How Could This Be?

Wang Chao's return looked ordinary, but its angle and placement were exquisitely subtle, landing right where Zhao Ge felt most awkward and leaving him unable to add quality to the shot.

If he forced more quality into it, there was a very high chance he would make an unforced error.

But if he did not add quality, the only thing he could do was force more power into it, even if it distorted his technique.

As a result, Zhao Ge looked like a reckless brute, swinging with all his might yet never managing to finish off his opponent.

The score began climbing in an absurd fashion, rising from 7:4 all the way to 11:4 as Wang Chao won the first game.

Do not forget that Wang Chao had started his comeback from 1:4. In other words, he had taken ten points in a row.

The moment Wang Chao finished the last point, he sat down on the floor without another word, sprawled out flat as he panted, "Let me rest for a bit."

This time, Wang Bin did not urge him on, nor did he mention anything about deducting points. He looked at Wang Chao with a complicated expression.

He had once been a player himself. As a child, he had properly attended a sports school before being selected level by level. At his peak, he had made the main squad of the provincial team. Unfortunately, he had never even seen what the national team's training base looked like. Only after he grew older did he retire and become a coach.

In a sense, he was a professionally trained table tennis player through and through.

His fundamentals and foundational knowledge were exceptionally solid, and he had always looked down on self-taught players—the so-called folk masters.

In his eyes, Wang Chao's style was a typical self-taught style, and Wang Chao's stamina would be a fatal flaw on the professional path.

He had always believed that someone like this was not qualified to play professionally.

But at this moment, he was somewhat dazed, because Wang Chao had won a match that he believed he could never possibly win.

Relying entirely on anticipation to return the ball, entirely on placement to restrict his opponent, and entirely on defense to grind out rallies—how could someone win playing like that?

Wang Bin could not understand it.

He had never seen a player like this before.

His mind felt muddled because he had no way to define Wang Chao.

The second game began.

Zhao Ge seemed to have learned his lesson. He no longer tried to attack immediately after serving, instead attempting to compete with Wang Chao in short balls and prolonged exchanges.

On the first point, they pushed the ball back and forth, neither able to make the first move. Just as Zhao Ge felt an opportunity approaching, Wang Chao suddenly flicked his paddle aside, and the ball instantly changed direction, flying straight toward the wide angle on his left.

He had instinctively stepped half a pace forward to the right, preparing to strike, only to realize that the ball had gone the other way. Even though he desperately turned back, he still could not reach it in time.

Wang Chao led 1:0.

Fine sweat seeped from Zhao Ge's forehead, not from fatigue, but from the anxiety in his heart.

Playing and watching felt completely different. Right now, he felt as though a shelled turtle stood across from him—impossible to kill, impossible to boil, impossible to smash. No matter how hard he tried, the thing on the other side simply would not die.

Yet whenever he relaxed even slightly, that turtle would quietly stick its head out and take a bite out of him...

He clearly felt that he was already playing very cleverly. Short balls, long balls, topspin, backspin, shots to the left, shots to the right—he had tried everything. But his opponent's positioning was damn ridiculous. No matter how he changed things up, his opponent only had to shift half a step to return the ball.

If this continued, his opponent's stamina would barely be drained at all, more than enough to last through an entire game.

"How could this happen?"

"This makes no sense..."

"Am I really playing that stupidly?"

"Could he be cheating?"

Zhao Ge's thoughts became a mess, and his shots slowed as a result. The longer he played, the more his fighting spirit faded. In the end, the score froze at 11:3, and Wang Chao claimed the match with a commanding 2:0 victory.

Even though Zhao Ge had scored three points this time, he could not feel happy at all, because he knew those points had been caused purely by normal mistakes during play and proved nothing whatsoever.

He stepped down dejectedly, his head covered in sweat. He had only played two games, yet he felt more exhausted than after an entire round robin. His head buzzed, and he could barely even hear the noisy commotion around him.

