Let's Go Play Table Tennis!

"If you don't study hard, you won't get into college."

"If you don't get into college, you won't find a good job."

"If you can't find a good job, you won't make money."

"That's awful..."

Wang Mei spread her hands and sighed. The stub of a cheap women's cigarette between her lips had stained the same color as her cheap lipstick, bobbing up and down in a rather comical way.

"You little brat, if you can't make money, how are you supposed to support me in my old age and bury me when I die?"

Wang Chao blinked, his expression a little complicated.

He really wanted to say, I'm eighteen this year, and you're thirty-five. You're only seventeen years older than me.

Going by the principle that women generally live longer than men, it was still hard to say who would be burying whom!

The woman before him was his biological mother.

More precisely, she was the biological mother of this body he had transmigrated into.

Wang Mei had been a troubled girl in her youth. She had given birth out of wedlock at seventeen, after which her boyfriend ran off and her parents disowned her. Backed into a corner, Wang Mei had finally come to her senses. She changed her flamboyant, rebellious ways, settled down to work hard, and somehow raised Wang Chao all the way to the threshold of eighteen.

She had been fairly pretty back then, but now her hands were covered in rough calluses.

They were a single-parent family, poor enough that their home had practically nothing in it. Life was miserable, to the point that Wang Chao had secretly developed a faint resentment toward his mother.

"Why should I have to suffer through this kind of life with you?"

"If you didn't have what it took, you shouldn't have given birth to me in the first place."

"You gave me such a terrible start, so don't blame me for giving up on myself."

—Those had been the thoughts of the original Wang Chao. As for the forty-year-old man now inhabiting this body, he felt that this bargain-bin mother of his had actually had it pretty hard.

She was just a little too naggy...

Just then, the phone in his pocket rang. Wang Chao hurriedly used it as an excuse to leave, escaping his mother, who was still chattering away.

The placement exams had ended. Although some had done well and others poorly, the holiday had arrived, so even the students who had bombed the exams wore an unmistakable trace of delight beneath their gloomy expressions.

For example, the three people waiting idly by the roadside: Han Feng, Liu Yue, and Hou Xiaojian.

They were Wang Chao's three closest troublemaking buddies at school.

"Wang Chao, how'd you do?"

"I estimated around three hundred. You?"

"Three-fifty."

"Two-fifty."

"I... I can't promise anything else, but I definitely got three digits."

"Tch~~~"

That concluded the four poor students' conversation about exam scores. Han Feng excitedly suggested, "Let's go play table tennis. My annual pass at Mingyue Stadium expires in three days, so I need to squeeze out its last bit of value."

No one objected.

Wang Chao took the opportunity to urgently sort through the overwhelming amount of information in his mind, lest he give himself away when answering them.

He guessed that transmigration probably followed some unspoken rules.

For instance, this body was six feet tall, better suited to basketball or soccer, yet its original owner only liked table tennis.

And before transmigrating, he himself had been a coach for China's national table tennis team.

What could he say? It was fate.

This wasn't lovers traveling a thousand miles to meet. They had crossed an entire world to meet.

The method of their meeting was just a little violent, something like a perfect body snatching...

Mingyue Stadium was quite large. In terms of status, it was among the top tier of venues in Jiangcheng City. It even occasionally worked with the authorities as a designated site for certain city-level competitions.

This showed that Han Feng was the most well-off of the four. He was a minor rich second-generation kid, which was why he could afford a membership here.

Probably because high school students were on break, the venue was exceptionally crowded today. There were no empty tables, so they had to wait.

While they waited, Liu Yue stubbornly brought up once more the topic that poor students hated most.

"Hou Xiaojian, what are you planning to do in the future?"

"My family has already arranged things. They'll spend some money to send me to a vocational school. I'm tentatively planning to study cooking." Hou Xiaojian was tall, broad, and dark-skinned, with extraordinary strength in his hands. That was a talent in itself. If he studied cooking, he would probably be able to lift those huge woks one-handed with ease. Besides, his skin was already dark, so he did not need to fear all that smoke and heat.

