Both draft lineups were quickly finalized. The enemy’s five heroes were [Black Dragon Knight], [Trap Hunter], [Cobra King], [Dark Priest], and [Poison Warlock].

Looking at this team composition, Ye Shaoyang felt a bit puzzled—if he remembered correctly, both [Cobra King] and [Poison Warlock] were mages. The opposing team chose a double-mage lineup without a marksman; what was the meaning of this?

Although he had organized hero data on the day he transmigrated, he was an “outsider” after all and could not understand every hero in this new game 100% inside and out. In particular, when faced with a composition he had never seen before, he couldn’t figure it out immediately.

This setup was very strange; he vaguely felt that it was a very unique tactical system.

The match loading screen quickly finished, and Ye Shaoyang opened the in-game stats panel to check the information—

Among the 5 enemy players, 3 of them had extremely uniform IDs: [Square and Neat], [Round and Smooth], and [Cute and Adorable], with avatars all in a cartoon style.

Ye Shaoyang: “…”

Could it be a professional pro stack?

Seeing these three IDs, the bullet screen section in Xiao Bai’s stream room instantly burst into excitement.

[Holy crap! Is that the Jingzhe Esports Team trio?!]

[Captain Fang, God Yun, and Ah Yuan?! Isn’t that way too much of a coincidence!]

[It’s not really a coincidence. The streamer has a 50-game win streak, so his hidden MMR is sky-high. Plus he’s trio-queuing, so bumping into a pro trio stack is totally normal.]

[Fangfang, Yuanyuan, Keke—with such bizarre smurf account names, it’s definitely the three of them!]

[The other side is playing the Poison Comp! And it’s Jingzhe’s Poison Comp—this round is totally doomed!]

Seeing the stream’s bullet screen, Ye Shaoyang finally understood their origins—they were professional players from Team Jingzhe, and three of them happened to be ranking together. Because his hidden MMR was too high, he had run into a pro stack early in the morning.

Running into a pro stack wasn’t anything to be surprised about, but what puzzled Ye Shaoyang was: do esports players in the ABO world wake up this early? In his past life, esports players generally slept until noon and only trained during the afternoon and evening.

That was because most esports events were held in the afternoon and evening. To let their bodies adapt to tournament hours and maintain peak energy during matches, over time, their schedules naturally became like that.

The match quickly began, and the familiar system voice echoed in their ears.

— Welcome to Gods’ War!

Chi Shuo pinged a mark in the bottom right corner, signaling a red buff start for this game.

Ye Shaoyang sent Qin Rui to the upper jungle to watch the blue buff, while he went to the lower jungle with the jungler to guard the red buff.

The enemy team invaded the jungle straight from the start—and it was their mid laner, bottom laner, and support all coming into the jungle together.

Ye Shaoyang hadn’t expected the enemy to play so aggressively at level 1. In a 3v2 jungle skirmish, the opposing [Cobra King] summoned several green snakes to chase the two of them down, while [Poison Warlock] shot cold arrows from a distance. Ye Shaoyang noticed the numbers 1, 2, and 3 rapidly ticking over his character; the number instantly jumped to 5, and his health pool began plummeting rapidly—he was losing health with every single step!

[Jungler No. 8]: Retreat!

Ye Shaoyang Flashed directly back under his tower and ate a health-restoring mushroom.

Seeing his [Abyssal Lord] left with only a sliver of health, the critical health mushroom saved his life. Reaching safety with a close call, Ye Shaoyang quickly pressed the recall button to head back to the crystal and restore his status.

In the voice channel, Ye Shaoyang remarked, “This is the Poison Comp? They’re this brutal right at level 1?”

[Jungler No. 8]: No team comp can beat the Poison Comp in a level 1 team fight. [Jungler No. 8]: Avoid fights. Support, follow me.

Ye Shaoyang said, “Xiao Rui, go follow the jungler boss. Mid lane will be fine with just me.”

Qin Rui: “Okay!”

Ye Shaoyang returned to the mid lane.

He discovered that the opposing mid laner’s wave clearing and last-hitting technique was extremely solid.

Last-hitting—killing a minion at the very last moment of its low health—yielded extra gold rewards. If the health calculation was off or an ability was cast too early, you wouldn’t get the bonus gold.

Although a single minion only rewarded a few dozen gold, it added up over time; last-hitting a few more might allow one to buy an extra piece of equipment and deal a bit more damage in fights.

When professional players laned against each other, they would frequently force the opponent’s positioning to make them miss minion last-hits.

