2025, Shandong Taishan Youth Training Base.
“Lü Fang” was knocked down during a practice match and lost consciousness. When he woke, his eyes were as weathered as the sea.
He ran his hand over the grass and murmured, “The grass at the Berlin Olympics was just as prickly.”
At training the next day, a thirty-meter “steel plate shot” blasted through the net.
The entire coaching staff froze. “When has Chinese football ever produced a monster like this?”
When reporters asked him for his secret, he smiled faintly.
“Just a few old tricks: a copper head, an iron tail, and a tofu waist.”
> On the Chinese Super League pitch, he toyed with foreign defenders using the lost art of the “lying shot.”
At a training camp for China’s youth national team, his technical report caused a stir among senior officials at the Chinese Football Association:
“His movements are 99.8% similar to Li Huitang’s in historical footage!”
On the eve of going abroad to play, he walked alone into the General Administration of Sport’s archives.
On a yellowed newspaper page was the result of China’s 1936 match against Britain: 0–2.
Tracing the three characters “Li Huitang” with his fingertip, he spoke softly into the empty room:
“This time, I’ll take you all to see the world.”
