The three youths moved all of the unconscious sentry crewmen into one of the ship's rooms and locked it. Without someone to input the passcode on the panel outside, the people inside the room would not be able to get out. Ling Lan also did not forget to let Little Four disable their communicators, preventing the possibility of any of the opponents revealing their plan if they woke up earlier than expected.
By now, the students following Ling Lan could tell what Ling Lan's objective was. Although it sounded insane, everyone's blood was boiling at the thought. No one chose to withdraw, instead becoming even more excited, believing that this was truly what they should do ...
They were youths who had just stepped out from the scout academy, and were right in their rebellious phase. They had countless fanciful dreams — they were still hot-blooded youths filled with boundless courage. They wanted to make something of themselves and were willing to put in the effort to do it, whatever the cost may be. Still wet behind the ears 1 , they had no fear. As young men, their wings of freedom had yet to be bound by reality ...
Thus, their only thought now was that as long as they kept following Boss Lan before them, they could achieve things they never thought possible — insane things they never would have dreamed of ... and all this was precisely what fed their confidence and pride!
"Third Elder Brother, they, they, they've gone mad! Completely crazy!" When the group trailing Ling Lan's party from afar finally saw what Ling Lan's party was doing, they were instantly scared sh*tless 2 . Some of them were so scared that their bodies had even begun to tremble.From the perspective of these students, Ling Lan's party's actions were undoubtedly a major crime of insubordination — actually daring to attack the people sent to escort them to their school ... Had they given up on studying at the First Men's Military Academy?!
"Third Elder Brother, let's quickly tell the ship's crew. We must stop them. What they're doing will ruin our pathway to the military academy. They must be lunatics." A member suggested informing the ship's men, thinking that stopping Ling Lan's party's insane actions was the right thing to do.
"Idiot! Shut your mouth!" barked Third Elder Brother, "What do you all know?" Third Elder Brother looked ahead at where the figures had already disappeared and a gleam of intense light flashed across his eyes. Although attacking the crew seemed to be such an unthinkable act, the immediate impression being that the perpetrators must be mad ... after giving the matter a little more thought, it was not necessarily so.
Mulling it over, from the very start of the journey, the captain's introduction had been filled with provocation, and the crew's attitudes had been even worse, their speech full of all kinds of contempt, mocking, taunts, and insults. Even with the students' clear tolerance and giving way, the other side had not let it rest, purposefully forcing that confrontation in the cafeteria, intentionally humiliating that student ... all of this was testing the bottom line of the students.
In other words, this ship, from the captain to its crew, had never intended to make nice with them from the very beginning. Even if they tolerated again and again, the oppression and humiliation would have just gotten worse and worse, until the students could not take it anymore and exploded ... this would have been the inevitable outcome. In that case, why shouldn't they go ahead and address the root of the problem?
That person must be thinking this way, which was why he was doing this! Admiration shone from Third Elder Brother's eyes. How daring was he to be able to make this decision? 3 And how great must his charisma be to be able to convince up to 100 students to willingly take this risk with him?
His thoughts went back to the cafeteria — the other Qi-Jin stage student, he too was an astounding existence. What role did he have to play in this?"He should be attracting everyone's attention, providing cover for their operation! The person who designed this plan is not just bold, but also very meticulous!" Third Elder Brother had always been a smart guy; he very quickly figured things out. A wave of bitterness surged in his heart — he had once thought he was good enough to challenge these elites once they entered the military academy, but now from the looks of it, he had taken things too lightly. Just this Boss Lan alone — whether in terms of scheming and guts, or realm 4 — was just too far away from him.
"Third Elder Brother, they will definitely fail. That captain is most definitely super strong — they absolutely won't be able to beat him. If we go with them, we will be mistaken as part of them ..." reminded a member.
"So what if we're together? D*mmit, how can we sit out of such an awesome thing? Although we're not Central Scout Academy students, don't forget, we're also graduates of a scout academy, cadets of the military academy just like them ..." said Third Elder Brother.
"If they fail, we will still be mocked and tormented by those crew members. We might as well join them and let the scales tip as far as it can in our favour ... it's a waste of youth not to take crazy risks. I have decided to take the gamble, what about the rest of you?" Third Elder Brother felt his heartbeat speeding up, his blood starting to boil — even though failure would bring nothing good, but what if they managed to succeed?
This was definitely an incident that would shock the military academy — perhaps even up to the entire Federation! He bloody did not want to miss this.
"Third Elder Brother's decision is my decision!" His most loyal team members declared.
"Since you all have decided, then I'll of course join in ..." Although there were still a few people on the team who hesitated, seeing that most of the members had agreed to fight it out, they could only grit their teeth and jump in since they did not want to hold their team back.
The team finally came to an accord. Meanwhile, Ling Lan's party had already disappeared into the passage ahead. Third Elder Brother made his members hurry up — if they were left behind by the other, then they would not be able to pitch in even if they wanted to.
