Xu "fy" Linsen or fygod as he was dubbed by the fans after being regarded for years as the finest hard support in the professional scene, showed he still has it.

fy has been a part of the elite echelon of Dota 2 professional scene for over a decade. He reached The International grand finals twice in his career and placed in the top 4 on the TI stage four times. However, the past couple of years have been rough. More precisely after his departure from LGD Gaming, in 2020, fy toyed with the retirement idea, but couldn’t really stay away from the game for too long. He regrouped with his former LGD members under the Elephant banner, but suffered an utter defeat at TI10, leaving the competition in the bottom four.

He missed on last year’s edition after failing to prevail in the regional qualifiers with Invictus Gaming. This year, at 28 years old he was close to not making it either after spending two Dota Pro Circuit tours at ViCi Gaming and actually being relegated to Division 2.

However, at the beginning of the last DPC tour, the Chinese gods reunited in an effort to make a great comeback. Along with his TI8 and TI9 former LGD teammates, Yang "Chalice" Shenyi and Lu "Somnus" Yao, fy has qualified for TI12 under the Azure Ray tag.

TI12 might represent the last dance for fy, but that seems to motivate him and Azure Ray even more. There are only two Chinese teams this year at TI, the lowest number the region has ever had at the pinnacle Dota 2 tournament, and both have started the group stage matches in Seattle with quite impressive games.

Read more: LGD Gaming deliver the first upset in the group stage at The International 2023

While LGD took a clean 2-0 victory over the main favourites, Gaimin Gladiators, Azure Ray opened their adventure in Seattle with a stomp in the first game versus Team Liquid, who for the entire year have been duelling in almost all the grand finals with Gaimin Gladiators.

Azure Ray are seeded in Group B, which can easily be regarded as the group of death. The bottom team will be sent packing by the end of tomorrow’s schedule, and while it’s too early to tell how safe AR are in that regard, their opening series versus Team Liquid is giving a lot of hope to the Chinese Dota fans.

Azure RayvsTeam Liquid

Game one was done and dusted in under 30 minutes, with Azure Ray establishing a pretty substantial lead from the laning stage courtesy of a very mobile draft, able to play aggressively from the get-go.

fy goes for kill record in TI history

fy got to play a position 4 Nature’s Prophet and together with Chalice on Pangolier, the offlane duo unleashed pure madness on the map. Little before the 9-minute mark, fy was sitting at 8 kills, 2 deaths and 2 assists, which is the highest number of kills in 9 minutes achieved by a single player in all TI history.

According to statsman Ben "Noxville" Steenhuisen, the record is even more stunning as only two players have managed to get more than 8 kills by the 9-minute mark in the entire Dota 2 history.

Artour "Arteezy" Babaev has landed 9 kills by the 9-minute mark at the ONE Esports Dota 2 World Pro Invitational Singapore in 2019, while Zhou "Emo" Yi has done the same at DOTA Summit 11 in the same year.

Azure Ray closed game one versus Liquid with 33 kills to 9 and a 26k gold advantage, however, their adversaries retailed in the next game, evening out the series.

Both Azure Ray and Team Liquid have more matches scheduled for the first day in the group stage. Liquid are also going to play against BetBoom Team and Shopify Rebellion, while Azure Ray have only one more match on their schedule, against South America representative, Thunder Predator.

fy returns to TI with record breaking performance