The enemy mid laner was constantly forcing his positioning without making a scene. The ground full of green little snakes gave Ye Shaoyang quite a headache, but fortunately, Ye Shaoyang had rich tournament experience. He had encountered summoner-type mages before, so he dodged rapidly with swift footwork and cleared minions with abilities only after seeing them reach low health.

During the 3-minute laning phase, the mid lane minion last-hit counts between the two were nearly identical.

Xie Yuan glanced at the match panel and said, “This Xiao Bai streamer isn’t bad; he hasn’t missed a single minion.”

Fang Zhengqing praised, “His basic mechanics are solid. Even with me pressuring him like this, he can still hold his ground.”

Unfortunately, while mid lane held steady, the jungle couldn’t.

This, of course, wasn’t Chi Shuo’s fault.

After clearing their lane, the enemy bottom laner and support invaded the jungle again to harass. When Chi Shuo arrived and wanted to turn around for a counter-attack, Xiao Rui placed a ward right inside the bush next to the Red Buff.

Chi Shuo: “…”

Are you serious?

At a time like this, shouldn’t you place it in the river to check their positions?

Qin Rui even opened his mic right there and said, “Boss, nobody’s in the jungle, your Red Buff is still here!”

Chi Shuo: “…”

I obviously know the BUFF is still here.

The problem is, you need to give me vision on where they are in the river, Support!

Instead of providing river vision, Qin Rui actually walked up next to the Red Buff and slowly started throwing basic attacks at it, obediently adding, “Boss, I’ll help you hit the BUFF.”

Chi Shuo: “…”

Watching the match from the side, Coach Lin Feng was dumbfounded: “He ignores the river and helps you hit the Red Buff?”

Not checking river vision, not scouting the enemy jungler, but crouching in the pit to help teammates hit the Red Buff… such a support only appeared in low-tier games below Diamond rank.

Usually, when Qin Rui played with his cousin, Ye Shaoyang would command him on where to go and what to do. Now, with Ye Shaoyang being pressured in mid lane by the opposing mid laner, he couldn’t spare the attention. Following the jungler, Qin Rui wasn’t sure how to coordinate either, so he simply followed the jungler boss the whole way like a tailing bodyguard.

Lin Feng didn’t know whether to laugh or cry: “Your assassin has invisibility. By following you, he’s actually exposing your location. What is this support trying to do?”

Chi Shuo didn’t get it either—what was a support doing following an invisible jungler? He originally wanted to ambush the enemy Poison Warlock, but the support revealed his position; this Xiao Rui really looked like a mole sent by the enemy team.

Soon, it was time for the first Elemental Dragon to spawn. Qin Rui proactively ran to check vision around the dragon pit, but because their river vision was completely suppressed by the enemy, his movements were spotted clear as day.

Before Chi Shuo could stop him, a kill sound effect rang in his ears, and text popped up on the screen—

[Round and Smooth (Poison Warlock) killed Xiao Rui (Blessing Priest)!]

Ye Shaoyang immediately grew vigilant.

With the support dead, the enemy bottom lane expectedly rotated to mid, joining their mid laner as a trio to aggressively push the tower.

The pro stack’s coordination was seamless, and their tempo was absurdly fast.

Ye Shaoyang called nearby teammates over for support.

After both sides skirmished for a bit, the moment the minion wave arrived, announcements flashed across the screen in quick succession—

[Square and Neat (Cobra King) killed Only Plays Marksman (Holy Spirit Archer)!] [Square and Neat (Cobra King) killed Top Lane Daddy (Holy Paladin), Double Kill!]

This was terrifying—you hadn’t even found the opponents’ locations, yet they had already taken down two of your teammates? Ye Shaoyang quickly sent a shadow clone to scout, and then he saw his team’s [Jungler No. 8] ping a mark inside a bush.

Almost at the exact same instant, Ye Shaoyang’s [Abyssal Lord] and Chi Shuo’s [Stealth Rogue] pounced together into the left bush. With a single burst of combos from both of them, they instantly burst down and eliminated [Cobra King], who was hiding there casting snakes!

Square and Neat: “…”

Square and Neat: “So ferocious?”

A match wasn’t a place for chivalry; two of us bursting one of you requires no discussion.

With [Cobra King] dead, one would think this team fight could turn the tide, but the enemy [Poison Warlock]’s positioning was far too slippery. Kite-ing while retreating, he pushed the mid tower down at maximum speed.

Once the mid tower fell, the gap between their novice support and the enemy’s pro support proved too massive.

Vision couldn’t be established at all, and both the top and bottom jungles were completely lost.

The match soon came to an end.

Ye Shaoyang had long anticipated this defeat; after all, the opposition consisted of three professional players queuing together.

Fortunately, he gained something from this match as well—

Having encountered the Poison Comp for the first time, he quickly figured out its synergy mechanics.

