Ling Xiao and Ling Lan hid in the forest, coolly watching batch after batch of mecha come and go. Even though they had to hide in the forest for up to an hour, there was not one trace of impatience on their faces. It could be seen that both father and daughter had extraordinarily strong patience.
Ling Xiao glanced at the completely still Ling Lan in her mecha by his side and just knew that his daughter was extremely calm. The feeling called pride reared up in his heart once more — just this patience alone was not something an ordinary person could possess.
Following the passage of time, their patch of grass finally regained its initial peace and quiet. Only then did Ling Lan move her mecha, and she could not help but say, "Father, you should keep a lower profile. Why don't you change to a slightly more common mecha?" She did not want to keep hiding here in this dense forest, unable to go out.
Ling Xiao was silent for a beat, then sighed and said, "This is already my worst mecha."
In his virtual mecha hold, all the other mecha were even higher level than this one. One of them was even the so-called god-class mecha he had obtained by completing that horrific mission, while several others were exclusive special editions specially gifted to him by the Mecha World after he had created a few imperial level skills in the game. These were all representations of his personal identity — the moment he piloted those mecha out, just the fire phoenix logo on their chests alone would allow others to guess who he was ...Ling Lan was utterly speechless. The two of them once again descended into wordless silence. But then, right at that moment, Ling Lan's heart clenched, a sense of danger suddenly rushing into her. Without thinking, Ling Lan chose to leap up and dodge instantly. When she turned around, she saw Ling Xiao, who had initially been standing immobile beside her, slowly in the middle of resheathing the two short blades of his mecha back at his waist. Meanwhile, on the ground beneath his mecha, two extremely ferocious-looking forest savage beasts were laid out.
Seeing this, Ling Lan's heart was shaken — when she had sensed a threat earlier, she could only choose to evade. But Ling Xiao had been able to easily finish off these ambushing savage beasts coming from behind him. From the two bodies laying on the ground, she could clearly see that there was only one point of fatal injury on them. In other words, Ling Xiao had instantly drawn his swords, both swords stabbing out to kill one savage beast each in the blink of an eye.
This may seem like a simple thing, but to do it was certainly not easy. A savage beast's life force was extremely formidable — even if one struck a fatal weakness directly, their powerful vitality would still allow these savage beasts a chance to carry out a final counterattack. This was precisely why many people did not dare to attack these type of savage beasts at close range.
However, all of this was no problem at all when it came to Ling Xiao. With clean and efficient moves, he had eliminated all danger.
"When you strike their vital points, you must instantly sever their nerves and disable their reflexes in one go. This way, the savage beasts' ability to counterattack will be destroyed. However, this kind of ability requires tens of thousands times of training before you will be able to do it. It cannot be rushed," Ling Xiao knew what Ling Lan was bothered about and so spoke up to explain.
Ling Lan nodded at his words. Her eyes shone vibrantly, because she had discovered that her father Ling Xiao was most likely the best instructor in this world to mentor her in mecha control.
Though Instructor Number Three in the learning space was indeed very strong in terms of mecha control, because the world she lived in now was still different from the world the instructors had come from, there were still some aspects which Ling Lan found rather difficult while learning from him. It should be said that the control methods Ling Lan was learning were modified from the control methods of their world, based off the results of Instructor Number Three's analysis of this world's mecha. Despite being very high-level, those methods could not achieve true 100% compatibility ...However, Ling Xiao was different. He was one of the top mecha operators in this world to begin with, and all the control methods he had learned were the accumulated results of this world over thousands of years. It should be said that Ling Xiao's control skills were the most appropriate for the mecha presently being used by the Federation, and he would be able to let Ling Lan truly understand the mecha of this world.
Ling Lan was rather frustrated at this time — why had she not realised this over these past few days? Actually wasting so many days for no good reason. Knowing that her dad's time was precious, Ling Lan decided that she could not continue wasting it any further, so she said to Ling Xiao seriously, "Father, you should be free these few days, right?" Ling Lan's eyes were sparkling brilliantly, her eyes shining with boundless hope ...
Could it be that his daughter had acknowledged his fatherly love? Ling Xiao was overjoyed — did this mean that his daughter was willing to accept him now and call him 'daddy' affectionately? He quickly nodded repeatedly, "Yes, I'm extremely free."
"Then instruct me a little on mecha controls." Ling Lan's subsequent words made Ling Xiao's mood plummet from the heights of heaven straight down into hell. He was greatly depressed, tears all over his face inside.
Oh daughter, daddy came all this way to come into the military academy undercover, just so I could establish a deep and meaningful father-daughter relationship with you, not so I could PK with you and be your instructor ...
But facing that bright-eyed gaze of Ling Lan's, Ling Xiao just could not say anything to refuse. He could only nod and say, "Okay."
Hearing Ling Xiao agree, Ling Lan's lips quirked up instantly. Even though Ling Xiao could not see his daughter's expression, for some reason, he just felt that his daughter was in a great mood. He could only smile wryly and console himself that he had finally done something that made his daughter happy, that all his efforts had not been for nothing.
An excited Ling Lan was completely an action-oriented Ling Lan — without saying anything more, she led her dad back to the city closest to them, Clear Winds City, running all the way. They came to the mecha combat hall at the city centre, and found an empty private room and requested entry for a spar.
