Ling Lan led the people of Lingtian out of the combat stadium. They were just pa.s.sing by the mouth of the pa.s.sage to the backstage when they heard a round of joyful cheers. Ling Lan turned at the sound and saw a group of cadets standing there. Lin Xiao, who had just won over Jiang Shaoyu, had just walked out of the pa.s.sage — he should be the reason for these cheers.

Li Lanfeng, who had been watching Ling Lan closely all this while, saw Ling Lan's attention drawn by those cadets, and so spoke up to explain, "These people are the partic.i.p.ants from the First Co-ed Military Academy. They should be here to welcome back their team leader Lin Xiao."

Ling Lan nodded lightly in response. She of course knew they were from the First Co-ed Military Academy, because she had seen two familiar figures among the crowd — Luo Chao and Han Xuya. However, the attention of the two girls was on Lin Xiao, so they had not noticed the arrival of Ling Lan's group.

When Lin Xiao came out, he had turned to Luo Chao and Han Xuya and said something. With her skills, Ling Lan could naturally hear everything he said loud and clear. Lin Xiao said that no one would still be able to strut around arrogantly after bullying someone from the First Co-ed Military Academy ... this sentence left the students of the First Co-ed Military Academy beside themselves with excitement, their eyes filled with respect for Lin Xiao. Even the always shy Luo Chao also cast a grateful glance at Lin Xiao.

The corners of Ling Lan's lips quirked upwards and she did not stop, pa.s.sing by the First Co-ed Military Academy's people just like that. In her minds.p.a.ce, Ling Lan instructed Little Four to help her send a short message to Luo Chao.

Luo Chao suddenly felt her wrist vibrate, and when she raised her hand to look, she found a message notification waiting for her. She opened the message and her face flushed red, a sweet, shy smile appearing on her lips.

"Little Sister Luo Chao, you have a good senior!" The message only contained this brief sentence, and the sender was Ling Lan.

She had not expected that the always cold and indifferent Boss Lan would actually care about her this much! Luo Chao's heart began to throb, and she could not help but think shyly — was her crush of many years finally being reciprocated?

********

In the afternoon, the compet.i.tion continued. The first to be held was the match to determine the third and fourth place. Zhao Jun and Jiang Shaoyu each piloted their mecha onto the field.

Jiang Shaoyu still had not recovered from his loss in the morning. He was rather unfocused — in his mind, he kept seeing scenes from his fight with Lin Xiao in the morning, all the way up till when he had been KO-ed by Lin Xiao's 6-hit combo chain, and he was immensely frustrated inside. During lunch, his instructors had already helped him a.n.a.lyse the reasons behind his defeat. He had lost in terms of patience — he had not been calm enough, a little too impatient, and had thus fallen for Lin Xiao's scheme. If he had only been a little calmer, a little more patient ... then perhaps the outcome might have been very different.

Even now, Jiang Shaoyu still could not accept the reality of his loss to Lin Xiao. In his mind, only Qiao Ting from the First Men's Military Academy was a worthy opponent.

The referee's green flag swept down, signalling the official start to the fight.

As the flag fluttered down, Zhao Jun sprang out like a tiger let out of its cage, pouncing at his opponent several hundred metres away. He pushed all the power of his engines into speed, hurtling straight for Jiang Shaoyu in a dark streak of light.

Although there were also different types of special-cla.s.s mecha, these types were not as extreme in their specializations as ace mecha. Despite having certain strength biases, special-cla.s.s mecha were overall still quite balanced. Thus, when Zhao Jun pushed his engines to the maximum, his speed was not significantly slower than close-combat ace mecha. In fact, it could even be said that he was faster by a hair.

This move of Zhao Jun's drew shocked gasps from the audience. This was because, for the sake of this speed, Zhao Jun had sacrificed activating even the most essential beam s.h.i.+eld protection. This meant that if he was accidentally hit by a stray beam, his defenceless mecha would certainly be immediately KO-ed out of the match. Moreover, his opponent was Jiang Shaoyu — his match in the morning had proven that his long-range attacks were no less impressive than his close combat skills. This action of Zhao Jun's was clearly too reckless ...

