Three hours earlier

8:45 p.m.

Bai Haonan detested the feeling of standing on the field, even though from the very first moment he encountered that black-and-white ball, he’d loved it to the core of his bones.

It was as if he’d fallen madly in love with the pure, innocent girl who sat next to him in class—so smitten he lost his mind, despite never so much as holding her hand—only to discover that she was working in a back-alley salon, where even the butcher next door could queue up and have a turn for the right price. The sheer disgust made him want to vomit.

Everyone knew just how rotten Chinese football was these days, but Bai Haonan, who’d been in the game since he was nine, understood the filth and squalor even more deeply.

He looked at the passionate, foolish faces in the stands, then at the greedy look on the referee’s face, and thought of those mysterious bookies’ phone calls. Bai Haonan felt like a man who’d arranged a one-night stand only to show up and find a fat, ugly woman; still, he’d grit his teeth and finish the job, because that was professional ethics for a footballer.

It’s not as if you just want to play the game for its own sake.

At moments like this, every minor gesture the referee made seemed loaded with meaning.

Damn it, what exactly did that cursed text message want from him?

His SG steel studs clattered on the cement in the tunnel, but out on the grass, they bit down hard, built for sudden stops and sharp turns. Bai Haonan, though, rarely needed that kind of traction; he just drifted lazily ahead of the defensive line, his mind turning over the same question—should he let it go, or block it?

If someone took the trouble to analyze Bai Haonan’s dozen-plus years as a professional player, they might notice that this perennial benchwarmer, every time he came on, tended to shift the flow of the match. Not always the scoreline, but something deeper—an atmosphere that no statistic could capture. Sometimes he’d render the opposition’s star player completely ineffective; sometimes he’d suddenly unlock the attacking front; and sometimes, he’d turn into a gaping hole in the defense.

Bai Haonan himself couldn’t remember how many times he’d helped his team to victory by picking apart the opposition. But in the past two years, ever since receiving that mysterious phone call, he’d occasionally let a goal through, swing and miss, or gift the opposition a chance with a botched interception. No one ever noticed. Rather than paying big money to bribe forwards and change the scoreline, the bookies preferred to fix the unremarkable defenders and midfielders of weak teams—especially defensive midfielders, where anything could happen.

Each time he met the bookies’ demands, he’d pocket two hundred thousand. Bai Haonan figured he was no better than the girls selling themselves at nightclubs. He’d understood how dark and real the world was since his teens—if he didn’t sell, someone else would. He’d only have a few years left to sell his youth for a good price; why not make the most of it?

Not every match came with instructions. The mysterious texts only arrived the night before a game, and most of the time, they were blank. But sometimes, they’d specify the desired result. For a mid-to-lower table team like Blue Wind, losing was the norm; winning would be a shock upset. Unless it was a special occasion, they were usually told to lose by a certain number, in order to wipe out the small-time gamblers who bet on the obvious outcomes.

So Bai Haonan didn’t find it too hard. If they could win, they’d try; the key was whether the bookies had bribed the opposition to throw the match. If not, losing by two or three, or by four or five, made no difference.

Players like him—defenders and midfielders from weak teams—were the bookies’ favorite targets. The more discreet, the better. The bookies didn’t want the match-fixing to be obvious; they wanted those clueless fans to keep believing everything on the field was a genuine, hard-fought contest!

And now, the new black foreign striker was bearing down with the ball...

Bai Haonan took a deep breath. Since he couldn’t figure out what the text message meant, and there was no time to check the odds online, all he could do was play to win and hope that would be enough for the bookies. With that decision made, he drew back his right foot and slid sideways to intercept.

It was over in a blink. The Brazilian striker, who’d never paid any attention to this local substitute, reacted as usual—mockingly shifting the ball past Bai Haonan’s reckless lunge with an outside-foot flick, slipping right by and heading for the back line.

But with a heavy thud, what should have been a smooth move ended abruptly as the foreign striker crashed squarely into Bai Haonan’s shoulder. The veteran, at twenty-eight, subtly lifted his elbow—a hidden move, sharp and solid, waiting for that split second when the striker’s ribs met his elbow tip. The striker’s body, in the midst of a high-speed aerobic run, seemed to seize up. He staggered back, winded and dazed!

