Chapter 30 The End

At 2:37 AM on September 24, 2006, I typed "The End" on the notepad on my computer, and Champion concluded.

This is the longest work I've written since I started writing hand-copied novels and circulating them in class during junior high school – long in terms of both the length of the work and the writing time.

Just like how I liked to summarize An Ke's and Zhang Jun's careers in the book using the structure of "starting from such-and-such date and ending on such-and-such date," I should now summarize the writing experience of Champion in the same way.

When I wrote the title "We Are Champions" in a two-yuan notebook in September 2003, I never thought that I would drag it on for so long – I always overestimated my writing speed and underestimated the length of my writing and the amount of nonsense. In fact, if I wanted to continue dragging it out to cheat for manuscript fees, I could have stretched the fifth part, which was only over 300,000 words, even further. In that case, you would have seen me solemnly promise again on January 1, 2007, that "this book will definitely end in 2007."

Fortunately, I didn't do that.

Perhaps because I started writing online as soon as I graduated from university, and continued writing after graduation, after starting work, and even after resigning... my life experience is so limited that writing about Intention, Champion, and the stories of Zhang Jun and the others has become the most important thing in my four years of life. It has left a unique mark on my resume, so I have poured almost all my feelings into it.

Therefore, when I wrote the chapter about An Ke's retirement (Chapter 23 of Volume 5, "The Thirty-Year-Old Hurdle"), I couldn't help but feel a surge of sadness from the bottom of my heart. It wasn't just because An Ke was retiring, but also because of the time that had passed for myself in these few years.

I am a person with multiple personalities. I like to pretend to be strong in front of others, to act like I don't care about anything, but in my heart, I'm not strong at all, and I care about everything. That's why I wrote Zhang Jun, because he is very much like me. He is not strong. No matter how talented he is or how capable he is, he is not strong. Such a protagonist is not at all likable in online novels, and may even be annoying. Toad told me that a protagonist with this kind of personality is a failure, but my stubbornness made me continue writing, because writing about such a Zhang Jun felt very close to me: he is like me, and I can always empathize with everything he experiences. He suffers for injuries, he is confused by love, he is saddened by the loss of his loved ones, and he is frustrated by his premature farewell... I truly feel all of these things, and I hope that I can slowly become stronger like him.

An Ran said that when he saw me at the Qidian gathering at the end of last year, he thought I was a very melancholic person. I was shocked. I remember that when I was chatting with him at that time, I was eloquent and gesticulating. How could I be melancholic? In fact, I have always been a talent who likes to be mischievous. But I don't deny that I am a sentimental person. I am easily moved by those clichéd touching scenes, that is to say – I am actually very corny.

An Ke's retirement made me feel bad all day. When I was writing about Zhang Jun's last goal for the national team and his last game, it was also in the early hours of the morning. I turned off the lights, and in the pitch-black room, I listened to the song "Life is as Brilliant as Summer Flowers" coming from my headphones over and over again. Looking at the words on the document, my eyes were a little blurry. It was as if I was on the scene, saying with the commentator, "Goodbye, Zhang Jun."

Those people have spent four years of my youth with me, and their departure is like the departure of friends in real life, which always makes me feel sad for a while.

When it came to writing "Chapter 29 Life is as Brilliant as Summer Flowers," I once wanted Zhang Jun to say goodbye like Basten, simply saying a word and then turning around and leaving coolly. But I found that I couldn't do it, because I, like Zhang Jun in the article, had a lot of nonsense to say. So I used 5,000 words to write that press conference, using Zhang Jun's mouth to say what I wanted to say. He said goodbye to everyone and thanked everyone. I also thank all the people who have supported me through these three years.

As for "Chapter 30 The Legend's Silhouette," I considered it for a long time, writing it for three days and rewriting it three times. Because I was never satisfied with the final ending, Zhang Jun's last game.

I hoped that the game would be both sentimental and fully display everything about Zhang Jun and everything related to Zhang Jun, including his friends, his opponents, his fans, his family, reporters, commentators... and so on. As a result, when I wrote 10,000 words, I found that I had written something that was neither fish nor fowl, nondescript.

"What is this?!" I asked myself, looking at what I had written, "Is this Zhang Jun's last game?" Then I shook my head, deleted it, and rewrote it.

The second time was slightly better, but when I wrote 13,000 words, I gave up again, because I felt that I had written a game like a running account, wanting to write about every place, but with no focus at all. So I deleted the more than 8,000 words I had written again.

That's how what you see now is the third time I've written it. Although it still doesn't satisfy me, I feel that I really can't write it any better... I have too many things to say, but the length and skills are limited, so I can't tell them one by one, so I can only give up some and leave them for the readers to think about. After writing it, I found that I had forgotten some details again, but looking at the final battle of 19,000 words that had already been written, I couldn't muster any strength to add those things that had been forgotten and now remembered. Forget it, let it be... Pursuing perfection does not mean that it must be perfect. Zhang Jun's last game may not be perfect, but it's not bad either.

