A Twist of Fate

All the players specifically called out by the coaches had shown up today. Only Wu Li was absent, off practicing alone somewhere.

"Oh, so he was the strongest player at your training base? No wonder he was so good."

Luo Xiaoyu sounded a little uneasy. "Dad, if he's that strong, he must be your training base's secret weapon, right? Doesn't that mean the video I worked so hard to shoot can't be aired?"

"It can! It absolutely must be aired!" Luo Zhihong fully supported his daughter's work. "There's nothing at our training base that can't be shown to others. Air whatever you filmed. If it helps promote the base, I couldn't ask for more. Just one thing—don't put me in it. Show only the players. I don't want to steal their thunder."

Naturally, Luo Xiaoyu declined with thanks. After all, she had not filmed Luo Zhihong at all. Even if he wanted her to include him, she had nothing to show.

After the call ended, Luo Zhihong summoned several coaches for a meeting. They mainly discussed one matter: who should serve as Wu Li's practice partner.

The players on the main team had suffered enough over the past two years. None of them was willing to play against Wu Li anymore. For the last two months, the newly arrived brothers Xiao Ping and Xiao Jian had taken turns as his practice partners. But their parents had come to make a fuss too. Luo Zhihong could not bring himself to force the brothers into it again.

So the practice partner had to be chosen from the reserve players who had just moved up.

Thinking about it, Luo Zhihong felt a little regretful. Why had Tian Ye lost to Zhou Bo?

That kid Tian Ye had long been the high-quality practice partner Luo Zhihong had his eye on.

Now he could only choose between Wang Chao and Jiang Shan.

"Jiang Shan definitely can't be the practice partner. He's still too young. Wu Li hits too hard—I'm afraid he'll ruin the kid," one coach immediately voiced his opinion.

"I agree," another coach said. "Jiang Shan should have entered the main team from the start. We only put him in the reserves for a year because he was too young. He's a real talent, someone who could have a chance to make the provincial team in the future. I absolutely refuse to let Jiang Shan be a practice partner."

Luo Zhihong had no objections. As usual, he asked everyone around the room before finally saying, "Then it's settled. Wang Chao?"

Wang Bin, the reserve team's head coach, was sitting in on the meeting today. He shifted slightly as though he wanted to speak, but in the end, he held himself back.

Only he knew that Wang Chao was nothing like what everyone had seen today. But Jiang Shan truly was a promising prospect as well.

One was a thirteen-year-old kid from a sports school, properly trained and solidly grounded. The other was an eighteen-year-old grassroots phenom, with terrible stamina and fundamentals... no one knew whether those were solid or not.

Neither choice was right. A thousand words were worse than silence.

Thus, the meeting ended. Comrade Luo was quite pleased. It was a day of double happiness: he had repaired his relationship with his daughter and found a new practice partner for Wu Li. In rare good spirits, he gave himself the afternoon off, went home, ate dinner, then sprawled comfortably on the couch to wait for the evening sports news. Before it began, he considered how to talk Wang Chao into it.

Coach Wang said the kid's family isn't well-off. Maybe I should raise his stipend?

If he's willing to be Wu Li's long-term practice partner, even giving him double the stipend would be fine. It's only a little extra money. At worst, I can pay it out of my own pocket.

After all, Wu Li's training is what matters most. I'm still counting on that kid to win me a provincial team slot in the second half of next year.

Just then, a familiar tune played on the television. Jiangcheng City Evening Sports News was starting.

The program had never drawn much of an audience, and competition was not fierce. Besides, Luo Xiaoyu had a father working in the sports world. So even though this was a story independently covered by an intern reporter, the station still aired it in full. That was already quite generous.

Wang Chao and Li Shaoqin's match appeared on the television screen.

Since it was a news report, all the exchanges between them during the match, along with Li Shaoqin's grandstanding, had naturally been cut out.

It was said that the station's editing staff had laughed nonstop while cutting it, to the point that their supervisor had scolded them a few times.

Those were just behind-the-scenes details, not worth mentioning.

The moment the two appeared on screen, Comrade Luo sat upright on the couch and let out a soft, "Huh?"

Something felt wrong to him, because this was not the Wu Li he had expected.

After cutting out all the filler, the match itself was actually very short. And Jiangcheng City Evening Sports News truly had little else to air, so all ten points from those five minutes were broadcast in full.

The more Luo Zhihong watched, the more wrong it felt. At first, he was slumped over. Then he sat straight, leaned forward, and finally stood up and moved close to the television.

When Wang Chao unleashed that volleyball-style smash, Luo Zhihong's entire body jolted. He made an indistinct sound. "Ah."

Then Wang Chao served an extremely high-level chopping serve. Luo Zhihong took off his glasses, rubbed them hard, put them back on, and kept watching.

This time, he saw that super shot.

Luo Zhihong was completely dumbfounded.

He understood.

That call from his daughter this morning had not been hinting at anything.

She really had seen a super shot!

Suddenly, he remembered the few exchanges he had had with Wang Bin before the match began that morning.

He had asked Wang Bin why the kid played so badly.

Wang Bin had said, "That kid has too many thoughts. I can't see through him."

He had asked Wang Bin whether the kid was even stronger than Wu Li.

Wang Bin had said, "Why not let them play and find out?"

And at the final meeting, Wang Bin had chosen silence.

"Wang Bin, Wang Bin... damn it, you knew perfectly well. Why wouldn't you just say it?" Luo Zhihong was starting to vent his frustration on someone else. He took several deep breaths, ignored the fact that it was nearly ten at night, rushed into his study, shut the door, and immediately called Li Shaoqin.

"Li Shaoqin, tell me. Is Wang Chao really that strong?"

Li Shaoqin did not say anything for a long time. Just when Luo Zhihong thought the signal was bad, he heard faint sobbing from the other end.

"Are you still there?" Luo Zhihong asked. "What's wrong with you?"

Li Shaoqin finally broke down and cried, "Coach Luo, you can't bully me like this! I heard all about it. That girl from this morning is your actual daughter, right? You must've watched the original footage, right? You must think I was pathetic, right? Do you look down on me now? Are you going to kick me out of the training base? Boohoohoo..."

Luo Zhihong was utterly bewildered.

He could understand Li Shaoqin's suffering.

Being toyed with in every conceivable way by Wang Chao had left Li Shaoqin with no less psychological trauma than serving as Wu Li's practice partner. After all, Wu Li bullied people through straightforward, no-frills offense, unlike Wang Chao, who was practically performing acrobatics.

But as an old-school table tennis man, Luo Zhihong bore certain distinct marks of his era. For instance, they would not use power for personal gain or engage in corruption, but neither would they ever insist on treating everyone equally or fairly.

In the eyes of people like them, anything a high-achieving kid said was right, and anything he did could be forgiven. As for poor students... so long as they did not affect the good students' studies, that was enough.

In Luo Zhihong's mind, Wu Li had always been the best kid at this training base. But now, there might have to be another one: Wang Chao.

As for who was better, they would have to play to find out.

So even though he sensed that something was wrong with Li Shaoqin's mindset, he had no intention of dealing with it immediately. He offered a few perfunctory words of comfort, hung up, and began calling the coaches under him one by one. "Get out here, all of you! Get online! We're holding a video meeting to discuss Wu Li's practice partner again!"