Didn't Expect It, Did You? My Brother's a Climber

Huang Chong was incredibly excited at that moment.

Not because the race had gone entirely according to his rhythm and plan, allowing him to win the championship with ease.

Nor because he had won the hefty 28,888 prize.

Well, the prize money was certainly worth celebrating, but not enough to make him this excited.

What thrilled him was that, when he focused on the system's reward text, he discovered that the newly added electrolyte sports drink in the daily gift pack was measured by the case, not by the bottle!

"Fifty cases? Am I seeing this right?"

After crossing the finish line, Huang Chong did not stop riding. Instead, he adjusted his gearing to make things easier and continued forward in Zone One for a cool-down.

This was to flush out the excess lactic acid buildup in his body, part of the muscle-relaxation process.

Although he had plenty of supplies now—enough to last the next few months—he had always believed in saving whenever possible.

Besides, today's effort did not even compare to a single Prince Peak HC climb from last week, when Zhang Yi had led them on a ride through Western Zhejiang Sky Road.

He had not even gotten his fill. Just as he was about to find his rhythm, it had abruptly ended. There was no need to eat a Training Recovery Energy Gel at all.

Huang Chong descended from the finish line all the way to the foot of the mountain, after which came a long, flat stretch of road without the slightest rise or dip.

It was the perfect kind of road for relaxing, and it gave him enough leisure to inspect the system storage space.

Just as the system had said, the storage space was piled almost like a small mountain with those so-called electrolyte sports drinks.

There were fifty full cases, with eight bottles per case and 500 milliliters per bottle—a total of four hundred bottles.

"Damn, this system is way too generous. With this gift pack, won't I be able to stop carrying a cycling bottle altogether? No more mixing electrolyte water, and no more choking down those horribly salty salt tablets either?"

After confirming that he really had received fifty cases of sports drinks, Huang Chong immediately took out a bottle, wanting to taste it.

But the moment the thought arose, the system prompted him again:

[To ensure that the host can use the beverage more conveniently, would you like the beverage to be directly replenished into the host's cycling water bottle?]

Huang Chong froze when he saw the prompt, then immediately understood why the system offered this option.

At professional races, riders were watched from start to finish by referees and broadcast camera crews.

Especially after becoming a star rider, the eyes of cycling fans around the world would be fixed on those top names.

If the system put some unknown sports drink on his bike frame, it would inevitably draw discussion from curious fans.

What was he drinking?

Was it some suspicious concoction packed with performance-enhancing drugs?

Once that kind of talk started, it would surely spark endless rumors afterward.

The system had stated that none of its items could test positive for prohibited substances under any currently existing doping tests.

But when rumors started flying, mud splashed on your pants still looked like shit, whether it was or not.

So the best solution was to prevent the discussion from happening in the first place.

By offering to automatically fill his cycling bottle, the system had perfectly solved that problem.

He could even use the water provided in the team's bottles to cool himself down in the future, then keep the empty bottles to fill with system drinks. Just thinking about it was exhilarating.

Without another word, Huang Chong decisively emptied the cycling bottle on his frame. It happened to hold exactly 500 milliliters. Then he replied in his mind, "Yes, please fill my cycling water bottle directly with the drink."

[Settings complete. If the host wishes to change the replenishment method, it may be changed at any time by thought. Replenishment complete.]

Seeing the prompt, Huang Chong found that the cycling bottle he had just emptied had instantly been refilled with an orange liquid. He was very satisfied.

This system was incredibly smart. Not only had it considered how to avoid drawing unwanted public attention, but it had also accounted for the possibility that he might forget to bring a cycling bottle one day, in which case it could provide the drink in its original packaging according to his preference.

He lifted the bottle and took a sip. It had a faint orange flavor, slightly sweet, slightly sour, and faintly salty—a layered taste.

It was delicious, like Gatorade's orange flavor, yet also somewhat like old-school Jianlibao.

But unlike those drinks, this one had no harshness. It was not carbonated, its texture was incredibly smooth, and the various flavors blended together perfectly.

Most importantly, after Huang Chong finished cooling down and rode back to the finish line, he found that unlike ordinary sucrose drinks, it did not make his mouth produce a great deal of saliva after drinking it.

Clearly, this stuff contained no high-calorie sucrose. Its sweetness came entirely from fresh orange juice and other sugar substitutes, making it a healthy, low-fat sports drink.

"How did the race turn out? Who won in the end?"

At the finish line, the four domestiques whom Huang Chong had dropped soon reached the summit one after another.

But when they asked Little Rice Grain, who had driven over early to record the overall results at the finish line, they received a wry answer.

"President Du's friend won, but only by the length of a bike. He won with a sprint against President Zhou!"

The news struck the four domestiques like a bolt from the blue.

They glanced at Zhou Ming, who was already resting beneath a temporarily erected sunshade, and saw that their benefactor was expressionless, his face as wilted as a frostbitten eggplant. They knew they were done for.

But had they failed to give their all to protect Zhou Ming's bid for victory?

Not at all.

Each of them had squeezed out every last bit of energy to answer Huang Chong's four consecutive attacks.

Without their pursuit, Zhou Ming would never have been able to keep battling his opponent until the final sprint. He would have been left behind long ago.

But the result had already been decided. There was no point in reviewing it now.

Their benefactor had lost, and based on what they knew of Zhou Ming's personality, he would probably not listen to any explanation.

At that moment, they had basically prepared themselves to be kicked aside by Zhou Ming, to lose their chance at such generous treatment, and to return home in disgrace to keep working for bike shops.

"We can only blame ourselves for not being strong enough. Even after giving it everything, we still couldn't protect President Zhou's victory," one of them could not help muttering with a sigh.

"Honestly, we thought that with President Zhou setting up this route, plus all of us leading and protecting him the entire way, the championship would be in the bag. And we did drop President Du early on, but President Du happened to bring a climber—" another sighed dejectedly.

"Forget everything else. That kid surnamed Huang is seriously strong on climbs. He launched four consecutive attacks on the ascent, dropping one of us every single time, as if he had planned it all out beforehand. Then he still had enough in the tank to sprint past President Zhou at the end. He's a complete climbing monster!"

"Where did a rider like that even come from? With his strength, he should definitely be the main GC leader of an amateur team. We shouldn't have never heard of him. We join so many rides, and the major teams in Hangzhou all know people from one another. Which team do you think he belongs to?"

"Who knows? But does that even matter?"

Seeing that his companions still had the mood to investigate Huang Chong's background, one of them mockingly said, "We should be thinking about how to face President Zhou's wrath!"

Just as they were all preparing to be scolded by their benefactor, Du Wei finally arrived. More than twenty minutes behind Huang Chong, he pedaled painfully across the finish line with a face as red as a peach.

After learning the final result from Little Rice Grain and discovering that Huang Chong had really beaten Zhou Ming at the last moment to take the championship, Du Wei was nearly too breathless to speak. Yet he did not even pause to recover before hurrying over to the resting Zhou Ming and bursting into laughter.

"Brother Zhou, you tried to pull a fast one and ended up losing the farm, huh?

You're one sneaky bastard. You set up so many climbs just to screw me over.

Too bad man proposes, heaven disposes. Didn't expect it, did you? My brother's a climber! Hahaha!

You brought five guys to gang up on one, and every last one of you got dropped by my brother. Do you even know how to ride?"

Hearing Du Wei's booming, thunderous mockery, Zhou Ming was furious, yet he had no way to argue.

In competitive sports, if you lost, being weak was the original sin.

What else could he say?