When Cheng Feng climbed out of the simulator pod, Mr. Kong’s expression was still somewhat dazed from the sheer shock.
He felt certain that during the time he’d turned his back, he’d missed something crucial and spectacular. Although the instructors beside him repeatedly assured him that he hadn’t, he wasn’t entirely convinced.
Cheng Feng ran a hand through her messy hair, smoothing down a few flattened strands that had been crushed by the helmet. Her unfocused gaze drifted across the floor in front of her. Her mind hadn’t yet disengaged from the duel she’d just fought when Mr. Kong suddenly slapped a hand onto her shoulder, startling her so badly she nearly jumped.
Pulling a stern face, Mr. Kong lectured her. “Even though you won, I still have to criticize you. Next time you want to pull a stunt that thrilling, could you at least warn your teacher first? Do you know how old I am? Do you know that the mental well-being of middle-aged people is also an important social issue that urgently deserves attention?!”
“Uh…” Cheng Feng nodded awkwardly. “Okay.”
There were still other students in the examination hall. Seeing that she had finished packing up, Mr. Kong ushered her toward the exit.
Cheng Feng pulled out her optical computer from her pocket. As soon as she stepped out of the signal-jamming zone, the first thing she did was log onto San Yao and check the latest discussions on the forums.
She wasn’t the first contestant to finish her match.
In the early stages of the league, there were huge numbers of competitors and the schedule was packed. Discussion topics were all over the place, bizarre and unpredictable in their directions, yet all of them enjoyed decent popularity. Still, Cheng Feng quickly found the threads concerning herself among the countless posts.
Even the style of the thread title was completely different from everyone else’s:
#Cheng Feng Is So Bad, I Love Her So Much#
“Cheng Feng was definitely using Hu Silun as a practice dummy, right? The way she fought like a coward in the first half – I almost believed it.”
“Honestly, that was a bit arrogant. The other guy was still her senior and upperclassman. Winning with any tactic is fair and square, but deliberately humiliating and toying with your opponent crosses a line and shows poor sportsmanship.”
“The person above is being too polite. This isn’t a lack of sportsmanship – it’s a lack of basic decency. Cheng Feng’s ego has really gone to her head. I don’t get what’s so lovable about this kind of behavior.”
“Looking at it this way, hand-operated mecha really are impressive. The thing is, every time Cheng Feng enters a match, she manages to provoke a whole new group of opponents. She’s already spread the flames from the hand-operated mecha specialty to the sensor-mecha side. Who knows when she’s going to get burned by the fire she keeps starting.”
“So a bunch of you just imagined an entire chain of cause and effect and decided it was fact? Who are you people to speak on Cheng Feng’s behalf?”
“You need evidence that Cheng Feng is arrogant? You need analysis to prove she was mocking her opponent? What’s next – do I have to prove that one plus one equals two?”
“Now hold on. Who was it that used to say ‘victory is justice’? I seem to remember San Yao’s guiding principle has always been that the strong deserve respect. So why is it that the moment this strong person turns out to be a girl, and a manual-operated mecha pilot at that, everyone suddenly drinks a potion of forgetfulness and starts acting like they’ve never said such things? How strange. [Hmmmm?]”
Cheng Feng had only made it halfway through the comments when Mr. Kong reached over from behind, snatched away her optical computer, and casually turned off the screen.
“Don’t pay attention to what people say online,” he said. “The more attention you get, the louder the voices trying to tear you down become. Worrying about that stuff won’t do you any good.”
Cheng Feng gave a quiet “Mm.”
She pulled open her pocket with two fingers, and Mr. Kong obligingly slipped the optical computer back inside.
The shadow cast by the middle-aged man’s tall frame was almost enough to swallow Cheng Feng whole. As an elder, Mr. Kong occasionally made rather immature jokes and had a temper that seemed easy to provoke, but when it came to professional matters, he was always dependable.
Standing beside Cheng Feng, he lowered his head slightly and asked patiently, “What do you think of sensor mecha? Did this match give you any particular insights or revelations? Are you planning to change your combat style?”
Cheng Feng looked up at him, then turned away again, feeling tired. “During the summer break, I spent some time competing against Jiang Linxia and Xin Kuang.”
Mr. Kong asked, “How did that go?”
“I lost quite a few matches.” Cheng Feng shrugged indifferently. “My win rate wasn’t particularly high.”
To be precise, it hadn’t even exceeded fifty percent.
And that was after she had already studied both of their fighting styles. That was also when neither of them was the strongest member of their squad.
Mr. Kong nodded, not looking especially surprised.
Although Jiang Linxia and Xin Kuang weren’t pilots who specialized in assault-type mecha, both were outstanding infantries.
Jiang Linxia had lightning-fast reactions, along with an exceptional natural talent for handling and adapting to high-speed situations. Xin Kuang was calm and observant by nature – a strategist who liked to think three moves ahead before making one.
They were experienced fighters who knew how to create favorable conditions for themselves within a limited battlefield and how to restrict their opponent’s options.
And the thing that most effectively countered manual-operated mecha was chaos.
When faced with a sudden, unexpected crisis, the human body can react in just a fraction of a second. With the assistance of propulsion systems, a sensor mecha can therefore respond almost instantaneously.
But a manual-operated mecha is different.
No matter how fast the pilot’s fingers move, entering code is always a process. And that process will almost inevitably take longer than the response time of a sensor mecha.
This was also the reason manual-operated mecha had suffered defeat year after year.
