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墨書 Inktalez
At night, I found myself sleepless again, tossing and turning unable to sleep. I took a deep breath and told myself not to feel stressed or anxious, but I couldn't help but let my mind wander. Eventually, I put on my headphones and listened to music. I came across a very interesting and relaxing song, Xu Liang's "Exam Stuff Can Go Die." After listening to it, my tense mood relaxed quite a bit. I then set my phone's timer for half an hour and closed my eyes, waiting for sleep to come. Gradually, I drifted off into dreamland...
The next day, the three of us stood at the entrance of Lake City Park, looking at the park. A Fei pulled out his silver Eagle and exclaimed loudly, "Let's go! We three swordsmen are embarking on a road of no return!" His words drew countless glances from passersby. I was startled and quickly stepped forward to cover his mouth, saying, "Stop, stop, stop! Brother A Fei, what kind of nonsense is this? This is called inappropriate wording. What do you mean by 'road of no return'? It should be called dying on the battlefield!" Ouyang, who was nearby, almost fainted from laughter: "Just give it up; yours is even worse than A Fei's. We're both illiterates! Shouldn't we say we’re the three swordsmen? Let's take flight again in the Street Basketball Championship!" Then the three of us raised our hands and marched into Lake City Park with enthusiasm.
Our first opponent was the Sword Rain Team. It was quite amusing; we were the Three Swordsmen while they were Sword Rain—two swords clashing! When we arrived at the competition venue, the Sword Rain Team was warming up. Upon seeing us, they all froze. One tall guy, nearly six feet three inches tall, said, "You guys are last year's National Championship Dream Chasers Team, right?" Ouyang quickly stepped forward: "Yes, we are the national defending champion Dream Chasers Team!" The tall guy scratched his head: "It seems like there wasn't anyone like you in last year's Dream Chasers team?" He stared hard at Ouyang, who suddenly felt awkward and didn’t know how to respond. He stepped back and said, "That was last year; this year we are just rookies starting anew. We're all on equal footing now!"
After preparing for a while, we started the match. Seeing the familiar scene of the referee tossing a coin felt warm and nostalgic. We won the ball possession; after receiving the ball from A Fei, I passed it directly to Ouyang at the arc top. Ouyang took a three-pointer and scored! He looked particularly excited because this was his first basket in the Street Basketball Championship—a three-pointer at that! After their possession began, their Point Guard passed to their Center under the basket. The Center went for a layup as A Fei and I jumped simultaneously to defend. The ball circled around the rim twice before bouncing out. Ouyang grabbed the rebound and dribbled out beyond the three-point line before shooting again—another score! Demon Blade Ouyang Shangqiang had arrived! We opened with a 6-0 lead against them with all points scored by Ouyang.
It seemed that the Sword Rain Team consisted of inexperienced high school students who had just entered high school not long ago. Although their Center was tall, their skills and experience were clearly lacking. The match ended quickly after ten minutes; we easily defeated Sword Rain Team 5-0 and advanced to the second round of elimination in the preliminaries. After winning this match, I deeply felt our progress was truly remarkable. In just one short year, I had experienced so much and learned a great deal. After the game ended, Ouyang walked over with a smile and hugged us; this was his first victory in his Street Basketball career, making it particularly memorable. He treated us to KFC to celebrate. Oh! Ouyang is really something; he gets so excited just for winning a preliminary match—imagine how he would react if we won the city championship!
Next, we continued into the second round of elimination matches; this one was a round of sixteen qualifying match against AB Team. It seemed that this team consisted of students with poor English skills who only recognized the letters A and B. However, they appeared exceptionally composed—like triplets—with similar buzz cuts and heights around six feet one inch tall. They spoke little and hardly ever smiled, giving off a chilling vibe. "This time our opponents have a clear height advantage; we need to run!" Before the match began, we huddled together realizing we had to leverage our speed advantage.
After a while, our game against AB Team started. After the referee tossed the coin showing it was their possession to start with, they passed to their forward who then handed it off to their Point Guard at the arc top position. The Point Guard passed it to their Center who jumped for a layup—scoring without any expression on their faces as they quickly returned to position in the paint after scoring. After our possession began, I controlled the ball at the edge of the three-point line before making a direct pass to A Fei who stepped back for a jump shot—also scoring! The opponents calmly took possession again from zero-degree angle at three-point line.
The following game turned into a tug-of-war; however, their style remained solid yet unremarkable. Even when we dunked over them once, they still opted for layups instead of retaliating with dunks themselves. Their cautious approach resulted in high shooting accuracy; with just over twenty seconds left in the game, we led them by four points at 11-7 with them having one last offensive opportunity left. After they inbounded it to their Point Guard who returned it back to their Center—the latter surprisingly launched another three-pointer from zero-degree angle—scoring! That marked AB Team's second three-pointer of this match; both were made by their Center player! We hadn’t expected him to have that range as well! Their possession took only four seconds from inbounding until scoring; there were still twenty seconds left on the clock—we just needed to run down our final offensive time to win.
After inbounding again, we started passing around to waste time without feeling much pressure since most pressure rested on them now—we still held control over proceedings until Ouyang received it when suddenly two players rushed towards him! Ouyang quickly made an overhead pass back to me as I noticed AB Team’s Point Guard charging towards me—I took a big step forward catching it before executing a fadeaway jumper—scoring! With only three seconds left in the game after their inbounding play where their Point Guard quickly returned it back to their Center outside three-point range—he shot again but missed! We narrowly escaped defeat!
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