Divine Level Witch Doctor

Faced with a wall of players, Zhao Yuan circled with the ball, unable to find an opening. The defensive line formed by the eight men was a layered wall, like a dense thicket of thorns, giving him no way to penetrate.

”Haha, you can’t break through this time, can you?” Liu Zhu laughed smugly, completely unashamed that his side was using eight people to defend. But what could they do? The one they were up against was the ridiculously freakish Old Demon Zhao.

”Actually, you don’t necessarily have to penetrate to break a packed defense, right?” Zhao Yuan said suddenly, stopping in his tracks.

”Huh? What do you mean?” Liu Zhu froze for a moment.

Zhao Yuan quickly answered with his actions. He jumped and shot. The ball traced a beautiful arc through the air and dropped into the basket with a SWISH.

A three-pointer!

It was absolutely perfect, a textbook three-pointer!

Zhao Yuan’s incredible control over his strength was on full display with that shot.

The eight players packed under the basket were all dumbfounded. They had been so focused on stopping Zhao Yuan from breaking through that they never imagined he’d go for a three-pointer.

Liu Zhu was stunned as well. It took him a moment to recover before he yelled, ”No way! That doesn’t count! How can you shoot a three-pointer?”

”Obviously,” Zhao Yuan said, rolling his eyes at him in annoyance. ”There are eight of you packed under the basket, not leaving me an inch of space. Even a pro player might not be able to break through that, so how is a rookie like me supposed to? Of course I had to find a different approach.”

A flicker of embarrassment crossed Liu Zhu’s face at his words.

He was right. In a normal game, when would you ever see an eight-man defense against a single player? A team only has five players on the court, for crying out loud!

”A rookie? What kind of terrifying rookie are you?! Your performance is as good as a pro’s,” Liu Zhu muttered under his breath, then said with a hollow laugh, ”Fine, I guess you have a point...”

”What do you mean ’I guess’ I have a point? I was completely in the right!” Zhao Yuan said, bouncing the basketball. ”So, what are we practicing next? More dribbling and penetration drills?”

Liu Zhu’s face paled. He scrambled to shout, ”No! We don’t need to practice penetration drills anymore! You’ve got that move down perfectly. Let’s practice some other skills!” Internally, he was ranting, ’I’m not a masochist! You’ve already broken through my defense so many times I’m starting to question my existence. Why would I want to keep going?!’

”That’s a shame,” Zhao Yuan sighed, his voice full of regret. ”The penetration drills were pretty fun.”

’Of course it’s fun for you,’ Liu Zhu continued to rant in his head. ’You’re practically playing us to death!’

After collecting himself, he said, ”Your fundamentals—dribbling, penetration, shooting—are all rock-solid. But besides solid fundamentals, basketball also requires a ton of stamina. Our original plan for today was for you to work on your fundamentals while the rest of us did conditioning. Since your fundamentals are already solid, you might as well join the group for conditioning.”

”Sounds good,” Zhao Yuan agreed readily. He loved things like stamina training.

When Zhao Yuan wasn’t looking, the team members all huddled around Liu Zhu to whisper their suggestions.

”Old Liu, let’s crank up the intensity of the conditioning!”

”Exactly! Old Demon Zhao completely broke us with his penetration drills. We have to make him feel what it’s like to collapse!”

”That’s right! Let’s make him question his own existence for once!”

Every single one of them had been tormented by Zhao Yuan, and now they were plotting their revenge.

”Are you guys sure?” Liu Zhu didn’t agree right away, frowning instead. ”Don’t forget, during the last game against the Orthopedics and Traumatology Class 2, the physical prowess Zhao Yuan displayed was off the charts. We don’t want a situation where you guys collapse before he even breaks a sweat.”

The group fell silent. After several seconds, one of them said hesitantly, ”True, Old Demon Zhao is built strong and he’s tough, but that doesn’t mean his stamina is just as good, right? Before today, he spent all his time either in class or working in the anatomy building. We’ve rarely seen him exercise. We’re different. Not only do we play basketball all the time, but we’ve also been doing stamina training for the past few days to prepare for the Fresher’s Cup tournament. Our stamina has to be better than Old Demon Zhao’s. There’s no way we’ll be the first to collapse.”

His words immediately rallied the group. Although they still had their doubts, none of them wanted to back down, and they all clung to this hopeful fantasy.

Liu Zhu mulled it over and nodded. ”That’s a good point. Just because Zhao Yuan is built well doesn’t mean he has great stamina. He really hasn’t done any training recently. The only thing was a few days ago when he did some of that ’square dancing’ in the dorm.”

Little did Liu Zhu know that the ”square dance” Zhao Yuan had been performing was actually a Cultivation Secret Technique designed to temper the body! He also had no way of knowing that Zhao Yuan actually trained every single day, just not on campus.

Since they had reached a consensus, Liu Zhu cranked the intensity of the upcoming conditioning drills to the absolute maximum. Yet, half an hour later, every single member of the basketball team, including Liu Zhu, was lying on the ground, drenched in sweat and completely exhausted. As for Zhao Yuan, the one they had intended to torture, he was standing off to the side. Although he was also covered in sweat, his breathing had already returned to normal. He called out to them, ”Get up, let’s keep going! The conditioning isn’t over yet. Why are you all lying down?”

”I can’t... We really can’t go on. We’ll die if we keep this up,” Lu Quan said, his face a mask of misery. ”Old Demon Zhao, I submit. I truly, truly submit to you.”

The others also started chiming in, crying out and begging for mercy.

”I submit too. Your stamina... it’s monstrous! It’s not human!”

”And here we were, thinking we could exhaust you with conditioning drills? Damn, we were so stupid, so naive!”

”Old Demon Zhao—no, Brother Zhao, I’ll call you my big bro! I really can’t go on. Please, have mercy, let me off the hook.”

Zhao Yuan shook his head and said with a helpless sigh, ”We’ve only just gotten started and you’re already giving up? Your stamina is just too poor. Fine, don’t worry about it. I’ll just train on my own.” He then turned around and actually began to continue the drills by himself.

”Our stamina is poor?” The team members stared at each other in disbelief. ’It’s not that our stamina is poor,’ they thought, ’it’s that you’re an absolute freak of nature!’

After taking a few gasping breaths, Liu Zhu suddenly burst out laughing.

”Old Liu, what’s wrong with you?”

”Don’t tell me he’s lost his mind from exhaustion?”

The team looked at him, their faces etched with concern.

”Get lost. You’re the ones who are crazy,” Liu Zhu shot back with a glare, then explained with a grin, ”I was just thinking... when the Fresher’s Cup tournament starts, and all the other teams from the other departments run into this freak... aren’t they going to get so thoroughly thrashed they’ll end up in tears?”