Ordinary battlefield situations were already enough to leave pilots scrambling. How could inexperienced university students, when danger struck, instantly switch their instincts from physical evasive movements to the corresponding code inputs without any delay at all?
That was genuinely difficult.
The only consolation was that a manual-operated mecha’s cockpit wasn’t located inside the machine itself.
Mr. Kong gave Cheng Feng’s shoulder a heavy pat and didn’t say much at first. He simply said, “I believe in you.”
After a pause, he added, “What I believe in isn’t that you’re definitely the strongest competitor in the league, nor that you’ll definitely win the MVP for the infantry category. I’ve never believed in absolute strength. In the real world, there’s nothing more common than an upset.”
“What I believe is that the Cheng Feng I know will do everything she possibly can to win any match she enters, no matter how small the odds of victory are.”
As long as the chance wasn’t zero, Cheng Feng would give it one hundred percent.
After all, owls were apex predators that ruled the skies, standing at the top of the food chain.
And robots never feared the strong.
Cheng Feng had the combined buff of both.
Cheng Feng nodded and said seriously, “Mr. Kong, I think there’s one thing you said that’s absolutely right.”
“Of course what I said was right! Which part are you talking about?” Mr. Kong lifted his chin proudly. Before he could start basking in self-satisfaction, however, he processed her wording and clicked his tongue. “Only one thing?”
Cheng Feng grinned, flashing a row of white teeth. With an innocent smile, she said, “The strongest tactic should be prediction!”
Her greatest advantage wasn’t her hand speed, her aggressiveness, or her patience.
It was data analysis.
Cheng Feng gave Mr. Kong a thumbs-up and raised her eyebrows knowingly, as if sharing a secret understanding.
Unfortunately, Mr. Kong was not in sync with her at all.
He smacked her squarely on the back and barked in his rough voice, “Go eat your lunch!”
…
Cheng Feng’s third match was scheduled three days later, and her opponent was another freshman from the sensor-mecha program.
As the league progressed, its popularity kept climbing. Several standout competitors drew increasing attention from netizens, and professional data analysts gradually joined the discussions as well, beginning to speculate about and rank the students’ strengths.
Among all of them, the one people found hardest to figure out was Cheng Feng.
Partly because there were already very few analysts specializing in manual-operated mecha, and partly because Cheng Feng’s fighting style was simply too unconventional.
That left Cheng Feng in an awkward position. When people discussed MVP candidates, not many paid special attention to her – but at the same time, no one dared say she had absolutely no chance.
As it turned out, a sense of mystery was an excellent seasoning for public interest.
For a while, searches for Cheng Feng – the “mysterious” mecha pilot – nearly surpassed those for Xiang Yunjian, though the attention came mixed with both praise and criticism.
The controversy online, however, seemed to have no effect on Cheng Feng herself. She continued using the same stuttering, stop-and-go combat style as before, and once again won her match despite the less-than-positive commentary surrounding her.
Netizens genuinely couldn’t understand it: if she was capable of fighting properly, why did she insist on adding that bizarre little performance act at the start of every match? Were military university students now trying to become internet celebrities too?
The thing was, Cheng Feng really didn’t seem like that type.
After Cheng Feng’s third match, negative opinions about her began to surface.
Some netizens were already quite harsh toward military university students on matters of morality and liked to lecture them. With other netizens defending Cheng Feng, both sides ended up provoking each other. The language quickly became uncivil, and what started as small-scale arguments gradually escalated, prematurely entering the annual “online showdown” phase.
Perhaps arguing was also one of the pleasures of being online – though Cheng Feng couldn’t really understand it.
After noticing that the tone of the comment section had become somewhat strange, she stopped logging into her social media accounts and focused on classes and competitions instead.
In her third match, Cheng Feng was paired against another manual-operated mecha peer. She finally fought a “properly serious” match and cleanly secured a beautiful victory.
After the third round, most of the beginners had already been eliminated, especially those in the manual-operated mecha category.
In the league group chat that Mr. Kong had created back then, fewer than one-tenth of the students were still in the competition.
Those who were lucky enough to still be matched in San Yao’s system at this stage were not very optimistic about their own futures either. In the group chat, they joked that they would probably be eliminated in the fourth round, and told Cheng Feng to keep going and carry their hopes forward.
Since it was a single-elimination format, from the fourth round onward, competitors would start facing experienced and well-developed opponents.
What surprised Cheng Feng a little was that Lu Yuan had actually kept winning all the way to this point.
Lu Yuan himself was also extremely shocked. He even specially sent Cheng Feng a holiday greeting message and bought a small cake, thanking his “B-class dad” for carrying him to the peak of his life.
After a cold front passed through, autumn rain fell for several consecutive days. The temperature seemed to drop along with the yellowing leaves.
In the early morning, the streets were scattered with ginkgo leaves that hadn’t yet been cleared away in time – bright golden yellow, vivid in color.
Cheng Feng pushed open the window, wanting to get a clearer look at the garden in the distance, only to be met head-on by a wave of cold air that hit her face.
Her optical computer vibrated. San Yao had released the matchups for the fourth round.
Cheng Feng closed the window, pulled a thick coat from her wardrobe and wrapped it around herself, then casually opened the spreadsheet on her optical computer to search for her name.
Black text was listed at the center of the page. Two familiar names popped up together, and even Cheng Feng couldn’t help but widen her eyes slightly when she saw them.
Ye Guicheng – Jiang Linxia
