Smooth Descent

[Detected that the host is descending at high speed. Please maintain an average speed of at least 25 KM/H and safely clear at least 10 hairpin turns. Reward: 2 Basic Optimization Points, Brain Reaction Enhancer x1]

[Brain Reaction Enhancer: After consumption, enhances the host's mental reflexes and improves thinking agility. When taking high-speed corners downhill or crashing while riding, it enables rapid reactions in critical moments to take appropriate countermeasures.]

"Brain Reaction Enhancer? This is another good thing!"

After reading the description of the new supplementary drug, Huang Chong could not help but marvel. Was the system planning to optimize all of his innate physical traits first?

Mental reflexes were undoubtedly among the most important qualities for professional athletes in any field.

Not only did road cyclists need them, but F1 drivers did too, as did basketball players, footballers, esports competitors, and practically every other professional athlete. They all needed reflexes far beyond those of ordinary people.

One could even say that what people generally considered athletic talent largely referred to innate reaction speed.

Huang Chong knew full well that before activating his cheat, he had not been any kind of genius. He had been exceptionally ordinary.

He came from an ordinary family, had ordinary physical talent, possessed ordinary intelligence, and attended an ordinary undergraduate university.

If nothing unexpected had happened, he would have found an ordinary partner and lived out an ordinary life.

But he knew that he was no longer ordinary.

After taking all kinds of supplementary drugs provided by the system, his body had long since surpassed that of his past life.

His potential was constantly being raised, especially his most important cardiopulmonary capacity.

Now that a supplementary drug capable of enhancing mental reflexes had appeared, once he took it, the system would optimize him from head to toe, from body to mind.

"Safely clear ten hairpin turns at 25 KM/H?

Looks like System Dad knows why I was reborn too!

Is that why it deliberately lowered the difficulty to something I could casually complete?"

Huang Chong could not help mocking himself inwardly.

This cornering speed posed no challenge to him at all.

Downhill sections were probably the favorite stretches for amateur cycling enthusiasts.

After all, they could enjoy exhilarating speed and excitement without having to put out any effort themselves.

But for professional riders, descents were the most dangerous sections of a race.

Huang Chong did not like descending, especially when facing these endlessly winding, consecutive hairpin turns.

Not only was the gradient too steep, but the difficulty was high. It required total concentration, and it was hard to gain much of an advantage over riders of the same level.

After all, not everyone was Tom Pidcock, daring enough to attack on a high-speed descent and make up more than a minute on someone else.

In the top-tier UCI WorldTour races, Huang Chong had seen quite a few professional riders suffer crashes while taking downhill corners on livestreams.

It was especially dangerous in rainy weather. The roads became slick, and road bike tires were already narrow with limited grip. Rain only made that problem worse.

If they were lucky, they would suffer torn flesh and broken bones, then retire from the race on the spot.

If they were unlucky, they could end up like Evenepoel, known as the Little Cannonball and the pinnacle of human flat-road ITT performance. During a descent in Il Lombardia, one of the five Monument Classics, he had accidentally fallen off a bridge and nearly lost his life and his entire career.

Some even flew straight off the course on a descent and died instantly.

The only consolation was that abroad, following racing tradition, the deceased rider's name would be inscribed at the site of the accident, forever commemorating them.

But to be honest, however unpleasant the thought might be, Huang Chong had no desire for people to remember his name that way.

Especially since he had already ended one life that way in his previous life.

Although the accident had not been his fault—the sedan coming from the inside lane had been speeding, had not honked, and had seriously crossed the line into his lane, forcing him off the shoulder.

But regardless of how the law assigned responsibility for the accident, he had been the one who lost his life.

If he had taken that corner a little slower, then even if the other driver had illegally crossed into his lane, he would not have failed to react in time and ultimately fallen to his death.

So in the face of death, assigning blame no longer meant anything.

The only lesson was that while one was still alive, one must never indulge in wishful thinking.

Of course, descending from the summit of Prince Peak was different from descending back in his hometown.

From here, the view looking down was unobstructed. He could see the route through every hairpin turn and all information about passing vehicles at a glance.

Unlike in his hometown, where the mountains blocked the view. If motor vehicles did not honk, there was no way to know whether one might suddenly emerge from a hairpin turn.

So, with full visibility in advance and teammates riding ahead to control a safe pace, Huang Chong descended all the way to the foot of the mountain with remarkable smoothness.

Whether it was his line choice or his technique entering and exiting turns, he was far from a complete novice.

For example, he knew to slow down before entering a turn, then ride from the outside shoulder toward the apex at a speed he could fully control. Without crossing the line into the opposite lane, he shifted his body weight toward the direction of the turn.

At the same time, he had to raise the crank on the side corresponding to the direction of his weight shift to its highest point and avoid pedaling throughout the turn.

This prevented the bike from leaning too far during the turn, causing the crank and pedal to strike the road, upsetting the bike's balance, and leading to a crash.

"Huang Chong, your cornering is so smooth. You really don't look like a beginner who's been riding for less than a year.

Have you really only been cycling for such a short time?

Why do I keep feeling like you've been riding for years, just like us?"

On the descent, Huang Chong followed behind Wang Qiang and Chen Guangming, while Liu Junjie deliberately chose to ride behind Huang Chong.

He wanted to see how this kid would perform downhill after showing such strong climbing ability.

The result was exactly as he expected. Huang Chong's descending ability was indeed silky smooth.

Although he was not at the level of a professional rider, he was absolutely first-rate among amateur cyclists.

Liu Junjie considered himself one of the better descenders on the team. His hometown was also in the mountains, and he often rode mountain roads when returning home. He had more opportunities to train, so naturally his level was somewhat higher.

Yet he discovered that Huang Chong was not inferior to him in the slightest.

When leaning into turns, Huang Chong could even achieve a greater lean angle than he could.

That meant that if they were truly racing on a closed course and let loose with their speed, Huang Chong would be faster through the corners than him.

That was definitely impossible without years of accumulated descending experience.

In road cycling, personal talent was certainly important, but without daily accumulation and training over countless kilometers, it was all just empty talk.

Take Pogačar, the world's number one rider today. His everyday training casually involved five or six consecutive hours of Zone 2 aerobic work, with power reaching as high as 350W.

So no matter how talented a rider was, they still had to build results through time and mileage.

"I really wasn't lying to you, Brother Liu.

But Xianyun County, where I'm from, is a small mountain town. The roads are all winding, and the slopes rise and fall sharply.

Maybe it's because I usually ride mountain roads more often and ride straight, flat roads less, so I ended up like this?"

The explanation was convincing. Liu Junjie himself had trained on mountain roads, so after thinking it over, he did not ask any further questions.

And after Huang Chong successfully cleared every hairpin turn on Prince Peak, the system reward finally refreshed!