Half an hour later.

"Welcome again!" Under the extremely respectful and even slightly awestruck gaze of the convenience store clerk, Zijing Cheng walked out of a large convenience store.

At this moment, he was carrying two oversized shopping bags stuffed to the brim, filled with various flavors of delicious sticks and other high-calorie snacks.

Looking at the "spoils of war" he had bought, Zijing Cheng's face, which had previously been full of annoyance, was now filled with undisguised joy, and even his half-drooping eyes lit up slightly.

"Great, I just managed to catch the last three boxes of this flavor."

He rudely tore open the packaging of a cardboard box, impatiently pulled out a delicious stick from it, tore off the wrapper, and walked and chewed loudly without caring about anyone around him.

Not knowing how long he had walked, in order to take a shortcut back to the hotel, Zijing Cheng unknowingly walked to an extremely quiet forest path.

This was precisely a shortcut from the Hiroshima Central Gymnasium to the direction of the hotel where Shoyo was staying.

Both sides of the path were planted with tall maple and cherry blossom trees, their lush branches and leaves intertwining overhead into a green dome, completely isolating the heat and hustle and bustle of the outside world.

Mottled sunlight filtered through the gaps in the leaves, scattering like broken gold on the smooth flagstone road, and the air was filled with the fresh scent of soil and grass.

The surroundings were very quiet, and occasionally a few crisp bird calls could be heard. Pedestrians in twos and threes walked leisurely or dated in whispers here, making the scene quiet and beautiful.

Zijing Cheng looked like a moving purple hill, walking slowly on this path, and the "crunch, crunch" sound of chewing became his unique background music.

Just at this moment, a voice carrying irrepressible excitement and an extremely complex tone suddenly came from under the shade of trees ahead and to the side, accurately reaching Zijing Cheng's ears.

"So it really is you! Zijing Cheng..."

"Hmm?"

Zijing Cheng had a delicious stick dangling in his mouth, and his chewing motion did not pause in the slightest because of this sudden sound.

He turned his head slightly with some confusion, looking in the direction of the voice.

Under the mottled tree shadows not far ahead and behind, stood a teenager wearing the black and white team uniform of Sannoh Industrial.

The teenager had his hands in his pockets, his posture was upright, and on his extremely handsome and sharp face, astonishment, ecstasy, and a trace of complexity from a long time apart and finally meeting again were intertwined.

Looking at that face, Zijing Cheng only felt that in a corner of his mind's memory, he had a relatively familiar impression of this face.

The person coming was none other than Eiji Sawakita, who had also chosen to walk this forest path to take a shortcut back to the hotel.

Just a minute ago, when he looked up inadvertently and saw the back ahead that was as huge as a mountain and had iconic purple hair, he simply couldn't believe his eyes.

Eiji Sawakita stood in place, confirming it three times to be sure he definitely hadn't mistaken the person, before taking a deep breath and taking the initiative to step forward to say hello.

After all, standing in front of him was the only person in his entire basketball career who, during junior high school, used an absolute violent posture to completely shatter his proud basketball skills and ruthlessly defeat him.

While making "crunch, crunch" chewing sounds, Zijing Cheng tilted his head up slightly, as if struggling to ponder the long-faded memories in his mind.

Soon, Zijing Cheng's two purple eyebrows raised slightly, as if remembering something, and he spoke in a lazy voice devoid of any ripples and even carrying a hint of banter:

"Oh... So it's you! That... crafty guy who always likes to do flashy moves on the court."

Crafty guy?!

Hearing this outrageous title, the expression on Eiji Sawakita's face froze for a moment. The cool smile he originally wore instantly stiffened, and the corners of his mouth couldn't help but twitch violently.

He was the dignified number one high school student in the country, yet in the other person's mind, he was only left with the label of "crafty"?

However, Eiji Sawakita quickly adjusted his breathing, forcibly suppressed the urge to complain, rearranged his expression, and his eyes became sharper and more serious than ever before as he spoke:

"It's really great to see you here. You guy, you disappeared without a sound back then, and I almost thought you had completely given up and stopped playing basketball!"

