Ling Lan wasn't bedazzled by this magical scene; her expression changed slightly in awareness. Although Ling Lan hadn't been able to see what was going on in Ling Xiao's palm earlier, she could tell that Ling Xiao's fingers hadn't been exerting much pressure; he had just simply been blocking the paths of those crystal beads to prevent them from falling off his palm. But it was precisely this sort of forceless pressure that, under the workings of extreme speed, had shattered the crystal beads from the inside out. It was clear to see just how much destructive power it had.
"Looks like, you've understood." Ling Xiao was very pleased with Ling Lan's reaction. He had thought that he would have to explain in further detail, but unexpectedly, Ling Lan had actually grasped the deeper meaning already.
"Yep, when anything reaches a certain limit, a great energy will be created," said Ling Lan carefully, summarizing her thoughts.
Ling Lan was very excited internally, because she had finally met someone she could discuss these things with. In the learning space, her instructors only let her feel things out for herself, never ever telling her much about Dao, causing Ling Lan to feel extremely lost.
"That's right. I didn't expect you to notice that point. I call it 'Shi' 1 , and there isn't just one type of Shi, but many. However, Ling Lan, you must remember not to bite off more than you can chew. More Shi is not always better." Ling Xiao glanced coolly at Ling Lan, rapidly cooling down her initially bubbling excitement.Ling Xiao's reminder caused Ling Lan to become thoughtful. After that, Ling Xiao didn't let Ling Lan remain for long in the mission space. He only told her that in future, she could access this place directly to find him by using his spirit crystal, with no need to take the test again. Then, Ling Lan was immediately sent back to the login point of the academy's virtual world.
********
"You finally appeared, Boss!" When Little Four saw Ling Lan, he burst out in tears and pounced on her, clearly upset.
Ling Lan reflexively caught hold of Little Four, and cautioned him saying, "You coming out like this, won't it be suspicious?"
Little Four sniffled, "It's no problem, Boss. This is a special space I created. We can see outside, but they can't see us."
"Right, in the mission space, why did you become silent after I arrived at the Ling family mansion?" Ling Lan had thought it strange. If she hadn't been afraid that her dad wouldn't acknowledge it, she would really have liked to just let Little Four open the safe directly. She had originally thought that Little Four would jump out straightaway to critique her dad's pedantry, but Little Four had been surprisingly silent and non-reactive.
Back then, she had been too caught up with the mission, so although Ling Lan was puzzled, she didn't have the mind to go ask Little Four about it. But now, Ling Lan's curiosity was back.Ling Lan's words caused Little Four to recall his misery, and he started crying once more. Under Ling Lan's consolation, he managed to tell her the reason in between sobs — apparently, when Ling Lan had entered the study and seen Ling Xiao smiling face, what greeted Little Four had instead been Ling Xiao's sharp and cold gaze. That piercing gaze had scrambled Little Four's operations, kicking him right out of the legacy space. This was also the reason why Little Four had been unresponsive — he had been kicked out by Ling Xiao at that point.
Ling Lan frowned, a little worried. Did this mean that anyone with strong spiritual strength would be able to discover Little Four's existence?
Little Four sensed Ling Lan's anxiety for him, and his core chip actually started to heat up. However, this heat was warm and very comfortable, cheering him up immensely. He said then to Ling Lan, "Boss, don't worry. I've met other people before with great mental and spiritual energy, but they never noticed me. Perhaps it was because I entered your dad's legacy space, which is equivalent to entering his spiritual self, that's why he noticed me."
"Hmm, yup, what you say makes sense. Still, please be careful after this. Don't simply go into other people's spiritual self. Let's avoid the risk." Ling Lan felt that what Little Four said made sense, but still cautioned Little Four to be more careful in the virtual world from now on. He shouldn't get too caught up in thinking he was a god.
The two of them talked for a little bit longer. During this time, Little Four was multitasking — he was also controlling the fake Ling Lan he had created to walk out of the library and slowly make its way to the login point. Then, he made the fake Ling Lan go through the motions of logging out.
Due to expending so much brainpower during the legacy mission, Ling Lan was somewhat fatigued. So, she logged out of the virtual world together with Little Four and went off to take a good long rest.
Meanwhile, due to Little Four's thorough arrangements, neither the monitoring military nor the other students entering for the test noticed that Ling Lan had already sneakily obtained Ling Xiao's legacy. To create the false impression that the legacy mission was still uncracked, Little Four left the virtual pocket testing space up. Until one day, it disappeared along with Ling Xiao's legacy mission, throwing the military into disarray, unable to figure out what had happened ...
********
After Ling Lan received her father's legacy, she began practising the bead exercise every day with both hands at the same time. Of course, Ling Lan did not practise with those precious crystal beads, but with sturdy steel beads instead.
Qi Long and the others, who had been hanging out with Ling Lan all this while, saw Ling Lan forever carrying around two steel beads to fiddle with, and was overcome with curiosity. So they asked Ling Lan why she was doing so.
