"Alright, congratulations to TES!"
"Congratulations to TES for defeating V5 2–0. With that, their winning streak has been extended to seven games."
"V5's undefeated run ends today—kind of a pity. But you can only say TES played better today, and their form was better."
"Yeah. Even with this loss, V5 is still first in the league. TES are chasing hard and have climbed to eighth."
"Mainly because the hole they dug early was too deep. But now it's basically confirmed they'll make playoffs. The regular season is about to end—if they can keep this form, I'm really looking forward to it."
…
In the arena, fans also started chatting excitedly with friends.
"V5 actually lost? Is TES really this strong now?"
"Infinite Borders Bro is just too strong. I can't understand how a mid this strong played six games as support. Were they blind at the start?"
"You can only say White Moon is as stupid as ever after turning into a 'new moon,' trusting that idiot Knight."
"But at least he admitted the mistake and fixed it. Infinite Borders Bro is a treasure now. Knight has all that 'rotten pants' tabloid trash—just sell him next split. Pair him with Huanfeng as a double-carry, sounds perfect. One likes prostitutes, one likes hookups."
"Those two little trashcans—bad and loves to play."
"But honestly, beating V5 is a massive morale boost. That basically locks playoffs, right?"
"Pretty much. Historically, seven wins gets you playoffs, eight is super safe. TES has three regular-season matches left—Weibo Gaming, LGD, and IG."
"Still feels a bit shaky. LGD are the 'steal-from-the-rich, give-to-the-poor' team, and TheShy is god mode one game and ghost mode the next."
"Doesn't matter—Infinite Borders Bro will handle it."
As for the people who always jumped out to attack Lin Fan the moment TES lost, they didn't get their chance today.
All they could do was complain V5 were fake—Rookie got ten straight wins and still couldn't beat Dine, who never trains and loafs around all day?
But even with a mid like that, TES was destined to go nowhere.
Sooner or later, they'd walk the old "Tang Sect mid laner" road.
Weixiao went to play PUBG—so, you dog, Infinite Borders Bro, hurry up and go play Naraka: Bladepoint.
…
At the player area, Lin Fan stood up and went with his teammates to shake hands with V5.
For V5, losing one match didn't matter much—almost irrelevant. Their early foundation was that solid.
Still, losing the streak stung a little.
Not many people could smile after a loss. If there were, it'd probably be Da Huang and Tai Shou.
"I watched your videos earlier and knew you were strong. I didn't think you'd be this strong." Rookie said quietly as he shook Lin Fan's hand.
"You're not bad either. I'm just stronger." Lin Fan smiled.
"Old Song, he's flirting with you to your face. Next time, you're not going to spank his ass?"
"We're still first, you know. In the regular season we'll be first or second. With your ranking, to face us in playoffs you'll have to clear at least two rounds."
"Tch. Us rising late has more value than you popping off early." JackeyLove refused to back down.
The old IG three-carry relationship had always been good. They'd occasionally meet up at Uzi's place to play mahjong.
Usually in and out during the day—rarely the kind where you go in at night and come out the next morning.
Apparently, if you don't play mahjong overnight, it's not exciting enough.
Watching TES leave, Karsa suddenly asked Rookie, "Does Dine really never train?"
"I've heard… yeah, he doesn't train…"
"And his form stays this good? His talent is just maxed out."
"Probably because they're winning a lot so his form is good. Once they start losing, he'll fall off. He's just holding his breath right now."
PPGod's analysis made sense. The others nodded along.
A player like that was destined to go only so far.
Next time they met, V5 definitely wouldn't lose again.
TES would always have to rely on bot lane.
Sadly, for so long they hadn't had a reliable mid.
To have talent and choose to waste it like that… maybe, like he said, League of Legends was just a job, and other games were his real life.
TES's five players walked to center stage and bowed to the fans.
Then they returned to their stations and packed up their gear.
Back in the lounge, Lin Fan was invited to do the post-match interview.
After all, he'd gotten MVP in both games. Not interviewing him wouldn't make sense.
Xiaoyu, in a yellow short dress, smiled as she asked Lin Fan to introduce himself.
