Yang Yiming shared his experience of playing a basketball exhibition game at NASA with Kuzma, describing the terrifying black shadows, such as the seven-foot demon man of Andert Kumbaugh and James, and the two young men fell into deep thought. However, there was one thing that Yang Yiming did not share with him, and that was the short man who introduced the black shadow, the man who hid behind D'Antoni and the coach of the home team at halftime. Even he and his friend Yu Xiaochun didn't talk about this person.

Because this man is exactly the same person in his nightmare.

Because this person and Yu Xiaochun also look exactly the same.

1/

To be honest, Yang Yiming didn't see the short man's face clearly until the end of the game with the space agency's basketball team.

In that game, they led 60-29 in the first half without suspense, but in the second half, the situation changed, although the "black shadow" replaced by the space agency had no basketball skills, could not shoot or dribble, but his physical advantage against the sky greatly made up for his lack of skills. Not only is the defensive rebounds almost all taken by him, but the offensive rebounds are also half of the chance to be grabbed by him, and his wide body is also a sharp weapon for blocking and dismantling when attacking, blocking can provide sufficient shooting space for defenders, and can also go straight to the basket, directly receive the ball and dunk or rush to grab rebounds. In addition, once the Black Shadow guards the basket, the Rockets have almost no possibility of breaking through to the basket - of course, in order to avoid injury in the exhibition game, the team also deliberately avoided this high-risk offensive method - can only switch to shooting three-pointers from the outside, so the second half of the game completely becomes a matter of probability:

Because without offensive rebounds, how many points the Rockets can score depends entirely on the number of three-point shots and shooting percentage; And how many points the space agency team can score is a bonus to the team's shooting percentage and the number of rebounds in the Black Shadow's frontcourt!

In this hard-fought battle, in the end, the Rockets narrowly won with a three-point advantage, 96-86. But as a professional and amateur team, the difference is very close.

Fortunately, it was an exhibition game after all, and the Rockets who won the game showed American-style optimism, hugging each other as if they had won the championship, cheering loudly, and trying to pull the dark shadow who caused a lot of trouble in the crowd and talk to each other. Unexpectedly, as soon as the game ended, the black shadow was called away by the short man, and he didn't stay in the field for a minute, and disappeared directly into the passage outside the stadium door.

There is a shadow, but there is no trace. An enigmatic eccentric, or, something else?

At this time, Yang Yiming noticed the short man for the first time.

2/

This is really a guy carved out of a mold with Yu Xiaochun, in addition to being a few points shorter in height, his body is even thinner, the similarity between this short man's appearance and Yu Xiaochun has almost reached ninety out of ten, single eyelids, wide head, raunchy bangs, lenses as thick as the bottom of the bottle, and the only difference is probably from the beard. Yu Xiaochun has a stubble, and the one in front of him has a neat and delicate mustache, which can't help but remind Yang Yiming of the nightmare he had a night a few days ago.

There is also a character who looks like Koharu in the dream, appearing at the end of the dream. At that time, Yang Yiming's team called a timeout, and the team members formed a circle, and he was isolated from the circle, listening to a lore tactic with him as the core. He pushed away the crowd, only to find that the familiar voice in the circle was indeed from an acquaintance, at least the appearance was familiar to him:

"Believe me, don't you believe me, Yiming?"

That person looked at it carefully, and there was an indescribable difference between him and his friend Yu Xiaochun, a neatly trimmed mustache, under thick glasses, and a sly look that was not concealed. After a moment's hesitation, Yang Yiming remembered that the tactical board was pushed into his face, and in addition to the red cross and the circles on behalf of the players, a bunch of unfamiliar letters, numbers, and strange formulas also popped up, gradually filling the entire dream.

"As long as you choose to trust me unconditionally, you will shine like an entire star. Shine eternally..."

This was the last shot of the dream he could remember. After waking up, he tried several times to relive the dream, trying to figure out its meaning, but had no clue. What is the implication of a guy pretending to be his friend and saying such a thing to himself? Yang Yiming didn't communicate with Yu Xiaochun either, there is no doubt that he is single-minded for his basketball career, but the person in his dream seems to have other plans. He didn't want his relationship with his friends to be separated by a nightmare of his own nonsense.

However, unsuspectingly, the man in the dream actually appeared in reality at this time, standing on the edge of the field, also looking back at him, showing a smile.

Even the sly meaning of the smile is exactly the same.

3/

Yang Yiming was looking at the familiar and strange short man on the sidelines in a daze, but he didn't expect that the other party had already taken a step ahead of him, walked over, and stood in front of him.

"Hello, Yuris." The short man spoke first, handing it over. That's right, because of the huge difference in height, he not only needs to raise his neck to look up at Yang Yiming, but also shakes hands like a primary school student who accepts an adult's reward.

Yang Yiming was still stunned.

"Hello, Yuris." The other greeted again, "My name is Nicolas, I'm a big fan of yours, it's nice to meet you." ”

"Oh, hello, thank you. Thank you Nicholas. "Is it just a fan? Yang Yiming thought in his heart, and responded mechanically.

"I'm also Tarron's coach."

"Tyron?"

"It's the big guy who just played." As an Asian face, Nicholas speaks English very well, even surpassing Yu Xiaochun, a law graduate student in the United States. His speech is also very confident, straight to the point, without the slightest hint of Chinese humility and detours.

"Oh, that big guy is called Tyron, he's amazing." Yang Yiming's compliment is still sincere.

"Thank you." Nicholas was unceremonious, and accepted the praise in its entirety, "But he's not the best, I mean I can develop a better player, as long as he wants to—can you borrow a step to speak?" ”

"Stronger?" Surprised, Yang Yiming followed the other party to a corner of the stadium stands. At the end of the game, the space agency employees who came to watch the game had already left.

"That's right." Nicholas saw Yang Yiming asking, and lowered his excited voice, "Taryn is just my first experiment. He's tall, that's his innate advantage, but he doesn't know how to play basketball, he doesn't have any skills to speak of, you can see that. ”

"Hmm." Yang Yiming cautiously replied to the other party's enthusiasm.

"I'm a scientist in space biology myself and have been working at NASA for many years. This is one of my side hustles, researching the application of space biological experiment technology to real people. I've only been doing this experiment for about three months, but you may have seen the results: his muscle strength, bounce, flexibility, and balance are almost at the top of the human level. If he had the skills of a professional player like you, he might become the scariest basketball player on the planet! ”

"Aerospace Biological Experiment Technology... It does sound a little scary..."Yang Yiming remembered the nightmare he had when he became a giant.

"No problem, technically you can rest assured, look at Taryn!" Nicholas cut off his doubts in one sentence, "So Yuris, what I want to ask you now is, are you willing to be my partner?" ”

"Partner?"

"yes, be my next experiment." Nicholas had the terrifying and charming smile on his face that Yang Yiming had in his dream:

"As long as you choose to trust me unconditionally, you will shine like a star..."

"Not only the contemporary NBA, but you will shine in the history of basketball!"