With Day 2 of the rumble stage finished, TES's record had become 4–0, firmly sitting in first place.
Honestly, the qualification picture was already very clear.
Especially since they'd beaten both G2 and SKT.
Even if they dropped the remaining games later, they could still finish 8–2—
and in that case, they'd be either first or second.
The remaining opponents didn't bring that much pressure.
If you can advance straight to the finals, everything gets easier.
The less you show, the more stable you'll be in finals.
They could even use the remaining rumble games to test new tactics and new champion systems—
after all, Tu Bro had shown mid Yone recently, so they might as well test its strength.
And today's win was so clean that discussion across domestic platforms was nonstop.
"TES is insane this year. Holy crap, I'm genuinely stunned. At this pace, TES has a bright future, alright?"
"I actually hate the phrase 'bright future.' I prefer living in the present. But what TES is showing right now makes me believe in it."
"The midterm exam paper was answered beautifully. In that case, I'm looking forward to the final exam."
"Yeah. Up to now, there hasn't been a single 30-minute game. The longest I remember was 27 minutes. I'm overflowing with anticipation."
"Honestly, the moment I see Tu Bro start roaming, I know the game is already over."
"When Tu Bro gets a huge lead, he immediately wants to help teammates build leads too. His roams are the moment the team advantage is created."
"I really love this kind of mid. If I met him in ranked, that would be a peaceful LP farming game."
A mid laner who can both lane and roam massively raises a team's ceiling.
A lot of mids, when they get ahead, only know how to sit in lane and play their own game.
They don't help side lanes at all.
Then their laner—who got smashed into 0–5 or 0–6—walks to other lanes, gets easy kills, and flips the game.
And in that situation, the fed mid starts flaming teammates.
"A piece of trash I beat to 0–5 can just walk to your lane and kill you—what are you doing?"
This is something many people have experienced.
That "advantage player" forgets the core of the game is teamwork.
Being comfortable on one lane doesn't mean much.
Of course, other lanes share responsibility too—if you keep getting caught, you should reflect.
Teammate pings feel like fake pings.
They spam until their fingers break and you still don't react.
Two words: blind.
In League, playing with your head down doesn't really help you improve.
Sometimes watching videos and analyzing match decision-making can greatly broaden your perspective and game sense.
It can help more than grinding mechanics nonstop.
Once your macro improves—knowing what to do at what time point—
it's far better than sitting in lane forever.
Then climbing becomes easy.
That's why some people look bad mechanically but still climb high.
And why some people lane perfectly—always aggressive and winning—
yet get stuck in Gold or Platinum forever.
After every game they look at their 10+ kill score while teammates are all negative, curse that "they don't deserve to win," and queue again into another loop.
A page full of SVP and mental collapse.
Team games are like that.
Five people doing things right is far stronger than you fighting alone.
So even if Lin Fan's champion proficiency is maxed, he still can't truly 1v5.
The best way to win is to play as a team.
As long as each role has a half-item or one-item lead, teamfights become easy.
After the match ended, as usual, a huge crowd camped in the stream—waiting for Lin Fan to go live.
Bullet chats rushed by one after another.
Even staring at a black screen, the room's viewer count broke three million.
For other streamers, that would be unbelievable.
In Lin Fan's room, everyone was used to it.
Around 9:30, a beam of light finally appeared—stream went live.
Chat spam intensified, and viewership kept climbing.
"Hello, everyone," Lin Fan greeted.
"Tu Bro!"
"He's here, he's here!"
Chat spam grew even faster.
As a League pro, the core audience was still League fans.
And when it came to "combat power," League fans were unmatched—far stronger than other games.
So the speed of fighting for chat lines was even faster than people moving their hands.
"Too strong today—hard smashed Faker!"
"Tu Bro's Twisted Fate is still trustworthy, right? LPL's last card!"
"That used to be true, but now Xiye is so bad that LPL has no 'last card'—until Tu Bro appeared."
"Exactly. LPL really should have that tradition. The region that plays cards best, but no one can play Twisted Fate? That's ridiculous. With Tu Bro, that got fixed."
"Honestly, today's match was insanely satisfying—especially watching LCK fans mental boom."
"I looked at Korean forums—they completely exploded. They were pre-celebrating before the match, then got slapped instantly."
"SKT got flamed into the ground. Faker got attacked too—looks like every hater came out."
"Just watch the drama. The moment TES loses a game, Tu Bro won't end up any better than Faker."
…
Lin Fan only glanced at chat and saw the discussion already drifting.
Winning is worth celebrating, sure—but this was just one rumble-stage BO1.
It didn't affect the overall situation much.
SKT wouldn't lose their semifinal slot just because of this one loss.
The real "difference-maker" is the BO5 stage.
When you knock them out completely—that's the moment worth celebrating.
"Yeah, rumble stage standings are pretty clear. First place is likely, not much pressure."
"But the real main event is semifinals."
"Faker won't fall in rumble. The real knife fight is in BO5."
"So celebrating early really isn't necessary."
The moment Lin Fan said that, chat froze.
Nobody expected him to respond.
In the past, TES would win and people would discuss in chat, and Tu Bro would usually say nothing.
Today he suddenly spoke up, and everyone didn't react for a moment.
"At MSI, the only moment worth celebrating is winning the championship."
"BO1 upsets are normal."
"And with higher ping, the reaction demands are higher."
"My feeling laning against Faker was that his reaction speed was a bit slow—slightly sluggish. He probably hasn't adapted to the ping yet."
