181: Chapter 181 The Popularity of Esports

As the enemy crystal exploded before his eyes, A-Shui felt his entire body lose all its strength.

Although he was wearing his headset, in this moment, he felt as if he could still hear the tsunami-like cheers and applause rising from the audience below, and the floor of the entire stage seemed to be trembling slightly.

Yet, facing this thrilling moment, he only felt a slight ringing in his ears.

Trailing zero to two, and falling behind by ten thousand gold in the final game—had they really won?

The next second, a figure behind him bounded over, removed A-Shui's headset, and pulled him up. Liu Yang's face was incredibly flushed, and he kept repeating the same few words: "We won! We won!"

When they won that miraculous team fight while ten thousand gold behind, Liu Yang couldn't sit still anymore. He had run from the lounge to the tunnel and watched the final few minutes.

When A-Shui and the others finally destroyed the Uzi Team's crystal, he ran straight up from the rest tunnel and grabbed A-Shui, who still hadn't fully processed what happened.

At this moment, as Liu Yang took the stage, the others also removed their headsets, their eyes filled with excitement that refused to fade.

Only those who had personally experienced it knew how difficult it was to come back from a two-game deficit to win three in a row, let alone falling ten thousand gold behind in the final game.

You have to realize, after losing the first two games, they had to win every single one of the remaining three to emerge victorious, while their opponents only needed to take one of them.

Fortunately, they withstood the final pressure and secured the first victory of the Opening Match!

Just as they were celebrating, staff members wearing headsets came up behind them and said a few words. Only then did everyone remember the post-game procedures they had been trained on. They then walked toward the Uzi Team to shake hands.

After being reverse-swept, the members of the Uzi Team looked worse than the next. Uzi's face was flushed an unnatural shade of red. When faced with the hands extended by A-Shui and his teammates, they were merely going through the motions.

When Liu Yang walked up to Uzi, the corners of his mouth curled upward, and he spoke a few words. Although no sound could be heard, Uzi could tell what he was saying from his lip movements: "That's right, I am the coach."

Hearing this, Uzi's expression grew even uglier. If they had also had a coach, would the result have been better? Unfortunately, the match was already over; there were no "what ifs."

Aside from Uzi's perfunctory attitude, their Top Laner was even more exaggerated; he kept his back perfectly straight and refused to bend even an inch, making it look as if A-Shui and his teammates, who were bowing to shake hands, were the ones who had lost.

After paying their respects to their opponents, the group finally stood slowly in the center of the stage, bathed in the spotlight. Below the stage, thunderous applause erupted once more, and all the audience members stood up in unison. Even Qin Mo and the others in the front row were clapping, smiling and nodding in acknowledgment—it was truly a spectacular match.

After also nodding toward Qin Mo, the group felt the spotlight, felt the countless applause, and felt the gazes of tens of thousands of audience members. They looked at each other, hugged, and revealed heartfelt smiles.

"We really won."

"That's right, and we came back from a two-game deficit—we're too strong!"

"Coach, what do you say? Do we have championship-level skills now?"

"Speaking of winning the championship, I actually thought we had already won just now. Turns out it was only the Opening Match."

"Fatty, can you not be a buzzkill? I also thought we won the championship just now; winning the Opening Match felt like winning the finals."

Listening to everyone's words, Liu Yang smiled.

"Through today's match, I'm certain that winning the championship isn't a fantasy for us; we could even achieve good results in the Global Finals."

At this point, Liu Yang remembered the barrage comments and trending searches on various platforms during the final game. He couldn't help but laugh.

"And you guys don't know this, but because your performance in the last three games was so good, you've completely turned around the reputation of esports. Now, the entire internet's trending topics are about us."

"Do you remember when the officials asked us to register Weibo accounts? Back then, Fatty didn't take it seriously, thinking it was just a formality."

"But before going on stage, I took a look. By the time the fifth game was halfway through, A-Shui, your Weibo followers had already surpassed two million, and everyone else, including me, had over a million followers."

Hearing this, everyone's eyes lit up significantly. They remembered very clearly that, except for A-Shui who already had a few hundred followers on his Weibo account, the others only had a few followers. But after these few games, that number had shot up directly to over a million!

This was just the follower count on Weibo alone. In other words, even if they were eliminated right now, with this amount of followers and attention, it seemed they could already generate quite a bit of income.

After sharing this information, Liu Yang took a deep breath.

"Everyone, we don't even have to wait for the finals."

"It seems like we..."

"Have already changed our destiny!"

...

Meanwhile, although the final match had ended, because the broadcast was still ongoing and there was a post-game interview segment, the number of viewers in the various official streaming rooms barely decreased. The screen was still being bombarded with barrage comments.

Besides that, within just a few minutes after the last game ended, a brand-new entry had surged to the number one spot on Weibo's trending searches with unprecedented speed: "A Shui Team completes a reverse sweep to win!"

The other trending topics following this massive hit were also related to the match: "The miracle team fight while ten thousand gold behind," "ADC Flash forward, defying fate!" "Jarvan IV EQ Flash knock-up—how many more plays in league of legends do we not know about!" And so on.

Of course, the earliest trending topic, 'How boring are league of legends matches,' was still up there, but the comments under that search were all mocking it—if this kind of match was boring, then there were very few matches in the entire world worth watching.

Besides Weibo, whether it was Douyin, Tieba, or other social platforms, almost all the top trending searches were dominated by this match, with various discussion topics emerging one after another.

"It's too exaggerated. A reverse sweep plus a comeback from being ten thousand gold behind—I don't even know how A-Shui and the others did it."

"Brilliant! The entertainment value of this match was truly maxed out!"

"I must go to the venue for the next match! I looked it up; the second match is the day after tomorrow. It's between two other teams, and the venue is in Shu City. I've already bought my ticket!"

"For the third stage of matches, apart from the first few where there's one per day, the later rounds will become gradually more frequent, even two or three a day. We can watch to our heart's content!"

"This match is indeed good. I want to play a damn game of league of legends right now, but why do I feel like I've forgotten something? Why did I start watching this match in the first place?"

However, what's interesting is that among these trending searches and discussions, one topic was missing: the league of legends viewing chest! You have to know, because they played all five games, all players watching the match could claim two chests containing skins they didn't own, with a guaranteed Epic tier skin. But because of the excitement of the esports match itself, the existence of these chests was forgotten by many players, and not many people were even mentioning them.

At this moment, although the match had just ended, the discussion about league of legends esports across the entire internet had only just begun! The heat generated by a match watched by over forty million league of legends players simultaneously was incredibly massive. And this was just the Opening Match of the league of legends tournament in the Great Xia region!