Chicago, North Shore's affluent district.
Michael Jordan sat in the home theater of his mansion, the enormous screen frozen on Li Fei's calm, unruffled face during the interview.
Only a little amber whiskey remained at the bottom of the glass beside him, its ice cubes long since melted.
Cigar smoke curled through the air, blurring his sharply defined features.
"Getting hot?" Jordan softly repeated those four words, a complicated sneer curling at the corner of his mouth.
As the man on this planet who understood "taking over a game" better than anyone, how could he fail to hear the dismissiveness in Li Fei's words?
That wasn't getting hot. It was absolute confidence—the sheer dominance of, "When I want to score, no one can stop me."
The loss in the Eastern Conference Finals was like two sharp thorns driven deep into his heart.
For two consecutive years, he had fallen before a man more than a decade younger than himself.
He admired Li Fei's strength. That body, as though forged from Titanium Alloy; that style of play that perfectly combined power, skill, and composure—he had truly never seen anything like it in his life.
But admiration was admiration. He absolutely did not want to see Li Fei reach the summit so easily. Kingship could not be shared, and the city in the sky should have only one master.
Yet when he watched the final five minutes of the game, watched Li Fei face the historically elite interior defense of Duncan and Robinson and sink shot after unreasonable shot, Jordan felt more than irritation. There was also something he refused to admit even to himself—trembling.
He put himself in Duncan and Robinson's shoes and imagined defending that 2.24-meter monster.
He was confident he could use his footwork and anticipation to disrupt Li