Portugal, Oeiras, Cidade do Futebol.
June on the Iberian Peninsula; the sun spills down like molten gold, drenching the training-ground turf trimmed as fine as carpet. A breeze off the Tagus can't disperse the heat, because all of Europe is watching.
The 2024 European Cup kicks off in less than ten days.
Outside the gates, a hundred journalists have set up their long-lens artillery, vultures waiting for prey. They outnumber and outwork the security police; any black van that nears the gate triggers a fusillade of shutters.
'It's him! Chelsea's ride!'
Someone shouted, and the pack surged.
A black Mercedes Viano eased to a stop. The door slid open; first a pair of retro skate-shoes hit the tarmac, then Lin Yuan stepped out.
He wasn't wearing the national-issue crimson tracksuit, just a plain black tee and oversized shades. After a season of Premier League and Champions League wars he looked bulkier than when he'd left Portugal two years earlier. Sunlight carved hard shadows across the muscles wrapped in dark cotton, radiating a keep-back chill.
Less a footballer about to serve his country, more a mafia enforcer come to collect a debt.
'Lin! Over here!'
'What do you say about making the Premier League Team of the Year?'
'As the only pure holding midfielder, do you think you can fit into Roberto Martínez's possession game?'
Reporters swarmed, mics jabbing his face.
Lin Yuan slipped off his sunglasses, hooked them on his collar. The eyes that had terrified strikers all season swept the crowd.
The hubbub died, unnaturally.
A senior reporter from Record, counting as a hometown voice, braved:
'Lin, critics call this Portugal the most technically gifted ever—artists like B Silva, B Fernandes, João Félix… while your style is labelled "thug". Some fear you'll ruin the team's elegance or cost us with cards. Your response?'
A trap question, the very doubt Europe keeps throwing at him.
Lin Yuan stopped, tilted his head toward the man.
'Elegance?'
He snorted, voice low, metallic. 'If elegance won titles, Arsenal would lift the Champions League every year.'
Gasps rippled. He'd opened fire on the map already.
Ignoring the stir, he went on, flat as stating physics:
'This squad doesn't need more pianists. Plenty of those already. Someone has to carry the piano. If you call that destruction, get used to it.'
'What about Cristiano Ronaldo?' a British hack followed. 'He's 41, playing in Saudi, can't run—some say he blocks the kids. As Chelsea captain, your view on the old skipper?'
Lin Yuan's head snapped round.
His stare cut like a blade, silencing the man mid-sentence.
'Write this down—bold, underlined.'
He pointed back at the complex gate, voice iron:
'As long as he's on the pitch, he's the king. I'm his shield. Touch his crown—answer to my shield, or my fist.'
He slid his shades back on, shoved through the throng and strode inside.
Only stunned hacks remained, headlines already forming: Tyrant's Declaration – I Am the King's Shield.
The dressing-room air-conditioning blasted cold.
The mood felt subtly split.
Portugal's locker room was never one block—Premier grinders, La Liga artists, PSG super-car gang. Each a club king, pride standard issue.
In the corner, Pepe stripped to the waist, sinew dried-beef taut. The 41-year-old 'monk' rubbed warming oil on his thighs.
When Lin Yuan entered, Pepe looked up first.
Their eyes locked.
A strange magnetism: two old wolves meeting on the steppe. Pepe grinned the grin only a kindred soul reads. He rose, walked over, crushed Lin Yuan in a hug.
'Finally here, kid.'
He slapped Lin Yuan's back hard enough to rattle ribs. 'Saw you against City—sent Haaland flying. I couldn't have hit that hard ten years ago.'
'Still a long way from you, old Pepe.' Lin Yuan returned the respect; only Pepe here smells of pure, whatever-it-takes victory.
'Hey, Lin!'
B Fernandes and B Silva came over. Manchester's twin cores had tasted his boots often enough to know how massive a thigh he is.
Yet not everyone welcomed the 'tyrant'.
Across the room, João Cancelo sat on the bench, ball underfoot, murmuring with João Félix and Vitinha.
When Lin Yuan walked in, Cancelo only gave him a cold glance and didn't stand up, his eyes barely flickering, as if the newcomer were just another inconsequential staff member.
As the poster-boy of the technical school, Cancelo had always thought highly of himself. To him, football was an art of the feet—outside-of-the-boot curls and exquisite dribbles, not wallowing in the mud like a wild boar. Lin Yuan's style of barging past people with brute force was, in his eyes, the very definition of brainless.
