Top Warzone Analyst Chapter 75

Jiang Linxia couldn’t let the matter go – he kept grumbling about it all the way up until the start of term.

Yan Shen said that Jiang Linxia refused to admit his embarrassing behavior every year, but this time he could no longer fool himself. He even praised Cheng Feng for a job well done and secretly sent her a red envelope as a reward.

However, he also warned her not to spread the story. If the instructor found out they had been drinking, they’d definitely “experience the weighty bond between teachers and students” during the training camp at the start of term.

That Spring Festival break turned out to be quite fruitful for Cheng Feng – she had taken a big step closer to her goal of becoming a “little owl” that could finally fly.

When the university dorms reopened, she wheeled her small suitcase back to campus, practically bouncing with excitement. The first to greet her was the warm smile of an instructor from the Command Department.

The instructor checked her results with her, led her over to sign and confirm them, stamped the paperwork, and then took her through a special channel to issue her a three-day scholarship in advance.

Last semester, because of the technical revision, Cheng Feng had spent most of her time focused on that specialization and wasn’t particularly familiar with this instructor.

But an instructor was still an instructor. He took the initiative to carry her luggage and walked ahead, completely at ease, striking up a familiar conversation as they went, “Students from our Command Department rarely receive this kind of scholarship. I followed your livestream the whole time – you performed brilliantly, kid! It’s not just about winning or losing; what matters is the strong will and unyielding perseverance you showed. That’s why I gave you a final GPA of 4.8!”

As he spoke, he turned back, holding up two fingers with a simple, radiant smile.

Cheng Feng gave a slight nod. “Thank you.”

An instructor’s ability to switch expressions was practically a professional skill. With a slight lift of the lips and a downward press at the corners of his eyes, that plain, honest smile instantly turned into a ferocious sneer. “Unlike certain people – three whole days of exams have passed, and they’re still freaking wandering around the entrance of the map! It’s because of them that the Command Department instructors’ mental health is in such a worrying state!”

Cheng Feng didn’t dare ask who he meant, but judging by how he was grinding his teeth in frustration, it was probably not just one person, but an entire group.

Most likely with Shen Dan as the typical representative – though not limited to a single style. After all, when it comes to the “art” of slacking off, human creativity tends to flourish in all kinds of ways.

When they reached the dorm entrance, the instructor stopped. He clearly hadn’t finished venting and smacked his lips, still unsatisfied. He handed the suitcase back to Cheng Feng, then solemnly patted her on the shoulder as if entrusting her with some great revolutionary mission. “Work hard – my future as an instructor is counting on you!”

…That wasn’t necessary. She was just after those few feathers from the little owl, not carrying any lofty ambitions.

The instructor raised an eyebrow, giving her a knowing look. “Cherish every exam – I’ll be watching you all the way! If you have any questions, come to me anytime!”

Cheng Feng’s slight frame swayed from the force of his pat. She swallowed and replied awkwardly, “O-okay.”

At the time, Cheng Feng hadn’t yet grasped the hidden meaning behind the instructor’s words. It wasn’t until two days later, when Shen Dan returned to campus and they chatted casually, that she finally understood what he meant by “do well in your exams.”

UFU seemed worried that the less-than-two-week winter break might corrupt the students’ discipline. On the third day after term officially started, they launched a tightly packed round of professional assessments.

The schedule for manual-operated mecha was the most urgent. Mr. Kong had already prepared the exam questions during the holiday, most of them building on the key technical improvements from last semester, with a focus on testing students’ tactile control.

Any student studying manual-operated mecha wouldn’t dare spend the entire winter break just messing around. A portable code training device was standard equipment – something they kept in their pockets, idly tapping away at whenever they had time, trying to build up muscle memory as quickly as possible.

As a result, once that exam was over, the students were all quite relaxed.

What surprised Cheng Feng more was the assessment for the Command Department.

The Command Department’s exams were scheduled a week later than the Infantry Department.

Mr. Luo, clutching his thermos, gave them two new lessons, rushing through a key topic in a hurry. Only right before the exam did he inform the students of the test location.

When the students received the address and checked it, they were shocked to discover that the venue for this early-term test was actually equipped better than the computer lab they had used for their final exams.

The faculty had deliberately waited until all the infantry assessments were finished before submitting their request for approval, which allowed them to borrow one of the university’s most advanced batches of new equipment.

Even more unusual was that students of different levels would be tested in the same venue. After all, in the Command Department, knowledge accumulation was crucial – first-year and third-year students were, to a large extent, not really comparable.

