Cheng Feng finished posting and returned to the event plaza.
A bustling crowd swarmed around her as netizens eagerly volunteered themselves: “Still playing, master?”
“Could you give some guidance, junior?”
“How did you manage to overcome your instincts in just ten days? Is it achievable through hard work?”
“Is your style of play considered mainstream in UFU?”
There were too many questions. Cheng Feng waved her hand, signaling for them to wait a moment.
She opened the blinking friend messages. Zhong Yijie had sent her a facepalm emoji, asking if she wanted to play another round.
Ye Guicheng: Next time, in three days.
Swiftness Prevails: No way? Your reading time is that long? Three whole days?
Ye Guicheng: It’s already short. Last time I took six days.
Swiftness Prevails: Wait, what exactly are you reading?
Ye Guicheng: I only know these few skills. I need to go learn new ones.
Swiftness Prevails: Huh? [Full of question marks] What do you mean?
Cheng Feng felt it was exactly what the words meant. Seeing that he didn’t understand, she wasn’t sure how to explain it either. She opened the next new private message.
Mr. Kong: CALM DOWN!!!
Cheng Feng felt she was perfectly calm. If anything, it was this friend who looked like he was about to lose it.
Mr. Kong: This playstyle of yours is highly inadvisable!
[Mr. Kong recalled a message.]
Mr. Kong: Your approach is a bit too reckless. If this were on a real battlefield, wouldn’t the losses be huge?
Ye Guicheng: I know.
Mr. Kong: Do you really know?
Mr. Kong: Under non-extreme circumstances, we do not approve of piloting a manual mech and zooming out like that. The risks are high, the difficulty is immense, and it’s not the optimal way to counterattack. Sure, it looks stylish and cool, but it’s not effective.
Mr. Kong: Of course, the way you connected the new code was quite ingenious, showing that you’ve done meticulous research and independent thinking. But I remember your operational style used to align more with the mainstream, not this kind of unconventional approach. Whatever you do, don’t keep developing in this direction.
Cheng Feng replied once more.
Ye Guicheng: I know. [Nodding obediently]
Mr. Kong was afraid that saying too much would annoy Cheng Feng. Besides, her attitude toward learning was so good that he found himself deeply experiencing the woes of being a worried father.
Making gradual progress was truly difficult. He tried hard to rein in his bad temper and engaged in an exchange of ideas with this little mech.
Mr. Kong: So, how did you overcome the instinct of muscle memory and adapt to this tech revision? Can you share it with your instructor?
Cheng Feng had seen this question at least ten times, and every time she couldn’t help but want to send a question mark in return.
Ye Guicheng: Compared to survival, it’s hardly an instinct. Just practice.
Mr. Kong: It can’t just be brute-force practice, can it? Is there any unique method? For instance, code classification, difficulty arrangement.
Cheng Feng always found the thoughts of these people very strange.
There was a kind of unrealistic naivety about them, stubbornly refusing to accept the correct answer. Even when an equation like “1+1=2” was laid out right in front of them.
Ye Guicheng: Didn’t you guys summarize it?
Mr. Kong: The teaching team did come up with quite a few methods, but the feedback from students after practicing them was all just average. The results from simulation tests are also gradually showing a polarization. We’ve talked to the students individually, but for now, there haven’t been any significant results.
Even though everyone is improving, it can’t conceal the overall low morale of the manual mech class.
When someone who has excelled for over a decade is suddenly told that they are actually quite average, the blow is undoubtedly devastating.
Cheng Feng stroked her chin, her expression solemn as she stared at the chat box in deep thought. After a long while, she finally came up with an apt analogy.
Ye Guicheng: Stare at a leaf for a hundred seconds.
Mr. Kong stared at the ten-character message for three seconds, pondered its meaning, and felt it was probably some kind of metaphysical, profound, and very non-scientific insight. He was about to say that even if an ordinary person stared for a thousand seconds, they might not suddenly have a revelation, when a new message appeared the next day.
Ye Guicheng: It’s still a leaf.
Mr. Kong: …
Ye Guicheng: So why can’t you just practice brute-force? Practicing to death is still better than just staring. [Head tilt]
Mr. Kong paused, typed a string of ellipsis, then deleted them. He started typing a line asking, “Is it really just that?” but before sending, his finger moved up and chose to delete it instead.
He rubbed his face vigorously, pushing the stiff muscles outward. The cold, dim background light reflected off his stern expression. As his thoughts wandered, a colleague he had just contacted sent him two messages.
“When you think about it, nothing in this world is more unfair than biological evolution. You have to admit that even among geniuses, there are immense differences in levels.”
“One of my students watched the recording and told me she was completely devastated. She’s been crying nonstop. If I were twenty years younger, I’d probably smash my optical computer too.”
“Sigh. What do you think we as teachers can do?”
Seeing that the other party had been stuck on “typing…” for a while with no result, Cheng Feng closed the chat box with a puzzled look.
San Yao had edited Cheng Feng’s final strike from Zhong Yijie’s perspective and was now playing it in a loop on the plaza’s big screen.
The mech’s pitch-black metal hull, coated in a pale golden glow, dominated the entire field of vision as it descended from above – through scattered debris, through roaring artillery fire – until it claimed victory with unstoppable force.
Netizens strongly suspected that San Yao had secretly added filters, because otherwise, the manual mech they had once scorned could never have looked so much like their dream machine.
In just six seconds, the video had been watched dozens of times. The more they watched, the stronger the immersion became – so much so that they felt the mech practically had their own name engraved on it.
It was also Cheng Feng’s first time appreciating her own maneuver from a different perspective. After savoring it a few times, she quietly downloaded and saved it. Noticing that the netizens were still looking at her expectantly, she coolly held up two fingers.
