Martial Arts Livestreaming
Chapter 407 - 374 Public Opinion Storm

Chapter 407: Chapter 374 Public Opinion Storm

Regarding the online comments, the members of the Hua Country Team were currently unaware, as they were all focused on the competition.

After the fourth match finished, the current score was a tie at 2:2. The fifth match was about to begin, featuring the Middleweight class.

Li San stood up and took off his jacket, ready to enter the ring.

When the audience at the venue saw Li San, they let out bursts of surprised exclamations.

In the previous round of matches, aside from Wu Li, the most impressive person on the Hua Country Team was Li San. His ability to "deflect a thousand pounds with four ounces," beating heavier opponents with lighter moves, left a deep impression.

Many spectators, whether Chinese or Americans, had bought tickets to the venue today specifically to see Li San. They wanted to witness firsthand once more his skill in defeating heavier opponents and to experience the real Tai Chi Fist, but to everyone’s surprise, he was not competing in the Heavyweight class tonight.

"Ah!" Many people issued sighs of disappointment.

Li San paid no heed to these emotions and calmly walked up to the arena.

The plan for the Hua Country Team tonight was to have Wu Li compete in the Welterweight class and Li San in the Middleweight, aimed at sniping the strongest member of the Nigeria Team, "Black Dragon" Adiya.

Adiya was the number one UFC Middleweight. Wu Li and others had judged beforehand that the opponent might fight in the Middleweight or Welterweight class tonight, so they arranged for the two strongest team members to target him.

Wu Li did not encounter Adiya in the Welterweight class, now it was down to whether Li San would meet him.

However, when the Middleweight contestant from the Nigeria Team entered the check-in area, the faces of the Hua Country Team changed—it wasn’t Adiya!

If Adiya wasn’t competing in Welterweight or Middleweight, could he be aiming for the Light Heavyweight class?

Wu Li, looking at Adiya in the opposite warm-up area, had actually known through system detection when the teams entered that Adiya was going to fight in the Light Heavyweight class tonight.

Unfortunately, the signup list had to be submitted before entering the venue, and he and Li San had registered for the Welterweight and Middleweight classes, respectively. Even after Wu Li saw Adiya’s weight for the night, there was nothing he could change.

"Sorry, it was a miscalculation," Li Tongyun said softly beside Wu Li.

Having Wu Li and Li San compete in the Welterweight and Middleweight classes was her suggestion. Based on what she knew of Adiya and her analysis of his characteristics, it would not suit him to move up and fight in a higher weight class. To perform at his best, he should either cut weight to fight in Welterweight, or maintain his weight for Middleweight.

"It’s not your fault, I didn’t expect it either," Wu Li shook his head.

There was nothing that could be done about such a misjudgment.

If Zhao Lixin hadn’t been injured, Wu Li, Li San, and Zhao Lixin could have aimed at one weight class each, ensuring a hundred percent chance of facing Adiya. After all, it wasn’t very likely for Adiya to compete in Lightweight or Heavyweight as it would significantly impact his strength, and if that happened, Hua Country Team wouldn’t be worried about whoever stepped into the ring.

Unfortunately, Zhao Lixin was injured... Wu Li glanced at Zhao Lixin beside him, who also looked back with an apologetic gaze.

Clearly, Zhao Lixin also understood that if he hadn’t been injured, they wouldn’t have had to be so cautious about Adiya tonight, because any one of the three of them could have had a chance to win, to a lesser or greater extent. For anyone else to face Adiya, winning would be much more difficult.

The fifth match, Li San’s win, was equally unsurprising.

This time, instead of using the technique of "deflecting a thousand pounds with four ounces," he used the Tai Chi Hammer Technique to directly cause his opponent’s blood to surge and gums to bleed, conclusively knocking him out.

In the previous match, Li San had shown the world the soft aspect of Tai Chi Fist, and in this match, he exhibited the hard aspect. However, nobody was too surprised, after all, in the last match Li San made an opponent who was 76 pounds heavier than him continuously retreat!

After Li San’s match, the score changed to 3:2, slightly improving the mood of those watching the live broadcast. However, their good mood did not last too long:

In the sixth match, the Light Heavyweight class, the Hua Country Team sent Guo Dongyang to the ring.

Guo Dongyang’s Overall Score was an A+ (56%), while Adiya’s was S (17%), not a small gap.

Both were stand-up fighters who preferred offense, but facing Adiya, Guo Dongyang seemed somewhat overpowered, even though Li Tongyun had conducted a key analysis on Adiya before the match. Fighters of this caliber naturally don’t have significant weaknesses, and they also have the support of top-notch coaching teams. So, with less ability, Guo Dongyang eventually lost the match.

Not only did he lose the match, but Guo Dongyang’s right wrist was also injured, with the severity unknown.

On the big screen, the score became 3:3.

This score left many Hua Country spectators dissatisfied, knowing that in the last event Japan had defeated Nigeria with a large score of 6:1! Yet now, Hua Country was tied at 3:3, which inevitably disappointed the audience who had been eagerly anticipating Hua Country Team’s advancement.

Meanwhile, Wang Kehan, who had been sitting quietly on the bench all evening, received a message from her agent, telling her to pay attention to the online news.

She sneakily checked the news on her phone and her face changed instantly.

"Who allowed you to post messages online recklessly?" Wang Kehan asked her agent with some anger.

