Chapter 1 Liverpool vs. Arsenal

When the final whistle blew, Robin van Persie couldn't hide the disappointment on his face, nor the pain of defeat.

He stood there, hands on his hips, shaking his head helplessly.

At that moment, someone clapped him heavily on the shoulder.

"Let's swap shirts!"

Chen Hero's voice rang out.

He turned and saw Chen Hero's smiling face.

And a thumbs-up on the other hand.

"You're amazing!"

Seeing him like this, Van Persie forced a smile. "You're not bad either..." He started to take off his shirt.

So far, it was just a normal exchange of jerseys, more of a courtesy.

But after receiving Van Persie's jersey, Chen Hero finally couldn't help but challenge him.

"I'll snatch the Golden Boot from you this season while you're injured!" he said to Van Persie.

Van Persie was stunned for a moment, perhaps not expecting the person in front of him to say such a thing so directly. Most of the time, such words would be considered arrogant and rude.

However, Chen Hero took the initiative to exchange jerseys with him and said he was amazing, so Van Persie couldn't associate him with being rude. As for arrogance... from what he knew of Chen Hero, the guy really had the right to be arrogant...

Okay, he really wanted to steal his top scorer award...

Realizing this, Van Persie's face showed anger. "You won't get your wish!"

Back in the day, when I debuted, I was known as a "bad boy"! I still have a bit of a temper!

Chen Hero seemed not to see Van Persie's angry expression. He laughed loudly. "Good! Let's have a good fight!"

With that, he turned and walked away, muttering, "Great, just great..."

Van Persie watched the man's back. When this guy came to exchange jerseys, he thought it was an act of goodwill. The subsequent conversation made him feel that the other party might be here to issue a challenge...

How inexplicable!

But... if you want to fight, then fight!

His left hand, holding Chen Hero's jersey, clenched tightly into a fist.

※※※

"The highly anticipated match between Liverpool and Arsenal ended earlier, with Liverpool defeating Arsenal at home. Arsenal conceded the first goal again, but this time they weren't able to continue their streak of comebacks... Van Persie was in excellent form, but they ran into a guy in even better form... Hero scored a hat-trick in this game. If you don't count the four goals against Manchester City, this is actually his first hat-trick..."

The evening's television program was playing highlights of today's Premier League matches. The game between Liverpool and Arsenal at Anfield, as the first game of the round and also a highlight, was naturally reported first.

The match was also a direct confrontation between two super strikers. In the end, Chen Hero scored a hat-trick in the game, defeating Van Persie, who scored twice.

"Now he's only three goals behind Van Persie. And he has one game less... I think the Premier League's top scorer race this season is starting to get interesting..." The host chuckled on the screen.

The fiercer the battle for the top scorer, the happier those watching the drama were. At the beginning, Van Persie was far ahead, and his opponents couldn't catch up at all, which made the competition for the top scorer uninteresting.

In the first half of the season, Chen Hero was also low-key, only scoring eight goals, far behind Van Persie.

He started to exert his strength in the second half of the season, and so far he has scored fourteen goals, leaping to second place in the league's top scorer list.

In Serie A, Hero monopolized the top scorer award, making it his private property.

Whether it was Zlatan Ibrahimović or Antonio Di Natale, such excellent strikers, no one could take this honor from him.

Especially Zlatan Ibrahimović. In the 2008-2009 season, his performance at Inter Milan was perfect, and he was always far ahead on the scorer list. Unexpectedly, Chen Hero caught up in the last game and became a sad backdrop for Chen Hero's great reversal.

Will Van Persie become this season's Zlatan Ibrahimović?

Van Persie himself certainly knew about this past event. The competition for the Serie A top scorer that season was not only well-known in Italy, but also attracted the attention of media in other European countries. This was because Chen Hero's performance in the second half of the season was too crazy, and his name often appeared in important positions in the European sports media.

At that time, many people watched as Chen Hero chased Zlatan Ibrahimović like a hot knife through butter and reversed the situation in the final round. Poor Zlatan Ibrahimović, scoring twenty-six goals in a season still didn't get the league's top scorer award...

Van Persie certainly didn't want to become such a tragic figure as Zlatan Ibrahimović.

To this end, he had to try to increase his goal tally.

He was quite confident in this. As long as he wasn't injured, with his form, scoring goals wouldn't be difficult.

And even if it was difficult, so what? Chen Hero had already challenged him face-to-face, and he had accepted the challenge face-to-face. Was he going to back down now? Then how would he face anyone in the future?

He knew that Chen Hero was very good at scoring goals, which could be seen from his past record.

But it was precisely because Chen Hero was so difficult to deal with that he was even more interested—in the scorer list, so far, no one seemed to have been able to defeat Chen Hero, right? If he became the first person, wouldn't that be even more fulfilling?

At the thought of this prospect, Van Persie was full of motivation.

※※※

Chen Hero was really determined to win this league top scorer award.

Even if Van Persie was still three goals ahead of him, he wasn't afraid.

