Chapter 436 – The Prince

At the end of the first half, class 2-3 was in the lead with the score 34:27. I scored 10 points, Niu Shi Li scored 11 points, and the remaining 13 points were scored by the rest of the team.

Although I only scored one point less than Niu ShiLi, the bet we made was that as long as Niu ShiLi was on court, then he would also get the points made by the other teams members. So, the score of the bet was 10:(11+13) = 10:24.

It can’t keep continuing on like this! If I don’t get passes, I wouldn’t be able to fill up the gap in score, but I will get filled up with Fu Yan Jie!

There are only 6 classes in the second year. Since we were using the knockout method, there would be three winners in the first round. Then, the class with the most points gets to sit out the second round and wait for a winner to be decided from the other two classes. Finally, the remaining two classes would compete for the championship.

So taking that into account, you could only play a maximum of three matches. The 20 minute second half is one sixth of the entire competition, so I have to use the time wisely.

I really wanted to head to the volleyball courts to watch the class leader’s jump spikes and legs, but I was still the captain. Even if all my team members wanted me to fail, I still had to stay behind and discuss strategy for the second half.

Loud Mouth brought over two bags of chilled bottled water and distributed it to the team members based on the class leader’s orders.

“Drink up and play well.” Loud Mouth said, “We used the class budget to buy this, so you can’t let the class down.”

Xu LiJun spoke while wiping the sweat off his head: “If you’re using the class budget, why didn’t you buy something more expensive like vitamin water…”

I was in the middle of drinking water, but I spat all of it out when I heard vitamin water…

Everyone looked at me strangely. No one knew it was because I remembered the time Xiong YaoYue almost wet her pants.

Xiao Qin and Loud Smart followed Loud Mouth to check up on us, but Xiao Qin couldn’t speak with any of the other boys. She couldn’t even pass out the water.

She could only pass the water to me, then let me pass it to the others.

The fact that I was the only boy Xiao Qin was close to had already raised discontent among the other boys in class, but Eunuch Cao spread a rumor which said Xiao Qin was conditioned by me since childhood and couldn’t survive without me. She was something that belonged to me, so the others shouldn’t even think about making a move on her.

Eunuch Cao always had low credibility, but even if the boys don’t understand what’s the relationship between me and Xiao Qin, they still understand that she belongs to me. So, for their own safety, no one made a move on Xiao Qin.

“Ye Lin classmate.” Xiao Qin whispered to me right before the second half started, “The other team’s captain has an injury on his left kneecap. He won’t be able to keep playing if you hit it once with the ball.”

Huh, the one in charge of defending me was coincidentally the other team’s captain. I competed against him for 20 minutes on the court and didn’t even realize it, yet you were able to easily find that out on the sidelines? It looks like your title of being a martial arts genius isn’t fake. Can you find an opponent’s weakness by simply monitoring their actions?

Even though I received good information about the other team’s captain, I don’t plan on intentionally hitting him on the knee with a basketball.

In any case, you would get my respect as long as you fight fairly in front of me.

Playing with an injury adheres to the Spartan code. I will make him concede without using any petty tricks.

But I did feel like I had an advantage after I obtained that information.

I wasn’t afraid to pass balls that I used to believe would be intercepted. Class 6’s captain who was delayed by 0.1 seconds due to his injury, gave me enough time to pass the ball to my teammates.

I wasn’t afraid to go for layups that I thought would be blocked before.

My points quickly surpassed Niu ShiLi. As for when I passed the ball, I purposely passed it to You Chen who wasn’t great at scoring.

You Chen, who was only 160cm, didn’t get many opportunities to score. In order to go for a layup once, he had to dribble desperately and make a lot of fakes to finally score.

Although he had a lot of steals in the first half, he was only able to score one point. That point was also obtained on a foul, so he was embarrassed.

The vice-captain, Niu ShiLi was able to calmly analyze our enemy along with our own team and make each of our team members (except for me) play their strengths. But he forgot that our team members aren’t robots, they have their own ideas and wishes.

You Chen really wants to score more points, he doesn’t want to only assist. It’s like how you don’t want to always be support in LOL. (Since Ai Mi was going to form a professional LOL team, I’ve been researching about the game lately. I feel like it’s pretty easy to transition to if you played dota before.)

I have a dad who often talked about The Prince during meal times, so when I calm down, I still understand the importance of boosting your subordinates’ enthusiasm.

The author of The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli, was an Italian diplomat who had similar views to Xun Kuang that humanity’s inborn tendencies were evil. They both advocated that rulers should use any means to run a country and the military.

If we only look at the aspect of running the military, ever since The Prince was published and was taken as a guiding principle by Italian monarchs, they have never won a war. I think Italy should have paid more attention to ‘The Art of War’ rather than ‘The Prince’.

But my dad also mentioned the phrase ‘A man isn’t invalidated by his words, nor are his words invalidated by other people’ when he spoke about Wu Qi.

What he means is that sometimes a person may be bad, but his words may be correct and you can learn from it. Sometimes what a person says might not be useful, but you can learn from their character.

That’s why I think the analysis of human nature in The Prince is very interesting. The author of one of Niu ShiLi’s revered sci-fi novels, The Three-Body Problem, once said on TV that the main points of his book wasn’t about human nature, but about survival. Niu ShiLi took his quote out of context and believed human nature wasn’t important. He even applied the concept to the basketball match and only played to our strengths, but ignored You Chen’s desire to score.

You Chen was visibly stunned when I caught a rebound ball and passed it to him.

Niu ShiLi was on the right, Pi ZeGuang was in the center, and even I had the option to score, but I passed the ball to him when he had only been giving assists.

Niu ShiLi gestured to You Chen for the ball. As the vice-captain his analysis of not letting You Chen shoot was correct if he wanted to win, but it was wrong in terms of human nature.

I went to interrupt the other teams defenders while You Chen was hesitating to give him an opening.

You Chen, who had only scored one point, picked up his courage and shot the ball.

The ball rolled around the rim and slid into the net.

“Good shot.” Niu ShiLi said to You Chen when he was returning to position, “But next time pass the ball in that situation. You can pass it to either me or Pi ZeGuang”

You Chen nodded, but it seemed he didn’t want to accept it. 3 points in a whole match were too few points for him.

“Don’t listen to Niu ShiLi.” I said to You Chen as I ran by him, “Shoot if you have the opportunity. Don’t be afraid to miss, I’ll get the rebound.”

I was more confident in getting rebounds after I learned the class 6 captain and a knee injury. Sometimes, the area under their net also became a battleground between me and Niu ShiLi.

The next battle was between ‘human nature’ and ‘rationality’.

Due to my unflagging efforts of interceptions, getting rebounds, and passing to You Chen, he was able to get the most chances.

But his score rate was quite atrocious. He would only score twice out of ten shots.

But as I became more used to his shots, it was easier for me to get the rebounds. Sometimes, I would pass him the ball again after the rebound and sometimes I would just go for a layup.

When You Chen had shot 19 times and scored a total of 10 points, perhaps he was satisfied, but he stopped shooting and began passing the ball with perfect timing.

After I satisfied You Chen’s desires, he began to follow along with Niu ShiLi’s rational plan. He worked even harder than before at stealing and breaking through.

The biggest difference from before was that You Chen began to return the favor. If I was standing in an advantageous position, he would pass me the ball even if Niu ShiLi glared at him.

That’s why they say it’s easy for men to forge friendships on the battlefield. It’s better than a friendship between girls as we already have a connection without saying more than a couple of words.

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