The key anchors of this composition were [Cobra King], [Poison Warlock], and [Dark Priest].

[Cobra King] could summon four poisonous snakes; the bites inflicted a poison stack, his ultimate released a wide-area snake matrix, and he could detonate the poison to immediately trigger all stacked poison damage.

[Poison Warlock], although classified as a mage, could be played as an ADC. In this ranked match, [Poison Warlock] built attack speed items and played bottom lane. His attack speed was naturally fast, his attack range was long, and his tower-pushing efficiency wasn’t inferior to a marksman at all. Upon activating his Q ability, his basic attacks carried a “poison” debuff, and his ultimate shot out a fan-shaped array of “poison arrows”.

The poison debuffs could stack.

In other words, during team fights, [Cobra King] and [Poison Warlock] worked together to apply poison, quickly stacking it up to five layers and causing enemies to continuously lose health. [Dark Priest] could steal health to restore teammates’ health bars; in that team fight earlier, Poison Warlock’s health bar had been boosted to over 20,000, making him tankier than a pure tank hero…

As long as one of the two mages remained alive in a team fight, the poison stacks could keep accumulating continuously.

If the enemy’s health couldn’t be sustained, the whole line would easily collapse.

Ye Shaoyang thought thoughtfully: “A double-mage, double-poison system paired with a lifesteal healer? Tanky yet agile, indeed tough to play against. To break it, at least two of the three core targets must be taken down simultaneously.”

The word “DEFEAT”, unseen for a long time, popped up on the screen.

Qin Rui lowered his head in shame: “I made a mistake earlier, getting burst down before the fight even started.”

Ye Shaoyang snapped out of his thoughts and gently comforted him: “It’s fine. The other team is a pro stack; your level obviously shouldn’t be compared to professional players.” He opened his live stream room and laughed: “I lost! I’ll give everyone half a minute to come flame me, so I can collect your flaming vocabulary.”

Netizens: “???”

What was with this streamer? When other streamers lost, they made all kinds of excuses—blaming bad teammates, poor performance… But when this guy lost, he directly invited everyone to flame him?

[The enemy team was playing the Poison Comp, it’d be a miracle if you won!]

[The Poison Comp was a composition that made it to the World Championship in Season 8! Fang Zhengqing’s Cobra King was perma-banned after that!]

[Exactly! Letting the enemy draft the Poison Comp means you’ve already lost half the game at the start!]

[Streamer, mwah! Don’t lose heart, losing to a pro stack is nothing to be ashamed of. Let’s keep winning the next round!]

The netizens actually didn’t flame him? Ye Shaoyang remarked with emotion: “This generation of netizens is way too gentle. In the future, if I lose, you guys should spam the screen calling the streamer an idiot or trash—that way I’ll have more motivation.”

Netizens: “???”

Chi Shuo: “…”

Who on earth was this Xiao Bai?

Why did it feel more and more like he wasn’t a professional player from any team?

Coach Lin Feng, sitting nearby, was also bewildered watching this: “Doesn’t he know about the Poison Comp? Fang Zhengqing is so famous; every player in the league should know Captain Fang, right?”

Chi Shuo frowned: “He isn’t a professional player. You saw the match just now—Xiao Rui’s skill level looks very much like a beginner. Which team training pro players would nurture a support who doesn’t know how to set up vision and only knows how to follow his brother around?”

Lin Feng thought about it and agreed. Supports in the professional league were smarter than the next, and vision control was a crucial part of matches. But in this round, the blue side’s vision was completely suppressed by the red side.

Xiao Bai’s mechanics were indeed excellent.

However, Xiao Rui’s awareness and skill were very much like a complete novice.

Chi Shuo noted Xiao Rui’s player ID through this ranked match. He quickly entered the ID into the [Gods’ War Assistant] app to check his match history. The user hadn’t hidden his match history, and as Chi Shuo scrolled down, he saw a mountain of Gold rank wins and losses, even featuring absurd kill-to-death ratios like 0-10.

“Xiao Rui was still in Gold rank the day before yesterday, and was carried up to King tier by Xiao Bai,” Chi Shuo said, pointing at the match list.

Lin Feng asked in confusion: “It seems he really is Xiao Bai’s younger brother? Two brothers ranking together?”

“Mm, that’s the only explanation.”

Lin Feng grew even more puzzled: “If he’s not a pro player, where did this Xiao Bai pop up from? He hasn’t been heard of in the streaming community either—could he be a wild, expert talent who appeared out of nowhere?”

Chi Shuo pondered for a moment and said, “I’ll interact with him a bit more and see what his true strength is.”