Top Warzone Analyst Chapter 59

As soon as this interview video was released, its popularity skyrocketed.

San Yao’s simulated combat segment uploads hundreds of student interviews each year. During the military university league season in particular, it’s practically morning, noon, and night updates. But without the added buzz of the league, it’s rare for an individual video to surpass ten thousand comments within fifteen minutes.

The students at UFU were caught between wanting to laugh and not daring to. Afraid that Mr. Kong might hold a grudge and get back at them later, they hurriedly created a few burner accounts and went wild in the comments section.

“This interview feels so fresh and unpretentious – I suggest keeping this style in the future. Mr. Kong, thanks for your hard work. 【doge】”

“So beneath Mr. Kong’s fierce exterior lies such an innocent heart. I must have misjudged before.”

“? Who would’ve thought that one day I’d actually feel a bit sorry for Mr. Kong.”

“Is it that your university doesn’t care enough about its students, or that this comrade’s filter for Cheng Feng is just way too strong?”

“If Cheng Feng represents one future direction of manually controlled mecha, then this teacher has clearly gone in the opposite direction lol.”

“Kong Kong, you don’t understand the world of young people.”

“@San Yao, give us some follow-up content, will you?”

After several hours of online revelry, UFU’s official account finally posted – reluctantly and with a hint of unwillingness – a message titled, [Humans Are Multifaceted].

The description was brief, with just one line: “From different angles in selfies, do you still look the same?”

Netizens showed it no mercy, flooding the comments with memes.

“Kong Kong, use your own account to speak. If you’re a man, stand up and face us! 【draws gun】”

“Has Mr. Kong hijacked whoever’s running this account?”

“I don’t think Cheng Feng is as ‘multifaceted’ as you are, Kong Kong. Today’s happiness was brought to me by you.”

Not long after, the post was deleted. Soon afterward, UFU’s official account reposted a [nervously eating popcorn] meme – clearly showing they were part of the crowd piling on.

Mr. Kong’s isolation and miserable situation ended up getting him invited back into the inter-school group chat that had previously kicked him out. Colleagues from teaching and research departments across various military universities offered him gentle words of comfort:

“Students like that really are hard to handle. You can’t control them. Try to take it in stride.”

“It’s no big deal – you were just laughed at. But Cheng Feng got famous, right?”

“Don’t worry. Who hasn’t faced a few setbacks on the road from lecturer to professor?”

But it didn’t take long before no one felt like laughing anymore.

A month after the technical revision, Cheng Feng broke their own record in hard mode of the manual-operated training.

Soon after, the rankings on the leaderboard began to shift dramatically. Within about two months, nearly a third of the top spots were marked with UFU’s insignia.

UFU became the first uni to break the deadlock, and the performance advantages of the upgraded mecha gradually began to show in real combat.

Students majoring in manual operations mecha across other uni were left restless by the sudden gap that had opened up. As for the heads of the military universities, they watched with envy and growing anxiety – yet had no solution. In the end, they could only swallow their pride and come to Mr. Kong, asking for his teaching secrets.

Mr. Kong scraped together a whole document of senior-year motivational slogans from the internet, uploaded it to the group files, and pumped his fist as he encouraged them. “Training – you’ve got to be a bit harsher on the students!”

Everyone: “……” Screw you.

Mr. Kong shared enthusiastically, but unfortunately his colleagues failed to appreciate his “kindness.” After gritting their teeth and ramping up training for a while, as students adapted, the average scores finally began to rise.

As the end of term approached, the gloom brought on by the manual operations technical revision quickly faded under the pressure of looming exams, giving way to a new storm of stress.

During this period, Cheng Feng had been focusing on training related to manual-operated coding. As a result, courses on the command-track side had been somewhat neglected, and there was even less motivation to keep up with a few of the less important electives.

As soon as the final exam schedule was updated, Cheng Feng belatedly felt the malice of the world.

Politics was hard. Official document writing was hard. And in an effort to “fill in the gaps,” she had even taken an elective in history.

