BOOM!
The white baseball tore through the air, producing a sharp, explosive sound as it sliced through the wind.
The spectators watching from the sidelines couldn't help but gasp.
"That's incredible!"
Before they could fully process what they had seen, the baseball had already reached home plate.
Pop!
Chris caught it cleanly.
The smile on his face was impossible to hide.
That single pitch was enough to prove that all of their previous worries had been unnecessary.
Zhou Hao's pitching had recovered.
Chris couldn't confidently say it was stronger than before, but it had unquestionably returned to its proper level.
"Beautiful."
"I didn't expect you to recover in just one day."
Zhou Hao rolled his shoulder lightly.
"It still hurts a little."
"But it doesn't affect my pitching anymore."
A muscle strain was still an injury.
No matter how exceptional Zhou Hao's recovery ability was, returning completely to peak condition overnight was impossible.
"That's already unbelievable."
If it had been any other player on the roster, the reaction from Seido's players wouldn't have been nearly as dramatic.
The current Seido High School Baseball Team was ridiculously strong from top to bottom.
Without exaggeration, if almost any other player were unavailable, the team's overall strength wouldn't suffer too much.
Only one person was different.
Zhou Hao.
The Ace.
The irreplaceable pillar of Seido.
No matter how well the other pitchers performed, nobody inspired the same level of confidence.
Even when another pitcher dominated on the mound, the players still felt more secure when Zhou Hao stood there.
That confidence wasn't built through words.
It had been built through countless victories.
Game after game.
Season after season.
And it wasn't only Seido's players who felt that way.
Many players from rival schools shared the same opinion.
The Seido supporters watching practice all wore relieved smiles.
"I told you he'd be fine."
"Who was the one pacing around nervously earlier?" someone teased. "Matsuda-kun, don't think I didn't notice."
"So what if you noticed?"
"I was concerned, that's all."
Everyone laughed.
But the truth was that they had all been worried.
Very worried.
The players understood it.
The supporters understood it too.
If another player were absent, Seido's overall strength might decrease slightly.
But if Zhou Hao couldn't play...
The team's strength would drop from one hundred points to ninety.
Maybe even eighty-five.
Against ordinary opponents, the difference might not be obvious.
But against true powerhouses?
Against teams capable of threatening Seido?
Zhou Hao was the stabilizing force that held everything together.
As long as he stood on the mound, everyone believed victory was possible.
That was why Seido's supporters confidently proclaimed that their team would stand at the top of the nation again.
Without Zhou Hao, they wouldn't have had such unwavering confidence.
Now, seeing that he had recovered...
The anxiety lingering in everyone's hearts finally disappeared.
Suddenly, one fan asked:
"By the way... did anyone check the speed?"
The crowd froze.
Many spectators had specifically brought radar guns today.
They wanted to verify Zhou Hao's recovery for themselves.
Not just whether he had recovered—
But how much.
Unfortunately, everyone had been so captivated by the first pitch that they forgot to turn on their equipment.
Naturally, no one had recorded the speed.
"I'm honestly impressed by you guys."
One spectator looked around helplessly.
"You carried radar guns all the way here and didn't even use them."
The others immediately fired back.
"You talk big. What about you?"
The first speaker spread his hands innocently.
"Use your brains."
"If I'm asking you guys, how would I know?"
"Enough talking."
"He's about to throw again."
"No mistakes this time."
"We have to get an accurate reading."
Almost everyone holding a radar gun immediately activated their devices.
Their eyes locked onto Zhou Hao.
Nobody blinked.
Nobody wanted to miss a single detail.
Meanwhile, Zhou Hao stood calmly on the mound.
As everyone watched, he prepared to throw again.
When he wasn't pitching, he looked like any ordinary high school student.
Tall.
Handsome.
Confident.
The kind of protagonist who seemed to have stepped straight out of a baseball manga.
But the moment he began his pitching motion...
Everything changed.
The aura surrounding him transformed completely.
"Earth-shattering" wasn't enough to describe it.
It felt as though he had become an entirely different person.
BOOM!
The baseball exploded from his fingertips.