Third Elder Brother was in the lead, and just whilst they were hurrying on their way, a cold and somewhat familiar voice suddenly rang out by his ear. "Since you all are interested, then come along!"
Third Elder Brother's footsteps abruptly stopped. His face shifted slightly, because he had identified the voice — it was the voice of that youth called Boss Lan.
The other team members were baffled by his sudden stop, and Third Elder Brother was suddenly heard to say, "Gao Jinyun, I look forward to working with you."
"Ling Lan, welcome to the team!" The cold voice responded swiftly. As expected, it was that Boss Lan.
"Boss, what are you mumbling to yourself for?" The team members were creeped out by Gao Jinyun's strange behaviour. One of the team members could not help but speak up to ask.
Gao Jinyun did not respond, only saying, "Hurry up and move forwards!"
"Ah? We'll be discovered by the team ahead if we move too fast," said a member worriedly.
"They have already discovered us a long time ago. Just now, they were just inviting us to join them." Gao Jinyun finally explained why he had been muttering to himself.
"So hurry up! No more chit chat!" said Gao Jinyun moodily. That Boss Lan actually possessed the ability to transmit verbal messages from a distance — what ability was this? Could it be a type of spiritual mutation?
"..." Gao Jinyun's words made everyone speechless. Who could have guessed that they had already long been discovered by the other party despite their caution? Thinking back, if they had decided back then to go tell on them, they may have been mercilessly attacked by the other party, ending up shoved into a small dark room just like those incapacitated crew members had been.
At this thought, the members could not help but look at Gao Jinyun gratefully. Once again, it was proven that following Third Elder Brother was not wrong.
The moody Gao Jinyun never would have known that his team members' trust in him would increase once more because of this. They even decided in their hearts that after this, no matter what decision Gao Jinyun made, they would agree unconditionally. This gave him a bunch of stubbornly united team members. In the future, this unity would be what allowed his team to perform exceptionally, securing their spot as the second main force of Ling Lan's entourage ...
"Boss, I did pretty good, right?" Little Four smugly begged for praise from Ling Lan in the mind-space. Earlier, he had used the advanced technology of the learning space to convert Ling Lan's voice into coded supersonic waves which could only be successfully received by the specified person.
Ling Lan said nonchalantly, "Not bad at all! Little Four, keep it up!" Honestly though, Ling Lan really thought what Little Four did was unnecessary. There had really been no need to make things so complicated — he had just needed to transmit her voice through the sound systems already within the ship and let it out within the vicinity of the other group. Even if the message was heard by a few more people, so what? Still, she would not burst Little Four's bubble and discourage him. Since Little Four had the interest to do it, then she would leave him to it, as long as he did not find it troublesome.
"However, don't forget to cover us. The opponent must not discover our movements!" Ling Lan reminded worriedly. She was just afraid that Little Four would get too caught up in his play and forget his main task. The reason why their path had gone so smoothly, not being discovered by the central control room despite taking out so many sentries, was all because Little Four had created fake video feeds, showing the opponent that everything was going on as normal.
"Got it, Boss!" Little Four said, disgruntled. Would he make such a low-level mistake? Why did Boss always ignore what he said? He was a god of the virtual world! He could handle this type of small case without any errors even if he were asleep ...
Leaving aside Little Four's grumbles within the mind-space, at this time, the other people in Ling Lan's party had also sensed Gao Jinyun's party's movements. When Han Jijyun heard the soft susurration of footsteps coming from behind them, his expression could not help but change.
The footsteps sounded rather disorganised, so it looked like the incoming people would not be few. Had they been discovered by the ship's crew?
The other students also began to become restless. Lin Zhong-qing turned to look at Ling Lan, asking her whether he should lead some people over to hold them off.
Only then did Ling Lan speak up to explain, "Don't worry, they are our allies!"
Hearing this, the hearts of everyone there relaxed instantly. The initially tense atmosphere dissipated as they patiently waited for Gao Jinyun's party to catch up.
The moment Gao Jinyun approached Ling Lan's party, he could see everyone stopped there waiting for his party. Thirty pair of bright eyes stared at them in unison, making him feel a tremendous pressure.
"We are students from Huoyun City 5 Scout Academy. I am called Gao Jinyun ..." Gao Jinyun straightened his attitude, and began introducing his party to the other.
"We'll do full introductions later. Jijyun, go arrange it!" Ling Lan coolly interrupted Gao Jinyun, and then immediately turned to head into the depths of the passage. The students did not dare to dawdle, following closely ...
Gao Jinyun reflexively rubbed his nose, silently noting to himself that this Boss Lan was really hard to talk to ...
With the addition of Gao Jinyun's party, Ling Lan's party now had more than 40 people. As they did not know the capabilities of Gao Jinyun's party, Han Jijyun did not split the teams, grouping everyone together as one team to move together.
This column of people did not meet any other unexpected issues along the way. Finally, they neared Ling Lan's first objective, the spaceship's central control room.
