Chapter 62: In the Early Days
News of the group stage draw took away all hunger from Lin Feng. He abandoned the rest of his meal and brought his chair to sit next to Su Xue. Then he tilted his head towards her shoulder to look at her phone’s screen. She had the official Riot Games website open.
“What are you doing? Don’t you have your own phone that you can look at this on?” Su Xue asked, annoyed.
“Nah, nah. That’s too much of a hassle for this,” Lin Feng said, waving her complaints away. Then he leaned over even more, basically leaning on Su Xue, and asked, “Hey, can you move your screen over a little? It's a little hard to see right now.”
“Really! Are you really that lazy?” Su Xue exclaimed. But she still tilted her phone screen so that Lin Feng could see it better, and ruffled his messy hair.
Lin Feng reached over and tilted Su Xue’s phone a little more. Then he scrolled down a little until he got to the groups for the Season 5 World Championships of League of Legends. His eyes jumped across the groups, searching for the Chinese representatives. There were three of them. KG in Group A, Hand of God in Group B, and Dust in Group D.
KG, which was the only Chinese team composed exclusively of Chinese players, had gotten a little bit lucky with Group A. Their real opponents were Europe’s first seed–Legend and North America’s third seed–Flash. The final team in group A was a wildcard team, and that was the small bit of luck that KG received. Wildcard teams came from smaller regions with less competition, so they were considered weaker teams.
Things were a little bit more difficult for Hand of God in Group B. The other teams in Group B were their old Korean rival Fate, the second seed from North America–COG, and the second seed from Europe–Gold.
That said, both Group A and Group B were difficult groups to be in, and it was an uphill battle for the Chinese teams to make it through to the next round. But Group D, well, Group D was something else. If Groups A and B were considered ‘uphill battles’, winning in Group D could only rightfully be described as scaling a mountain. The Chinese team Dust had to face two of the best teams in the entire world. Both from Korea, Warrior and SSK. Between the two, SSK was the one to watch out for. They were the reigning world champions returning to defend their title.
“Oh my god. Dust! I feel so bad for those guys,” Su Xue sympathetically exclaimed. “Everyone online is talking about how the Korean teams are the strongest. How unlucky! How did Dust get so terribly unlucky that they got pulled into a group with both of them?”