China’s dark horse will be one of the leaders for this year’s Aegis of Champions race

---

There’s a list of unorchestrated facts about The International, the grandest Dota 2 world championship, that continue to stay true every year. Some of the facts started since its inauguration back in 2011, some evolved into an amazing pattern after years of iterations, while some just became a tradition—it’s simply not The International without it.

The International Facts:

• The Aegis of Champions bearers annually alternate from Western Dota 2 teams to Chinese Dota 2 teams.
• No team has won the Aegis of Champions twice.
• No player has lifted the Aegis of Champions twice.
• The International sets a new prize pool record every year since crowdfunding was implemented in 2013 through the Compendium.
• Danil “Dendi” Ishutin, arguably the most influential and famous and loveable professional Dota 2 player, has appeared in every The International (either as a player or a guest).

All of this information has remained accurate until the upcoming The International later this year in August. However, out of those fun facts, there’s this little-known trivia about the tournament that only started to take shape in 2015 when the open qualifiers were introduced for the first time. Since that year, a relatively unknown Chinese team would always come out from the shadows to surprise the whole Dota 2 community by being one of The International runner-ups.

This is why Team Serenity will be one of the runner-ups in The International 2018.

(Cue BGM: X-Files Theme)

It started in The International 2015 with a team called CDEC Gaming. Outside the Chinese region, no Dota 2 fan would have expected the Fu “Q” Bin-led squad to even qualify to the biggest Dota 2 tournament of the year. It was later proven true after they lost against EHOME at the grand final of The International 2015 Chinese Qualifiers, but they still managed to fly to Seattle anyway thanks to the wildcard qualifier.

Then the magic happened. CDEC went from being a wildcard contender to the first The International 2015 grand finalists in two weeks. Bewildered fans who can’t believe what CDEC pulled off dubbed the Chinese team’s TI journey as a Cinderella run—a phenomenon in sports where a particular team performed greater than what was expected of them. Although they eventually lost to Evil Geniuses’ iconic Ice Blast + Echo Slam combo at the Roshan pit, a second-place finish at the grandest Dota 2 world championship is still one hell of a run.

Wings Gaming followed CDEC Gaming one year after in The International 2016. There were a lot of controversies that marred the organization during their reign, but nobody can claim that they were a Wings Gaming fan before Wings Gaming’s first championship title in the ESL One Manila 2016, the team’s first international Dota 2 tournament.

READ: A place where no one has been: Wings at the top of ESL One Manila

Their success in Manila put them in the map of competitive Dota 2, but their inconsistent results barred them from being a team worthy of a bandwagon fan base (if ever having bandwagon fans is a good thing). Although they dominated the Chinese Qualifier of The International 2016, to say that Wings Gaming will win The International 2016 that time was still an unpopular opinion.

Wings Gaming, however, still proceeded to cement their legacy as an Aegis of Champions bearer anyway because nobody can outmatch their unorthodox draft and baffling playstyle. Most importantly, 2016 was also China’s turn to win The International.

The final piece of evidence is completed by LGD.ForeverYoung in The International 2017. Formed one month after The International 2016, the whole Dota 2 season was basically a slump for LFY except for the last three months when Inflame and Ahfu joined their roster.

The tournaments leading up to The International 2017 saw LFY flexing their potential but it wasn’t enough for anybody to put their team logo in the “Which team will win?” prediction slot in The International 2017 Battle Pass. That’s why when they topped Group B with a 14-2 record, all of those who refused to put their team logo in the “Which team will win?” prediction slot wished that they could turn back the time.

LFY was one game away from breaking the West-China pattern last year. But since it was the Western teams’ turn to win The International 2018, Team Liquid slew all the Chinese contenders that dared to disprove the seven-year-old fact. (If I recall correctly, no fan entered The International 2017 as a Chinese Dota fan because the majority of the Chinese teams were underperforming during the entirety of the Dota season. I mean who would have thought about Invictus Gaming‘s victory against Team Liquid in the first round of the upper bracket, right?)

So far, Team Serenity has checked off all of the requirements for this little-known fact to come true for the fourth straight year. They literally made no appearance in the 22-tournament Dota Pro Circuit but came out banging from the very first day of The International 2018 China Open Qualifiers up to the main qualifiers itself.

If you’re going to ask me why does this keep on happening, I can honestly say that I don’t know. Tsunami guessed that Team Serenity’s success was determined from a divine game of Mahjong, and it’s actually the best answer that we can get because none of us even know who the players of Team Serenity are. (The guy in this article’s banner is zhizhizhi, who formerly played for EHOME.Keen.)

In a more serious note, their success could also be because of how The International is the biggest tournament in all of esports in terms of the prize pool, and how teams, especially the Chinese, would always make a big deal out of it. This was rather confirmed in an interview with Cybersport, Luo Tian Shen, the owner of Team Serenity, when he said how it was his dream to create a Chinese team that will compete in The International.

One’s success may utterly make sense if it’s driven with purpose, but I’d still go with the divine game of Mahjong because it sounds more awesome.

If this fact stayed true and Team Serenity eventually ended up as one of The International 2018 runner-ups, I wish for them to be the first Chinese team to break out another little-known fact. Among the relatively unknown Chinese team that would come out from the shadows to surprise the whole Dota 2 community by being one of The International runner-ups, none of them was able to return for the next The International.