Everyone believed that this match would set the record for being the fastest to end — would it be 10 seconds, or 5? If Zhao Jun was unlucky, the match could even end in 3 seconds.

However, everyone soon saw that reality was not turning out as they expected. With this great opportunity right before his eyes, Jiang Shaoyu seemed stupefied. He actually did not manage to lift his gun in time — by the time he raised his gun, Zhao Jun was already less than 50 metres away. With the mecha's speed, this 50 metres would be closed within two steps.

Only at this time did the fearlessly charging forwards Zhao Jun release a sigh of relief. It was as Boss Lan had predicted — Jiang Shaoyu had not taken him seriously because he was underestimating him; this had given Zhao Jun the chance to get close.

Zhao Jun was a close combat specialist as well, though he was no match for Jiang Shaoyu even in close combat. Still, it was much better compared to his long-range attacks — with his lame marksmans.h.i.+p, he would definitely get the c.r.a.p shot out of him by Jiang Shaoyu.

Jiang Shaoyu was awoken by the blare of alarms from his mecha. One look and cold sweat instantly broke out all over his body. It was lucky he had awoken in time, or else, just half a second later and he might have been subject to a successful blitz attack by Zhao Jun.

Why were these people all so annoying! Jiang Shaoyu's rage burned. He snapped up his beam gun and pulled the trigger on Zhao Jun who was sprinting right at him. Since you want to die, I'll grant you your wish.

With the pull of the trigger, the muzzle of the gun glowed brightly, a sign that a beam was about to be fired. Just then, a long and narrow black sword suddenly sliced down diagonally, stabbing straight into the muzzle of the beam gun.

"Boom!" An explosion rang out, followed by a column of dark black smoke. At this time, the two mecha were already in a standoff. Part of the audience had naturally caught what had happened, but there were some who had been unable to see clearly and were left boggled as to what could have happened. Had Jiang Shaoyu really been hit by Zhao Jun?

Just as everyone was wondering, the two mecha suddenly leapt back from each other. Only when the two mecha were fully displayed before the crowd once more could the audience tell where the explosion had come from.

Jiang Shaoyu's left arm was now a scarred mess. Half of the mecha's palm had been sliced clean off, only leaving a thumb behind. Electrical wires were left exposed to the outside at the broken edge, and some of them were still sparking.

The crowd gasped in shock once more — they had not expected Zhao Jun's reckless charge to work. He had actually managed to ambush Jiang Shaoyu! In that state, Jiang Shaoyu's left hand was pretty much unable to hold anything anymore — in other words, Jiang Shaoyu was now down by one hand, and his combat power would be decreased by three tiers because of it.

Jiang Shaoyu looked at the upper right corner of his screen, at the '100' there representing his points. The number suddenly began to scroll backwards rapidly — Jiang Shaoyu knew that this meant his points were being deducted. When the opponent's sword had jammed the muzzle of the beam gun, the beam energy could not be fired and had actually exploded within the gun. It was a shame for him that the energy block of the beam gun was completely full — the explosion instantly ignited the power left in the energy block. The force of the resulting explosion had been so powerful that it had instantly made waste of his mecha's left palm.

His point tally finally stopped scrolling, and the glaring number '70' sent p.r.i.c.ks of pain stabbing into Jiang Shaoyu's eyes. Unexpectedly, his little distraction had actually been taken advantage of so thoroughly by the opponent to launch a successful blitz attack, resulting in such a huge deduction right off the bat, almost one-third of his total points. This made him feel ashamed — he had actually been harmed by a special-cla.s.s operator. The thread of reason in his mind was fraying — he wanted to kill the other, he must kill the other ... Jiang Shaoyu's eyes began to turn red as a thick killing intent emanated from him.