Eiji Sawakita's tone carried a hint of gritting obsession, "Do you know, you made me practice like hell every day during junior high school just to find you for revenge, all so that one day on the court I could return the humiliation I suffered back then tenfold. And what was the result? You completely vanished like human evaporation."

"Huh? Vanished?" Zijing Cheng tilted his head slightly, blinked his eyelids extremely heavily, and his tone sounded incomparably natural and matter-of-fact, "I didn't vanish at all, I just transferred schools!"

"Transferred?" Eiji Sawakita frowned, and asked back loudly with a face full of doubt, "Even if you transferred, it wouldn't affect you continuing to play basketball and participating in the National Tournament! With your strength, no matter which junior high school you went to, it would be absolutely impossible for you to remain obscure."

Zijing Cheng swallowed the snack in his mouth, as if narrating an extremely trivial matter, and answered unhurriedly: "Because... the school I transferred to hadn't established a Basketball Club yet. So, I simply didn't play anymore, it's no big deal anyway."

Dead silence.

As Zijing Cheng's words fell, a cold wind named "absurdity" seemed to sweep across the forest path.

This single sentence directly dumbfounded Eiji Sawakita.

He widened his eyes, his mouth slightly open, completely petrified in place.

Turns out, the reason why this guy, regarded as an epic-level monster during junior high school, suddenly disappeared without a trace and didn't join any powerhouse teams wasn't because of an injury, nor anything else, but simply because... the school didn't establish a Basketball Club.

This damn frustrating answer left Eiji Sawakita not knowing what to say for a moment.

Just because of this, he simply gave up basketball for the two years after junior high?!

At this moment, in Eiji Sawakita's heart, it was as if tens of thousands of alpacas were running wildly and roaring, oh... yeah... yamete.

The heavy sentiment of sweating day after day for revenge and viewing the other party as a arch-rival seemed so comical and pathetic in front of the other party's understatement of "there is no Basketball Club".

Hoo...

Eiji Sawakita let out a long breath of turbid air, trying hard to calm his mentality that was on the verge of collapsing.

He raised his head and began to look up and down at Zijing Cheng in front of him again.

When the two stood face to face, Eiji Sawakita could finally feel extremely clearly the substantive sense of oppression brought by Zijing Cheng's terrifying height of 206cm.

"What a terrifying guy..." Eiji Sawakita was secretly shocked in his heart, "Who would have thought that after just a few years apart, the guy in front of me could grow so much. This body is simply the ultimate weapon perfectly customized for the sport of basketball. The abyss-like oppression he exudes now is countless times stronger than in junior high school. In contrast, back in junior high, he at least looked a bit more like a normal person."

Suppressing the shock in his heart, Eiji Sawakita took a deep breath, and a strong fighting spirit reignited in his eyes: "I heard that you joined Kanagawa Prefecture's Shoyo High School this year?!"

Zijing Cheng tore open another pack of delicious sticks, nodded, without any intention of hiding anything at all, and his voice remained lazy: "Yeah! Fujizai kept inviting me, and he promised that as long as I play in games, he'll treat me to lots and lots of delicious snacks, so I reluctantly agreed."

The corners of Eiji Sawakita's mouth curved into a proud and highly aggressive sneer. He looked straight into Zijing Cheng's half-drooping eyes and said: "Then I really must congratulate you, and also thank the person who invited you to join, otherwise I'd really worry that I would never meet you again."

"I just saw your match records..." Speaking of this, Eiji Sawakita's tone became a bit heavier, "Shutting out opponents for two consecutive games. It seems that in these two vanished years, not only have you not regressed, but you've become even more terrifying and stronger than before."

Facing this extremely high praise from the number one high school student in the country, Zijing Cheng just let out a very bored yawn.

Looking at the other person, he spoke in an extremely natural tone that took things for granted and even felt that Eiji Sawakita was talking nonsense:

"Isn't this nonsense! As the body grows, getting stronger and stronger is for sure! And..."