A fleeting hero, like a firework.

Every sport has its distinction between the professional and the amateur. Without height, jumping ability, or technique, one can never perform basketball’s most graceful dunks. Ping-pong is a game anyone can play, yet the technical threshold for top-spin loops and flicks is so clear and high that ordinary people rarely break past it. The twelve-second barrier in the hundred-meter dash sits there, unyielding; if you can’t do it, no matter what top-tier shoes or branded athletic wear you put on, you’ll never break twelve seconds—a feat the vast majority will never achieve in a lifetime.

But football is different. In this sport, anyone who loves the game might, by chance, score a spectacular goal worthy of the world stage. With the right luck and timing, even a wild long-range shot or an exquisite bicycle kick could find the net. It is the ultimate easy-to-learn, difficult-to-master game. Even a group of hopeless amateurs can find pure joy in playing, so long as their skills are roughly equal—unlike tennis, where, if you’re not at a certain level, you’ll spend the whole time chasing balls, to the point of maddening frustration.

For professional footballers, the odds of scoring a wonder goal in training are even higher. Practicing set pieces, after ten or twenty kicks, a world-class shot will almost certainly appear. For the truly skilled, this ratio goes up. Yet, it’s not uncommon for a player to dazzle in practice and show nothing of that brilliance in a real match. Football depends so much on form and fortune.

It is as mysterious and unpredictable as life itself.

Why else do gambling companies rarely pick basketball or volleyball as their main material?

Across the globe, football is the first choice of every major betting firm.

That world has long become an underworld—sooner or later, everyone pays their dues.

And so, in that instant, Bai Haonan was certain he was truly doomed.

His right hand, already by the woman’s cheek, instinctively gripped the bucket seat’s racing backrest. His left, flung onto the steering wheel after losing his phone, braced him as his whole body tensed, rigid as steel, rolling with the car.

It was pure instinct—there was nothing else he could do.

Two unbelted bodies crashed together, the powerful centrifugal force pinning the woman tightly against Bai Haonan, both of them crushed into a corner of the car.

He couldn’t even process the elastic softness his nose encountered—there was only one thought: I’m finished! The sports car slammed down, landing upside down.

Metal shrieked across asphalt, then all fell silent.

Bai Haonan was in disbelief.

He owed his survival to the car’s reinforced roll cage, to the fact they’d been wedged together, and above all, to the extraordinary strength and reflexes his body had honed. Though the impact was enormous, he did not even lose consciousness.

The violence of the roll and crash, the abrupt stillness—it could only have lasted a second or two, yet it felt like the world had been turned upside down.

If he didn’t count the unknown woman beginning to vomit, Bai Haonan himself was miraculously unharmed. Even inverted, he shoved her aside, kicked open the lightweight door, and dragged himself out of the wreck, ignoring the pain and damp warmth on his head—alcohol numbing whatever nerves might feel it. What overwhelmed him now was a raw, indescribable will to live.

A burning desire, as if reborn from certain death. He wanted to live.

He had never wanted so fiercely to survive as he did now.

That visceral impulse drove him to crawl out, heedless of the trembling in his legs. He forced himself out on his back, and as he lay on the ground, under the dim glow of streetlights, he saw at once that the blue sports car’s front engine compartment was completely gone.

The whole front end—like a snapped corncob—was sheared off from the body. Not far away, a massive four-wheeled construction vehicle loomed, its steel bucket glittering coldly, bloodily adorned with the sports car’s mangled remains.

That bloodiness was, of course, gasoline and oil spilling everywhere, their stench making Bai Haonan’s limbs begin to shake.

That many-ton construction vehicle had clearly come with lethal intent, aiming to kill everyone in the sports car.

Had the woman in the passenger seat not vomited, had Bai Haonan not, by some stroke of fate, slammed on the brakes, the steel bucket’s row of teeth would have torn through the car, through his body, and sent him straight to the afterlife.

When you live by the sword, you die by it—when a life is to be taken, it is done in the most ruthless way. No mercy, no second chance.

There was no time for reflection. Two dark figures had already leapt down from the cab, one or two meters high, rushing over—perhaps shocked that the sports car had survived what should have been a sure kill, cursing as they swung something menacing…

Bai Haonan didn’t even have a chance to stand. He could only roll on the ground, and a thick steel rod, whistling through the air, smashed into the pavement just beside his neck and shoulder.

Bits of concrete sprayed his face stinging hot—another clear attempt to kill.

Oddly, seeing living men, Bai Haonan felt as if he’d returned from hell to the world of the living. Bracing his back against the car, he kicked off a door, propelling himself at the nearest shadow, colliding with all his might and locking the man in his grip.

Tall and powerfully built, Bai Haonan brought the steel-rod-wielding attacker crashing to the ground in an instant. The man, caught off guard, had no room to wield his weapon at such close quarters. Before he could reverse the rod to strike, Bai Haonan, desperate, smashed his forehead into the man’s face—a movement honed by years of heading footballs, delivered with professional force. The man’s head reeled, and Bai Haonan, seizing the advantage, leapt up and swung his leg in a mighty kick to the attacker’s head.

The impact was so solid it felt as if he’d kicked a football clear off the pitch.

A move as professional as any.

The would-be killer, just moments ago brandishing his weapon, collapsed without a sound, limp as a sack of grain.

Bai Haonan, jaw clenched, snatched up the steel rod. He had never killed before, but as a professional athlete, he’d never been a stranger to a brawl. Looking at the other shadow, now stunned, he could feel his heart pounding, his body dizzy with exertion even without a proper warm-up.

He knew it was adrenaline flooding his brain—the team doctor, old Qin, had lectured him enough about this. Control it, or your stamina would plummet.

The second shadow, perhaps convinced his partner would have no trouble with a crash victim, had hung back several meters, a cigarette dangling from his lips, making no move to help. Now, in a panic, he reached behind his back and drew a gun.

Bai Haonan had heard rumors of such men’s ruthlessness, but this was his first time facing a gun—at least, from the silhouette, a handgun of some sort. He felt his blood freeze, the steel rod slipping from his nerveless fingers, clattering to the ground.

There was no way to fight this.

He was dead.

The man’s confidence returned. He spat his cigarette out with a flourish. “You little—!”

But before he could finish, the cigarette hit the ground and ignited the spilled fuel—a roiling, meter-high flame engulfed the man standing in it.

The gunman shrieked, thrashing, then fell, trying to smother the flames, only to forget again that the ground was slick with fuel. He rolled in the inferno, consumed.

As the fire blazed up, Bai Haonan, who had survived by a hair’s breadth, turned and ran, his legs weak but finding that familiar push-off, his stride lengthening. But the sudden change of direction unbalanced him; he stumbled and fell, and in that instant he saw, upside down in the car, the woman—her body stark white amid the mangled blue metal and firelight, a beacon in the chaos.

Even as his mind was wholly occupied with survival, Bai Haonan instinctively lunged for the car door, yanking the woman free, tearing her clothing in the process, and finally dragging her voluptuous form through the twisted window, all thanks, perhaps, to the absence of a seatbelt.

But as he pulled her out, a blast of fire erupted behind him, a roar like fireworks.

Bai Haonan knew that his career as a professional footballer had gone up in smoke with that explosion—gone, along with everything else.