I considered the epilogue for two days before starting to write it. Like the previous chapter, there were too many things in my head, but I couldn't write them out like a running account. The future of those people must be explained, and the life of Zhang Jun as the protagonist after his retirement must also be written. I didn't want to write a postscript that was not important, with each person having an average of so many words, and then the end.

In the end, I chose a method of "narration + description" to write, just like the kind often used in TV movies and cartoons, with narration appearing at the same time as the picture. So it looks a bit fragmented. I have tried very hard to make them look more coherent and concentrated, but my skills are still not up to par.

Long before I wrote the chapter in which Zhang Jun announced his retirement, I had an idea to have Li Yan write a summary of Zhang Jun's career, which was actually what I wanted to say: what kind of protagonist is Zhang Jun? I even opened the document, took a title, and saved it, but in the end, I gave up. Because I found that I couldn't write it. My head was in a mess, and if I forced myself to write it, I might not be satisfied with it in the end, wasting an evening and maybe having to delete it again. I found myself a lazy excuse not to write it: isn't the whole book Champion a summary of Zhang Jun's career? I used more than three million words to talk about "what kind of protagonist Zhang Jun is," isn't that enough? Do I still need to add something superfluous to define him? So I didn't write it. I put the story here, and I let everyone evaluate it themselves. In your eyes and hearts, he is what he is, whether you like him or hate him, it has nothing to do with others, it all depends on your heart.

So, Champion is finished.

For me, it has left many regrets. It's not how much I wrote in Champion, but that so many people could read it, just because it was long enough and maintained continuity, and never stopped updating. It has many problems, and I have many shortcomings. It is full of typos, the logic is chaotic, I wrote the back and forgot the front, it is incoherent, the writing is not up to par, it is verbose and stiff, technical errors are everywhere, and I will not list the strategic errors and tactical errors one by one...

Toad once asked me, why must I write the fifth part? Wouldn't it be better for Champion to have a happy ending in the fourth part? What do people read books online for? To be happy! Why do you have to make it a tragedy? You only write what readers don't like to see. Readers don't like to see the protagonist injured, so you let Zhang Jun be injured for eight months! Readers don't like to see the protagonist experience setbacks, so you make Zhang Jun full of ups and downs. Readers don't like to see tragedies, so you have to write a fifth part after the fourth part with the theme of sadness and reflection! You are an author who likes to go against the readers! Are you only happy when you fail miserably?

To this, I can only smile wryly. Of course I know what readers like to see and what they hate to see. Every time I wrote about Zhang Jun being injured, suffering setbacks, or being unable to recover, wasn't the book review area full of scolding? But even so, I still have to write the fifth part. Why?

Although writing Champion has earned me some money, enough to make my family live a decent life... the readers' love is my lifeline, and I am no different from most commercial authors. But I also have a persistence in my heart – I want to finish what I want to say and finish the story I want to write. Because no one will read it in other places, newspapers and magazines don't want it, and publishing is a distant dream, I only have the platform of the Internet, so I have to ask everyone to watch me write arbitrarily in the last fifth part... and you can only mutter in the book review area: when will it be finished?

Maybe it has something to do with my habit of writing from the beginning. In the past, when I was in school, writing so-called novels was first of all to satisfy my own desires, to write out the story in my heart. I was the reader, and as for being able to spread it, let other classmates see it, and even spread it to other schools, that was my honor, an additional benefit. Therefore, this writing habit makes me consider my own feelings first when writing. The things I write must move myself. If I can't even move myself, I will think it is garbage and can't show it to others. Before writing Champion and Intention, I also wrote a novel about time-traveling to another world to fight for supremacy, but I didn't post it online. Years later, when I dug it out and relived it, I found that I couldn't tolerate the countless flaws and childish writing in the character creation, and finally gave up the idea of changing my vest and posting it online to earn VIP money...

Saying this is actually very unfair to the readers. Because the first thing I consider is myself, and then the readers. This has caused a very long part of Champion to be just me having fun, and you are suffering... Every time I write about Zhang Jun being unhappy, my writing speed picks up. I don't know why, maybe An Ran is right, I am a melancholic person. I like tragedies, I like to abuse myself, I like to create a lot of sentimental things for myself, and then immerse myself in them and think that I am the most pitiful person in the world... Ah, how ridiculous, but that's me.

So, I let Zhang Jun be injured and encounter setbacks again and again, breaking the hearts of a large number of readers, and even losing a lot of subscriptions because of it – the highest subscription for the first four parts of Champion was more than 8,000, and the average subscription was between 5,000 and 6,000. Unfortunately, I am paid by the number of words in a buyout, so even if the subscription is higher, I won't get more money. And from the fifth part of Champion, the subscription has been declining, with an average subscription of only 3,000. After disconnecting from the Internet for ten days and re-updating, the subscription for 10,000 words per day is even lower, only 2,000. This fully illustrates the readers' preferences, and fortunately, I am a buyout, so I don't have to worry about how the subscription affects my mood, so I can stably and consistently maintain my mentality and insist on writing what I want to write.

