When an Alpha is Marked by One of His Own Kind

Chapter 75

During Shen Qiao's self-imposed break from Weibo, two playoffs games took place. DG won the first. They played against WTG in the second game, and ultimately-WTG, whose players were more well-suited to playing best-of-five matches, won that one. As a result, DG would unfortunately have to face off against COCO for the third place position.
Spectators were all worrying over whether or not DG would qualify for the world championship. After all, there were only three spots for the world championship that year. One would go to the winner of the LPL's summer tournament, and now it was already impossible for DG to win that title.

One of the other spots would go to the team with the highest cumulative score from the spring tournament and summer tournament. Judging by DG's fourth-place finish in the spring tournament and the fact that they wouldn't be first or second in the summer tournament, this spot wouldn't go to DG either.

In that case...

DG's final chance to qualify was to duke it out for the third spot.

The third spot would be contested by high-ranking teams, with the two previously seeded teams removed from the competition. The three top-scoring teams that hadn't already secured a position at the world championship would battle against one another to determine a victor for the third and final spot.

This system inevitably raised the suspense for Team DG.

Online, many comments mocked DG for being last year's champions who wouldn't even qualify for the world championship this year. Besides that, other voices all asked just one question-

When exactly would Lu Zhe return?

One night, at one in the morning.

DG's headquarters were still lit up like a beacon.

Shen Qiao had devoted himself to practicing his strategies in Teamfight Tactics over the past few days. That night, he decided he wanted to play a few ranked matches during his personal training time. But, perhaps because the server was extremely busy over summer break, he queued up for ages without managing to get into a match. In the end, he switched over to his alt on another server.

He hadn't used this alt account much since joining DG. Most of the champions he'd unlocked on that account were junglers. When he logged in now, the account was still sitting at a silver rank.

Some people on the friends list of that account were also online, even at that late hour. A few of them were streamers who played LoL. They'd played a few rounds with Shen Qiao in the past, before asking if they could add him as a friend. Now, seeing him come online, they all threw him invitations to join their games.

Shen Qiao glanced at those incoming messages, where he saw a familiar name.

[StandUpLittleO: This account... is this Qiaoqiao-gege's alt?]

[StandUpLittleO: When did I add you? How come I don't have any impression of doing that at all? Well, whatever. Qiaoqiao-gege, come watch over me when you have time... wahhh, I've been losing all day! I worked so hard to get up to gold! QAQ]

Shen Qiao could practically imagine the expressions Lu Qianshuang was making as he read those messages. Originally, he'd planned on queueing up by himself, but now he wrote back and asked, You're staying up this late?

[StandUpLittleO: !!!]

[StandUpLittleO: Don't tell my brother! I made plans with a friend to pull an all-nighter, please don't tell!]

Shen Qiao drummed his fingers against the tabletop. He looked around the training room and saw that Lu Zhe was busy watching footage from previous games with Zhao Yue and Zheng Zhizhuo, analyzing the strengths and tactics of other teams. For the time being, Lu Zhe wouldn't have any time to pay attention to Shen Qiao.