After the livestream shut down, the stunned netizens were left at a complete loss. Looking at the comment histories still attached to their accounts, they silently clicked to change their usernames.
Most of the students in the analysis group never got to see the final two minutes of the match. Before they could witness the reversal, they had already been transmitted into their next battle.
As a result, they fought the entire match halfheartedly, feeling even worse than if they themselves had lost. They hurriedly dealt with the opposing students, then returned to the group chat to vent their tangled emotions.
“Cheng Feng lost so miserably. My condolences to every little cabbage who’s ever been schooled by Xu Jingwang.”
“Bro, hold off on typing for a second. Wake up.”
“…Holy shit?!”
As more and more students finished their exams and came out of the testing grounds, the group chat quickly became lively again.
“Hahaha, I’m dying! Just now I was outside arguing with some shortsighted netizen about what counts as proving your true skill. We were right in the middle of the fight, I hadn’t even finished typing, and the proctor forced me offline. Then I came back and found out Cheng Feng actually won? That guy who loved lecturing everyone suddenly couldn’t say a word anymore. Such a waste of the ten-plus minutes I spent drafting my argument! Oh yeah, I also lost my last match.”
“Both happy and sad. Thinking about it carefully, maybe it would’ve been better if Cheng Feng had lost. [sad]”
“Even Xu Jingwang lost? I thought his style was a perfect counter to Cheng Feng.”
“That’s what everyone thought. All the strategies were researched around exhausting her stamina.”
“The fact that he managed to drag it out to thirty minutes proves it really was effective. We should keep studying it.”
“Is Xu Jingwang here? How are you feeling?”
Xu Jingwang was replaying the livestream recording from earlier and originally didn’t want to respond. But after getting tagged over and over again, he finally surfaced to reply with a single sentence: “Injured.”
“It’s okay, keep it up next time!”
Xu Jingwang: “No thanks.”
“Looks like the injury was to his heart. [crying]”
The topic quickly shifted elsewhere.
“So what kind of player can actually solo-kill Cheng Feng?”
“I wonder how good Cheng Feng is in team battles.”
“Why are you even talking about team fights during the qualifiers? You guys already assuming she’ll make preliminaries?”
“This analysis group is hopeless. Fine if you won’t stir up trouble, but now you’re actually boosting Cheng Feng’s ego? Raise your heads and look at the group slogan. Remember who you are, okay?!”
“By the way, where’s Cheng Feng? Don’t tell me she collapsed under the gauntlet matches? [snicker]”
According to San Yao’s matchmaking system, the chances of running into top-ranked players in two consecutive matches were actually fairly low.
After transferring to the next match, Cheng Feng quickly swept through the entire map. Copying Xu Jingwang’s style, she used simple turning maneuvers to kite the opponent all over the map.
The other player was clearly nowhere near as comfortable as Cheng Feng when it came to speed control. After being dragged around for half the match, his mentality was on the verge of collapse.
The moment her opponent let his guard down, Cheng Feng secured the win without much surprise.
After finishing that match, Cheng Feng directly canceled her final scheduled match for the morning and headed to the infirmary to get a massage from Doctor Lin.
As soon as she stepped out of the teaching building and her optical computer regained signal, unread notifications from the group chat flooded her interface.
Cheng Feng tapped “ignore,” slowed her pace, then switched to her personal account and posted a message.
Ye Guicheng: 31 [Owl Blowing Wind]
“Got it, got it.”
“There’s no need to @Xu Jingwang for announcements that are literally just numbers. If I were Xu Jingwang, I’d find it annoying too! @Xu Jingwang just happened to start a livestream and just happened to lose one match, that’s all. Don’t keep tying @Xu Jingwang to Cheng Feng from now on. Right, @Xu Jingwang?”
“Don’t get too carried away, babe. Stuff like this is better said privately.”
“Well, her name is literally Cheng Feng – isn’t soaring part of her natural right?” [1]
Cheng Feng scanned through the top comments and nearly walked right past the infirmary entrance. She hurriedly backed up two steps, pushed the door open, and saw a crowd of students lined up inside the spacious room.
Ever since the league began, the massage equipment in the infirmary had practically been monopolized by the manual-operated mecha class students.
Cheng Feng swept her gaze around and spotted Doctor Lin.
He was on duty today, lounging behind a desk by the window with one leg crossed over the other, looking completely at ease. In his hands was a fluffy little owl, and he absentmindedly stroked the white feathers on its head every now and then.
Cheng Feng walked over suspiciously and came face-to-face with the tiny owl. The intelligent robot made no sound, standing docilely on Doctor Lin’s leg with its feathers all mussed up.
The sight genuinely confused Cheng Feng. She lowered her voice and said, “You have a little owl too?”
Doctor Lin lifted his eyelids and gave her a bland glance. “Mm. Someone gave it to me.”
Cheng Feng said, “Wow… mine was a gift from someone too.”
Doctor Lin looked a bit speechless, though he politely restrained himself. He merely raised the end of one brow slightly and shot Cheng Feng a sidelong look that practically screamed, What is wrong with your brain?
“The owl Xiang Yunjian ran into on the way – it was apparently an escaped one. He was in a hurry to get to class, so he dropped it off with me first. The thing started making such a racket the moment it arrived that my head hurt. Completely disobedient, like it was malfunctioning.”
Doctor Lin pinched the little owl by the back of its neck with two fingers and handed it over to Cheng Feng with undisguised disdain.
“There aren’t many intelligent robots this dumb. Next time, have a little more confidence in yourself.”
When Cheng Feng took it, she realized the owl’s speech and movement functions had both been switched into repair mode and were under partial forced restriction. No wonder it had been so peaceful.
