Shrimp and Pork Heart

Li Shaoqin fell silent.

At this point in the match, nothing he said would matter. He had already humiliated himself enough.

He stopped looking at Luo Xiaoyu. The agitation in his heart gradually settled instead. With no distractions, he crouched low and decided to play properly.

Unfortunately... it was useless.

What determined the outcome of a match was always skill, not attitude or some sudden burst of inner power.

This time, Wang Chao did not play any tricks. He served a proper backspin ball. Li Shaoqin dropped it short, Wang Chao dropped it short again, Li Shaoqin launched an attack, Wang Chao counter-looped, and Li Shaoqin counter-looped in return. They each took two steps back, settling into a head-on rally that tested their fundamentals most severely.

The little ball flew back and forth through the air, pap pap pap pap pap pap pap. After seven looping exchanges, Li Shaoqin lost his feel for the ball and sent his shot long.

Wang Chao scored another point. The score became 6:0.

Luo Xiaoyu also fell silent. She watched the movements of the two players on the camera screen intently, inexplicably feeling that these mid-to-long-distance looping rallies possessed an indescribable beauty.

She even felt that both players' looping motions were beautiful. Perhaps they conformed perfectly to some principle of sports mechanics, or perhaps it was simply thrilling to see all that power concentrated into a single point of impact.

All of a sudden, she felt that her father's profession did not seem as boring as she had imagined.

In a sense, the arc traced by that tiny silver ball through the air had something in common with the curve of a world-class strike on a football pitch.

But because table tennis balls were so small, they lacked football's wild passion and freedom, while gaining a touch more subtlety, control, and delicacy.

If football was a game of sweat, hot blood, and passion—

Then table tennis was a great art that pushed precision, technique, and calculation to their absolute limits.

Li Shaoqin did not want to play anymore.

He had always had a foul mouth and loved showing off, so he had never been particularly well-liked on the team. This time, he had finally run into a folk master, and he had even witnessed this folk master's grueling six-game battle against Gao Ming. So he had decided Wang Chao was someone he could push around.

There were sixteen people in the main squad's internal assessment. He ranked thirteenth, only one place away from having to play in the promotion-relegation match.

It had scared him into a cold sweat. He was both terrified in retrospect and relieved, but it also left him with an unbearable sense of frustration that he needed to vent somehow.

Otherwise, he would not have taken the initiative to provoke Wang Chao.

But now, he knew he had been wrong.

This folk master was absurdly strong!

Whether it was serving, receiving, calculation, or even rallies that tested fundamentals the most, Wang Chao was superior to him in every way.

He simply could not understand why someone like this had needed a full six games to beat an idiot like Gao Ming.

Was he throwing matches?

What would be the point?

Li Shaoqin could not understand.

"I'm not playing anymore!" He tossed his paddle onto the table. "I concede."

"Don't." Wang Chao looked at him with a smile. "Remember what we agreed on earlier?"

He reminded him, "No resting, no conceding. Whoever breaks the rules is a pig."

"Ah!" Li Shaoqin remembered...

Back then, he had thought Wang Chao was out of his mind. Now he understood. Wang Chao had dug a pit for him from the very beginning.

"There's a camera filming, you know." Wang Chao pointed at Luo Xiaoyu beside them. "If you really don't want to play, then admit to the camera that you're a pig."

Luo Xiaoyu's pretty face had turned red with excitement. She only found the match more and more interesting, clapping her hands as she said, "Great, great!" The camera hanging against her full chest swayed along with her movements, drawing plenty of attention.

Li Shaoqin picked up his paddle again, gritted his teeth, and crouched down, desperately thinking about what serve he should use.

In the end, he decided on a long serve to the left-side baseline, only for Wang Chao to smash it straight back with a beautiful Penhold Backhand Loop.

"Wow!" Luo Xiaoyu cried out again. "What was that move? So cool!"

This paparazzi girl was seriously unprofessional. She did not even recognize national player Bai Feng's signature move...

Wang Chao muttered inwardly.

Li Shaoqin, meanwhile, was beginning to despair.

Damn it all!

My old man's dead!

