Chapter Two: The Nine-Hundred-Yuan One-of-One

Back at the workshop, they digitized the tape. The footage was grainy but sufficient. At seventeen minutes and forty-two seconds, Zhou stopped sharply and the top eyelet on his right shoe split. He sat courtside to change shoes. As the camera passed the sole, it captured a hand-cut lightning mark identical to the one on Lin's pair. Su assembled the material analysis, sole macrographs, and timestamped footage into a seven-page report. Lin did not approach an auction house. He chose a livestream on SneakerEye, where hundreds of thousands were already discussing the next day's release. His title was blunt: A 900-yuan reject is Zhou Tianyue's final test shoe. Mockery flooded the screen within three minutes.