In the dozens of practice matches between Jiang Linxia and Cheng Feng, according to incomplete statistics, his frequency of cursing was 50% higher than in other matches.
And this was already the result of him holding back.
He had to admit – he hated competing against Cheng Feng.
The more practice matches they played, the deeper his understanding of Cheng Feng grew, and the stronger this feeling became.
Even when facing Xiang Yunjian and suffering over a dozen consecutive losses, he had never experienced this kind of anxious unease – something close to resistance or even fear.
No opponent had ever made him feel so helpless and intensely unsettled. Yet Cheng Feng – whose win rate wasn’t even higher than his – had managed to do just that.
The scattered thoughts flashed through his mind for a brief moment before Jiang Linxia swiftly suppressed them. He bent his knees and quickly swam along the guardrails at the edge of the track.
The flat area offered more open space. Jiang Linxia scanned his surroundings but found no suitable spot for combat.
The nearby landscape leaned toward the low-lying side – empty streets and irregularly shaped flower beds that he couldn’t effectively use to his advantage.
The two best options before him were: first, to enter the mountain forest park and use the rugged, uneven terrain to create distance; second, to continue downward or circle around in search of advantageous terrain like clusters of high-rise buildings.
Both options carried the risk of being outplayed by Cheng Feng.
Jiang Linxia had no time to hesitate. The pounding of his heart was already threatening to overpower his reason – before the haze of pressure could drown his mind, his body pivoted toward the park gate on instinct.
But Cheng Feng was faster.
She was clearly still on the mountain-loop track, yet it was as if she had a god’s-eye view through an electronic surveillance lens – a powerful strike ruthlessly severed his path forward.
And one blast wasn’t enough. The weapon reserves she’d been counting on her fingers just moments ago were now being deployed wildly on a massive scale, as if they cost nothing.
Caught off guard by this area-of-effect assault, Jiang Linxia felt like he was standing at the center of a fireworks display. Every attempt to retreat or change course was met with sparks on all sides – one wrong touch, and he’d be consumed along with them.
He abandoned the mountain forest park without hesitation, struggling to find an escape route among the nearly overflowing red alerts on his monitoring panel, and charged out through the billowing smoke and dust.
“Damn it!”
Jiang Linxia took a deep breath, glancing at the rearview monitor to see the pockmarked, cratered ground – now barely recognizable – and still felt a lingering dread.
Out of respect, he cursed again, “If I didn’t have quick reflexes, you’d have ground me to ashes!”
He let out a long breath, forcing himself to relax.
What he could be thankful for was that this wave had also greatly depleted Cheng Feng’s weapon arsenal.
In the previous two practice rounds, it was precisely after exhausting the ranged weapons of his piloted mech that he had secured his victories.
At the start of this match, Cheng Feng’s fighting style had become unusually conservative, and Jiang Linxia had thought this tactic of hers was about to fail.
Unfortunately, before he could get far, the black mech had already latched onto him like a persistent ghost – formally appearing within his detectable surveillance range.
Jiang Linxia zoomed in on the feed and saw Cheng Feng raise her mech’s left arm, about to open the Zone-3 weapons bay.
If he remembered correctly, the Zone-3 weapons bay was characterized by short range, high fire rate, and wide coverage. The damage from its scattered munitions wasn’t particularly high.
However, the Windwing’s defenses were on the weaker side among sensor-type mechs. A direct frontal assault from Cheng Feng would still easily result in extensive damage to his weapons systems.
Jiang Linxia narrowed his eyes, his gaze sweeping hastily over the terrain on both sides. He immediately decided on the eastern direction, using his thrusters to try to vault up onto a higher platform nearby.
But contrary to his expectations, the anticipated attack never came.
At the very moment Jiang Linxia began his maneuver, the raised bay door of Cheng Feng’s mech lowered back down. At the same time, she deployed a different cannon barrel, aiming it squarely at Jiang Linxia’s hiding spot.
He’d been tricked!
Jiang Linxia gritted his teeth, his expression uncontrollably twisting into something ferocious.
This feeling of being perfectly outmaneuvered by Cheng Feng sent his sense of frustration skyrocketing by ten degrees.
On top of that, the pent-up agitation and anger accumulated over dozens of matches all exploded at once when – after his clumsy evasive maneuvering – Cheng Feng’s mech maliciously made a taunting waving gesture at him.
He stopped dodging and fired straight at Cheng Feng.
This was exactly why sensor-mech pilots feared data analysts.
Some deputy commanders were so deranged that they could build complex mech models to deduce even the subtlest habits that the pilots themselves hadn’t noticed.
And Jiang Linxia had suffered greatly from this.
Before those dozens of matches against Cheng Feng, he’d had no idea that he had a habit of taking a small step out with his right foot before drawing his cannon. He hadn’t known that he’d slightly raise his arm before decelerating.
These subtle physical tells were very inconspicuous. Even if most mech pilots learned of such habits through data analysis, they’d struggle to pay attention to them in the heat of actual combat – or to form a conditioned reflex to counter them.
By the time they’d observed and reacted, Jiang Linxia would have already fired off two full rounds of attacks.
So when Cheng Feng first pointed these things out to him, Jiang Linxia hadn’t taken it seriously at all.
The two of them had played over 80 matches in total.
Cheng Feng had reached her conclusion within the first ten matches.
By the thirtieth match, Jiang Linxia had vaguely sensed that Cheng Feng was trying to keep up with his rhythm. She’d often make preemptive moves right when he was about to attack – though her success rate at pulling it off was still pretty shaky.
