Orc Undead Sports Warrior

Hu Yuan, the third runner for the Ningcheng team, finished fifth in the 400-meter final. He had an absolute advantage among all the third runners in this group, and he kept narrowing the gap with the two opponents ahead of him from the start of the race.

The Beijing team's runner seemed to be the weakest, and was quickly overtaken by the Chongqing team. Seeing a chance to overtake, Hu Yuan became more and more confident. At this point, Ningcheng only needed to overtake one team to advance directly to the finals, but Hu Yuan did not rush things and instead distributed his energy evenly.

Entering the final straight, Hu Yuan finally overtook the third runner from Beijing.

"Great!" Yu Weiming and the other three coaches were all invigorated. With Lu Wei leading the fourth leg, advancing to the finals was no problem at all.

As it turned out, they were still a bit conservative. How could Lu Wei accept second place in the group? After taking over the baton, he unleashed his full pressure without any attempt to hide it. Hu Yuan's baton was Ningcheng's most advantageous baton in the preliminaries. Lu Wei was now less than 3 meters away from the first-place Yucheng player.

He maintained his own pace, and after rounding a bend, the gap between the two narrowed to about 1 meter.

"Coach Wang, you two must have put a lot of effort into the curves during this period. The speed of your progress is unbelievable!" Sun Jun had witnessed all of Lu Wei's competitions during this time and had also personally witnessed his abnormal progress.

The fourth runner of the Chongqing team was starting to panic. He could hear Lu Wei's footsteps, and the pressure from his opponent's unbridled intimidation made him run for his life.

Lu Wei got closer and closer as he ran, and finally overtook Lu Wei at the corner where he cut into the curve on the straight.

The rest of the race was fairly predictable. Lu Wei maintained his rhythm in the final 100 meters, helping the Ningcheng team secure first place in their group with a time of 3 minutes and 5.81 seconds.

Lu Wei remained relatively calm, while the other three team members couldn't hide their excitement. None of the three had won a medal in this competition yet, and compared to Lu Wei, who was practically racking up gold medals, they had high hopes for the 400-meter relay and a stronger desire to achieve good results.

For Lu Wei, the preliminaries were not very challenging, but he was not satisfied with three championships. In his mind, every time he competed, he should win first place, and there was no doubt about that.

接下来的两个小组比赛里，沪市获得了第2小组比赛的第一名，成绩是3分5秒12，第3小组的第一名是粤市，成绩是3分5秒43。

Seeing this result, the Ningcheng relay team, who had been full of confidence just moments before, became somewhat serious. Both teams ran with ease. Apart from Lu Wei, who didn't exert his full strength, the other three members of the Ningcheng team did their best, yet their result could only barely place them in the top three of the preliminaries.

“I’ve discovered a very serious problem: Tan Tianhao from Yue City didn’t participate in the relay preliminaries…” Yu Weiming pointed in the direction of the Yue City relay team and saw Tan Tianhao high-fiving his four teammates who were participating in the race.

"This is normal, I guess. Guangdong's track and field strength is already very strong, so finding four good athletes to participate in the relay preliminaries shouldn't be difficult. Sigh, it seems our strength is still a bit inferior to theirs..." Zhou Hu's joy was quickly washed away.

“We couldn’t even make it to the finals in previous competitions. This time we have a chance to get into the top 3, so why are you all looking so miserable? When did your appetites get so big?” Wang Qiao felt helpless. When did these guys become so greedy?

“But I really want to win the championship. We couldn’t get a ranking before because we couldn’t even get four players of similar skill level on the team. Now that we have Lu Wei, this is probably our last chance…” Wu Bin said with a mournful face. You could tell that he was really upset this time.

What he said made sense. Apart from Lu Wei, the other three would probably be around 30 years old in the next competition, making this competition their peak.

"There's no competition yet, maybe we'll make a comeback in the finals, keep your confidence!" Zhou Hu patted Wu Bin on the shoulder to comfort him, and Hu Yuan, who usually trains with him, also came up to comfort him.

Lu Wei was puzzled: "In terms of ability, this guy is the worst on our team. If he had played better in this competition, we probably would have already been in first place overall in the preliminaries. But now he seems particularly sad, and what's even stranger is that everyone else is rushing to comfort him. A good team can elevate people's morale..."

"Seeing such strong team spirit from everyone is truly gratifying! Since the atmosphere is so good, I'll share some bad news with you all. One member of the Shanghai team has a time of around 45.5 seconds, but due to health reasons, he can't increase his training intensity. Otherwise, he would probably be a very strong player. Based on past experience, he only participates in the relay finals, and he should be competing tomorrow."

The speaker was Coach Jiang. He had been accompanying the leaders on the podium for the past few days, but he couldn't resist when it came to the 400-meter relay. He greeted the leaders and then came down.

"..." Everyone was speechless after hearing this.

"I watched today's preliminary rounds. Your lineup was a bit conservative, putting your two strongest players in the last two batons. It seemed like a safe bet, but if you fall too far behind, it will be very difficult to catch up later. Team competitions are the hardest to predict. It's hard to measure a player's performance in a competition based on their usual results. Players often perform beyond their usual level."

In today's race, Zhu Chenbin from Shanghai was assigned to the first leg. This allowed him to establish an early advantage and avoid congestion for the last three legs after merging lanes.

"It seems we need to reconsider the batting order. Let's call it a day. Everyone go back and get some rest. You'll definitely make history for Ningcheng tomorrow! Relax and don't think too much about it!" Yu Weiming told the coaches and players to go back to the hotel to rest. After all, there was still a day until the finals, and there was no need to waste their energy here now.

That day, none of the coaches were in the mood to sleep. The players needed to conserve their energy; maintaining their own stamina was of little use. They called Coach Jiang together to discuss the lineup for tomorrow's final.

Looking at the lineup for today's preliminary round, it seems to be the most stable but also the least competitive. It's foreseeable that if this lineup were used in the final, their hopes of winning would likely be dashed after the first leg. Based on today's performance, Tang Yang might be relegated to sixth place or even lower after the first leg.

After much discussion, the core issue was actually how to arrange Hu Yuan's batting order.

Besides the lineup setup for the preliminary rounds, the second method of sorting is to place Hu Yuan in the second leg. On the first straight of this leg, everyone can merge, and Hu Yuan's ability advantage can be used to help Ningcheng team get a good position when merging.