The rookie who took the LPL by storm in 2024 is back. This Wednesday, FunPlus Phoenix officially announced that their former jungler Cai “Milkyway” Zijun will be rejoining the team for Split 3.

Milkyway officially returns to FPX

Milkyway made a stunning debut in 2024, instantly making waves across the league. During the Summer Split, he only played traditional setup or tank champions twice — once on Sejuani and once on Maokai. The rest of the time, the rookie favored carry-oriented picks like Kindred, Brand, Nidalee, Viego, Zyra, Lee Sin, and Graves. The jungler seemed to embody the spirit of Damwon-era Canyon, often leading his team to victory through his own initiative rather than simply enabling others — like most junglers usually do. Milkyway also pulled off numerous individual highlight plays, and was honored with two “Outstanding Rookie” awards for his first two splits.

A New Dawn In The Middle Kingdom

Milkyway rejoined his former organization in early 2025, as he was still under contract from his time in the LDL with Royal Club — RNG’s academy team. His move to FPX comes after Royal Never Give Up withdrawal from all LoL competitions, following their relegation to the LDL in Split 2. The team failed to make it past the LPL Nirvana group. Alongside OMG, they became one of the first casualties of the league’s new format, which relegates the bottom two teams ahead of Split 3. Both RNG and their academy team disbanded before the start of LDL Split 2, forfeiting all remaining matches. As a result, all of their players were left teamless going into the final stage of the Tier 1 season. Milkyway will reunite with his promising former teammate at RNG, Zi “JiaQi” Jiaqi (Outstanding Rookie of Split 1), under the FPX banner.

FunPlus Phoenix could well be the most entertaining team to follow this summer, having already impressed the league in Split 2 with Zhao “Shadow” Zhiqiang. So much so that the jungler was recruited by the eternally unsatisfied in this role — Bilibili Gaming — before the start of Split 3. FPX stick to the creative and aggressive Sun “Jwei” Jun-Wei in support, the prodigy Xu “sheer” Wen-Jie in toplane as well as adding Milkyway and JiaQi to the equation. Not only that, but the transfer comes on the heels of the team’s 2-0 dominant victory over Invictus Gaming. Let’s just hope this roster’s lack of experience doesn’t undermine the aggressive playstyles each player brings — or, conversely, lead to the team overplaying too often. In terms of raw talent, few teams could better represent the future of the Chinese league.