"No wonder Rookie played so aggressively in Game 1. Turns out he wanted to gamble for MVP, so he could see Xiaoyu in the post-match interview. Looks like I kind of ruined their plan…"
The interview lights shone on Lin Fan.
…
"Sure enough, a player with a normal life is different from other pros—glowing, energetic."
"Infinite Borders Bro just keeps getting more handsome. His face has its own kind of charm."
"Let's fence, let's fence."
"With that little body of yours, you're not enough for Infinite Borders Bro to fight alone. You still want to fence?"
"Is it possible the 'fencing' he meant isn't swordplay… but staff techniques?"
…
Standing here again, Lin Fan felt very relaxed.
He looked toward the audience.
Besides JackeyLove's signs, he saw quite a few people holding up signs for him now.
Men and women alike.
Nice, nice—looks like his recent performance in the league had won him plenty of fans.
"For the first question: after seeing Rookie pick LeBlanc, you picked Syndra in response. What were you feeling at the time?" Xiaoyu stared at Lin Fan with a look that said: if you don't answer properly, you'll pay for it.
"Rookie's LeBlanc is famously strong. Plus he has that Worlds skin buff, which gave me a lot of pressure. So I could only pick the champion I'm most confident in to fight him.
So you saw us pick Syndra. Luckily V5 didn't ban her—otherwise I honestly wouldn't know what I'd pick to play into him."
"And the result really proved it. Besides Syndra, everything else was hard to play. In lane he gave me a lot of pressure. Rookie's strength is real—just that LeBlanc early really isn't great into Syndra, so I was able to slowly snowball."
The answer was official and formulaic, but it made Rookie's fans satisfied.
You can lose, but you can't say the opponent was garbage—you have to make people feel good.
Xiaoyu was satisfied too, her eyes turning into crescents.
"TES has now won seven straight. A playoff spot should be basically secured. Do you have an even farther goal? Like winning Spring Split and representing the LPL at MSI?"
Veterans all had one lesson: don't set huge flags in interviews.
From retirees to those still grinding at LNG, plenty had done it—and got their faces smashed in.
Even half a year later, people still brought it up. Pure black history.
"Even though we've won seven straight, our foundation wasn't great. I was on stage for those six straight losses too, so I can clearly feel the gap between us and other teams.
Given that, we just want to play every match well. No extra goals. We'll take it step by step—keep our feet on the ground."
The live chat scrolled like crazy.
"With your one ranked game a month, that's really not convincing."
"If anyone else said this, I'd believe it. Infinite Borders Bro spends all his time on any game except League."
"To be fair, this interview was good."
"Rookie grinds so hard for moments like this, doesn't he? Too bad Infinite Borders Bro outplayed him."
"Is Rookie watching the interview in the lounge right now? This is… in front of the husband—"
"Hey, hey, don't talk nonsense. But if it's Xiaoyu, I think I can."
After the interview, Lin Fan returned to the lounge.
They weren't planning to watch the remaining match. Everyone packed up and got on the bus back to base.
Everyone was smiling.
Seven straight wins felt amazing.
With playoffs basically locked, the pressure dropped sharply.
"Today's matches were really solid. I thought we might have to go to three games, but we cleanly 2–0'd V5." Luo Sheng sighed from his seat.
"They tried to knife-fight us and we won. They tried to roam-fight us and we won again. They're first in the league—after beating them, we're first.
So in the next matches, keep it up. Don't let the 'first place' name slip away again.
The regular season is almost over. We need to gradually shift our training rhythm and prepare for playoffs."
"Confidence?"
"Yes!"
After a loss, coaches pour chicken soup into players.
After a big winning streak like this, you need it even more.
Coaches now weren't just delivery guys ordering takeout at the base.
They had real authority—management-level.
Back at base, everyone ate a simple meal in the cafeteria, then went into post-match practice.
TES's schedule wasn't tight.
Maybe because there were too many star players—they didn't want to wear them out.
Back-to-back matches were basically nonexistent.
"Brother Fan, duo queue?"
"No. I made plans. Tuantuan invited me to play Goose Goose Duck with them."
"Goose Goose Duck?"
"Tuantuan?" JackeyLove instantly got sensitive to girls' names.