"Heard he's snapped legs in the Premier League?" João Félix muttered. "On the international stage, refs won't baby him like they do in England."
"Just don't cripple us in training," Cancelo snorted, flicking the ball up with his toe and juggling it twice.
Lin Yuan caught the chill from across the room.
He paused, gaze sweeping over the flair players, but said nothing and walked straight to his locker—the one stencilled with the number 16.
In the national team, 44 wasn't allowed. He'd chosen 16, Roy Keane's old digits: a statement.
At that moment, the innermost door of the dressing room swung open.
The chatter died instantly.
Cristiano Ronaldo stepped out.
Wearing a training vest, bronze skin beaded with sweat—he'd clearly put in an hour alone in the gym before the squad met.
Cristiano's eyes cut straight through the room and locked on Lin Yuan.
No pleasantries. Ronaldo strode over, urgency burning in his stare, the almost fanatical hunger for victory that time had etched into him.
"Five minutes late," Cristiano said, glancing at the priceless watch on his wrist, face stern.
"Flight delay," Lin Yuan shrugged, changing his boots. "Plus I cleared a few flies at the gate."
Cristiano blinked, caught the reference to the press, and the corner of his mouth lifted in that trademark grin.
"Good."
He thrust out his hand, gripped Lin Yuan's hard, bumped shoulders. "But I don't need you shielding me from reporters—I need you shielding me from defenders trying to snap my ankles."
"That's premium service—costs extra," Lin Yuan joked.
Cristiano burst into hearty laughter, threw an arm around Lin Yuan's shoulders and turned to the squad.
"All right, lads! Chelsea's bulldozer's here, so we can crank the intensity up a notch. Don't let him think Portuguese just do embroidery!"
Scattered laughter and nods rippled through the group.
Lin Yuan noticed Cancelo roll his eyes and mutter a Portuguese slang phrase—quiet, yet to Lin Yuan crystal-clear.
Roughly: "Another brute who only knows how to charge."
Lin Yuan's smile stayed put, but his fingers paused while pulling up his socks.
In the corner of his retina, the system panel flickered:
[Hostility detected: scorn from teammate.]
[Notoriety task triggered: Who's the soft one?]
[Objective: in the coming training match, silence the doubter—methods open.]
Lin Yuan stood, rolled his neck with a crack.
"Let's go," he said to Pepe… Half an hour later, on the training pitch.
Roberto Martínez stood on the touchline, tactics board in hand, brows knitted.
The Spanish coach watched the players warm up, uneasy. Since taking over Portugal, one headache had eclipsed all others: overflowing talent, short on steel.
Too many geniuses who could bend the ball into violin-like arcs, none who'd smash the piano.
"Let's go! Seven-a-side!" Martínez whistled. "Reds are starters, blues the rest!"
To mix chemistry, Martínez put Lin Yuan in blue (reserves); Cancelo, Bernardo, Cristiano and company in red (starters).
From kick-off, the reds showed elite technique.
The ball zipped across the grass. Félix flicked it heel-to-heel, Bernardo spun into space and threaded a slide-rule pass to the under-lapping Cancelo.
Poetry in motion—quintessentially Portuguese flair.
Until the jarring full stop.
When blue won it back and Neves laid it off, Lin Yuan didn't caress the ball to set tempo—he hit it first time.
Bang!
A cannon-crack.
Lin Yuan rammed his instep through it.
The ball screamed low and true into red territory, so hard it skimmed a trail of grass, a bullet just above the turf.
Cancelo, waiting to intercept, misjudged the pace; startled, he stabbed a foot out. The ball thudded off his instep and ricocheted two metres out for a throw-in.
Mis-control.
Play halted.
"Hey! Kicking stones?" Cancelo spread his arms, shouting. He tapped his ankle, voice dripping sarcasm. "This is a football pitch, not a rugby field! Soften the pass—planning to break my leg? Is that the technique they teach at Chelsea?"
Several of the flair boys frowned; such a pass felt brutish, devoid of velvet touch.
Lin Yuan stood at the centre circle, not even lifting an eyelid.
"Your first touch's just awful."
Lin Yuan's voice cut through the sweltering air like ice. "If you can't even handle a ball at this speed, go play in the kiddie league. In the Premier League, this is just standard velocity."
