Time is Running Out

Hu Lai lay sprawled on the turf, his chest heaving violently.

Not far away, Li Ziqiang's voice rang out. "All right, have you had enough of the show? Get back to training!"

Mao Xiao's apologetic face appeared in his field of vision. "Sorry, Hu Lai..."

He felt someone pat his body—maybe his shoulder, maybe his arm.

Then he saw Meng Xi poke his head out to glance at him. Without saying anything, he ran off into the distance.

Footsteps faded from near to far before finally disappearing.

A whistle blew in the distance.

There were other sounds too, from the stands and the sidelines, all mixed together and impossible to make out. In Hu Lai's ears, they all became a buzzing hum.

It felt as though the whole world was buzzing beside his ears.

After being knocked to the ground again and again, his head was still somewhat dizzy. With the ringing in his ears, his reactions had become sluggish.

He did not know how long he had been lying on the ground, but he had not yet finished his basic training for the day. So he struggled back to his feet.

Training had already begun on the other half of the field.

He staggered toward his own training area—the wall of the stadium.

Seeing Hu Lai in such a bedraggled state, Li Zhiqun laughed happily.

When you were throwing your weight around in front of me, did you ever think joining the school team would leave you this miserable?

Li Zhiqun laughed so gleefully that he completely failed to notice Song Jiajia staring at him from afar with a murderous look.

Li Qingqing did not care what Li Zhiqun was doing. Her eyes were fixed entirely on Hu Lai.

Under her gaze, the boy carried the football to his training spot, set it down, and kicked it toward the wall opposite him.

But because he had no strength left, he mishit the ball. It flew crookedly off to the side instead of rebounding back.

Hu Lai had no choice but to wobble over, retrieve the ball, dribble it back with alternating touches from both feet, and bring it back.

Even during this, he did not forget to do his basic dribbling drills.

The moment Hu Lai got home, he gave his mother, Xie Lan, a fright. "What happened to your face?"

The left side of Hu Lai's face was a little swollen, but that was not the most noticeable part. More eye-catching was the red scrape across the left side of his face.

That was what made his mother cry out in alarm.

"I fell off my bike," Hu Lai explained.

"Good thing your dad went to work..." Xie Lan complained.

"Come on, Mom, I really did fall off my bike! Look if you don't believe me!" As he spoke, Hu Lai lifted his shirt and showed his mother the matching scrape on his ribs. "There's one on my palm too." He spread open his hand, revealing the red abrasions on it.

Seeing the injuries on her son, Xie Lan frowned in distress. "I'll go get some medicine."

"No need, Mom. They've already scabbed over." Hu Lai showed her.

"You still need medicine. If they've scabbed over, pick off the scabs and apply medicine again, otherwise bacteria could get trapped inside," Xie Lan said seriously.

Hu Lai jumped in fright. "Mom, are you serious?!"

In the end, Xie Lan still applied medicine to Hu Lai's wounds, though she did not pick open the scabbed injuries.

At the dinner table, Xie Lan smiled as she watched her son wolf down his food.

His appetite had grown lately. It was probably related to him playing football—he was exercising more, so naturally he was eating more.

That was a good thing. Xie Lan had always worried that Hu Lai was too short and might have trouble finding a wife in the future.

Hu Lai's father was not short at all, standing at 1.8 meters, but Xie Lan herself was only 1.5 meters tall. She had always worried that she would hold her child back and keep him from growing taller.

If playing football could help her son grow a little taller, that would be a good thing too...

"Eat more. Get another serving when you're done," Xie Lan said, looking lovingly at her son.

"Mhm, mhm." Hu Lai nodded as he continued shoveling food into his mouth.

"Qingqing? Qingqing?"

"Huh?" Li Qingqing snapped back to her senses and looked at her father, who was staring at her.

"What's wrong? I called you just now, but you didn't answer," Li Ziqiang asked.

"Oh, nothing. I was thinking about a problem."

"Is it difficult?"

"Mm... It's difficult. Very difficult." Li Qingqing frowned and thought for a second before nodding. It was more than difficult—it was downright impossible. No matter how hard she racked her brains, she could not figure out how Hu Lai, who had only trained for a month, was supposed to break through the man-marking defense of two starting center backs who never left his side.

"If you can't figure it out, stop thinking about it. Don't push yourself too hard," Li Ziqiang advised.

"Mhm." His daughter lowered her head and took a bite of rice.

Seeing how absentminded his daughter was, Li Ziqiang could not help feeling a tightness in his chest.

All he could do was fantasize about how he would deal with that little bastard Hu Lai over the coming year after Hu Lai failed the special training...

Only that could give him even the slightest bit of comfort.

