Your climbing ability leaves me in awe

When Zhang Yi's gaze fell on Huang Chong, the latter naturally noticed he was being watched.

After all, in a seventeen-man team, as the climb grew increasingly difficult, more than two-thirds had already fallen behind before they even reached the final 10 kilometers of winding mountain road.

Including himself, only six riders remained at this point.

He had originally been at the back of the group, so any movement from the riders ahead was impossible for him to miss.

By professional racing standards, the six of them now formed the leading group at the front of the course.

The three female riders who had only just fallen behind them and were now visibly being dropped farther and farther back formed the second group.

As for the third and even fourth groups farther behind, they had been dropped so badly that Huang Chong could no longer see them.

But setting aside those who had fallen behind early, Huang Chong noticed that Zhang Yi's gaze seemed to carry a trace of surprise, anticipation, and approval.

He knew that joining the Headwind Cycling Team was basically a done deal.

If he still could not join the team after hanging on until now, then it would not be a problem with his own ability—it would be a problem with Zhang Yi's judgment and brain.

There was no need to mention where he ranked in terms of sprinting ability on flat stages.

At the very least, when it came to mountain climbing, he had already beaten more than two-thirds of the entire team.

As for the remaining five, including Zhang Yi himself, Huang Chong had no intention of fighting them to determine who would be the first to reach the top of Prince Peak.

After all, it was not important at all.

Even if he could not become the Headwind Cycling Team's climbing king today, he would eventually be able to drop them all.

For him, the top priority was maximizing completion of the system mission and obtaining system rewards.

However, as a newcomer who had never received systematic training, he had followed the group all the way here. Once they entered the hairpins and the slope grew steeper and steeper, nearing the section with a maximum gradient of 12%, everyone had no choice but to stand on their pedals, faces red as they gritted their teeth and rocked their bikes desperately. Yet their average speed was still a pitifully low 10 km/h or less—

Wang Qiang and the others saw Huang Chong, who was at the very back of the group, gritting his teeth and laboriously turning the cranks like everyone else. Yet through steady bike rocking, he actually began passing them bit by bit.

Then, relying on astonishing willpower, Huang Chong clung tightly to the captain's pace and continued riding toward the summit finish.

They could no longer describe what they were seeing as mere shock. Panting heavily, they began complaining:

"Damn, what the hell is going on with this guy?"

"I told you—Huang Chong is definitely hiding his true strength. He's nowhere near as simple as he looks—"

"His real ability really isn't at the level he showed yesterday—"

"So he deliberately held back last night?"

"But why would he deliberately hide his real strength?"

In the brief few dozen seconds they spent grumbling and speculating, Huang Chong and the captain had already rounded a U-shaped bend ahead of them and vanished from sight.

On a long 12% climb, once a rider's energy was nearly depleted, even a gap of just five meters to the rider ahead could become as insurmountable as a chasm.

That was the brutality of road climbing. Once a rider's legs and stamina reached their limits, producing even one more watt of power became a luxury.

Thus, Wang Qiang and the other three could only watch helplessly as Huang Chong and the captain gradually widened the gap, until they disappeared from view. They could not close the distance by even a single meter.

If this had been an official KOM climbing race, with the finish line at the summit of Prince Peak, then there was no doubt that victory would belong to either the captain or Huang Chong.

As for the four of them, they had all been decisively beaten by stronger legs on the hardest stretch of the climb, the stretch closest to both victory and the finish line.

It was actually much like a mountain stage in the Tour de France.

Race organizers always set the hardest HC-category climb as the stage finish.

Unless a GC rider had already secured a decisive overall lead and could freely let breakaway riders go for the stage win.

Otherwise, on such a long climb, only the strongest legs in the world could be the first to crest the mountain and cross the finish line.

Yet Huang Chong, who was still following Zhang Yi's pace as he sprinted toward the top of Prince Peak, had no idea that his bout of bike rocking had drawn such furious complaints and envy from Wang Qiang's group.

Instead, when he looked at the riding data displayed on the system bike computer, he could only smile bitterly.

He realized that even on a 12% climb, his average speed had only barely exceeded 10 km/h, not much faster than Wang Qiang and the others.

That was after he had taken a Fast-acting Recovery Energy Bar at the foot of the mountain to replenish his energy in advance.

But based on his experience watching the Tour de France, never mind a 12% gradient—even if it rose several more percentage points, Pogačar could still maintain an average speed of over 20 km/h on an even harder slope.

So for the world's top road climbing specialists, the gradient of Prince Peak was practically as easy as riding on flat ground.

The gap is still enormous. These 200W legs of mine aren't even half as good as a top rider's.

After Huang Chong passed the hardest section of the climb, the road near the summit of Prince Peak began to level out.

Unfortunately, during the final stretch, he was still unsurprisingly dropped by Zhang Yi, a former professional rider.

Moreover, he could tell that Zhang Yi had not gone all out from beginning to end. At most, he had been doing Zone 3 endurance riding.

Only on that short 12% section might his heart rate have reached the Zone 4 threshold.

Meanwhile, during the bout of bike rocking that had dropped Wang Qiang and the others, Huang Chong's heart rate had already surged past 190, sending him straight into Zone 5 anaerobic riding.

"Huang Chong, your climbing ability leaves me in absolute awe!"

At the summit of Prince Peak.

Zhang Yi, the first to reach the summit viewing platform and rest, watched Huang Chong arrive at the finish only a little over ten seconds behind him. His tone was now openly full of praise.

The view from the summit of Prince Peak was exceptionally broad. Not only could one see far into the distance, but looking down from above, one could take in the entire stretch of hairpins below at a glance.

So as long as riders entered the final long climb, anyone who fell behind could be seen clearly by those who reached the summit first.

The second group led by Wang Qiang and the others remained quite steady in terms of strength.

Although they had been dropped by Zhang Yi and Huang Chong simultaneously on the hardest section, no one else fell behind afterward.

They maintained a steady average speed, slowly rounded the final U-shaped bend, and rode toward the summit finish.

But compared to Huang Chong and Zhang Yi, they would be at least two minutes slower in reaching the top.

If this were the Tour de France, falling two minutes behind the leaders of another team on a climbing stage would basically mean they had no hope of contending for the overall title.

Huang Chong heard Zhang Yi's praise and merely smiled faintly, with little change in expression.

In fact, after riding the entire climb of Prince Peak, he suddenly realized that this route was very similar to a mountain road in his hometown, Xianyun County.

Both were winding mountain roads that climbed all the way upward, both were around 20 kilometers long, and the maximum gradient of the winding road in his hometown was even steeper.

Several of Zhejiang Province's highest peaks were located in the southwestern mountain region where his hometown lay.

Although the mountain in his hometown was not Zhejiang Province's highest peak, nor even its second-highest, its vertical elevation was still greater than Prince Peak's, reaching more than 1,800 meters.

In his previous life, he had often ridden that winding mountain road leading to a terraced-field scenic area near his hometown.

So after finishing the climb at Prince Peak, he did not find it especially surprising. It felt rather ordinary to him.

Still, he kept his tone as modest as possible.

After all, his current strength was still no match for Zhang Yi's, so he smiled and said, "Captain Zhang, you flatter me. Compared to your level, I'm still far behind!"