Chapter 1 I've Leveled Up!

When Chen Yingxiong saw his experience bar refresh on the webpage, he couldn't help but laugh out loud—finally, he had leveled up!

Yes, after tireless practice day and night, he had finally leveled up. In the early stages, without matches or goals, he could only rely on training to gain experience. Therefore, he had to adopt this method, which Advocaat found dangerous and wanted to stop, to increase his experience.

But all the hard work, all the exhaustion from Yesenin's drills every night, was worth it.

He clicked on the Talent Simulator page and, guided by Yesenin, saw a friendly number "1" in the "Available Talents" column.

This meant he had one available talent point, and he could choose to add it to the talent he liked.

What talent to add?

This was not a problem at all!

Chen Yingxiong moved the mouse directly to the "Knockdown" icon.

The talent skill description then floated beside the mouse gesture: "Knocking your opponent to the ground during an attack, with a 5, 10, 15, 20, 25% chance of not being called for a foul."

A five percent chance might not be high. It would be better if it could accumulate to fifteen percent, but who told Chen Yingxiong to be a bit of a hand-wringer before?

"Are you really sure you want to click this?" Yesenin asked.

Chen Yingxiong nodded, "Of course!"

"Are you sure you're not doing this to get revenge on your teammates?"

"Of course, I am! But it's not just that simple," Chen Yingxiong replied. "That's just a side benefit. The main purpose is still to score goals. I often knock opponents down or push them aside when competing for headers now, and many of them are called fouls. If I can reduce that chance, my goal-scoring rate will increase. So, it's mainly for scoring goals."

Seeing that Chen Yingxiong had his own ideas, Yesenin stopped talking.

Chen Yingxiong took a deep breath and then gently pressed the left mouse button.

With a "click," a red light flashed on the talent icon, and then a number "1" appeared in the lower right corner. This meant Chen Yingxiong had learned the first level of this talent skill.

Chen Yingxiong stood up from the chair, shook his muscles, and couldn't wait to find someone to test it out…

The next level up required 60,000 experience points. Chen Yingxiong now felt that relying solely on training was too tiring and boring. He asked Yesenin, "Didn't you say there was a mission system? How come I've never received a mission? And I haven't seen a yellow exclamation mark above your head…"

"Actually, you've already started doing a mission now. A main quest."

Chen Yingxiong was a little surprised, "I've already started? How come I didn't receive a mission prompt? There's no mission description either… How did it start? What's the mission objective?"

"Get a chance to play in the first team."

"This…" Chen Yingxiong didn't know what to say. He paused for a moment and asked, "That's it? No mission description or anything? Like telling me what I should do?"

"Don't you know how to get a chance to play in the first team? Train hard, win the coach's favor in training, and then add a little luck, and you'll have the opportunity to be selected for the match roster. In fact, you've already won the coach's favor in training. You train so hard that even a blind man would see it."

"Uh, what does luck refer to?"

"How would I know?"

Although he didn't know how to get selected into the league roster by Advocaat, Chen Yingxiong still worked hard in training the next day. Besides training hard, there was nothing else he could do. First of all, he wasn't one of Advocaat's three Korean proteges, so he didn't have a natural advantage. Secondly, he wasn't a veteran who had played for Zenit Saint Petersburg for many years, so the team couldn't do without him. What could he do?

However, there was one thing he was looking forward to in training—he planned to test whether the talent points he had added yesterday would really have an immediate effect.

The test subject, of course, was the Korean, Lee Ho, who just couldn't stand the sight of him.

Today, there were no set-piece tactics rehearsals like corner kicks, but rather an internal scrimmage.

Chen Yingxiong was assigned to the substitutes' side, while the three Koreans were all wearing the yellow vests that symbolized the starters.

When Chen Yingxiong's eyes met Lee Ho's, he could still feel the disdain and ridicule in the other's eyes.

He didn't know where this Korean's sense of superiority came from… Well, in terms of football as a whole, Koreans were indeed qualified to express disdain for Chinese football, but you can't express disdain for me personally. I don't represent Chinese football as a whole, do I?

After the scrimmage started, Chen Yingxiong and Lee Ho weren't directly facing each other, because one was a striker and the other was a defensive midfielder, so the two rarely met.

Until the substitutes' side got a corner kick.

Chen Yingxiong stood in the penalty area.

In such a scrimmage, the coach wouldn't ask him to be a decoy anymore. He could do whatever he wanted.

Chen Yingxiong was originally standing in front of the goal, which was where a tall center forward should be. But when he saw Lee Ho in a slightly farther area, he pulled out from in front of the goal and stood on the periphery.

Krizanac, the center back on his team, saw Chen Yingxiong run out and shouted his name, signaling him to go inside—if a center forward didn't stay inside to pressure the opponent's center backs, the space for him to insert from the back and head the ball would be much smaller.