After showering, Hu Lai was already in bed. Kneeling on the mattress, he closed his eyes and entered the system, looking at the spinning roulette wheel before him.

During today's special training, aside from the first time when he had touched the ball and shot it toward the goal, he had not even gotten near the ball at any other point. He just kept falling down, getting back up, falling again, and getting back up again.

He felt like a punching bag being thrown around over and over.

At this rate, he could see no hope of completing the special training at all.

Actually, if not for this, if he had merely been asked to spend a year practicing the basics, Hu Lai might have wanted to play matches, but he would not have resisted the arrangement too strongly. After a month of training, he had realized that he truly needed to build a solid foundation.

But now, with two missions sitting in his consciousness system, their rewards were like goddesses half-veiled in mystery, tempting him and setting his heart ablaze.

And there was that time-limited mission. Its countdown ticked down without pause and had already reached 24:17:41:08. It was practically a death knell, reminding him that time flowed like water, rushing to the sea and never returning.

Thinking of this, Hu Lai looked again at the four lottery tickets in his possession. He had taken two thousand of the three thousand points he had earned from previous missions and exchanged them for four lottery tickets.

Take a gamble, turn a bicycle into a motorcycle.

What if he drew some kind of divine artifact and turned the tables against the odds? Wouldn't that be amazing?

He decisively used the first lottery ticket.

"You have obtained [Stamina Potion] ×1."

"Damn it!"

Hu Lai grabbed the blanket, rolled over, and lay down on the bed, no longer thinking about turning the tables with cheat powers.

The next day, the special training was moved to the final segment so it would not interfere with everyone's regular training—because of Hu Lai's special training yesterday, the others had watched the show for quite a while after warming up. By the time training resumed, their bodies had already cooled down, and the training results had not been very good.

While the team underwent its usual training, Hu Lai also worked on his own basic drills.

Only during the final part of training did the special training begin.

This special training was no different from yesterday's. Hu Lai was still knocked to the ground again and again.

At first, Mao Xiao immediately reached out to pull Hu Lai up every time, expressing his apology to his friend that way.

But later, he stopped doing so, because even if he offered a hand, Hu Lai had trouble getting back up. He might as well leave Hu Lai more time to recover and rest.

Head coach Li Ziqiang still stood outside the penalty area, coldly watching everything.

If Mao Xiao or Yan Yan showed even the slightest slackness, his booming voice would ring out like a whip, lashing the two of them until they dared not stop.

So when another day of training came to an end, Hu Lai could only lie on the rough, stiff artificial turf, gasping for breath as he stared up at the sky.

Chaotic footsteps rose and faded beside his ears, moving from near to far, then from far to near again.

All kinds of voices and discussions entered his ears, eventually blending into nothing but a buzzing hum.

Of the three weekly training sessions, only one remained. He did not have much time left.

Lying on the ground and gasping, Hu Lai entered the system again, unwilling to give up. Although he had drawn only a [Stamina Potion] last night, he still wanted to try again, to make one more effort.

After all, he still had three lottery tickets left. Once bought, they could not be returned or exchanged back into points, and keeping them was useless.

He might as well use them.

With that thought, Hu Lai used another lottery ticket.

A brilliant flash of light passed, and a card floated quietly in his system space.

[World-Class Goal Experience Card]: After use, the user's shot may become a world-class goal within ten seconds.

Hu Lai froze.

"Hey, Hu Lai, stop lying there. You'll catch a cold..." Mao Xiao squatted beside Hu Lai, calling to him.

But Hu Lai gave him no response. He simply stared blankly at the sky. If his chest had not still been rising and falling, and if the sound of his breathing could not still be heard from his nose and mouth, one might have thought he was dead.

Meng Xi, who was squatting beside Hu Lai with Mao Xiao, waved a hand before his eyes. Hu Lai's gaze did not refocus. It remained fixed on the endlessly distant sky, completely unresponsive to Meng Xi's movement.

Mao Xiao reached out and gave Hu Lai a push. "Training's over, Hu Lai. The coach has already left, seriously..."

Hu Lai still did not react.

"Did he get knocked stupid?" Meng Xi said from the side. "Getting slammed to the ground over and over could cause a concussion..."

Before he could finish, Hu Lai, who had been lying on the ground like a corpse, suddenly sat bolt upright from the turf, startling both Mao Xiao and Meng Xi.

Hu Lai ignored the two people beside him. He got up and walked straight off the field.

"He's done for. He really got knocked stupid." Watching Hu Lai stagger away, Meng Xi sighed.

"I didn't do it on purpose. The coach told me to..." Mao Xiao muttered fearfully, sounding as though he were begging Hu Lai to spare him if he turned into a ghost.