She lowered her head and saw the little owl’s eyes starting to flash in multicolored lights again. Although the colors were unusually dim due to the debugging mode, it did nothing to hide its fury at Doctor Lin’s mockery. It looked like it wanted to pull out a gun on the spot.
Cheng Feng didn’t dare reactivate its functions. She was afraid Doctor Lin, in a fit of outrage, would smack both of them straight out the door.
“People need to learn how to back down sometimes. We’re not on the post-war planet anymore,” Cheng Feng whispered, trying to reason with it. “Later on, I’ll install the most advanced flight system for you as compensation.”
The little owl was utterly defeated.
Cheng Feng had chickened out – practically a cardinal sin for a combat robot.
Doctor Lin pointed at the chair opposite him and coldly ordered, “Sit.”
Cheng Feng answered with an eager “Okay!” and scampered over happily.
Doctor Lin leisurely rolled up his sleeves, grabbed the armrest of the chair, and pulled himself closer on the wheels. Then, under the intensely jealous gazes of the surrounding students, he personally gave Cheng Feng half an hour of therapeutic massage treatment.
Walking out of the infirmary beneath the late spring sunlight, Cheng Feng hugged the little owl and turned back, pointing at the large glittering characters hanging on the infirmary wall. With a profound expression, she educated it solemnly:
“See that, my friend? This is what they call a society built on connections.”
She patted the owl on the head. She didn’t expect it to understand such a profound food-chain relationship, but she at least hoped it could build a basic foundation of knowledge.
No matter who’s the boss where you come from, once you arrive at the infirmary, there is only one shared status:
humble.
…
Doctor Lin’s combination of massage and medication worked almost immediately. By the afternoon match, Cheng Feng’s hand was basically back to normal, with no discomfort.
However, Doctor Lin had told her to pay more attention to her lower back.
Students in the manual-operated mecha major only focused on their hands, but for league training they had to sit in front of equipment for ten-plus hours a day. Even at a young age, they still had to take care of their lower backs. That warning scared Cheng Feng enough that she spent an extra hour in the physical training room that night.
Before going to bed, Cheng Feng finished the study schedule set by Mr. Kong, then pulled up San Yao’s ranking list. Starting from the top, she searched for each competitor’s past match videos and analyzed them one by one.
Xu Jingwang’s match had left her with an overly deep impression. All well-known players had distinct fighting styles, and those styles also represented one extremely prominent ability each of them possessed.
The reason Cheng Feng’s win had been so close and exhausting this time was precisely because she didn’t yet have a deep enough understanding of these varied and highly individualized combat methods.
Players like Xu Jingwang and the others, after long-term systematic training, knew how to maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses. That was the biggest difference between them and self-taught, “wild path” fighters.
After watching a few matches, Cheng Feng’s eyelids grew heavy with sleepiness. She forced herself to keep going, pausing the videos to take notes, and persisted for another hour.
After one in the morning, her biological clock finally gave up on her. She slumped against her optical computer and fell asleep.
Cheng Feng didn’t know if it was just her, but she always felt there wasn’t enough time in the day. Even when she broke time into fragments and used it efficiently, she still felt constantly pressed for time.
Every so often, problems would pop up and overwhelm her – like acne during adolescence – disrupting her newly stabilizing routine and bringing all kinds of simple but annoying troubles.
Constantly improving, and constantly realizing how small she still was.
Each day repeated a similar rhythm, yet still seemed to bring scattered little surprises.
Cheng Feng searched online, and confused netizens replied underneath: “Isn’t that just normal life…” …Oh. Is that what it is?
In the following days, Cheng Feng didn’t encounter any particularly difficult players, and her winning streak smoothly surpassed sixty matches. Netizens went from shock to numbness, and cleverly learned to selectively ignore it.
After her match against Xu Jingwang, Cheng Feng felt like she had become a little luckier. The bad luck that Yan Shen had somehow infected her with gradually faded with the end of spring, steadily shifting toward a more positive and optimistic direction.
When she woke up in the morning, she logged into her account as usual, planning to post her win record. Still half-asleep, she opened San Yao and discovered that the post she had made the night before had quietly passed twenty thousand comments – and a small golden crown had appeared on her profile picture.
“Happy birthday, my baby.”
“My daughter is 19 already? I am so relieved.”
“In the new year, go create miracles!”
“Sis look at me, I’m the first one here to check in and send blessings!”
Cheng Feng rubbed her face, thinking she must still be dreaming.
At the top of her screen, a message from Xiang Yunjian popped up.
Xiang Yunjian: Your birthday? April 22?
Ye Guicheng: I don’t know?
Xiang Yunjian: ?? Didn’t you fill it in yourself?
Ye Guicheng: Oh, that. I probably just wrote it randomly.
Xiang Yunjian: …
Cheng Feng had previously been an undocumented person. In order to apply for identity documents, she had filled in many unknown details blindly with her eyes closed. In any case, they were untraceable – she couldn’t exactly travel back into her mother’s womb to ask her biological mother.
Just as she was about to send a message to clarify things, still typing out her explanation, she was hit by a flood of messages from Xin Kuang.
My Family’s Got a Mine: Happy birthday, why didn’t you say so earlier?
What followed was a series of red packets – nineteen in total.
Cheng Feng’s fingers froze. She snapped fully awake, sprang up from bed, and accepted each red packet one by one. Then she solemnly typed in the chat box:
Ye Guicheng: Yes, today is my birthday.
Xiang Yunjian: …
Translator’s Notes:
[1] “Cheng Feng,” literally means “riding the wind.”
