Chapter 1 What to Do Next?

The team was on vacation. What to do next?

Chen Hero, of course, wanted to go home. He had been separated from his parents for half a year, and he missed them. It was a good opportunity to go back and see them. Besides, his son was making money abroad, which could be considered returning home in glory.

But what about Yesenin?

"I'll go home with you," Yesenin said, pushing up his glasses. "I think your parents need to meet your agent. Then you can just leave me alone."

Chen Hero looked at him, then thought of something else: "Right, if I go back to China, what about the training and stuff?"

Yesenin was taken aback, obviously not expecting Chen Hero to ask such a question: "Aren't you on vacation? Why would you train on vacation?"

"Of course, I want to improve myself as soon as possible. The new season is coming, and next season we'll be playing in the UEFA Cup. I don't want to waste time like this," Chen Hero said, spreading his hands.

Chen Hero fully understood that the higher the level, the harder it was to level up. It took him more than two weeks to level up from Level 7 to Level 8. Of course, this was partly due to his laziness and going out to eat, drink, and have fun with the gang. But the most important thing was that the experience required to level up was increasing.

Therefore, he had to consider using his vacation for training.

"I think the instance training mode is pretty good. I can train anywhere, without a venue, which is very convenient. So I want to ask if I can continue to train after returning to China."

Yesenin thought for a moment: "It's possible… but it might be inconvenient if you disappear inexplicably for more than an hour in front of others, right?"

The instance system was that your whole person moved from the real world to the instance for training. If you were in the instance, you naturally couldn't be in reality. Therefore, the Chen Hero in the instance could not be seen or found in reality.

Chen Hero waved his hand dismissively: "That's not a problem. It's just a vacation. I don't believe I can't even have one hour of private time a day."

Yesenin also felt that Chen Hero had a point. There were many excuses to create training opportunities.

He nodded: "Okay. I have no problem."

Chen Hero was stunned: "What do you mean, no problem? You have to tell me what to do!"

Before, Yesenin had taken Chen Hero into the instance training, so he had no idea how to enter the instance on his own.

Yesenin snapped his fingers: "It's done now."

"What's done?" Chen Hero was confused.

"Do you remember what your training ground looks like?"

"Of course, I remember."

"Very good, close your eyes and recall the appearance of your training ground in your mind, the more detailed the better."

Although Chen Hero didn't understand what was going on, he still closed his eyes and did as he was told. He tried hard to recall every plant and tree in the training ground. To be honest, it wasn't difficult, because he had trained there for half a season, and he knew what the training ground looked like even with his eyes closed.

When he heard Yesenin say "okay," he opened his eyes and was frightened by what he saw.

In front of him were green trees, grass, and wire fences… blue sky and white clouds… he was standing on the Yudeni Park training ground!

"This…" Chen Hero was dumbfounded.

"There's no one here yet, because you only thought of the training ground. Actually, it's just materializing your memory," Yesenin explained from the side.

Chen Hero quickly closed his eyes again. This time, he tried to recall his teammates in his mind. In the process, he first heard Denisov's voice: "What are you standing there for, Hero?" Because he was most familiar with the captain, he thought of him first.

Then came Anyukov's laughter: "Thinking about which beauty? When should we go again?"

When Chen Hero opened his eyes again, the whole team was in front of him, even assistant coach Porter.

Yesenin applauded from the side: "Good job, Hero. Now you know how to enter the instance, right?"

Chen Hero nodded: "Just think about it."

He suddenly thought of another question: "I want to increase my burden…"

"Take two steps, try taking two steps?"

As soon as Chen Hero lifted his leg, he felt like it was filled with lead. He laughed: "It's done!"

"If you want to train on your own after returning to China, and I'm not around, just do this," Yesenin said.

"Wait, how do I exit?"

"Just think about exiting."

"It's that simple?" Chen Hero was particularly surprised.

"It's that simple," Yesenin nodded.

"Then doesn't that mean I can't think about quitting during training?"

"That's right. You have to persevere until the end of training."

Chen Hero understood that this was completely a test of his willpower. After training in the instance, he would understand that training there was quite uncomfortable, and every minute was torment for the trainee.

He nodded: "Interesting, I got it."

While Chen Hero was scouring Saint Petersburg for local specialties, planning to bring them back to China to honor his parents, what he didn't know was that a rather loud debate had already been triggered among fans on the Chinese internet because of him…

It started when a fan who liked soccer betting and often paid attention to those lower-level leagues accidentally discovered a person named "hero_Chen" frequently appearing in the goalscorers list when studying Russian league match reports. Especially in the last eleven rounds of the league, his name appeared almost continuously.

