Cheng Che sat cross-legged on his bed, staring at the glowing "Tennis Gift Pack" on the system panel. His heart was pounding as if he had just finished a sprint.
He reached out with his mind and tapped it.
[Tennis Gift Pack opened. Congratulations, you have received the following items:] [Old Sturdy Tennis Racket ×1] [Never-Wearing Tennis Ball ×1] [Training Recovery Card ×1] [Backhand Hell Training Pack ×1] [Serve Hell Training Pack ×1] [Forehand Heavy Hammer Training Pack ×1] [Lingbo Weibu Training Pack ×1]
Cheng Che's vision blurred, and a pile of things appeared on the bed.
He picked up the racket first.
Its face was a little narrower than the rackets in Old Chen's equipment room, the edges of the frame bore faint scuff marks, and the grip tape wrapped around the handle was already somewhat worn. But the instant Cheng Che took it in his hand, he froze.
It's a perfect fit.
It's like using a racket made just for me.
The thickness of the grip, the weight of the racket head, and the balance point of the whole racket all fell exactly where he found them most comfortable.
He gave it a couple of casual swings. It felt as though his arm had grown an extension of its own.
"Great racket," he said with genuine admiration.
[A timeless classic. It may be old, but it's more than enough to train with until you reach the professional level.] A line of text floated up from the system at just the right moment.
Cheng Che put it down and looked at the other things.
The "Never-Wearing Tennis Ball" lay beside his hand, yellow-green and fuzzy, looking no different from an ordinary tennis ball.
But he knew this thing could probably last until the seas ran dry and the rocks crumbled.
The important thing was the [Training Recovery Card].
He opened its description.
[Training Recovery Card: After each training session, automatically repairs bodily strain, minor muscle pulls, and joint wear caused by training. Applies only to training-related injuries. Ineffective against non-training injuries such as those caused by fights or car accidents.]
After reading it, Cheng Che stared blankly for quite a while.
Then he slowly broke into a grin.
A godly card.
It really is a godly card.
What did athletes fear most? Injuries.
That was especially true of an individual sport like tennis, which put extreme wear on the shoulders, elbows, knees, and ankles. Nearly every professional player carried injuries.
With this card, though, no matter how brutally he trained, his body would be as good as new once he finished.
What did that mean?
It meant that while others needed a day's rest for every day they trained, he could train for a week without stopping. While other people's knees gave out by thirty, he might be perfectly fine.
Cheng Che put the recovery card away and turned his attention to the four "hell training packs."
He opened them one by one:
[Backhand Hell Training Pack: Complete 5,000 backhand strokes to receive backhand-specific experience and attribute rewards.] [Serve Hell Training Pack: Complete 10,000 serves to receive serve-specific experience and attribute rewards.] [Forehand Heavy Hammer Training Pack: Complete 10,000 forehand strokes to receive forehand-specific experience and attribute rewards.] [Lingbo Weibu Training Pack: Complete 100 hours of footwork training to receive movement-specific experience and attribute rewards.]
Four training packs, four areas, each requiring a mountain of repetitions.
Cheng Che closed the panel and lay back down.
The excitement in his heart was even stronger than before.
He had often heard people say, "Passion can carry you through the long years."
He wasn't sure whether what he felt for tennis counted as passion, but he knew that training with clear goals, immediate feedback, and visible progress was more addictive to him than drilling practice problems.
He closed his eyes.
Starting tomorrow, complete ten thousand serves.
Early the next morning.
[Ding! Yesterday's task results:] [Task "Incubus's Beauty Sleep" completed. Charm +0.3.] [Task "Incubus's Face Project" completed. Charm +0.3.]
Cheng Che rubbed his face and opened the panel.
[Host: Cheng Che] [Rank: Lesser Incubus] [Stamina: 60.9 (You're now a passable beast of burden.)] [Endurance: 60.9 (Congratulations on becoming a full-fledged gigolo.)] [Charm: 60.9 (You can try charming normal members of the opposite sex now.)] [Intelligence: 60.9 (With your current IQ, you should be able to tell mushrooms from... Never mind, keep working hard.)]
Cheng Che automatically filtered out the nonsense in parentheses. He got out of bed, washed up, changed, and stuffed the racket and the Never-Wearing Tennis Ball into an old canvas bag before heading out.