Chen Yingxiong explained to the Croatian international, "They definitely all know I'm the decoy. You attack, we'll switch, and then we'll have a chance to score."

Krizanac thought about it and felt that what Chen Yingxiong said seemed to make sense. In training, Chen Yingxiong had always played the role of a decoy, and everyone was familiar with this.

Maybe switching it up would have an effect?

Chen Yingxiong patted Krizanac on the shoulder, "You go inside, Ivica."

Krizanac thus took over Chen Yingxiong's task and ran to the front of the goal.

Chen Yingxiong wasn't afraid that his teammates wouldn't pass the ball to him, because according to the previous tactical drills, this corner kick was mainly for the teammates in front of the goal to attract the opponent's defenders' attention, and then the ball would be kicked in an out-swinging arc, bypassing the near post and coming directly to the outside, where the players on the outside would insert from the back and attack the goal.

After everything was ready, Ilya Maximov kicked the ball out, just as Chen Yingxiong had thought, the ball drew an out-swinging arc and went straight to the penalty spot!

Just as Maximov kicked the ball out, Chen Yingxiong also started moving, and he rushed towards Lee Ho, who was helping defend in the center!

Lee Ho was originally turning his head to look at the ball. When he saw the ball flying over, he jumped up to compete for the header.

Just at this moment, his center of gravity suddenly tilted, and before he could react to what was happening… he was already flying out sideways…

As he fell, he saw that the position where he had been standing was now occupied by a behemoth!

Chen Yingxiong didn't spread his arms out. He just crashed into him with his body. Without any suspense, the Korean international, who was one meter eighty-two tall and weighed seventy-five kilograms, was knocked away by him.

Then, he headed the ball!

The ball went into the net, and the starting goalkeeper, Kontofalskis, didn't make any saves. He just watched Chen Yingxiong head the ball into the goal—perhaps he didn't expect that even though someone was clearly blocking Chen Yingxiong, he could still head the ball so smoothly and accurately…

After scoring the goal, Chen Yingxiong wasn't as excited as before—he didn't really care whether this goal went in or not. He was just concerned about how the assistant coach, Potter, who was serving as the temporary referee, would judge it.

The whistle blew, and Potter pointed his hand to the center circle!

The goal was valid!

There was even a round of applause for the goal from the sidelines!

No one thought it was a foul!

Chen Yingxiong was secretly shocked—the power of this talent was truly amazing!

Although it was said that this kind of collision was inherently a probabilistic event, it could be called a foul by the referee, or it might not be called a foul. There were also many situations in football matches where opponents were knocked over in a challenge and then the ball was headed in. Sometimes the referee would call a foul on the attacking side, and sometimes the referee wouldn't call anything.

But in the past, as long as Chen Yingxiong did this, there was a very high chance that he would be called for a foul. He didn't expect that this time, there would be no problem at all!

Lee Ho was knocked to the ground by Chen Yingxiong, and he got up a little annoyed. He didn't fall hard, but it was very embarrassing.

Seeing Lee Ho's embarrassed appearance, Chen Yingxiong rolled his eyes at Lee Ho.

You roll your eyes at me, and I'll roll my eyes at you! Let you also taste the feeling of being ridiculed and mocked!

Chen Yingxiong's goal earned him congratulations from his teammates, and Chen Yingxiong was very happy. He could feel that he was gradually gaining the attention and respect of his teammates, not because of this goal, but because of his training attitude.

Because even before this goal, he had already begun to integrate into the locker room.

A player who trains hard is always worthy of everyone's respect.

In the following match, Chen Yingxiong began to frequently use his header skills, and the opponent he targeted was always Lee Ho—he seemed determined to completely defeat Lee Ho.

They had a total of five direct confrontations, and Chen Yingxiong won all five with overwhelming advantages—Lee Ho got up from the ground five times.

However, not every one of these five times was free of fouls. Chen Yingxiong was called for a foul twice for collisions, and he wasn't called for a foul the other three times, but he only scored one goal—he had put all his energy into teaching Lee Ho, the Korean, a lesson…

Although he only scored one goal, Chen Yingxiong was particularly happy when he saw that Lee Ho's yellow vest had been turned brown and cyan by the falls, and it had long lost the glory of the starters' vest.

Don't think you're awesome just because you're a starter and I'm a substitute!

Seeing Lee Ho being repeatedly forced out of position and beaten to the ball in the air by Chen Yingxiong, Advocaat, who was watching from the sidelines, couldn't help but shake his head. Lee Ho's header and jumping ability weren't very good, but his strength was excellent. He didn't expect that he would be so thoroughly suppressed by Chen Yingxiong. Although the two were ten centimeters apart in height, the two were competing in strength, not height…

He didn't expect that Lee Ho, who had World Cup experience and had already become famous in the Korean domestic league, would be beaten so badly by a player who had been promoted from the youth team not long ago.

Advocaat now thought that perhaps it was all due to those reckless extra training sessions?