Coach, I Want to Play

The days passed one by one. The school team's thrice-weekly training sessions continued without fail. Even in wind and rain, Li Ziqiang required his team to train on the field.

Thanks to the school having renovated the pitch, the new underground drainage system worked well. As long as it was not pouring rain, training could proceed as normal.

No matter what the team practiced, Hu Lai continued with his own basic training: juggling drills, passing and receiving drills, shooting drills, and dribbling drills.

As for Li Ziqiang? He still came over during breaks to "guide" Hu Lai's training, and his methods remained just as rough.

But to everyone's surprise, despite being treated so harshly and only being allowed to do the most tedious basic drills, Hu Lai had not voluntarily left the team.

Nor did he give the coach any excuse to kick him out... His attitude toward training was beyond reproach. Whatever the coach told him to do, he did without a word of complaint.

It was not until Hu Lai heard that emotionless voice in his mind that he realized he had actually completed that pitifully rewarded mission...

Three thousand points had been credited to his account, but Hu Lai felt no joy at having completed the mission.

He sat on the artificial turf, too exhausted to stand, feeling as if his legs had been filled with lead.

He suspected that Coach Li Ziqiang somehow knew about his mission, which was why he had deliberately increased the training load—to force him off the team and make him fail the mission. He did not know why the coach was so determined to force him out, but he had that feeling. The head coach's harsh demands of him clearly were not simple. After all, the head coach did not treat him the same way he treated everyone else. Even an idiot could see that.

But he could not understand why.

Of course, that was not important. What mattered was that he had successfully remained on the team and completed the mission.

He could finally let out a long breath.

He had previously spent all his points on four [Stamina Potions], leaving his balance at zero. That had made him feel very insecure.

Now things were better. His account had been replenished with another three thousand points.

He had no plans to use them right away. He decided to save them until he needed them.

After all, that [Training Boost Potion] seemed very difficult to draw.

Before, he had thought the mission reward was pretty useless. But now, considering just how lazy this system was—mainly because it issued so few missions, and did so at such a low frequency—those three thousand points seemed especially precious.

Over the past four weeks, the system had been like a corpse, completely silent, without issuing even a single mission.

When he had first obtained the system, Hu Lai had thought his life was about to go into cheat mode, with all kinds of awesome cheats rushing at him and drowning him in the happy dilemma of "Should I use this cheat today, or that one?"

Then cruel reality told him:

What the hell are you dreaming about?

It had been over two months since the system attached itself to him, yet it had only issued three missions. Most of the time, Hu Lai even forgot that he had such a system.

This had to be the laziest system in the world!

Hu Lai grumbled to himself.

Then, at that very moment, the emotionless voice suddenly rang out in his mind. "Mission: Play in an official match. Mission reward: Basic Training Scroll: Shooting ×1."

It was as if someone had suddenly grabbed Hu Lai by the throat. His inner complaints came to an abrupt stop.

He now deeply suspected that this system, which normally never responded to him, could actually see and hear everything. It definitely knew he had been ranting about it, so it chose this moment to issue a mission and slap him in the face!

After covering his face in his mind, Hu Lai finally began to pay attention to the mission itself.

Play in an official match?

The system had specifically added the qualifier "official" before "match," meaning the scrimmages and instructional matches played during training did not count.

You've got to be kidding me. How am I supposed to play in an official match in my current state?

He had been doing basic training all this time and had not even joined the team for full training yet.

He had indeed thought about playing in matches, but cruel reality had told him that getting match time would probably not be so easy...

Yet now the system had given him a mission that required him to play in a match.

He felt that the system had dug a pit for him.

The mission did not say when it had to be completed anyway. I'll just leave it there. Once I qualify to play in a match someday, won't I complete it naturally?

Thinking this, Hu Lai focused his consciousness on the reward.

An explanation immediately appeared in his mind:

[Basic Training Scroll: Shooting]. After use, improves training effectiveness for the next ten shooting sessions.

He froze.

There was something like this too?

Before, he had been dead set on drawing one of those [Training Boost Potions] that could improve training results, but even after spending two thousand points, he had failed to get one.

Yet he had not expected there to be something that could improve the effectiveness of a specific type of training.

Although it was not as effective as the [Training Boost Potion], considering the drop rate of the [Training Boost Potion], being able to obtain this single-skill training scroll just by completing the mission before him was still very tempting to Hu Lai.

After all, he was a forward. What was the most important skill for a forward?

Of course, shooting!

He could not keep doing basic training forever. Improving his shooting ability had become the top priority.

But if he relied solely on regular training to improve his shooting, how long would that take?

Now, there was a training scroll right in front of him...

Hu Lai hesitated. If this mission only rewarded points, he probably would not have cared that much.

But now, it was actually something that could improve the effectiveness of his shooting training!

Did he really have to wait until the time was right for the mission to complete itself naturally?

Huh? What was this?