With higher delay, reaction demands go up.
After all, 0.025 seconds is "wasted" by ping.
Pro players average around 140 ms reaction time—0.14 seconds.
So that extra 0.025 seconds is almost 20% of the window.
In that situation, skills you could've dodged might become impossible.
It really can impact outcomes.
A skill you could've flashed might land instead, and then you just die.
Of course, if your reactions are fast enough, the impact is smaller… like Zeus.
These pings don't matter to him—he still reacts.
Here's a simple way to explain:
If you feel "lag" even at low ping, it means your reaction speed is faster.
Most people only start feeling lag around 80–90 ping.
The difference looks tiny, but reaction speed is worlds apart.
If you can play normally at 140 ping, congratulations—your reactions are in the "slow" category.
No matter what, you'll eat every skill cleanly.
Lin Fan's words made a lot of people think.
He wasn't wrong.
Starting to celebrate and mock the Korean crowd wasn't really appropriate.
How was that different from them?
The earlier counterpunch was enough; dragging it out wasn't necessary.
The Korean side should have learned their lesson.
And they were already dumping their anger onto SKT.
That was satisfying enough.
And you could also see Tu Bro wasn't the kind of player who got arrogant from praise after a win.
That made him feel even steadier.
"Alright—next, let's see which game gets my favor."
Before people could even finish thinking, that line instantly broke everyone's composure.
Damn it—Tu Bro really is great in every way except being "unprofessional."
If he trained properly, would anyone even need to worry about wins and losses?
It was just a pity—his peak got "wasted" like this.
If only a team had discovered his potential earlier and signed him out…
Maybe he would've trained consistently and maintained peak form.
S11 LPL champions, S12 champions again under Tu Bro…
But without all these side adventures, Tu Bro's persona wouldn't be this rich, and he wouldn't bring so much joy.
Everything has pros and cons.
Maybe a "pure peak-form" Tu Bro wouldn't have this level of charm, and people wouldn't become his fans…
"Since we're in the tournament phase, I'm not playing horror games."
"If I get scared and can't sleep in the dorm, and my form gets affected, then the next matches will be hard."
Seeing chat spam him to play Jia Hui—what the hell.
Sure, he knew she had a great figure, but he really couldn't play it.
If he got solo-killed, it would be lethal.
Since everyone already knew he was scared of horror games, whatever.
He'd just lay flat.
A dead pig isn't afraid of boiling water.
With limited time, playing DNF sounded nice.
Run a few dungeons, feel that Ghost Knight combo pleasure.
No idea what the level cap was now.
He quit in 2019 and hadn't touched it since.
He opened the DNF he'd already downloaded and logged into his QQ account.
Then he checked his profile.
Good lord—now it was a level 110 version.
Looks like Tencent really put in work these past few years to keep players.
That's normal too.
The slower you raise the cap, the longer people play.
After more than ten years, bot studios became more mature.
There were also plenty of solo "brick movers"—gold farmers—who could still make decent returns after a day of grinding.
Chat spammed question marks when they saw his screen.
"Why is Tu Bro's gear all trash? Even if you gave it to me, I wouldn't want it."
"Looks like he hasn't logged in forever. Only level 84?"
"If I remember right, back then it was the 95 cap. Under that version, 84 is actually pretty good."
"At least he's awakened twice. If you didn't have those two awakenings, you'd be dizzy. Just keep doing quests."
Lin Fan glanced at chat and replied casually:
"F2P gear being trash is normal."
"And I quit in 2019. Games are for entertainment. Spending that much money is unnecessary."
"If you play DNF, finishing BIS as F2P is actually easy."
"But if you want to min-max your gear, that's extremely hard."
Then he started slowly feeling his way back in.
After all, it had been over three years—everything changed a lot.
Adjusting would take time.
Chat spammed nonstop, begging to pull Lin Fan into a party.
Everyone wanted some interaction.
Lin Fan refused.
And at the same time, countless accounts that had been sealed away for ages started logging back in.
This was Lin Fan's "bring a game back" tempo, and everyone had long gotten used to it.
After all, DNF used to be many people's white moonlight.
Back then, people used to mock DNF players as fat otakus in broken sneakers and messy clothes.
That day, Lin Fan even fantasized about wearing a suit to an internet cafe to play DNF.
But because his pockets were empty, he couldn't afford a suit, and couldn't join the "Eight Hundred Warriors."
If he got the chance, next year on April 26, he'd join the next Suit Raid Day—
and fulfill a small dream from back then.
But before that, he couldn't quit this game again.
Thankfully, there were lots of events now, and leveling wasn't too slow.
Questing and running dungeons—two hours flew by.
Lin Fan said goodbye and ended stream.
He also made a deal with everyone:
As long as they didn't lose tomorrow, he'd stream again at the same time as today.
As usual, after matches there were Weibo posts and small forums.
Someone even clipped what Lin Fan said today and posted it.
A lot of people saw it and genuinely felt something.
Until the last moment, nobody knows what will happen.
Tu Bro could keep this mentality—
even if his form dipped, he could adjust quickly.
His life experience didn't feel like these young league kids at all.
Every sentence he spoke felt like a quote.
Maybe that's the calmness a true strong person should have—
not obsessing over every single win and loss.
And with that, a big chunk of passersby quietly turned into fans.
TL: If you want to read ahead by at least ten chapters, patreon.com/EdibleMapleSyrup