In the park, the elderly morning exercisers were already at their stations.
Cheng Che didn't head for the running track as usual.
He turned toward the southeast corner of the park, where a short stretch of abandoned wall stood. It seemed to have once been part of a management office. Most of its plaster had flaked off, but the wall itself was reasonably flat.
He put down his bag, took out the racket, and stood about six meters from the wall.
"Activate."
[Serve Hell Training Pack activated: Current progress 0/10000.]
Cheng Che tossed the ball into the air and swung.
Smack!
The ball struck the wall and bounced back.
He caught it, tossed it again, and swung again.
Smack!
Smack!
Smack!
The monotonous yet crisp sound of the ball being struck rang out in the quiet corner of the park.
A few elderly men out for a stroll after their morning exercise followed the sound over. They stood watching for quite a while, then exchanged glances.
"This kid's practicing his serve."
"He's certainly putting his back into it, but all you hear is the noise."
"Ah, to be young. Swinging away with that much energy so early in the morning."
Cheng Che was completely focused and didn't notice his surroundings at all. His world was filled with those repeated smacks.
Ten thousand serves sounded daunting, but spread out over each day, it wasn't so bad.
He wasn't crazy enough to try to finish them all in one day.
He had it all planned out: forty minutes of serve practice every morning, with extra training on Saturdays and Sundays. It wouldn't take long to finish ten thousand.
The days passed like that, one after another.
Cheng Che's daily routine was remarkably consistent:
He got up at five thirty in the morning, played tennis in the park, went home to shower and eat, then headed to school;
He followed the lessons with all his might and drilled practice problems between classes;
After school in the afternoon, he ran home, studied with total concentration for an hour in the evening, and went to bed promptly at ten thirty.
Was it hard? A little.
Was it tiring? That too.
But he never found it difficult to endure.
Because every day brought gains.
His charm was rising, his stamina was rising, and his tennis serve progress bar was rising. Even with his Chinese essays, he could feel that the words had been flowing more smoothly lately.
Saturday morning.
Cheng Che went to the park for his usual tennis practice, then came home and took a shower.
He had just come out, drying his hair, when his phone rang. It was a WeChat message from the contact labeled "Yan Ruanning's assistant, Xiao Zhou."
[Xiao Zhou: Xiao Che, meet us at one this afternoon at the small building next to the badminton hall at Spring City Sports Center. Do you need me to pick you up?]
Thanks to his sweet talk, Cheng Che and the assistant Xiao Zhou had already become good online friends.
Cheng Che thought for a moment and replied: [No need, no need. I'll get there myself. Thanks, Sister Zhou.]
[Xiao Zhou: Okay, keep an eye on the time. Don't be late!]
Cheng Che checked the time. It was still early.
He blow-dried his hair, changed into clean clothes, slung his bag over his back, and went out.
He took the subway.
It wasn't that he was being fussy about not letting Xiao Zhou pick him up. Saturday or not, Spring City traffic was just as bad early in the morning!
He knew Spring City Sports Center; he had just been to the tennis hall the previous week.
But the filming location wasn't at the tennis hall. It was in a small building at the other end of the stadium.
Cheng Che took the subway to Sports Center Station and followed the navigation halfway around before spotting a gray-and-white building in the distance.
A slightly plump young woman stood at the entrance, her hair in a bun, looking at her phone and glancing around.
Cheng Che walked over. "Hello, are you Sister Zhou?"
The young woman looked up sharply, and her eyes lit up when she saw Cheng Che. "Oh, Cheng Che? You're here, you're here! Follow me!"
She led the way at a jog, talking nonstop. "The makeup room's on the second floor. Sister Ruanning's already here, so go check in first. There are quite a few people here today, so don't be nervous."
Cheng Che thought to himself, I'm a man who's going to become the king of incubi. What kind of scene haven't I seen?
Then he followed Xiao Zhou through the door of the second-floor classroom being used as a makeup room.
The next second, he froze in the doorway.
Inside were not the "one camera and three staff members" he had imagined, but a dense crowd of twenty or thirty people.
Reflector boards, boom poles, tracks, monitors, makeup tables, and rolling racks hung with clothes packed the classroom to bursting.
Staff in vests of various colors moved back and forth through the room, while voices crackled one after another from walkie-talkies.
Cheng Che stood by the door, sweat breaking out in his palms all at once.