Only when a hand gently landed on his shoulder did he regain a little clarity.

"Don't overthink it. It wasn't your problem." Zhao Fuqiang's voice sounded beside his ear.

Zhao Ge abruptly looked up at his distant uncle.

"This kid's game... is too strange..." Zhao Fuqiang sighed, lowering his voice even further. "Forget you—even I'm getting confused watching him... Look at Coach Wang..."

Zhao Ge followed Zhao Fuqiang's gaze and saw that head coach Wang Bin wore an incomparably complicated expression, seemingly filled with struggle.

"Logically speaking, physical ability and table tennis skill should improve in step with each other. After all, both physical training and practicing table tennis require a great deal of time, and playing itself is also a form of physical exercise..."

Zhao Fuqiang sighed again. "But this kid is really strange... His table tennis skill is far better than his physical ability."

After resting for ten minutes, Wang Chao faced Li Mu once more.

In truth, Li Mu and Zhao Ge usually traded wins and losses evenly, but Wang Bin still stubbornly wanted to see what kind of result Li Mu would produce against Wang Chao.

At the end of the day, he was still unwilling to accept it.

He did not want to admit that Wang Chao's unorthodox style could defeat an orthodox style.

Nor did he want to admit that he had misjudged Wang Chao.

That would overturn his long-held understanding of table tennis technique.

The match began.

Li Mu and Zhao Ge were completely different kinds of players. If Zhao Ge was a spear, passionate and fond of all-out offense, then Li Mu was a shield, skilled at defensive counterattacks and flawless in his play.

Wang Bin did have a good eye. He could see that, in the previous two games, Wang Chao had borrowed too much power from Zhao Ge's drives. He believed that might be a breakthrough point.

Li Mu's shots had always been difficult to borrow power from. He wanted to see how Wang Chao would deal with that.

The match moved quickly. Silver flashes danced over the table, and six points soon passed, bringing the score to 3:3.

Li Mu held the ball and repeatedly bounced it on the table, taking a long time to serve.

Only when he faced Wang Chao directly did he realize just how...

Strange.

He needed to think carefully about how to serve and how to plan his follow-up actions if he wanted any chance of securing points on his own serve.

At that moment, head coach Wang Bin unconsciously stepped forward. He had actually crossed the usual safe distance for watching a match, where he might affect both players.

But he had not meant to. He simply wanted to see more clearly, because within those six points, he had vaguely noticed something he scarcely dared believe.

This Wang Chao...

Had he specifically studied Li Mu's style?

If not, why did nearly every ball he played land exactly where Li Mu felt most uncomfortable?

Li Mu did not take the initiative to generate power, and Wang Chao did not either.

Li Mu wanted to move Wang Chao from side to side, but Wang Chao's returns repeatedly left him unable to make any effective adjustments.

Li Mu wanted to launch an attack, but his ability to initiate offense truly was not as good as Zhao Ge's. After six points, he had not managed a single decent attack.

Instead, the calculating ability that coaches had always praised was completely suppressed by Wang Chao throughout those six points.

Thus, in the eyes of the spectators, Wang Chao still barely moved at the table, while Li Mu kept running wildly forward and back, left and right.

He had no choice but to run. If he did not, Wang Chao would move him to death.

Even though he ran so hard, he still failed to save two balls and lost two points.

The remaining point had come from Wang Chao scoring directly off his serve.

So Wang Bin discovered something else terrifying: Wang Chao's rate of scoring directly from serves was astonishingly high.

In the match against Zhao Ge, more than a third of Wang Chao's points had come from his serves.

And against Li Mu, he had scored directly off the very first serve of the match as well.

The strange thing was that Wang Chao had not served any particularly difficult balls. Due to his lack of stamina, he had barely even put any force into his serves.

"In other words... he scores from his serves entirely through calculation."

"And he scores from returns entirely through anticipation."

"How could this be?"