The day before the exam, when Mr. Luo was rallying everyone in the group chat, he even hinted – somewhat meaningfully – that they should relax and just take it easy.

Given Mr. Luo’s notoriously nitpicky personality, the fact that he could say the words “just take it easy” was enough to make this group of first-year students uneasy.

Cheng Feng listened to her roommates spin conspiracy theories all night, had several rounds of nightmares, and ended up so exhausted that when she swiped her card to enter the exam venue the next morning, she barely had any energy.

Following her candidate number, she found her seat and glanced around.

The pale white stone tiles should have made the room bright, but to ensure the clarity of the electronic screens, the curtains were tightly drawn. Only a few rows of dim blue lights glowed from the ceiling.

In front of each spacious seat was a curved, three-dimensional screen, roughly estimated to be about 1.5 meters wide. It could be split into multiple displays. The two rows of seats were separated by a two-meter-wide aisle, ensuring that no one could see each other’s operations.

Cheng Feng powered on her station and took the opportunity to observe the nearby examinees before the exam officially began. Everyone she saw was unfamiliar – likely upper-year students.

Shen Dan was assigned to the same exam hall as her, but they were separated by half the room, so they could only exchange a quick wave.

Cheng Feng sat quietly, waiting.

When the system time ticked over to nine o’clock, the blue screens in front of everyone flickered for a second before refreshing to display the exam questions.

There were three major questions in total, each containing three to four sub-questions.

Text, data, images, videos, and audio – various bits of fragmented information were fed into the database, piling up in the prompt window at the top left of the screen.

Cheng Feng opened the document and gave it a quick scan. The dense layout made her eyes swim. She raised a hand to press the temples on either side of her forehead, forcing herself to steady her focus.

Although she hadn’t studied at Alliance before, and didn’t have a clear sense of her classmates’ abilities, based on her recent review for finals, she could tell one thing for certain – this exam was absolutely beyond the syllabus.

A large portion of the database materials consisted of mecha-related parameters, with sensor-based mecha being the main focus.

Unlike manual-operated mecha, sensor-based mecha had complex and ever-changing parameters – this was a clear blind spot in Cheng Feng’s knowledge.

She had never really had the chance to engage with sensor-based mecha before, let alone perform data analysis based on them. If she remembered correctly, this was clearly a third-year specialized course.

The difficulty of the questions was also extremely high. For two of the sub-questions, she couldn’t even understand what was being asked. Another required her to “use the XX model to verify…,” and that so-called “XX model” was something she had never even heard of.

Combat robots from twenty years ago were ultimately far too outdated. The knowledge Cheng Feng had learned from the database still carried the imprint of an earlier era. Faced with these complex advanced models, the technological gap was laid bare – like sand exposed under the blazing sun.

The bright red countdown on the right side of the screen kept ticking, lingering stubbornly in her peripheral vision – impossible to ignore and extremely irritating.

The exam lasted three hours. By the time Cheng Feng finished reading through the questions and looked back at the clock, fifteen minutes had already passed.

Earlier, she had suspected that students of different years might be given different papers. But judging from the current difficulty, that was probably not the case.

The core principle of this test, unexpectedly, was that everyone was equal.

A surge of unease churned in Cheng Feng’s chest. She pinched her chin with one hand, staring solemnly at the database in a daze.

A proctor walked past her with light footsteps. Perhaps having heard of her name, he paused beside her seat and bent down to check her progress. Seeing the blank answer sheet, he looked slightly startled, then left with a helpless air.

The crisp clatter of typing echoed through the room like a sudden downpour – short, rapid bursts that added another layer of tension to the already strained atmosphere.

After going through the image and video materials, Cheng Feng glanced at the time again and immediately decided to start with what she was best at: the modeling problem.

Scanning the map, adding details.

As for determining the enemy mech’s position based on residual data from the scene, she went with the most straightforward and safest approach – using massive computational workload to derive the final result.

Cheng Feng had always been fast at solving problems, but this time, she knew she wouldn’t be able to finish the entire paper.

Two and a half hours later, examinees began handing in their papers one after another, while Cheng Feng still hadn’t even started on one of the major questions. The names and numbers of all who submitted were displayed on the large screen at the front of the exam hall, scrolling continuously in a deliberately pressure-inducing manner.

Cheng Feng stretched her stiff neck. As she lifted her eyes, she noticed that more than thirty people in this exam hall had already submitted. And in the very next second, Shen Dan’s name popped up.