The familiar sound of the pitch tearing through the air rang out once again.
Everyone stared intently.
The radar guns recorded.
The spectators held their breath.
In their eyes, the baseball had become a streak of white light.
Before anyone could react—
Pop!
The ball was already in Miyuki Kazuya's glove.
Silence.
Then—
"My God!"
"That's impossible!"
"This isn't just recovery."
"It's like he was never injured at all!"
"Didn't the doctor say it was only a minor strain?"
Logically speaking, his performance should still have been affected.
After all, Zhou Hao could still feel a faint ache in his shoulder.
His body wasn't completely comfortable yet.
And yet...
The pitch showed no signs of weakness whatsoever.
The answer appeared on the radar guns.
161 km/h!
Gasps erupted throughout the crowd.
Even before anyone announced it, Zhou Hao already knew the result.
He could feel it.
That pitch had reached 161 kilometers per hour.
Although it wasn't the fastest pitch of his career, it was enough.
More importantly, it proved that he had fully recovered.
At the same time, Zhou Hao could clearly feel the changes within his body.
The effects of the Strength Card had not disappeared.
The card itself might be gone, but the benefits remained.
His body's upper limit had genuinely increased.
And he had already begun approaching that new ceiling.
That meant one thing.
As long as he continued training and improving, sooner or later...
He would be able to throw a pitch exceeding 168 kilometers per hour through his own ability.
At that point, calling it a fastball would no longer be accurate.
Even the term super fastball wouldn't be enough.
A pitch of that speed would transcend ordinary categories.
It would overwhelm everything through pure velocity alone.
A pitch so fast that hitters could barely perceive it.
The legendary—
Light-Speed Ball.
As long as it could be thrown into the strike zone, it would be an unstoppable weapon.
The brief interruption caused by Zhou Hao's bullpen session attracted a great deal of attention.
Before long, news of his full recovery spread throughout the team.
The players of the Seido High School Baseball Team all breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Without Zhou Hao, they would have been deeply worried about their future prospects.
Against ordinary opponents, perhaps it wouldn't matter much.
But what if they faced a team like Inashiro Industrial?
Even with Zhou Hao on the mound, nobody could guarantee victory against an opponent of that caliber.
If he wasn't there at all?
The Seido players didn't even want to think about it.
In their eyes, their chances against Inashiro would drop dramatically.
And Inashiro wasn't the only powerhouse in the country.
There were numerous elite teams capable of competing on the same level.
Many of them simply hadn't revealed their full strength during the Spring Koshien qualifiers.
That didn't mean they were weak.
Without Zhou Hao, how would Seido overcome obstacle after obstacle on the road to the national championship?
What the players didn't realize was that several dark horse teams were also watching them closely.
Under normal circumstances, those teams wouldn't pose much of a threat to Seido.
This year, however, was different.
Whether in West Tokyo or on the Koshien stage itself, there would be dangerous underdogs.
Some of them weren't ordinary dark horses.
They were super dark horses.
Over the following week, Seido officially entered its legendary hellish training camp.
For Zhou Hao, it was a rare experience.
Since he normally lived off-campus, he now had to move back into the dormitory alongside the rest of the team.
Unsurprisingly, he was assigned to Room 5.
"Welcome, Zhou Hao-senpai!"
Sawamura Eijun greeted him enthusiastically.
Last year, Sawamura hadn't been part of the training camp, so this was his first time sharing a dorm room with Zhou Hao.
The energetic first-year busied himself helping Zhou Hao unpack and settle in.
"Save some energy," Zhou Hao said with a smile.
"The next few days won't be easy."
Seeing how enthusiastic the younger player was, he couldn't help offering a warning.
"Don't worry, Senpai!"
Sawamura proudly patted his chest.
"I'm not tired at all!"
Beside them, Kuramochi revealed a wicked grin.
"I really hope you can keep saying that, dear little Sawamura."
A chill immediately ran down Sawamura's spine.
His instincts told him something bad was about to happen.
After all, Kuramochi had a criminal record.