Her entire mind filled with thoughts of learning from Ling Xiao, Ling Lan did not notice that when she and Ling Xiao had entered Clear Winds City, they had been noticed by those sharp-eyed people at the city gates. It could not be helped — Ling Xiao's mecha was just too unique; there was no way to conceal it. Some people were even quicker, instantly taking photos of the two of them flying across the city and uploading them onto the official website. The title of the post was naturally 'Top-class Elite [belief] Sighted'.
This news caused a commotion instantly, the post scoring several billion hits within just a few minutes. When someone pointed out that the gleaming and eye-catching mecha in the photograph was the top imperial mecha in the mecha world, the entire mecha world was rocked to the core.
For context, imperial operators were very difficult to see in the mecha world now. These top-class masters were now all old men who had become famous a decade or even a few decades ago. They were all basically already living reclusively, rarely sighted. There was even a time when many people questioned whether there were any imperial operators existing at all within the mecha world. And this time, this photograph proved that the imperial operators of rumour truly did exist in Mecha World, and one had finally appeared.
Everyone was worked up, especially since the post stated very clearly that the photo was taken at Clear Winds City. Having found some direction, the mecha operators all flocked towards Clear Winds City ... fortunately, Ling Lan and Ling Xiao were both moving extraordinarily fast, not meandering inside the city for long. They had directly headed straight into the combat room of the mecha combat hall to fight, thus dodging this crisis, not being trapped by the mecha operators who had rushed over because of the news and jammed up the city.
Nevertheless, the small little Clear Winds City had turned into a choked up hive of activity within the course of several minutes. Those outside could not get in, while those inside could not get out either, causing the entire city to become unbearably congested.
********
Inside their own private combat room, when Zhao Jun and Li Lanfeng saw the news about the top-class elite [belief] descending upon Mecha World, they no longer had the mood to continue sparring. They too wanted to see what the top-class elite [belief] was like and so were preparing to go outside and try their luck.
They had just left the private room on their end when Zhao Jun received a text message from a member of his team.
Zhao Jun instantly stopped moving after he glanced at the message, prompting Li Lanfeng to ask him curiously, "Why'd you stop?"
Zhao Jun smiled wryly and said, "It looks like we can't get out anymore."
Ah? Taken aback, Li Lanfeng immediately used his communicator to check, and after finding out about the situation, he too smiled bitterly and said, "Who would have expected that [belief] would actually be at Clear Winds City. I really don't know if we're lucky or unlucky ..." Lucky, because they were in the same city; unlucky, because they were trapped within the combat hall, unable to go out.
"We just weren't destined to meet that elite," said Zhao Jun regretfully, "Since we can't go out, why don't we have another spar?" He had no intention of going out to crowd with the people outside.
Li Lanfeng naturally agreed and said, "That's fine."
Obtaining Li Lanfeng's agreement, Zhao Jun bent his head over his communicator, connecting to the A.I. of the mecha combat hall as he said, "Let's just go back to our previous room, 817." Even as he spoke, he keyed in the number '817', and without even noticing the alert tagged to the room, he clicked to enter.
Seeing Zhao Jun's entire mecha suddenly disappear before his eyes, Li Lanfeng shook his head helplessly. Knowing that the impatient Zhao Jun must have already gone ahead to room 817, he quickly connected to the mecha combat hall's A.I. as well and selected room 817 too, then chose to enter ...
Li Lanfeng unintentionally saw that the number of the people in the room was 3 ... huh? What was happening?
The next second, Li Lanfeng had entered room 817. In a corner of the room, he saw that familiar black-coloured special-class mecha of Zhao Jun's. Not only that, on the stage in the middle of the room, two mecha were facing off against one another. One was an extremely common standard intermediate mecha, while the other was an extremely dazzling and beautiful mecha. With just one glance, Li Lanfeng could tell that this was the rumoured top-class imperial mecha ...
"What in the world is this?" Li Lanfeng was stunned by this scene before his eyes, and quickly sent a private message to Zhao Jun.
Zhao Jun very quickly responded with a message of his own, "Shh, don't make a sound. That imperial mecha's operator is most likely [belief]. Let's observe quietly. Don't let them discover us and kick us out ..." Zhao Jun worked hard to shrink in on his own mecha. Right then, he truly wished that his mecha could instantly become tiny — best if it could become a speck of dust, invisible to the naked eye.
Li Lanfeng saw Zhao Jun's actions and sweatdropped profusely. This fellow ... did he not know that no matter how much he tried to hunch in on himself, these two hulking mecha they were piloting just had no way of becoming any bit smaller? This series of actions by Zhao Jun only made him even more conspicuous.
********
"Do you know those two mecha?" Ling Xiao had long noticed these two mecha that had entered behind them, and he turned to ask Ling Lan about them.
Ling Lan shook her head and said, "No, should we kick them out?"
Even though she had left messages for her companions, asking them to come to room 817 of Clear Winds City to observe the mecha fight between her and Ling Xiao, Qi Long and the others had soon responded with news that the entire traffic of Clear Winds City was already paralysed. They just had no way of getting there.