His mid was too strong. If he went down the wrong path, what then?
"She's a Douyu streamer. Yitia Xiaotuantuan. We all stream on Douyu. Sometimes when I raid streams, I see them playing Goose Goose Duck and it looked fun, so I asked to join."
Hearing that, JackeyLove didn't relax—he got even more alert.
Because of the pro-player identity, and because Brother Fan had been so cracked lately, plenty of bad-intentioned women would try to latch on.
Better keep an eye on it.
"What is Goose Goose Duck? Is it like Werewolf?" Mark asked as he handed over a milk tea.
"Pretty much."
As he spoke, Lin Fan smoothly turned on a VPN accelerator and opened Goose Goose Duck.
Susu sent him the room number.
"Hello hello hello, can you hear me?"
"Yeah, yeah. Lin 'Big Hammer' is in. Anyone else coming? If not, we start."
…
Lin Fan also opened his livestream.
In no time, a huge crowd poured in.
Right after matches ended was always peak viewership.
"Insane, Infinite Borders Bro! You absolutely slaughtered Rookie today!"
"It's always the original who can't beat the mistress—let alone the fourth who kicked the mistress out and took the spot. Rookie didn't lose unfairly."
"Goose Goose Duck? Infinite Borders Bro's playing with Da Sima and them tonight?"
"Don't let Da Sima set the pace. He plays Goose Goose Duck by stalling forever."
Amid the noisy chat, the game started.
An 11-player lobby: two Ducks, two Neutrals.
The voices shifted instantly.
Lin Fan rolled Assassin, and the other Assassin was Diao Deyi.
Nice. First game and he got a Duck role.
As a Duck, you just find people to kill—but you have to be careful not to get exposed, or report a fake body and play innocent.
So Lin Fan moved from the basement toward the lab.
At the lab entrance, a bunch of people were clustered at the doorway.
He immediately saw Diao Deyi glowing red.
He swept the area.
Including him, there were five people. If he killed someone, there'd still be four—too many eyes. He couldn't move.
Da Sima wore a creepy grin and kept sticking to Detective Conan Tuan.
Tuantuan tried hard to avoid him, warning him not to come close.
Then she walked off alone toward the bottom side.
Wang Damou followed her.
One slash, two deaths—Sheriff had killed an innocent.
Da Sima yelled, "People! People! Come look, come look!"
Using the bodies, he baited two more over.
Lin Fan raised his hand and slashed—one down.
Inside was a Pelican, who immediately swallowed Lin Fan whole.
Da Sima instantly knifed the Pelican—an emergency C-section—saving Lin Fan.
"Do we report?"
"Of course. Call them over. Say the Sheriff killed an innocent—stir the muddy water. I'll go in and bait their roles."
After saying that, Lin Fan went to touch the bodies.
"Four dead. I just got here and saw Sansan kill Tuantuan. I'm Sheriff—I can't just watch a bad guy kill a good guy. So I swung and took him out too."
"As for the other two: Pelican ate one, and a Duck killed one. The situation is complicated."
Meaning: six people left, and there were still two bad roles among them.
This instant Sheriff-claim was unstoppable—because the real Sheriff was already dead. No one could counter-claim.
"From now on, all the good guys follow me. The last two—use your brains."
But with all the arguing, they still couldn't find the remaining Duck.
Because no one could've guessed: Sheriff killed an innocent, then both Ducks were double-killing.
With Lin Fan deliberately muddying the waters, the game became chaos.
Six people left, and everyone trusted the "Sheriff."
Kills came even faster.
In a minute and a half, everyone was dead.
"So satisfying. Killed from start to finish. Lin Big Hammer is cracked."
"Wait, Tuantuan was Sheriff? Four deaths in round one—I'm completely stunned."
"I just walked over and you one-shot me."
The livestream chat went crazy.
"Infinite Borders Bro's brain is actually insane. He played everyone like a fiddle. Most importantly, they didn't fully group, and he used the two extra deaths to make everyone distrust each other."
"He's got human weakness figured out. Maybe that's why his tactics are dirty enough."
TL: If you want to read ahead by at least ten chapters, patreon.com/EdibleMapleSyrup