Back when Sawamura had first joined Seido, Kuramochi had enthusiastically invited him to play video games late into the night.
How was a fifteen-year-old supposed to resist that?
On one side was the temptation of the game itself.
On the other was the kindness of a friendly upperclassman.
In a completely unfamiliar environment, having a senior who seemed eager to take care of him naturally made Sawamura feel grateful.
Then he got completely tricked.
The next morning, he overslept.
At Seido High School.
Under Coach Kataoka.
The consequences were obvious.
Even now, remembering it made Sawamura want to crawl into a hole and disappear.
Although he and Kuramochi had become close friends afterward, and he hadn't received a severe punishment for the incident, that didn't mean he had forgotten.
Almost instinctively, Sawamura looked toward Zhou Hao.
Zhou Hao was smiling calmly.
For some reason, that smile reassured him.
It didn't look like a trap...
Probably.
With that thought in mind, Sawamura officially began Seido's infamous hellish training camp.
At first, nothing seemed particularly unusual.
Running.
Playing catch.
Batting practice.
Everything looked similar to their normal routine, with only a slight increase in training volume.
By now, Sawamura was no longer the clueless rookie who had just joined Seido.
He had already adapted to the team's demanding training schedule.
The current workload didn't seem especially difficult.
"The legendary hellish training camp?"
"This is it?"
The fact that off-campus players like Zhou Hao had moved into the dorms and everyone was training together certainly made it feel special.
But aside from that...
It seemed pretty ordinary.
"Just wait."
"This is only the warm-up."
Kuramochi smirked.
Having survived it once already, he knew exactly what was coming.
Back then, he hadn't even been a regular player.
He had merely been a first-year rookie.
Even so, the previous year's training camp had nearly killed him from exhaustion.
There had been days when he couldn't even complete the assigned workload.
And now Sawamura was looking down on it?
It was time for this junior to learn a valuable lesson about reality.
By the afternoon, the true training finally began.
And the atmosphere changed instantly.
Sawamura's instincts had always been unusually sharp.
Normally, he got along well with the assistant coaches.
Today, however...
He felt a terrifying murderous aura radiating from them.
At first, he thought he might be imagining things.
Then one sentence shattered that illusion.
His instincts had been absolutely correct.
"Divide into four groups."
"Base-running drills."
"One runner starts immediately after the previous runner finishes."
"No breaks."
"Twenty sets."
The moment those words were spoken, countless players' faces turned pale.
Twenty continuous sets of high-intensity base running.
Even the battle-hardened Seido regulars wore expressions of despair.
"Have they completely abandoned reason?"
Sawamura couldn't help blurting out.
Traditionally, Seido's training focused on practical application.
Whether it was batting, fielding, or base running, everything revolved around actual game situations.
How do you beat the opponent?
How do you get a hit?
How do you score a run?
That was always the focus.
Everything else came second.
But now, it felt as though all of that had been thrown out the window.
"Don't be stupid."
Kuramochi laughed.
"This isn't skill training."
"It's stamina training."
"Endurance training."
"Just focus on surviving."
Patting Sawamura's shoulder, he immediately sprinted away.
Whoosh!
Kuramochi exploded forward like a bolt of lightning.
Within moments, he had already reached the next base.
"Hyah-ha!"
"Nice run!"
The cheers from his teammates were completely sincere.
Everyone had to admit it.
When it came to pure speed, Kuramochi was nearly unbeatable.
If he could improve his hitting even further, his value to Seido would skyrocket.
One after another, the players began their runs.
Even the first-year rookies joined in.
Sawamura.
Furuya.
Haruichi.
None of them were exempt.
Among the first-years, Haruichi's situation was particularly special.
Originally, he should have been practicing with the reserve first-years, helping support the First String.
Instead, he was training alongside players like Maezono, Kawakami, and the others competing for roster spots.
The meaning behind that decision was obvious.
Haruichi was no longer being treated as an ordinary rookie.
And the same applied to the others in that group.
As long as they performed well enough during the training camp, there was still a chance.
A chance to earn—or reclaim—their jersey numbers.
A chance to fight their way back onto the First String roster.