Liu Yue looked rather envious. He turned to glance at Han Feng, then suddenly remembered that this guy was a rich second-generation kid whose family owned a factory. Wisely giving up, he turned instead to Wang Chao. "What about you?"

"Me?"

Wang Chao smiled. "I haven't decided yet."

Wang Chao really had thought about what he should do in the future after transmigrating...

His first thought had been to speculate in real estate and stocks, but he quickly realized that this world was not much like Earth. His historical memories of housing prices and the stock market were meaningless here.

Then he wondered whether he could rely on the wealth of knowledge he had accumulated over forty years to become the top scorer on the college entrance exam and rise straight to success.

He briefly recalled the history paper they had taken yesterday.

One question had gone like this...

"How many emperors did the Great You Dynasty have in total, and what were each of their posthumous titles?"

Wang Chao had been dumbfounded on the spot.

The Great You Dynasty?

Where the hell had the Great You Dynasty come from?

This world's history seemed rather different from Earth's...

Then perhaps he should recall the Chinese language paper. After all, they spoke Chinese here too. With such a brilliant and glorious Chinese traditional culture, there had to be something in common!

He remembered another question.

"Mian Dynasty poet Zhang Songfei has a widely beloved work, praised as 'the first half makes no sense, while the second half brings everything to life.' Given that the second line is 'Warm waters, fat ducks, honking quack-quack,' fill in the first, third, and fourth lines."

He was so tired...

Did this godforsaken place not have "The waters of the Yellow River come down from heaven" or "When will the bright moon appear"?

"System, system, are you there?"

"Stop hiding in there without making a sound. I know you're there."

His mind was completely silent. There was no beep.

"Ugh..." Wang Chao sighed and accepted reality. "I've decided. I'll become a table tennis coach in the future."

Well, there was nothing shameful about a transmigrator with no benefits returning to his old trade!

But his friends all laughed.

"We're talking about serious stuff." Liu Yue punched him. "Be serious."

"Exactly." Hou Xiaojian chimed in with a grin. "With your lousy skills, you're not even qualified to be a practice partner, and you want to be a coach?"

Han Feng joined in with a mocking tone. "Why be a coach when being a player is better? You could win a World Champion title, bring glory to your ancestors, honor your country—how awesome would that be... Oh, sorry, I forgot. You're already eighteen. Other people start learning table tennis at seven or eight and attend specialized sports schools. You're too old. Nobody would even want you as a ball boy!"

Wang Chao did not know whether to laugh or cry.

He actually did not like being a coach. His dream in his previous life had been to stand on the competition stage and become a World Champion, and he had even successfully made it into the provincial team.

However, an accident during an internal provincial team assessment had permanently damaged his left wrist, cutting off his path as a professional player.

With no other choice, he could only become a coach.

Yet even as a coach, he had an inherent flaw. Because of his wrist injury, he could not personally step onto the court to practice with his players.

To make up for that weakness, he had no choice but to think and study harder than other coaches, putting effort into every aspect of tactical and technical theory.

The facts proved that his talent for playing was merely average, but his talent for coaching was astonishingly good.

Over the next decade or so, he was transferred from the provincial team to the National Second Team, then promoted to the First Team. After that, he took one-on-one responsibility for one of the national team's star players, eventually helping that player achieve the Grand Slam, the highest honor in Ping Pong World.

He became the most unusual member of the national team's coaching staff. The international table tennis community even called him "the Sage," "the master coach," and "the person on this planet who understood table tennis best."

Yet whenever the night was quiet, he would think of his disciples standing on the podium, of their words of gratitude toward him during interviews. Though he felt proud alongside them, he still carried a faint regret.

Why... wasn't it me... standing up there?

Now, he had transmigrated.

Suddenly being asked about his future and his dreams, something within him stirred faintly.

"Can I stand in the spotlight again?"

"Eighteen is indeed a little old, but... how will I know whether I can do it if I don't try?"

Liu Yue did not press further, because someone came over carrying a number card and said that a table had opened up. The topic ended there.