Chapter 317 - 202: Hard Against Hard, Wild
In late October, the autumn winds blowing off the Hudson River brought a bone-chilling cold to New York. But by the time that chill reached East Rutherford, New Jersey, it was met by a raging inferno that set the very air ablaze.
Three heavy-duty broadcasting helicopters bearing the ESPN and FOX logos circled endlessly in the sky above MetLife Stadium. Beneath the thunderous roar of their massive rotors, more than 80,000 fans let out a frenzied cry.
The aerial view from the helicopters showed the stadium’s perimeter completely flooded in the deep blue of the Giants and the scarlet red of the Kansas City Chiefs, a clash that looked like the sea battling a volcano.
"This is a special report, live from the scene for ESPN! I’m your field reporter, Samantha!!"
A blonde reporter stood before a cordon of metal barricades, barely held in place by security, and shouted into the camera.
Even with her noise-canceling headset, she had to shout at the top of her lungs to be heard over the background noise. "This is an unbelievable sight! We’re still a full two hours from kickoff, but all 82,000-plus seats in MetLife Stadium are already filled! Scalped ticket prices even doubled again just ten minutes before the game! Because today, Metropolis’s Tyrant, Li Wei, will face the man currently on the throne of the NFL Alliance—Patrick Mahomes—right here on his home turf!"
The camera cut to Samantha handing her mic to a burly, shirtless white man with his face painted blue. In bold letters across his chest was written "KING LIWEI."
"Are the Giants going to win today?"
"Win? Are you fucking kidding me? We’re gonna grind those Kansas country bumpkins into paste!" The burly man pounded his chest for the camera, spit flying everywhere. "This is Li Wei’s turf! I don’t care if he’s Mahomes or some magician, Li Wei’s gonna shatter his bones!"
"God wears a number 1 jersey!"
His companion, wearing Li Wei’s number 1 jersey, shouted maniacally at the camera.
The reporter quickly snatched the mic back and, with a security escort, squeezed through the crowd to the red-clad opposition. She zeroed in on a die-hard Kansas fan in a number 15 Chiefs jersey and glasses.
"Look, I won’t deny that rookie Quarterback is a physical freak," he said, pushing up his glasses with a contemptuous tone. "But Quarterback is a cerebral position. Mahomes has a Super Bowl ring. Coach Spagnuolo’s blitz packages are going to teach that savage, who only knows brute force, a lesson. This is a team sport. Metropolis’s false god is destined to fall today!"
"And that’s the report from here at Metropolis," Samantha said. "Let’s send it back to the studio."
On the national broadcast feed, ESPN’s star commentator Joe Buck was flushed with excitement, his tie askew. Beside him, Troy Aikman sat with a stern expression, his hands folded on the desk.
"Welcome back to the studio!" Joe Buck burst out, unable to contain himself. "Troy, just listen to that crowd! This is the most anticipated regular-season game of the season, and maybe even the last five years! The 7-0, zero-sacks-allowed, Yellow-Skinned God, Li Wei, versus the number one player in the NFL today, Mahomes! Honestly, I’m not even thinking about *if* Li Wei will win. I just want to know *how* he’s going to destroy the Chiefs today!"
Troy Aikman scoffed and shook his head. "Joe, you need to calm down. Put aside your blind worship for a moment. This is the Kansas City Chiefs, not those trash teams they’ve played with nonexistent defensive lines."
He pulled up the starting lineups for both teams on the telestrator. "Let’s talk facts and data. The Giants’ record is dazzling, sure, but if you take Li Wei out of the equation, their O-line protection and receiver corps rank near the bottom of the league. And the Chiefs? They’re a championship team with no weak links!"
He then pointed to Mahomes’s heat map on the big screen. "Mahomes’s vision and ability to read the game are historic. Kansas’s overall talent is just so much better than the Giants’. As long as the Chiefs cut off the connection between Li Wei and his receivers and force him to play hero ball, he might break through once or twice with his incredible physique, but can he do it all game? I think Li Wei’s myth of invincibility comes to a decisive end tonight."
Meanwhile, the entire North American internet had erupted into a frenzy long before MetLife Stadium did.
On the eve of this showdown, dubbed "The New God vs. the Old King," every major social media platform had already devolved into a meat grinder for the two fanbases.
In the comment sections under TikTok clips, new posts were appearing at a frantic rate of dozens per second.
"All you soft Kansas fans better watch closely. This is a real-life Terminator!"
"Hilarious. He beats a few weak teams and now he’s trying to clout-chase the best player in the NFL? Just wait. Once they’re on the field, Mahomes will teach that brainless New York boar a lesson!"
Over on the NFL subreddit, armchair analysts were creating threads thousands of comments long, filled with endless, in-depth tactical breakdowns.