"What did you say?!"
Cancelo's temper flared instantly. As one of the world's top full-backs, he was treated like a star everywhere—when had he ever been humiliated like this?
"Enough!" Martinez blew his whistle, massaging a headache. "Play on! João—Cancelo—take the throw-in."
Cancelo shot Lin Yuan a venomous glare, cursing under his breath as he hurled the ball back in.
The match resumed.
But everyone could taste the gunpowder now thick in the air.
Cancelo was clearly out for revenge. A few minutes later he collected the ball on the right. This time he ignored the pass, eyes fixed on Lin Yuan closing him down, a mocking smirk curling his lips.
He was going to dribble past this brainless brute.
Cancelo snapped his hips, feinted left, then flicked the ball with the outside of his right boot—the classic "fried-onion" chop. He was lightning-quick, a blur.
An ordinary holding midfielder would have been left flat-footed.
But he was up against Lin Yuan.
Or, more accurately, an armoured personnel carrier travelling at full throttle.
Lin Yuan ignored the footwork ballet; he tracked only the relative positions of man and ball.
The instant Cancelo prodded the ball past him, Lin Yuan moved.
He didn't stick a foot in—that would invite a nutmeg.
[Skill triggered: Savage Physique (legal shoulder charge)]
Lin Yuan simply, brutally, threw his shoulder across the lane and crashed into Cancelo's path like a collapsing wall.
THUD!!!
The impact sounded twice as heavy as the earlier pass, making even the physio on the touchline wince.
The scene was savage: 182 cm of wiry Cancelo was flung like a rag-doll struck by a train, sailing two metres horizontally before slamming onto the turf and skidding from momentum.
The ball sat obediently at Lin Yuan's feet.
Dead silence.
Cancelo lay face-down, groaning, clutching his shoulder, face chalk-white.
João Félix and several teammates sprinted over, surrounding Lin Yuan in fury.
"Are you insane? This is training!" Félix shoved him. "You could've crippled him!"
Lin Yuan didn't budge; the push-back almost knocked Félix off balance.
Lin Yuan looked down at the groaning Cancelo, no shred of guilt—only cold, terrifying indifference.
"This counts as hurting someone?"
He swept his gaze over the encircling teammates, finally settling on Martinez.
"When we reach Germany, facing Germany's Rüdiger, France's Upamecano, even England's brutes… do you think they'll step aside politely because you're doing a step-over? Or will they slam you back to your hometown like just happened?"
No one answered.
Lin Yuan bent and grabbed Cancelo's collar.
Gasps rippled—everyone thought he'd throw a punch.
Instead, with one arm, he hoisted Cancelo to his feet like a chick, steadying him.
Cancelo stared at the thug inches away, shoulder throbbing.
"Listen, João."
Lin Yuan brushed grass off his shoulder, the slap making Cancelo grimace. "Your footwork's slick—dances like a showgirl. But if you don't want your legs snapped at the European Cup, strengthen your core. First and final warning."
He spun away and punted the ball to the centre circle.
"Continue!"
The air froze for two heartbeats.
Then applause cracked the tension.
Pepe. The grizzled veteran clapped and laughed. "Well said! This is men's football. Enough of that soft nonsense!"
Next, Dias nodded. "He's right, João. You were reckless."
Finally, Cristiano Ronaldo.
The Portugal captain had watched arms-folded. Now he stepped up, clapping a hand on the dazed Cancelo's back. "Quit whining, João. In a final that would've cost us a goal. Lin's teaching you survival."
He turned to Lin Yuan, a spark of fervour in his eyes.
Exactly what he'd wanted.
This Portugal squad was too "nice," too much a classroom of painters. They needed a wolf—an unreasonable, ruthless alpha to teach the flock how to bite.
On the touchline Martinez exhaled. The locker-room hierarchy had just been reshuffled by that single shoulder-charge.
The kid in the No. 16 shirt was no longer the new kid, not merely a Premier League star.
He was the squad's new enforcer.
[System notification:]
[notoriety points +500 (fear from teammates)]
[Quest "Who's the soft one" completed. Reward: Squad-wide Intimidation Aura Lv1.]
[Effect: While you're on the pitch, teammates' running intensity +10% (because nobody wants your tongue-lashing).]
Lin Yuan read the floating text, a cruel smile tugging at his lips.
Good.
Now, finally, this team's spine was beginning to stiffen.