I am a person who is easily influenced by the outside world. If a reader says "garbage, I'm not reading it anymore!" I will feel very unsuccessful. But similarly, as long as a reader leaves a message in the book review area praising me for writing well, I can regain confidence and feel that I am really as good as he said...

.

I am a lazy person who will never stand when I can sit, and will never sit when I can lie down. I never thought that I would be able to persist in writing a book for three years before finishing it. For myself, in these three years, I have not only written a YY novel, but I have also really learned a lot from this process. Zhang Jun is growing, and so am I.

Toad said in an article I asked him to write, "From 'Do You Care If I Play Soccer?' to 'We Are Champions,' Lin Hai has poured his greatest hobbies and emotions into these two long stories. Writing books online is either for money or for love. But Lin Hai's writing makes people feel that he has poured his life into it. These two novels are a part of his life in these few years and are inseparable from him." (Excerpted from Dragon's Sky Original Review Edition "[Original] Five People and Five New Books That Are Highly Anticipated This Year," author: Wandering Toad)

I don't want to pat myself on the back, and I'm not narcissistic. But I want to say that he said this to my heart. Champion does contain too many of my thoughts, all kinds of feelings. I have used it as a platform to express my views, on soccer, on life, and on ourselves.

To have a confidant like Toad, I feel that these few years have not been in vain.

And I am equally grateful to those readers who insisted on reading the fifth part and truly understood my intention in writing the fifth part. It is you who made me feel that the last 300,000 words were not written in vain. It was not just me talking to myself. There were really people who heard my almost delusional words and resonated with them.

That's enough. What could be happier than having your own hard work understood by others?

Saying so much is actually to thank those tolerant readers who have always supported me and allowed me to write so arbitrarily and finish Champion.

Finally, according to convention, I would like to thank everyone who is worth thanking. Thank you to the readers of the public version. Maybe you have never spent a penny on my book, but you have used your votes and clicks to let more people pay attention to Champion. You have made great contributions to Champion's success today.

Thank you to the VIP readers and physical readers who paid money to buy my book. Your appreciation makes me feel that my labor has meaning. And it is you who have really supported me.

Thank you to the several websites that took in Champion. When sports novels did not have a place of their own, you were able to send me enthusiastic invitations to station, expanding Champion's influence.

Thank you to Qidian and Qingxin for adding Champion to their VIP programs, allowing me, such a lazy coder, to earn money by writing books.

Thank you to my friends, no matter what your identity, you have supported me, so I can get to where I am today and write "The End."

In the past three years, Lin Hai Ting Tao has not been a good author, not a good person. He is too willful, too selfish, hurt some people's hearts, let some people leave in disappointment, and also made some people angry. But I still have to shamelessly thank you, thank you for your support and suggestions.

.

Finally, I would like to reveal a little bit about the plan for the new book.

Some people have suggested that I write a sequel to Champion. Indeed, there are too many things that can be developed behind Champion, such as Zhang Jun's soccer school, the story of Zhang Jun, Yang Pan, and their descendants... But for me, the end of Champion is the end. There is no need to write any sequels, which will undoubtedly destroy the image of those people in the hearts of the majority of readers. I don't plan to use the method of sequels to add to Champion, nor will I use the method of reheating old dishes to tell everyone: Lin Hai Ting Tao is no longer good.

If one day Lin Hai Ting Tao's writing is no longer read by anyone, and he can't write anything, then he will choose to leave. At worst, find a job and work, start from scratch, and usually be a carefree bookworm who laughs and curses...

The manuscript for the new book has already started to be written, but it is written very slowly. Recently, in order to fully write the ending of Champion, I have completely given up the writing progress of the new book. The new book is still a campus romance theme, similar in style to Intention, but greatly different from Intention. I hope it will be more mature and outstanding.

The name is "Born Waste," describing the struggle of a waste, I hope everyone likes it.

According to the plan, it will meet you around the end of October. Please pay attention to the advertisements on various forums and websites at that time. If you have my QQ, that's even better, you can pay attention to my QQ signature.

.

Even the longest journey will have an end, even the liveliest feast will end, even the most glorious drama will have a dim curtain call, and even the most intense game will have the final whistle blown...

Everyone, we have accompanied Zhang Jun and the others for three years. I hope their stories can make you occasionally think of them in the future. Now it's time to say goodbye. Everyone who has walked together, let's agree to meet again at the end of October. I hope that you can experience another journey with me at that time.

Lin Hai Ting Tao

3:26 PM, September 24, 2006, in Chengdu, Sichuan.