Twitter, meanwhile, was like the Celestial Dynasty’s Weibo on steroids. The cross-state flame war between New York fans and Kansas die-hards pushed the hype for this regular-season game to a level second only to the Super Bowl.
It even led to fans arranging to fight in person, with some incidents landing people in the hospital.
Back in the studio, Joe Buck and Troy Aikman’s debate concluded, and the broadcast cut back to the live feed from MetLife Stadium.
A tsunami of sound from the more than eighty thousand spectators rolled in, so powerful it made the microphones tremble.
The lights in the player tunnel suddenly went dark. Two rows of pyrotechnic machines shot pillars of fire skyward. Amidst the deafening heavy metal of their entrance music, the New York Giants players filed out like a troop of heavily armored warriors.
And walking at the very end of the line, receiving the most extreme cheers and a baptism of sound at the highest possible decibels, was Li Wei in his number 1 jersey.
Invisible to all, the Jester’s skull bobbed up and down, hovering behind his shoulder.
Li Wei had been bracing himself to block out the chattering skull’s vicious mockery. In the past, no matter how spectacular his victory, the skull always found the most caustic words to belittle modern football, calling it "smashing each other’s bones in a mud pit" or "a cheap drama to entertain corpulent lords."
But this time, in a rare turn of events, the Jester’s skull didn’t speak right away.
The two rubies in its eye sockets, which normally glinted with sarcasm and derision, now scanned the colossal steel structure with a fixed intensity as the skull rotated.
The fanatical waves of sound, the blinding searchlights, the thundering iron birds circling in the sky, and the eyes in the stands—thousands of pairs, lost in a frenzy, staring as if at a god.
The skull’s jaw opened slightly. After several long seconds, a few lines of text slowly materialized before Li Wei’s retinas:
[...]
[What an incredible spectacle.]
The red light in its sockets flared violently as it looked at Li Wei.
[Even the Royal City, before the outbreak of the Abyssal War, never constructed such a magnificent colosseum.]
[Why... You are merely a Silver Knight from the End of the Dharma Era. How can you draw power from these frenzied souls?]
’What power?’
A thought crossed Li Wei’s mind. ’Is it talking about the system’s rewards? The +0.1 to my stats after every game?’
’Heh, you fool. I’ve got cheats.’
[Could you really be able to...]
[In an era where even Magic is fading... how is this possible?]
For once, the cryptic Jester’s skull wasn’t being sarcastic. Li Wei could clearly sense its attitude toward him had shifted from mockery to shock.
「The Pre-Game Coin Toss.」
At midfield, the two team captains stood facing each other. On one side was Mahomes in his scarlet jersey; on the other, Li Wei, clad in his blue number 1 uniform.
Mahomes stared at the Quarterback who, just seven games into his career, had already achieved a level of popularity to rival his own. He tried to read something in Li Wei’s eyes, but they were perfectly calm. There was even the hint of a smile visible inside his helmet, giving nothing away.
The coin toss ended. The Kansas City Chiefs won and would receive the ball first.
Mahomes turned and ran back to his sideline, ready to lead his offense onto the field.
Normally, Li Wei should have returned to the sideline.
But he didn’t.
He walked straight over to the Giants’ defense as they were reviewing their strategy. After exchanging a look with Head Coach Dabor, he took a defensive helmet and put it on.
The broadcast director’s camera keenly caught the strange development on the field.
Joe Buck was in the middle of a sponsor read when he saw what was happening and suddenly screamed:
"Wait! Li Wei isn’t coming off the field! He’s lining up in the Giants’ defensive backfield! What is he doing? He’s going to play on defense! He’s playing safety!"
Troy Aikman lost his composure and shot to his feet. "This is impossible! Letting your hundred-million-dollar starting Quarterback play defense? This is a flagrant insult to the entire tactical system of the NFL! He’s suicidal! Mahomes’s arm is going to teach him a lesson!"
It was no wonder Troy and Joe Buck were losing their minds. While NFL rules state that as long as a player is on the active roster, the head coach has the right to put him in on any given play—offense, defense, or special teams—
—and while numbers 1-19 are valid for Quarterbacks and 1-49 for defensive players, meaning Li Wei’s number 1 jersey was perfectly legal for the position without even needing to report to the referee—
—it was something that common sense absolutely forbade.
Unless the owner, head coach, and front office were all completely stoned, no team would ever let their starting Quarterback go play defense and brawl with men weighing several hundred pounds.
In fact, this was all Li Wei’s idea. It had taken him considerable effort to convince John Mara and Dabor.
Since so many people claimed Mahomes was better than him, he wanted to find a way to go head-to-head with him.
He wanted to see who was the egg and who was the rock in this collision.
The eighty thousand-plus fans in the stadium fell into a brief, dead silence, which was then shattered by a roar loud enough to tear the roof off the building.