Zhao Jun had managed to land a hit in one attempt — his heart was inexplicably exhilarated, and his admiration surged so high that he wanted to prostrate himself at Boss Lan's feet. It turned out this entire series of actions had all been directed by Ling Lan. Ling Lan had predicted that the opponent would be unable to focus at the start due to his loss in the morning as well as his natural disdain of Zhao Jun as an opponent. Thus, using the theoretical top speed of a mecha right at the start to draw close to the opponent for a blitz attack had a good chance of succeeding. Of course, this so-called top speed referred to abandoning everything else on the mecha to funnel its entire available power into speed ...

At first, Zhao Jun was not too sure about following Boss Lan's proposal — he just felt that it was too risky. If there was just the slightest bit of error, he would be KO-ed right out of the match and become the person to be eliminated from a match in the shortest amount of time in tournament history. That would be such a loss of face!

Noticing Zhao Jun's doubts, Ling Lan had merely said lightly, "If you don't take the risk, you will definitely lose. Take the gamble, and there is the possibility of a draw." Yes, at most, Zhao Jun could only push this match to a draw. The difference between their mecha's levels completely threw out any possibility of victory for Zhao Jun. No matter how much he schemed and plotted, it would all be for the sake of just a draw.

Ling Lan's words enlightened Zhao Jun. Yes, if he did not gamble, based on his strength, losing was just a matter of time even if he fought with his life. As such, he might as well take the risk — wasn't a loss the worst thing that could happen?

In reality, Ling Lan had created this plan with an estimated success rate of 70%. In Ling Lan's opinion, as long as the odds were at 50% and above, it would be a gamble worth taking. In order to increase the chances of success, Ling Lan had even lent her newly bought Firmament to Zhao Jun. The typical giant swords used by mecha were all the broadsword type, heavy and solid, thus making them unsuitable for more agile and dexterous attacks. However, Firmament was extremely unique — it was a fine sword and had extremely high resilience, allowing it to do things a typical broadsword could not.

So that Zhao Jun would be able to pinpoint the perfect timing to intercept, after they had eaten their lunch, Zhao Jun had been dragged by Ling Lan over to a mecha combat hall for some urgent training. The main purpose of the session was for Zhao Jun to familiarize himself with Firmament. The way to use Firmament was different from that of other ordinary giant swords — in order to avoid any mistakes, this impromptu training was necessary.

Zhao Jun's efforts had now finally come to fruition, and in the most perfect way. In order to ensure success, Ling Lan and Zhao Jun had a.n.a.lysed all the possible reactions of Jiang Shaoyu in detail, coming up with counterplans for each alternative. Who would have guessed that they would not need to use any single one of those in the end?

Right then, Zhao Jun's heart was running hot — he may be able to make history by proving that there was the possibility of a tie in a battle between an ace and special-cla.s.s.

However, Zhao Jun did not have the time to really think about all these random things right now. He was staring at Jiang Shaoyu with his full attention, not daring to miss anything. Boss Lan had said that once Jiang Shaoyu was injured, he would definitely go berserk. It could be predicted that the following attack would be an overwhelming one, and Zhao Jun's task was to tide over this round of attacks no matter what. When Jiang Shaoyu found that he was unable to bring Zhao Jun down, his morale would fall, and that moment would be Zhao Jun's chance.

Sure enough, Zhao Jun found himself faced with a barrage of wild attacks. The enraged Jiang Shaoyu's mind was fixated on the thought of killing his opponent. Furthermore, the oppression of the level difference allowed Jiang Shaoyu to attack without having to worry about so-called skill or technique. He attacked by relying solely on the brute force of his mecha itself, sending punch after heavy punch at his opponent. Zhao Jun desperately protected his most vital spots, slowly being pushed back by Jiang Shaoyu. He looked bitterly at his slowly dwindling points and sweat flowed uncontrollably from his forehead ...T/C: Actually ... aren't they using real mecha now? Losing is not the worst that could happen. Death is. (Or disability, depending how you look at it.)