"I didn’t post recklessly, I just told the truth," replied the agent.

"But doing this, Wu Li will only be more displeased with me, and it’s even less likely that I will get to compete in future matches!"

"Now that CCTV is covering the Hua Country Team, can Wu Li still monopolize the coverage? Once the Hua Country Team’s performance isn’t up to par, who do you think will bear the biggest responsibility?"

"But that will force Wu Li to reveal to the public that I openly challenged the coach. By then, the online public opinion will change completely!"

"Are you being naive? Who do you think are in the Hua Country Team? If they’re not Zhang Weili’s people, they’re Wu Li’s people. Do you think there won’t be some trickery involved? Even if there isn’t, people will suspect there is. When that time comes, they can say what they want, we’ll say what we want. We’re not afraid of a quarrel; we’re afraid of no quarrel at all! As long as there’s a quarrel, the moment you and the entire Hua Country Team tear into each other, your popularity will skyrocket!"

"But that way, I’ll completely offend people, and I won’t be able to compete in the following matches either."

"Silly girl, what are you competing for? It’s for the attention. With attention, are you afraid you won’t have matches in the future? And to speak frankly, given the strength of your opponents this time, the chances of advancing from the group stage are small. If you can’t make it past the group stage, even if Wu Li lets you compete, you’ll only have one match left to play. Rather than pleasing him and just going home after one match, better to seize this opportunity and really make a name for yourself!"

Wang Kehan stared at the messages on her phone, lost in thought.

"Consider the reason you made your comeback!"

Another message from her agent arrived just then, and Wang Kehan’s body jolted. She grabbed her phone tightly and pursed her lips.

She looked around; no one was sitting next to her. Then she glanced at Wu Li and Li Tongyun sitting not far away, remembered how Li Tongyun publicly pointed out all her problems that day, causing her to lose face, and remembered Wu Li’s disdainful tone when he said to her, "Are you teaching me how to do my job?" She had already backed down, yet he still wouldn’t let her play.

During tonight’s match, when Chen Min lost, Wang Kehan actually felt some schadenfreude, wanting to see Wu Li’s expression change, but unfortunately, Wu Li remained calm. As the match tied at 3:3, she also started to feel anxious, worrying about advancing.

Now her agent’s words were a reminder for Wang Kehan: Indeed, if the Hua Country Team didn’t make it through, even if she complied with every demand, she would at most only play one more match before going home. So why should she lower herself?

"How do you want me to do it?" Wang Kehan sent a message back to her agent.

"Simple. After the match, there will surely be interviews with you. Just do as I say."

"Okay!"

...

Dong Yunfei took to the stage for the seventh round.

He used to fight in the light heavyweight class, but now he had moved up to heavyweight, and his strength had not decreased but increased because he was truly suitable for the heavyweight class. With the added weight, his reaction, movement speed, and punching speed hadn’t decreased much, but his strength and resistance to hits increased with his weight, leading to his overall score rising from A- (65%) to A (11%).

The team from Nigeria fielded a rather average contestant, with an overall score of only B+ (78%), which was a clear gap compared to Dong Yunfei. The result was unsurprising—Dong Yunfei KO’d his opponent in 4 minutes and 23 seconds, scoring a crucial point for the Hua Country Team.

With that, the final score was 4:3; the Hua Country Team defeated the Nigeria Team, bringing their total points to 8, temporarily placing them first in their group. However, the upcoming matches between the teams from Japan and Thailand would surely change the standings.

After changing clothes and tending to injuries, the Hua Country Team members all appeared in the athletes’ lounge to watch the match between Japan and Thailand.

The two women’s matches resulted in a tie of 1:1.

In the third round lightweight match, the captain of the Thailand Team, Siti, took to the stage with injuries, facing off against a young contestant from Japan, and won a tough victory, bringing the score to 1:2.

However, in the subsequent matches, the Thailand Team continued to lose points. In the last two matches, in light heavyweight and heavyweight, two S-class players also lost to two martial arts experts from the Japan team.

The final score between Japan and Thailand settled at 5:2, with the Japan Team reaching a total of 11 points, once again taking the lead in the group!

With 11 points, the Hua Country Team was 3 points behind. In the last round against the Japan team, they would need at least a 5:2 victory to place above them, a significant challenge given the strength demonstrated by the Japan team.

After watching the match, the faces of the Hua Country Team were somber. Wang Kehan looked at the score on the big screen, her eyes flickering, deep in thought.

Just then, Wang Ruojun suddenly exclaimed, drawing everyone’s attention.

"What’s wrong?" Xu Chuan was right beside Wang Ruojun and asked with a frown.

Wang Ruojun handed her phone to Xu Chuan, who took it and glanced at it, his face changing color. He looked up at Wu Li, "Master..."

Wu Li: "What’s wrong?"

Xu Chuan glanced at Wang Kehan, who was sitting at the back with her head down and an expressionless face, before walking towards Wu Li and passing the phone to him.

Wu Li took the phone and looked at it. It was a message on Weibo.

A few minutes later, he handed the phone back to Xu Chuan, his face betraying no excess emotion.

"Let’s go."

He took the lead into the athlete’s tunnel, where, in addition to CCTV’s Bai Feng, there was a crowd of Hua Country reporters outside.

A storm of public opinion was waiting for him!