The new trial is about to begin

Autumn gave way to winter, and the comfort of California's early winter beds was devilish, eroding the will of the young men.

But Zhang Yang still resisted the temptation of his warm bed every day, persisting in his training relentlessly.

Persistence in hard practice is rewarding. By late October, Zhang Yang's free-throw accuracy had surpassed both O'Neal and Duncan, marking a milestone in progress.

However, by this time his free-throw improvement had hit a minor bottleneck, requiring a considerable amount of training time; given the current return on investment was not high, he increased the proportion of training for jump shots from five different angles at the free-throw line.