Bai Haonan knew full well that the striker’s favorite trick was that outside-foot flick. He’d already succeeded five or six times in the first half, so Bai Haonan deliberately left a gap, feinting away, only to swing his entire body back into the path at the last moment, blocking the ball cleanly. Not even a referee on the take could find fault with that move, and the entire stadium of ten thousand erupted in thunderous cheers!

In a match as closely contested as this, three or four clean tackles like that would be impressive. For a substitute to pull it off right after coming on—the crowd was electrified!

Bai Haonan felt the satisfying pressure of his studs on the ball—that was “touch.” He lifted his head, taking in the movement of every player on the field, rolled the ball forward with the sole of his foot, then swung his leg and sent a long pass thirty meters upfield...

Nearly twenty years ago, when Bai Haonan first fell in love with football, it was from reading a poster about the Brazilian national team’s captain, who was famed for being able to hit a coin fifty meters away with a pass. As an awestruck boy, that seemed nothing short of miraculous.

He’d practiced ever since; maybe not accurate enough to hit a coin at thirty meters, but at least a watermelon.

From the moment the striker charged in to Bai Haonan’s long pass, it was all over in a flash—smooth, fluid, and seamless. The ball landed perfectly in the path of his team’s sprinting forward. The crowd leaped to their feet, held their breath, then roared as one: “Score!”

The young forward who’d been joking around with Bai Haonan at lunch took off with a few powerful strides, leaving the defenders behind, but the angle for the shot was poor. With the disappointment of tens of thousands ringing in his ears, he still tried, but the shot was wild.

Bai Haonan didn’t mind. He glanced at the frustrated forward forty meters away, ignored the winger who was ranting about a missed pass, and turned back to help the foreign striker, who was still clutching his chest. Smiling, but with venom in his voice, he snarled, “Shit! Fuck you! Fuck you! Shit!”

The foreigner stared in disbelief at the treatment.

Bai Haonan leaned in closer, even more viciously: “Shit! Shit! Shit! Fuck you, you bastard!” Not that he knew many words—those were all picked up in bars and nightclubs. If his opponent had been Chinese, he could have unleashed a torrent of local dialect curses.

But it worked. A few minutes later, when the black striker got the ball again, he had a chance to pass, but seeing Bai Haonan’s mocking grin from eight meters away, he chose to take him on out of spite.

The more confident a player is in his footwork, the more likely he is to try to beat his marker with his favorite move, to wash away the shame of being bested. It’s like a one-on-one duel in basketball—he wants to crush you, body and soul.

You don’t count as a real athlete without that kind of fire, and as long as you don’t lose your head, even the coach encourages it.

The striker closed the distance to within two meters—a razor-thin margin for pros. Players with explosive power could change the dynamic in an instant; those with fancy footwork could shift their marker’s balance. This player used sudden changes of pace—an African’s natural spring and flexibility.

He stopped and started, a dangerous move that could easily dump a defender on his backside. Bai Haonan, though, stepped out early and blocked the striker’s favored right side, cutting off his usual route.

He knew the striker’s right foot was far stronger than his left; nine times out of ten, he dribbled right, with the left just for support. Maybe the left was still better than Bai Haonan’s own, but the right was so good that when the body reacted instinctively, it always went that way. So Bai Haonan’s interception left him uncomfortable, forcing him to use the left to nudge the ball and try to switch back to the right. Bai Haonan stepped up again, blocking the right. The striker had to go left again. After two or three moves, they drifted from the center over to the left side. Both teams’ players kept switching positions, trying to help, but the fired-up striker never looked up—he let out a roar and, relying on his springy, rubber-like physique, tried to burst past on the right, finally pulling away by half a meter—a gap of physical class that brains alone couldn’t close.

Bai Haonan didn’t hesitate—he slid in hard, still cursing: “Shit! Fuck you, you…!”

The striker, thinking he’d finally broken free, felt a sudden sharp pain in his calf and went sprawling, with a string of half-understood insults ringing in his ears. He looked down in disbelief and saw the steel studs had gouged a gash along his leg!

To the Jiangzhou fans, Lao Nan’s do-or-die style was ferocious—he’d already upended the opposition’s top weapon twice in the first half, and the crowd’s blood was pumping. Some sections of the stands began to chant in unison: “Go! Crush him!”

The whole stadium felt as if it had been doused in gasoline and set ablaze.

Such a shift in atmosphere was invisible in any statistic. Old Chen’s mouth curled in a satisfied, proud smile as he leaned back in his seat at the dugout, no longer pacing and shouting as he had in the first half.