The netizens took a few photos with her but found her indifferent expression somewhat unusual. “Hey, can you not make a blank face while throwing up a peace sign?”
Cheng Feng shot a sideways glance at her two fingers and said with dissatisfaction, “I’m not throwing a peace sign. I’m counting.”
A netizen nearby craned their neck and asked loudly, “Cheng Feng, why do you call Zhong Yijie ‘pretty face’? Is it because you two don’t get along privately?”
“…I forgot.” Cheng Feng thought for a moment and said, “Maybe because he looks pretty and fragile?” The netizens looked skeptical. “Huh?” So he was hiding his true depth quite well.
Another flash of friend messages appeared on Cheng Feng’s screen. Zhong Yijie, caught between embarrassment and frustration, said to her, “Don’t talk nonsense! These people are going to start making up all kinds of wild stories!”
Cheng Feng quickly added, “It’s not what you think.”
The netizens’ expressions immediately became knowing: “Oh…” Her saying that only made them think they understood everything.
Zhong Yijie sent another message: “Are you doing this on purpose? Just because I won one match against you, it’s not that serious, is it!”
Cheng Feng frowned.
Wow, these people were really hard to deal with.
She was about to log off and make her escape when Mr. Kong, who had been stuck on “typing…” for ages, finally seemed to have found his words again.
Mr. Kong: I have a task for you. Is that okay?
After reading his following message, Cheng Feng’s brow tightened slightly. She wasn’t entirely thrilled about it.
Mr. Kong delivered a knockout blow with two words.
“Paid.”
Ye Guicheng: I’m in!
…
Sun Zhenhao was now a sophomore, and no one could say for sure how many years he had spent studying manual mech coding.
He had gone through three rounds of manual mech updates in total, but none had left him feeling as defeated as this one.
One afternoon, he spent two hours watching a video uploaded to the class group chat, wasting time aimlessly. It was only when the progress bar reached the end once again and the screen went black that he finally snapped out of his petrified state. He stood up and went to the bathroom to wash his face.
Cold water splashed against his skin. The low temperature, combined with his held breath, made his heartbeat grow increasingly loud.
Only when his brain felt dizzy from the rush of blood did he slowly press the switch to stop the water, drying his fingers one by one with a paper towel.
Years of training had left his fingertips covered in rough calluses, and his knuckles were slightly more prominent than ordinary people’s. Yet these features did not make him an exceptional mech pilot – he was merely a grain of sand washed away by the tide.
At most, he had once been a tiny splash riding the crest of a wave, quickly swallowed up by the vast ocean.
Sun Zhenhao let out a self-mocking smile.
The time of his greatest glory and highest expectations was probably the year he was admitted to UFU.
His roommate came back from outside, carrying a bag, and spotted him through the crack in the door. “Did you see the notice?” he asked loudly. “Tomorrow at seven in the morning, Cheng Feng is doing a live training stream. The advisor suggested we all check it out. They even moved the specialized course to the evening. What do you think they’re trying to do?”
Sun Zhenhao thought to himself, what’s so interesting about it? Whatever Cheng Feng has to say is already written in her guide posts on San Yao.
That junior sure loved doing academic research.
Yet the next day, after a sleepless night, Sun Zhenhao still got up early and clicked the link to the live stream.
The stream’s title was strikingly bold: 【How to Overcome Instinct! Day 11 of Manual Mech Tech Revision】
A few of the words inexplicably stung Sun Zhenhao, making him feel an unaccountable sense of discomfort.
But after clicking in, the stream’s description read: “Fake. Mr. Kong made me start this stream. I said no, but he insisted and insisted!”
Sun Zhenhao: “??”
Cheng Feng’s manual mech stood in the middle of the training room. Since it wasn’t time yet, she idly read through comments and chatted with the audience.
“The admins wrote all that, not me… I don’t know who the admins are, they’re the ones who set up this stream.”
This was the official account of UFU, and to prevent interference from San Yao netizens, the stream was only accessible within the university network.
The stream was scheduled to start at seven, but it was only half past six, and the number of live viewers had already surpassed two hundred.
Sun Zhenhao was about to look for the admin when a line of text flashed across the middle of the screen.
[Manual Mech Teaching and Research Group: Hit the like button!]
Visitor: Asking for likes before class even starts? Is that appropriate?
Visitor: How long is today’s stream, junior?
“Mr. Kong said it can go until evening,” Cheng Feng replied. “Don’t you guys train at night?”
Visitor: How many hours do you train each day?
“Recently, from around five in the morning to about one at night. Excluding class time and meal times, I can train the rest of the time. I have quite a few classes, so probably no less than eight hours a day.”
Sitting in the cockpit, Cheng Feng’s expression couldn’t be seen, but from her voice, there was a noticeable weariness and lethargy, as if she hadn’t fully woken up.
“But I recommend you take half a day off every ten days, because you’ll get tired.”
Visitor: ??
Visitor: Don’t your fingers hurt?
“It’s not too bad.” Cheng Feng cleverly said, “You can slack off occasionally. You can also go to the infirmary for a massage.”
Visitor: ??
Visitor: You mean Dr. Lin? Do you have nine lives to be doing that?
“Dr. Lin is exceptionally kind.” Cheng Feng yawned. “I’m starting now. If I wait any longer, I’ll fall asleep.”
[Manual Mech Teaching and Research Group fed you a nutrient solution.]
Sun Zhenhao turned up the volume, ready to hear her experience summary – even though he probably wouldn’t need it.
Then he heard Cheng Feng lazily say, “I feel really good today. I’ll practice two sets of basic code. Rear cut, I’ll definitely master rear cut today!”