The plan had been perfect – but it was all a lie. No normal person had the energy to handle two majors and master the Alliance’s ridiculously long history curriculum.

Mr. Kong tried to comfort her, saying that wasn’t entirely true – after all, opportunities like a technical revision didn’t come around often.

On the eve of exams, Cheng Feng was still sitting in the dorm living room, scratching her head and calculating how many courses she was going to fail.

She dug out the eligibility requirements for UFU’s various scholarships and found that any of the high-value ones basically required students not to fail any subjects. Financial aid from society was also tiered based on academic performance. The only thing distributed equally was the Alliance’s official poverty subsidy.

But Cheng Feng wanted more money. She wanted to upgrade her little owl with a pair of wings that could actually fly.

If other people’s birds had it, then her friend should have it too!

So Cheng Feng started calculating again – given her lack of foundation, what were the odds she could push her humanities exam scores over the passing line in a short time? Or… what were the chances of success without bribing the examiner?

Holding up her optical computer, Cheng Feng diligently searched the campus forums for leaked exam questions from previous years, all while struggling to convince herself not to take any shady shortcuts. Meanwhile, beside her, the human-shaped “punching bag” slumped on the sofa let out its seventeenth sigh of the night.

Cheng Feng’s train of thought kept getting interrupted. She had the strange feeling that those heavy sighs were coming out of her own chest. When the other person drew in breath yet again, she couldn’t hold back anymore. Turning her head, she asked cautiously, “Are you going to fail too?”

“Fail?” Shen Dan paused mid-sigh, then asked in confusion, “With finals that easy, would anyone in our major actually fail?”

Cheng Feng fell silent.

This person was so unfriendly. Not a shred of empathy.

Irritated, she said, “Then what are you sighing for?”

Shen Dan stared blankly at the ceiling, one arm hanging limply to the floor. Licking her lips, she said weakly, “I started a study series.”

Cheng Feng had actually come across that livestream before. Probably because her name was in the title, San Yao kept pushing it to her.

It was called “Learning Manual Mecha with Cheng Feng.”

There was even a subtitle.

The first time Cheng Feng saw it, the little tag under the stream read: “Lagging behind schedule: 10 days.” And that number kept increasing every day.

A couple of days ago, when it was pushed to her homepage again, it had already turned into: “Lagging behind schedule: Don’t overthink life.”

And just yesterday, Shen Dan even changed that much-criticized username – from “Love and Peace” to “Peace and Dreams.”

Which clearly proved that, in this kid’s heart, “love” and “dreams” couldn’t coexist for the time being.

“I’m so tired,” Shen Dan said weakly, as if on her last breath. “A technical revision on this scale… I might only encounter something like this once in my life.”

A chance to defy fate had just slipped through her fingers.

The good days of casually teaming up with random squads without getting flamed for being bad would also soon be gone.

Shen Dan said heavily, “…I never thought I’d end up being one of the people eliminated by the tech revision.”

Cheng Feng felt she was seriously overthinking things – normal people shouldn’t even have this kind of worry.

After all, she wasn’t even within the scope of being eliminated by the revision.

Shen Dan stiffly turned her neck, as if it creaked, and allocated a tiny fraction of her remaining energy to look Cheng Feng over. After a moment, she asked, “Then why do you look so troubled all night?”

“Mm…” Cheng Feng hesitated, unwilling to say.

Shen Dan sat up and stared at her intently. Cheng Feng met her gaze head-on.

The two of them looked at each other in silence.

The room fell silent for a moment. Shen Dan recalled the first thing Cheng Feng had said and suddenly understood.

Her expression turned complicated. Feeling that Cheng Feng had it even worse than she did, she lowered her voice to a whisper and asked, “Are you failing a lot of courses?”

Cheng Feng shot back, “Does it make a difference?”

“Oh… then you still have one chance.” Shen Dan inched closer along the long sofa. “Max out your scores in all the practical, skill-based courses, and then place in the top 10% in the final special project simulation assessment – you can apply for a faculty-level practical scholarship. The award ranges from fifty to a hundred thousand.”