Back then, when Messi, the world's number one player, was six goals ahead of him, he still said he wanted to win the top scorer award. Except for his dad, who was he afraid of?

He had come back from being further behind, not to mention just three goals.

Now that I've chased to just three goals behind, I don't plan to go back empty-handed!

Just as Chen Hero had this thought in his mind, he also got a new mission.

"Challenge Van Persie": You have chased to within three goals on the scorer list, which is a very good result. But don't be satisfied, because second place equals failure. Years later, when people look up the past Premier League top scorers, they will only know who won the Golden Boot, and they will definitely not find out who was the second place. So you must work hard to win the top scorer award. Defeat Van Persie, win the Premier League top scorer award this season, and let the world only remember you!

In addition to a lot of experience and fame, the mission reward also included an extra reward—the "Golden Boot" talent, whose main function was to improve Chen Hero's shooting accuracy. In other words, it could increase Chen Hero's chances of scoring.

This was certainly a great talent, allowing Chen Hero's already terrifying scoring rate to be further improved.

Speaking of which, Chen Hero has won so many Golden Boots, even the Champions League Golden Boot, and this was the first time he discovered such a mission, getting such a generous reward for winning the top scorer award.

It seemed that after upgrading the mission system, the importance of missions was highlighted. Otherwise, in terms of difficulty, his competition with Messi for the Champions League top scorer last season was even more moving and more difficult. If that was a mission, this reward would not be excessive.

Oh, why didn't that Dracula guy upgrade earlier? Really!

Since he was going to compete for the top scorer, he naturally had to further improve his abilities.

To improve his abilities, he naturally had to go to the instance.

In the nights in Liverpool, if he didn't participate in the eating, drinking, and playing group's activities, his time would be used to train himself in the instance.

Although Juninho had already told him that he had graduated in free kicks.

But Chen Hero felt it was still not safe, so he continued to work hard on his free kicks, hoping to train this free kick technique into his body's instinct.

Now he felt that his free kick technique had matured, and it was time to show it to the world.

But suddenly showing that he was good at free kicks would definitely make people suspicious. Especially his teammates. He had never practiced free kicks during team training, and the team wouldn't ask him to take them when practicing free kicks. If he suddenly showed that he was good at free kicks, wouldn't it arouse their suspicion?

Although in the game against Manchester City, his fourth goal came from a free kick, and it was a very wonderful free kick. But many people thought he had just gotten lucky, and even his teammates thought so.

If he didn't show his free kick ability, how could he convince his teammates and the coach to give him the right to take free kicks? He couldn't just grab the ball and not let anyone else take it, like in the game against Manchester City, right? Once or twice is fine, but if he always did that, he would offend people... because that wasn't your area of responsibility in the first place!

So Chen Hero couldn't directly show his free kick skills rashly.

He had to think of a way...

※※※

When training ended, Liverpool's players were surprised to find that Chen Hero didn't follow them to the locker room, but stayed on the field.

"Aren't you leaving, Hero?"

Martin Škrtel asked.

Chen Hero shook his head.

"No, I'm going to do extra training!"

Chen Hero's answer shocked many people.

"What are you going to do?" Luis Suárez asked with wide eyes.

"Extra training!" Chen Hero shrugged.

"Are you okay, Hero?"

Since joining Liverpool, Chen Hero had never done extra training—in fact, even in the later stages of his time at Zenit Saint Petersburg, the number of times he did extra training had been very few. This was because he had enough time in the instance to do extra training, and the effect was much better than doing extra training in the real world.

So everyone thought Chen Hero was a genius! He usually didn't do extra training. Apart from the training tasks he had to do during training, he absolutely didn't give himself extra lessons. In his spare time, he went to nightclubs, picked up girls, and got into fights, causing trouble everywhere. As a result, he could still maintain such excellent form and rapid progress...

If this wasn't a genius, there really was no other reason to explain this phenomenon.

So everyone thought Chen Hero didn't need to do extra training.

But today, Chen Hero told them with his own mouth that he was going to do extra training!

Many people thought they had misheard.

"You... what are you doing extra training? It's not extra training in defense, is it? Hahaha!" After realizing what he said, Škrtel laughed. Others laughed along with him when they heard him say that.

They all thought that Chen Hero's ability in attack was already very outstanding, and extra training would have limited improvement for him. So what was he staying behind to do extra training in? Extra training in defense? Hero's defense was really bad, but he would be stupid to do extra training in defense.

"Practicing free kicks." Chen Hero shrugged.

"Huh?" Everyone stopped laughing.

"I scored a free kick in the game against Manchester City, and I think it's a good scoring method, so I want to practice free kicks so I can score more goals in the future!"

After hearing Chen Hero's explanation, everyone looked at each other—he had scored twenty-two goals in twenty-six league games this season, and he wasn't satisfied? He wanted to develop more ways to score goals!

No wonder he could become the top scorer in Serie A for three consecutive seasons!

Brilliant people naturally have their reasons for being brilliant!