This folk master had only been playing tricks with me earlier, but now he was even bringing out the most advanced techniques. What other sinister moves was he still hiding?

I don't want to eat Shrimp and Pork Heart...

Li Shaoqin was no saint either. He swiftly changed his train of thought. Since he could not concede, could he not just play negatively instead?

When the ball came over, no matter how difficult or easy it was, he would just deliberately miss it. In short, he would not give Wang Chao any opportunity to show off. He would hurry up and end this with a 4:0 loss.

With his mind made up, he calculated how to make his "deliberate miss" look more convincing. Then he sent over a thoroughly mediocre serve and waited for Wang Chao to attack.

Then he watched helplessly as Wang Chao gently lifted the ball back...

Yes, lifted it back...

Not a flick. Just a lift, without any hit behind it...

It was the posture teachers used when seven- or eight-year-old children had just started learning table tennis and were being taught what it meant to get the ball onto the table.

The ball was high and slow, without the slightest spin variation. It simply bounced toward Li Shaoqin, at the perfect height, as though it had been deliberately fed to him.

Should he take it?

As a professional player, seeing a ball like that really made his hand itch. If he did not smash it, he would be letting down his own conscience.

Li Shaoqin's body was more honest than his brain. In the end, he smashed it.

If he did not smash even that, then he would be playing far too obviously.

After all, the camera was still filming...

Li Shaoqin glanced at Luo Xiaoyu and suddenly found this girl truly detestable.

If it were not for her camera, what would it matter if he acted shamelessly?

He stepped back half a pace and unleashed an all-out power loop!

"I'll smash you to death!"

"I'll smash you to death, smash you to death, smash you to death!"

"No matter how you mess with me later, I'm giving you one brutal shot first!"

That was what Li Shaoqin thought, and that was what he did. The instant he made contact with the ball, he knew: I've got it.

The power went straight through. The rubber's bounce was fully unleashed, and the feel was unbelievably good.

He had played for over a decade and had never missed under these circumstances.

But today was determined to overturn everything he had known for over a decade.

Wang Chao directly retreated three steps to receive the ball.

The shot carried tremendous power. After bouncing off the table, it flew high into the air. By the time it reached Wang Chao, it was still above his head, looking completely impossible to return.

In theory, Wang Chao would need to retreat at least another seven steps to receive it.

But Wang Chao leaped high into the air, raised his arm and paddle, and hammered the ball down with a vicious strike.

That was not a smashing motion. It was an overhead kill.

Without a paddle in his hand, it would have looked more like a volleyball player leaping at the net.

The little ball flew back even faster than it had come, hurtling down along its original path and crashing in front of Li Shaoqin with a shockingly loud sound.

The score reached 8:0, and Li Shaoqin's face turned pale.

He had never seen anyone play table tennis like that in his life!

Only Wang Chao's voice rang out across the empty court. "My serve now."

Wang Chao served. He tossed the ball high, but it was not a standard High-Toss Serve. Instead, he suddenly crouched down, held his paddle upright like a blade, and chopped down hard. One side of the paddle lightly brushed the ball, sending it flying away along a bizarre curve.

"Wow! What a cool move." Luo Xiaoyu was utterly amazed. "What kind of serve was that?"

Li Shaoqin wanted to curse.

"This is a chop serve, even rarer than a High-Toss Serve! How many damn fancy tricks does this bastard know? Why didn't I see a single one before, but he's bringing them all out against me?"

He rushed to receive it, but he had truly never encountered such an obscure serve before. In his panic, he had not even noticed the exact motion of Wang Chao's wrist when he chopped down. So he misjudged it, mistaking left sidespin for right sidespin.

The ball barely touched his paddle before friction sent it gleefully flying sideways, almost at an absurd ninety-degree angle.

9:0.

The scene seemed to completely defy the laws of physics, and its visual impact left Luo Xiaoyu dumbfounded. She stared fixedly at the image through the camera lens, feeling as though an entirely new world had opened before her today.

So the world of table tennis could be this wondrous...

Thanks to "Star Controller" for the tip, thanks to "Butter Cat" for the monthly vote, thank you, thank you!