Ling Lan felt that this was not any special training method that she needed to keep secret — Ling Xiao himself had said before that this was just a small technique to train up hand speed, the key was whether one had enough determination to keep working on it without giving up. Thus, she generously told them what she was doing, and explained what benefits the training would bring.
When Qi Long and the others heard this, they immediately had stars in their eyes. Hand speed had always been a troublesome issue for fighters and mecha operators — even though the Federation had also tried to develop some training methods to increase hand speed, the effectiveness of those methods was limited, yielding only slight improvements. The moment one hit a bottleneck, there would be no more effect from then onwards.
The others in the group rushed to follow Ling Lan and train together, and so a trend swept through the Central Scout Academy — several bored students of the second grade Class-A, no matter if they were reading, eating, or chatting, would always be seen fiddling with a small steel bead in their hands, rolling it round and round in their palms ...
Just like that, they trained steadily for several months, and Ling Lan abruptly found that she had not experienced any improvement in an entire month. Every night, using three steel beads simultaneously, her training would break down at the 3.0127 minute mark. For a whole month she struggled and hovered on this time frame, and Ling Lan just knew that she had encountered her first bottleneck.
Ling Lan really wanted to break through this bottleneck, so she specially increased the practise time for hand speed ... but the more impatient she was, the worse the effect. Ling Lan found that after several consecutive days of forceful extended training, her hand speed actually deteriorated to a certain degree instead. She knew then that she couldn't continue this sort of self-punishing training anymore, otherwise, not only would there be no effect, she may even cause some unnecessary problem to appear in her two hands.
Ling Lan decided to rest well for a bit — besides the missions from the learning space which had never stopped, whether it was in reality or within the virtual world, Ling Lan chose to stop everything. Her typically busy life abruptly became free, causing her to feel a little out of sorts.
Seeing his boss's clear discomfort, Little Four thought of a good way to kill time and relax at the same time. He prepared an adult appearance for Ling Lan to use in the virtual network so that she could go explore the virtual world outside and expand her horizons.
Little Four's suggestion touched Ling Lan deeply. After all, she had never been to the real virtual world — the virtual world of the Central Scout Academy, at the end of the day, was just a platform for the students to familiarise themselves with the virtual world.
Immediate action is better than anticipation — that very afternoon, Ling Lan made Little Four get everything ready, and then she logged into the virtual world, prepared for her first foray into the outside world.
Ling Lan entered the login point — it was still the same hall she had first logged into, no changes whatsoever. At first, Ling Lan thought Little Four had forgotten about modifying her appearance, so she said moodily, "Little Four, why didn't you help to change my appearance?" Sigh, a kid was still a kid after all, easily dropping the ball at crucial moments.
Speechless, Little Four made a floor-length mirror appear in front of Ling Lan, presenting Ling Lan's current appearance to her.
"Hehehe ..." giggled Ling Lan in embarrassment. It turned out that Ling Lan's appearance had already been changed. When Ling Lan had logged in, Little Four had immediately modified her brainwaves, helping her into her virtual disguise instantaneously.
Ling Lan's current form was that of a girl around sixteen years old, in the flower of her youth — her looks bore some resemblance to the Ling Lan of her last life, with a steam-bun face 2 and a pair of big lively eyes, extremely alert and adorable.
"This appearance ... isn't it just too 'kawaii' 3 ?" She looked like a total loli 4 ! Ling Lan felt a little awkward. To be honest, she had already gotten used to her shota 5 face of this life that leaned more towards the boyish side.
"This way, no one will ever suspect that you're Ling Lan!" Little Four was perplexed. He had gone to so much effort to create a human appearance that was completely different from the current Ling Lan — why would Boss have any complaints?
"That's true." Ling Lan finally got with the program. If they had fashioned an appearance that had similar qualities to her current self, though the probability of being discovered was still very low, there was always the slight chance she would be discovered. Little Four had really considered everything very thoroughly.
Ling Lan didn't hold back her admiration, showering Little Four generously with praise, sending Little Four straight into a happy daze.
When he heard Ling Lan request to go to the capital, still hazy with pleasure, Little Four didn't look at the name of the planet, choosing a capital quickly and beginning their transportation ...
Cough cough , who asked every planet to have a capital? Little Four had just sent Ling Lan off when he noticed the problem. However, Little Four didn't dare to say anything. He had just received Ling Lan's praise — if he revealed his mistake now, wouldn't that just be slapping himself in the face? Besides, planet Azure's capital was still a capital! His boss hadn't really specified that she wanted to go to the capital of planet Doha ...
At this point, Ling Lan had no idea that her current position was already no longer on the planet of Doha where she lived. Instead, she was now on planet Azure, a planet on the fringes of the Federation several hundred thousands of light-years away.
Ling Lan stood at the transfer point, looking around in shock and surprise at the vintage scene before her. She could almost believe that she had returned to the olden times. "I thought that the capital should be even more advanced and futuristic than the city we live in. Who knew it'd be this traditional?"
"Every city's setting is different. The capitals here all have more traditional settings." Little Four secretly wiped the sweat off his forehead; at least that excuse had sounded somewhat plausible.
