Chapter 570: A Sudden Surprise

Chapter 570: A Sudden Surprise

Meng Fan did not merely stumble; he stumbled twice in succession, marking a "low score" of 10.7 on his eighth shot, a blunder that served to greatly prolong the joy of the audience.

By the ninth shot, however, Meng Fan recovered his regular form, drawing a chorus of boos from both the live arena and the streaming chat.

The tenth shot followed suit, and Meng Fan smoothly accomplished the challenge of his fifteenth world record.

Yet Meng Fan kept going, embarking this time on a two-shot round to challenge yet another world record.

He fired seven rounds of two shots each, exhausting them all, but the system offered no notification of a new world record attained; evidently, for this particular event, the system recognized only the initial world record.

With the ten-meter air rifle challenge concluded, the sequence of Meng Fan's subsequent challenges was left entirely to Zhu Kainan's arrangement, taking on whichever seemed most convenient first.

"Let us do the fifty-meter rifle three positions, then."

Seeing that Meng Fan required no rest, Zhu Kainan personally undertook the task of instructing him in the foundational mechanics of the rifle three positions.

An Olympic champion in the ten-meter air rifle who had also competed in the three positions—placing an impressive sixth at the 2016 Olympics—Zhu was undeniably a world-class competitor in this discipline, making basic instruction an effortless matter for him.

"The rifle three positions, as the name implies, requires shooting from three distinct postures during the match: prone, standing, and kneeling. In the qualifiers, you must fire forty shots within a set time limit for each position, while the finals utilize only the standing position for ten shots."

After briefly explaining the rules, Zhu Kainan guided Meng Fan hand-over-hand through the basic movements, highlighting the differences between an air rifle and a standard rifle.

Skill in one area indeed translates to mastery in others; after having his stance and posture adjusted a few times by Zhu Kainan, Meng Fan successfully fired a ten-ring shot, and following twenty-odd practice rounds, he hit his stride, commencing the official challenge after seven consecutive precision tens.

According to the regulations, the shooter stands fifty meters from the target, completing forty shots each within forty-five minutes for the prone position, seventy-five minutes for standing, and sixty minutes for kneeling. Meng Fan’s times, however, were ten minutes, twelve minutes, and eleven minutes respectively—one hundred and twenty shots in total, every single one a perfect ten.

In the ten shots of the final, he scored six 10.9s, three 10.8s, and one 10.7.

In terms of errors, this was double his mistakes in the ten-meter air rifle, making it glaringly obvious that Meng Fan was truly unfamiliar with this event!

"Unfamiliar!"

"Never played it before!"

"His first time!"

"I #$%#$%@%@#!“

Having completed his sixteenth world record challenge, Meng Fan moved on to his seventeenth project: the fifty-meter rifle prone shooting, an event that required no further instruction since he had already mastered it within the three positions.

He went straight into the challenge.

Sixty plus ten shots, finished in under twelve minutes.

Next event.

The pistol discipline.

The ten-meter air pistol took quite a while to learn, and completing the challenge itself devoured just over an hour.

The sixty shots of the twenty-five-meter pistol slow-fire and the sixty shots of the twenty-five-meter pistol rapid-fire were, to Meng Fan, essentially one and the same event; after all, his slow-fire was executed at rapid-fire speed anyway.

In a regular competition, the time allotted for sixty shots of twenty-five-meter slow-fire is one hundred and twenty minutes, whereas rapid-fire is divided into two stages of thirty bullets each, six series of five shots. The first two series must be finished in eight seconds each, the middle two in six seconds, and the final two in four seconds, meaning the two events are inherently vastly different.

Simply put, the scores for slow-fire are bound to far exceed those of rapid-fire.

Only in Meng Fan's case did these two equate to a single task; were it not for the necessity of letting the system "know" that one was slow-fire and the other rapid-fire, Meng Fan could have entirely used the rapid-fire method to break the slow-fire world record—in other words, his final rapid-fire score was no lower than the existing world record for slow-fire.

With the completion of these three world record challenges, Meng Fan’s progress reached twenty out of one hundred.

One-fifth of the way through.

And right at that moment, the system’s chime rang out.

"Congratulations to the host for completing progress 20/100 of the [King of the World] quest within three days, unlocking a hidden milestone reward."

"Progress Rewards: 1. Personal Reward (All attributes randomly increased by 1-20%); 2. Family Reward (Immediate family members randomly granted 1-20 additional years of lifespan); 3. National Reward (The host's country randomly receives 1-20 events that enhance national fortune within one year); 4. World Reward (Randomly averts 1-20 major natural disasters destined to occur globally in the future)."

"The host may select two options from the four."

"Please make your selection, host."

This hidden milestone reward arrived with utter suddenness, yet the choice was far from difficult.

A one to twenty percent attribute boost from the personal reward was somewhat superfluous for the current Meng Fan; its absence mattered little, and its presence would merely elevate the baseline of human limits.

As for the world reward, given that major natural disasters occurred by the tens of thousands each year globally, averting one to twenty of them was too small a fraction; though the benefits would undoubtedly be infinite, the scope remained simply too vast.

Thus, Meng Fan chose the middle two options: extending his family's lifespan and adding fortune to his nation, a choice that harmonized home and country, fulfilling both loyalty and filial piety.

Fortunately, it was not a choose-one-of-four scenario, which would have truly tested Meng Fan’s sense of the greater good; selecting either option two or option three alone would have left him deeply uncomfortable.

Having finalized his choices, Meng Fan did not claim them on the spot.

Today's challenges were at an end, as time no longer permitted the shotgun events, which would certainly have to wait until tomorrow.

After closing his live stream, Meng Fan arranged to have dinner with Zhu Kainan and the others, then headed off to shower and change. Right there at the Olympic Sports Center, after washing up, Meng Fan began his "lucky draw."

The options were set; what remained uncertain was the random "numerical value" he would pull.

"Congratulations to the host for obtaining the Family Reward: immediate family members randomly receive an additional nine years of lifespan."

The random value for the family reward was revealed—a median figure, neither remarkably high nor terribly low. Regarding this choice, Meng Fan possessed a rather Zen attitude; even a single year would have been deemed incredibly precious.

Glancing down, the names of his immediate family members were displayed below, encompassing spouse, parents, children, siblings, grandparents, maternal grandparents, grandchildren, and maternal grandchildren. Among these, Meng Fan naturally had no grandchildren or maternal grandchildren, but!

Meng Fan noticed the entry for [Children]. Names were displayed behind all other immediate relatives, such as Spouse (Wu Tong), yet no names appeared behind the children entry; instead, it showed only question marks—two question marks, to be exact, separated by a semicolon.

Meng Fan's heart instantly leapt into a frantic race!

Without losing a single second, he dialed Wu Tong's number, asking straight out when her last period had arrived, leaving Wu Tong entirely bewildered; when she finally registered the question, she struck dumb, realizing she had indeed been terribly preoccupied and muddled of late.

"Go take a test, quickly!"

If the system had made no error, Wu Tong was undoubtedly pregnant, and with twins no less!

Very shortly after, Wu Tong sent a WeChat message—a picture displaying two distinct lines.

"I am coming to the capital right now!"

Meng Fan was consumed by a wild ecstasy, wishing only that he could sprout wings and fly to her side.