King of Sports 177 Fueling The Flames 2

But in the end, it turned out to be useless.

After Tang Yan surpassed Magnussen with unbridled momentum, he continued to widen the gap between them.

At this moment an unexpected scene occurred, Magnussen in the pool was hugging close to the lane dividers and whether intentionally or unintentionally his arm fell into the next lane and hit the arm of Tang Yan in the next lane.

But fortunately, Tang Yan reacted fast enough and quickly adjusted his posture, sprinting to the end to touch the wall first.

At the end of the race, Tang Yan's time was 21 seconds 72.

And just after the race, Magnussen who had lost seemed a little embarrassed, he lashed out and punched the water, splashing water over Tang Yan and another swimmer who had just finished.

Tang Yan being constantly splashed again and again, was beginning to feel annoyed with Magnussen's childish behaviour especially when he had crossed into his lane earlier hitting him.

Fortunately, the assistant referee stepped in, in time.

The head referee also came over. First, he gave Magnussen a warning.

But on his way back, he was accosted by the Chinese team, who watching back the replay on the jumbo screen, realized that Magnussen had actually swung his arm into Tang Yan's lane, hitting arms with him.

Receiving protests from the Chinese team, the referee went back and re-watched the footage and confirming that Magnussen crossed lanes deliberately attempting to bstructing Tang Yan's race, his results were cancelled .

When this call was announced, the audience at the scene flipped out, whistling and cheering, the incident was being played on loop on the jumbo screen.

Magnussen who was disqualified, stood on the sidelines looking distracted before he was swiftly herded off the scene by a staff member from the Australian team.

Physical contact was extremely rare in swimming competitions, due to lanes being seperated by pool dividers which acted as clear borders. Crossing lanes even if it was just slightly accidently floating an arm into the next lane was a disqualifiable offence. 

After the race ended, Tang Yan didn't leave the scene immediately, but stayed to watch the second group.

The swimmers in the first group were weaker, this group had a higher average strength with multiple strong swimmers such as Cesar Cielo, Luca Dotto and Nathan Adrian who were all in this group.

After the swimmers were ready, they got in position.

Buzz!

They all dove into the pool.

Tang Yan saw Cesar Cielo's dominance in short-range events for the first time. His final time was 21 seconds 40, a superb time.

After watching César Cielo's race, Tang Yan felt the pressure. The Brazilian swam like he was born to dominant short-distance events In his current state, even if he exerted his best, he didn't have full confidence.

The semifinals of the two groups are over, and the final list of the 50m finals was released. All the favourites such as César Cielo, Nathan Adrian and Alain Bernard all made it to the the finals in the evening.

After the semi-finals, Tang Yan returned home to rest. After hesitating for a long time, he entered the system space.

Prior to the World Championships, he had accumulated 10 honor points at the Nation Championships but he spent 6 honor points to upgrade and unlock more of Zhang Shun's powers going from 60% to 70%.

He had only 4 honor points remaining but since the World Championships started, he had successively won the 400m and 100m freestyle events. Each medal at the World Championships was worth 2 honor points, so he had accumulated 8 honor points.

Choosing swimming had greatly boosted the amount of honor points he earned just due to the vast number of events. It was a good sport to collect honor points.

But like with everything else, you reap what you sow.

He didn't hesitate any longer and spent 8 honor points at once, raising the powers Zhang Shun from 70% to 80%.

After the upgrade, he could clearly feel that his entire body had changed. The feeling was not only limited to control of his body but also gave him a new understanding of swimming.

In previous races, physical control and superman tier kicking distance and frequency allowed him to overcome his height disadvantage compared to the top swimmers but that meant he needed a distance of about 20-30 meters to catch up. 

After this upgrade, he gained another method to upgrade his swimming style.

In swimming, in addition to the aforementioned skills, there was another factor that greatly affected final performance, lung capacity.

Generally, swimmers with large lung capacity could reduce their breathing rate. Ye Shiwen and Park Tae-hyun were representatives of such characters. César Cielo, was also such a swimmer. Lower breathing rate meant saving time and physical energy turning to take a breath, just like running, the further you could travel travel per breath the better.

Before the upgrade, Tang Yan didn't dare to try this, because his own lung capacity wasn't enough to support him, but after this upgrade, he could feel the increase in this area. Zhang Shun was nicknamed White Streak in the Waves, he was a master swimmer and could stay underwater for long periods of time, his lung capacity was tremendous and with this upgrade Tang Yan was better able to tap into that.

When he realised this, he didn't rest and quickly contacted Shen Qing, he headed down to the swimming centre to train.

Meeting him there, Shen Qing couldn't understand Tang Yan's intentions, but he couldn't bear Tang Yan's demands and finally arranged a training hall for him through relationships.

Tang Yan knew that this time was precious, and after a brief warm-up after arriving at the training hall, he started training back and forth.

Adjusting his style to incorporate his new breathing style, his overall speed increased quantitatively.

Watching Tang Yan flying across the pool, Shen Qing was stunned. Unfortunately he didn't have his stopwatch, to record Tang Yan's time.

Although he didn't know the reason for this change, but after seeing that Tang Yan's speed increased sharply, he increased his expectations of the finals tonight.

César Cielo, the 50-meter short-range king, was probably about to face the biggest challenge of his career tonight.

Chapter end