Just as Hu Lai was struggling inwardly, he noticed a row of red numbers at the end of the mission:

29:23:59:50.

While he was still staring blankly, the numbers changed to 29:23:59:45.

Only then did Hu Lai realize it was a countdown!

This mission actually had a countdown?!

What the hell!

He had originally planned to leave the mission alone and let nature take its course. Once he was able to play in a match, wouldn't it complete automatically?

But clearly, the system did not see it that way.

Judging from the changing numbers, the last column should have been seconds. By that logic, the ones before it were minutes, hours, and days.

Counting it out, the mission required him to complete it within thirty days!

Hu Lai panicked.

With that thought, he exited the system space and turned his gaze toward head coach Li Ziqiang in the distance.

This was the key person who would determine whether he got to play.

Li Ziqiang stood by the sideline. Training had ended for the day, and Hu Lai had once again completed the training assignment he had been given.

It had been four weeks since the kid joined the school team—nearly a month.

At first, Li Ziqiang had thought that under his deliberately harsh demands and high-volume training, this kid would not last long.

Judging by his face, Li Ziqiang had always felt that Hu Lai's eyes and brows carried a hint of slyness. No matter how he looked at him, he did not seem like the honest, hardworking sort who could endure hardship.

Though judging people by their looks was somewhat superstitious, Li Ziqiang felt there was still some truth to it. As the saying went, the face reflected the heart. A person's true character would more or less show on their face.

Take his daughter, for example. She was so pretty, youthful, and bright—one look and anyone could tell she was kindhearted.

But this kindness had its drawbacks. It made her too trusting of others—see? Hadn't she trusted that classmate of hers too easily?

What would happen when someone kindhearted and pure-minded met someone cunning?

Out of concern for his daughter, he had decided to bring Hu Lai onto the team so that he could deal with him himself.

Otherwise, he believed his daughter would definitely continue getting tangled up with this kid. See that empty lot behind the building? Clearly, it was not the first time they had met there in secret.

His plan had been simple: under his constant belittling and torment, Hu Lai would back down in the face of difficulty, voluntarily quit the school football team, give up football altogether, and stop pestering his daughter.

At the same time, it would let his daughter see how unreliable and irresponsible this boy was, so she could come to her senses and stay away from him in the future.

So, even at the risk of going too far and letting his daughter discover the truth, Li Ziqiang had gone ahead with it.

Who would have thought that over these four weeks, this kid—who looked like he should have had terrible stress tolerance and only knew how to cut corners—had actually endured it all?

He did not care how dull and tedious the basic training Li Ziqiang assigned him was, nor did he care about all the yelling and harsh criticism... He was like an emotionless machine, simply following Li Ziqiang's demands and completing the training plan.

It was not as though Li Ziqiang had no way to make Hu Lai fail. He could assign him a task that was absolutely impossible to complete—for example, requiring him to juggle the ball a thousand times in one minute. That was absolutely, utterly impossible; no one in the world could do it. But there was no point in doing that. He would never get past his daughter. When she questioned him, "Are you deliberately making things difficult for Hu Lai?" he would have nothing to say.

So he could only keep his torment of Hu Lai within an acceptable range. On one hand, he had to make Hu Lai genuinely suffer; on the other, he had to convince his daughter that he was merely being strict with Hu Lai, not abusing his position for personal revenge...

Thinking about it, Li Ziqiang felt exhausted.

He was clearly doing this for his daughter's sake, so why did it feel like he was fighting against her?

It was all that bastard's fault!

He turned his gaze toward Hu Lai, only to discover with some surprise that the kid was looking at him too...

And that look... was somewhat fervent.

Li Ziqiang immediately felt disgusted—what did that look of yours mean, kid? Were you provoking him?

All the resentment in his heart turned into a roar. "Hu Lai! What are you looking at?!"

Hu Lai had been thinking about how to earn a chance to play when, out of nowhere, he heard the head coach suddenly roar his name.

By reflex, he blurted out what was on his mind. "Coach, I want to play..."

Training had just ended, and the players were leaving the field, preparing to head back to the locker room to change. They walked in twos and threes, chatting.

After the coach suddenly shouted like that, everyone turned to look at Hu Lai.

They had no idea how Hu Lai had offended the coach again.

Some people quietly snickered and whispered among themselves.

The students watching from the sidelines had not fully dispersed yet. After hearing Li Ziqiang's roar, they too turned their attention to the field. The scene became much quieter than before.

So quiet that everyone heard Hu Lai's not-very-loud words clearly.

The snickering, whispers, and chatter... all sounds vanished. As if they had witnessed something utterly unbelievable, everyone stared in stunned silence.

Even Li Qingqing, standing on the grandstand, wore a surprised expression.

Song Jiajia, who stood beside her with his head lowered as he played on his phone, finally noticed the sudden silence around him. He looked up and asked blankly, "What's going on?"