Logically speaking, the surname "Chen" should only appear in East Asia. Judging from the spelling, it didn't seem like it would be from other regions. This fan suddenly became interested – could it be a Chinese player? But his name didn't sound like a Chinese name… Chen Heluo? It should be "heluo." Could it be that the old Russian's tongue was too big, and he mispronounced it as "hero"?

With these questions, this fan found the official website of Zenit Saint Petersburg.

As soon as he opened it, he saw Chen Hero's photo…

Next to it was a news article about Zenit announcing a new two-year contract with the team's center forward, Chen Hero.

The news didn't provide much information about Chen Hero's identity, only a simple sentence: "This Chinese center forward."

The word "Chinese" stimulated this fan. Like discovering a new continent, he posted a screenshot of this news and the photo on the Fan Family section of Tianya Community.

The title was very shocking and absolutely eye-catching. It looked like it had the potential to be a headline grabber on sports and other online media: "Hope for Chinese Football?! Chinese Center Forward Appears in Russian Super League, Amazing Data of Ten Goals in Eleven Games!"

This sensational title attracted many people to click in to see what was going on. Some people sprayed the poster as a "sB" without even reading the content, while others came in and said, "Poster, can we not talk about Chinese football?" Of course, when these people read the news translated by the poster, they found that it was really a Chinese player, and the debate began – was he really a Chinese player?

"...just has an Asian face... Besides, foreigners often confuse us with Koreans, Japanese..."

"Stop kidding, if Chinese football had this kind of player, the media would have hyped him up as a soccer king, how could he still be unknown?"

"How could this be a Chinese player? The name is not right! No Chinese people have this name! Hei Luo Chen? Chen Hei Luo? What parents would be so cruel as to give their children this name!"

"I think he should be a Chinese player! Maybe he went abroad directly? There are players who go abroad directly now..."

"Maybe he's a Russian player of Chinese descent..."

"Damn, this news is too vague! It only says a Chinese center forward, who knows where he's from? Is there any more detailed information?"

The great human flesh search engine started.

Many enthusiastic Chinese fans flocked to the official website of Zenit Saint Petersburg, wanting to find all the information about this "hero_Chen."

But obviously, Zenit's official website was not very careful with player information. On Chen Hero's page, there was nothing else except his photo, name, height, weight, position, number, and nationality...

He did look like a Chinese person, but what was the use of looks? In today's world, there are too many Asians, who knows if he's a real Chinese person?

The biggest achievement of the human flesh search was the speculation that this person's name should be – "Chen Hero." Hero is the meaning of hero, maybe the official directly used the English word as Chen Hero's name.

This guess was not confirmed, but some fans online had already started calling this "Chinese" player, whose name was still unknown, "Hero."

The Fan Family section of Tianya Community gathered a lot of fans, and of course, there were also many sports media reporters who occasionally came here to take a look, or simply registered a pseudonym and transformed into ordinary fans to hang out in the forum, saying things that they wouldn't dare to say in their usual reporter identity...

So this debate quickly entered the media's view.

First, *Football* reported on this matter in its newspaper, saying that a mysterious Chinese player was currently playing for Zenit Saint Petersburg in the Russian league, scoring ten goals in eleven league games, an amazing efficiency. But who was this mysterious Chinese player? No one knew...

Of course, as *Football's* arch-rival, *Titan Sports* naturally wanted to come out and contradict *Football*. They said that they had specifically checked with the Chinese Football Association, and there was no player named Chen Hero in the list of players registered with the Chinese Football Association, so this person was definitely not a Chinese player. So who was he? Maybe a Korean player or a North Korean player. Everyone knew that after Advocaat coached Zenit Saint Petersburg, three Korean players joined the team, so maybe this player with the surname Chen was also a Korean? It's just that he shouldn't be a player on the Korean national team, perhaps a player from within Korea, seeing that he was only eighteen years old, he should be a young player who was previously unknown...

*Titan Sports'* analysis was well-reasoned, and *Football* was not to be outdone.

In addition to competing on their respective newspaper fronts, they also used their personal blogs on online platforms to ridicule their opponents using Chen Hero's matter. Anyway, it was common for the two families to argue, and everyone just watched the show.

But was there really a Chen Hero?

While scolding behind each other's backs was one thing, this matter still had to be clarified. Everyone also knew that if Chinese football really produced such a great figure, it would be a powerful shot in the arm for the depressed Chinese football!

If the Russian league hadn't already ended, they might have really sent reporters to Russia to find out.

When Chen Hero and Yesenin boarded the plane from Saint Petersburg to Seoul, the capital of South Korea, on their way back to China, he had no idea that he was already being targeted by the domestic media...