Cheng Feng lowered her head and started scrolling through her materials.

“Don’t bother looking. It’s sponsored by San Yao – I remember it clearly, they offer it every year.” Shen Dan reached out and pressed down her optical computer. “But the special project test is something all students have to take. There’s no level restriction. It’s pretty tough.”

Cheng Feng asked, trying to stay composed, “What do they test?”

“It varies. Sometimes it’s long-distance field marches, sometimes a hundred-kilometre rapid assault, or even mixed-skill tests like sheer cliff climbing.” Shen Dan thought for a moment. “For upperclassmen, it’s professional skills training. For lower-year students, it’s basically just a physical fitness test. First-years just need to pass – but if you fail, that’s a serious problem.”

Cheng Feng began to think it over seriously.

She felt that a 10% cutoff was actually quite generous – after all, there were plenty of humanities-track students in the university. The truly competitive ones were mostly concentrated in the infantry department.

“In principle, you can form a team. Although, in most cases, teammates don’t contribute much, there is a small amount of team score weighting at the end. If your teammates are too weak, it’ll only make things worse for you.” Shen Dan stroked her chin, analyzing it earnestly. “The specific assessment items are only announced after you log in. If you want a good result, you can start looking for teammates now. Otherwise, if you leave it to random assignment… I wouldn’t recommend gambling on your luck.”

Cheng Feng didn’t look like someone particularly favored by fate.

Shen Dan had originally planned to team up with their dormmates, but since Cheng Feng was aiming for a top score now, they were no longer on the same path.

“For this kind of skills test, a deputy commander doesn’t play much of a role. It mainly evaluates individual combat ability.” Shen Dan added with a hint of sympathy, “Upper-year infantry students usually already have fixed teams… maybe you could try the power of money?”

Cheng Feng, who had been deep in thought, suddenly snapped upright and shouted, “No way!”

No one was getting a single penny out of her pocket!

Shen Dan tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Then what are you going to do?”

Cheng Feng lit up her optical computer again.

A minute later, an update popped up in Shen Dan’s follow list:

[Ye Guicheng: Recruiting teammates for the final special project test. Requirement: top 10%.]

Cheng Feng had previously gained quite a few followers from posting guides and answering questions – but most of them were from the manual-control or data analysis tracks.

Shen Dan felt a bit speechless looking at that line, but out of basic fangirl etiquette, she still gave it a repost.

The comments section filled up quickly:

“That requirement’s a bit high, junior. You don’t even have past results – hard for teammates to trust you.”

“First-year aiming pretty high, huh? Be good – this is the seniors’ stage, don’t mess around.”

“You’re not exactly at an advantage in this assessment, junior. The whole command track isn’t, and neither is manual-operated mecha!”

“Is this a bounty recruitment? What’s the reward?”

Ye Guicheng replied: You’ll get my gratitude.

“…”

“It’s dark, the kid’s asleep – dreaming, are we?”

“I’ll forgive you since you’re from a post-war star, but don’t do this again – you’ll get flamed.”

“Protect our Cheng Feng! She’s still just a child!”

Shen Dan spoke with a complicated expression, “This approach won’t work.”

Cheng Feng looked even more disappointed. She thought to herself that her gratitude was actually very valuable – she never gave her feelings lightly. If not for being bent over by the pressure of money, she would never have made such a sacrifice.

This was practically a bug in the system.

Shen Dan said, “Why not take a subtler approach – start as a manual operations practice partner to earn a bit of money first?”

So Cheng Feng edited her post again, making the content clearer:

Ye Guicheng: Selling myself, form a team.

Shen Dan clicked refresh, and after reading the words, let out a sharp intake of breath. Less than a minute later, Mr. Kong’s call came in in a rush.

Shen Dan panicked, “You’ll get your account banned if you do that!”

Cheng Feng hurriedly hung up Mr. Kong’s call and clicked to edit the post in the interface:

Ye Guicheng: Sell hard labor, take on side quests for free, or detailed data analysis, twice.