After sixty matches, their win rates had roughly evened out to fifty-fifty. And by then, a certain sense of restraint – of being hemmed in – had become so pronounced that Jiang Linxia could no longer ignore it.
The small details he’d once dismissed had been firmly grasped in Cheng Feng’s hands.
It was around that time that it hit Jiang Linxia like a club to the skull – he remembered. Ordinary mech pilots might not be able to pull it off, but Cheng Feng was still a data analyst.
Beyond observing, analyzing, and predicting, she also excelled at misdirection. She had nothing to do with the word “ordinary.”
However, in the practice matches that had just ended yesterday, Cheng Feng’s playstyle hadn’t been this refined. Jiang Linxia’s counter-misdirections had worked several times, which was a stark contrast to today’s situation.
When he deliberately used feints only to have Cheng Feng see through them time after time, Jiang Linxia finally couldn’t take it anymore – and opened a comms channel to Cheng Feng once again.
“Something’s off with you today – were you holding back on me before?” Jiang Linxia said in a gloomy tone. “Aren’t we on the same team? You’re using such dirty tactics on me, while I’ve held nothing back from you! You do know we still have squad matches and large-scale battles ahead, right?”
“No.” Cheng Feng kept her gaze locked on Jiang Linxia’s feed without blinking, replying between actions. “I’m just in particularly good form today.”
In her eyes, Jiang Linxia’s every move was laid out as clearly as an open hand.
Cheng Feng said sincerely, “Thank you for the special training. It’s very smooth playing against you.” Her mind and body both felt cleansed.
Basically, only experienced mech pilots had established patterns worth studying.
The opponents Cheng Feng had faced in her first few matches couldn’t observe her micro-movements, nor could they be influenced by her misdirection; they had no well-defined personal style either, and at critical moments they’d flail around aimlessly by instinct like headless flies – completely outside the framework of Cheng Feng’s probability-based knowledge system.
Jiang Linxia was different. His meticulous observation skills meant that every step he took landed squarely in the fresh pits Cheng Feng had just dug.
Without hesitation. Without deviation.
Cheng Feng would rate his performance today as perfect.
…
Crazed Charmer propped his chin on his hand, watching the two mechs engage in a head-on firefight, and said thoughtfully, “To be honest, Jiang Linxia’s performance today feels a bit… unfamiliar? His mechanics are fine, but there’s an inexplicable restraint about him. He’s strong, but it’s missing a bit of his personal flair. If I weren’t watching the livestream, I might not even recognize that the person behind Windwing is Jiang Linxia.”
The netizens were already completely confused.
Even if they were blind, they could tell that the tide of the match had turned.
At the start, Jiang Linxia had been in absolute control of the pace, but now Wingwing was merely scrambling to survive.
The mech famously known for its speed had never fallen into such a desperate situation before.
“Strong? Say that again.”
“Is he throwing the match? Why is he running around with his tail between his legs?”
“Is Jiang Linxia just firing blanks or what?”
Crazed Charmer caught sight of those comments and burst out laughing. He emphatically clicked on the video on the right and said in a tone thick with frustration. “Even laymen watching the excitement – can you really not see the nuance here? He’s not throwing the match. On the contrary, Jiang Linxia’s reaction speed today is faster than ever, his observation is razor-sharp, and his positioning is extremely meticulous. It shows that he has a certain understanding of Cheng Feng – and Cheng Feng’s technique of sticking to his tail like glue has pushed his potential to a whole new level! Before Cheng Feng came along, Jiang Linxia was a man no one could ever catch up to! Look at him now! Look!”
He pulled both progress bars back at the same time, zoomed in, and showed the audience step by step.
Several of Jiang Linxia’s god-tier moves were preemptive responses based on the telltale signs of the manual-operated mech’s component transformations.
And those shots Jiang Linxia fired that hit nothing – those were also because Cheng Feng had intercepted almost simultaneously.
The action-reaction speed of a manual-operated mech wasn’t as fast as a sensor mech’s. But its weapon-switching speed was leagues ahead – after all, the attack command string was the shortest, whereas a sensor pilot had to draw their weapon first.
“Get it now?! Look! This is textbook-level prediction from Cheng Feng!” Crazed Charmer had worked himself up with excitement. “Did you all learn something? This kind of prediction is only possible with a manual-operated mech! This is what it means to use the opponent’s strength against their weakness! This is the new path Cheng Feng has carved out for manual-operated mechs! This is the new frontier Cheng Feng has opened!”
He choked on his own words and coughed, quickly taking a sip of water to soothe his dry, scratchy throat. After regaining his composure, he pulled the progress bar back to the start and said with a sigh, “Windwing’s defenses and weapons bay just aren’t cutting it. Jiang Linxia’s done for.”
Jiang Linxia’s weapons bay was nearly exhausted. Even if it wasn’t completely empty, his mech’s damage rate had already exceeded 70% – he was a spent force, barely holding on.
He threw open all his remaining weapons bays and launched a final all-out strike.
Amid the blinding flash of gunfire, Cheng Feng calmly retreated, raising a metal shield in advance, leaping up onto a set of staggered platforms to avoid the most dangerous zone, circled halfway around, and charged back in for the kill.
Jiang Linxia’s voice crackled through the speakers in a frantic yell as his half-shelled mech turned tail and ran.
“Can’t there be a little privacy between people? You’ve stripped me bare and stared right through me! Is that appropriate? Do you think that’s appropriate?!”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Cheng Feng consoled him. “I’m really good at keeping secrets!”
Jiang Linxia said, “Thank you so much!”
After Jiang Linxia angrily slammed the “Exit” button, the word “VICTORY” flashed across the screen.
The fourth round of the qualifying matches had officially ended.
