Win!

As the air raid siren blared, the final battle of the 93rd summer officially began.

Compared to the previous games, Koushing Academy's batting lineup remained unchanged. The lead batter was the third-year right fielder Sawada Tatsushi—he had a batting average of .389 in this tournament, with a 50-meter sprint time of 6.7 seconds, a typical fast and skillful type.

However, this batter with impressive ball-hitting capability posed no threat to Lin Guanglai.

Against such a batter who relied on skillful hits and speed to get on base, Lin Guanglai opted for the simplest and most direct strategy: using fast, powerful direct pitches.

During pre-game research, Lin Guanglai found that although Sawada Tatsushi's batting skills were quite excellent, he was restricted by his physical abilities, having weak absolute power in hitting. When faced with balls with a particularly strong tail speed, he often easily hit ground balls.

After laying down a combination of good and bad pitches, Lin Guanglai's third pitch successfully lured the opponent into swinging. Though Sawada Tatsushi made contact, the heavy baseball severely hindered his energy transfer, ultimately resulting in a weak grounder towards first base, which Hagiyama Mitsuo easily fielded and threw him out.

The second batter, Wada Shouma, who had a tournament batting average of exactly .400 and contributed a home run, was the second core of Koushing Academy's lineup. Facing him, Lin Guanglai showed a bit more patience, using a combination of high, low, fast, and slow pitches. With a 2-ball, 2-strike count, he tricked him with an outside breaking ball aimed at the right batter, inducing a swing and miss, striking him out.

Having dealt with the first two batters relatively easily, when the third batter of Koushing Academy stepped into the batter's box, the theme song of "Lupin III" played from the stands on the first base side, dedicated to the strongest batter. Lin Guanglai's expression became slightly more serious.

Kawakami Ryohi, Koushing Academy's captain and strongest batter, the team's main central fielder and second pitcher.

With exceptional physical attributes, his fastest pitch speed was 142 km/h, could throw long distances of 115 meters, and had a 50-meter sprint time of 6.2 seconds. He was undoubtedly a well-rounded player excelling in offensive and defensive play.

Just like Lin Guanglai, he became captain and main batter of Koushing as a second-year student—this fact alone indicates that he was undoubtedly recognized by the entire team in terms of both strength and character.

Judging by his current Summer League performance, Kawakami Ryohi indeed lived up to his teammates' trust:

In the previous five games, he maintained a batting average of just over .300 and hit three home runs, being the strongest batter in this tournament besides Lin Guanglai.

It was because of such a figure that since the current Koushing Academy's lineup was formed last autumn, including both official and practice matches in over 100 games, they had never been shut out—against weaker opponents, they could easily dominate in just a few innings; even against stronger foes, they could still manage to scrape a few hits.

Given that Lin Guanglai wouldn't be playing against himself, it was clear that the matchup between Lin Guanglai VS Kawakami Ryohi represented the most intense pitcher-batter confrontation of this Summer League.

As the pitcher and batter met each other's eyes, subtle sparks seemed to be exchanged:

Starting pitcher Lin Guanglai naturally hoped to strike out the opponent's strongest batter to end the inning, ensuring no runs allowed and suppressing the opponent's momentum right from the start;

Meanwhile, in the batter's box, Kawakami Ryohi was itching to make a move—hitting a long ball from the recognized strongest player, allowing all of Japan to recognize him, was his current ambition.

The air was scorching; the atmosphere was intensifying.

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