, leaving Gala alone in the bot lane to play safe. This was also a system they utilized quite frequently.

It wasn't that he didn't trust his own top laner.

Rather, based on the performances in the spring split, he had far more faith in the opposing top laner's ability to tilt opponents. Throughout the spring split, the evaluation of Lu Ji given by every single top laner who had faced V5 in the laning phase could be summed up in two standard words:

Disgusting.

That sense of nausea felt akin to taking a slice of German rye bread that even a stray dog wouldn't touch, topping it with two slices of a Spanish old man's armpit cheese, spreading a layer of Australian drunkard's vomit Lao Gan Ma, and washing it down with a glass of American spoiled tomato and celery vegetable juice.

After swallowing it, you felt like your life was pretty much meaningless and you might as well just drop dead.

After thinking it over.

Tabe ultimately decided to employ both strategies.

And he initiated a pre-match brainwashing campaign on the team.

This year's RNG, under his guidance, operated strictly on a principle of three disbeliefs: don't believe you're incapable, don't believe you're doomed to fail, and don't believe the enemy is invincible.

Anyway, the players were already these exact players.

So let's just fucking fight!