The Dwotong Mecha Clan was the first to step out and challenge Lingtian after Lingtian"s defeat of Leiting. The moment this challenge fight was initiated, there was a great upheaval within Dwotong. It should be known that, in the Dwotong Mecha Clan, there was a portion of members who were students of the Doha Central Scout Academy. Also, the Lingtian Mecha Clan just so happened to be a mecha clan which consisted primarily of students from the Doha Central Scout Academy, while the four main regiment commanders were all from the Central Scout Academy. In contrast with Dwotong which gathered students from all scout academies on planet Doha, the "purer" Lingtian Mecha Clan gave these Central Scout Academy students a greater sense of relatability.

Thus, when Dwotong issued its letter of challenge this time, the seniors in the faction who had graduated from the Doha Central Scout Academy were infuriated. They rose up in indignation and demanded that the regiment commander of Dwotong would take the initiative to give up on this challenge. Unfortunately, the current regiment commander of Dwotong, Gu Jinxing, who had succeeded Zhang Jing-an, was not from the Central Scout Academy. He rejected the demand without any hesitation — this move thoroughly enraged the members who had graduated from the Central Scout Academy, and the conflict among the members began to intensify. Dwotong began to break apart from within.

When the challenge against Lingtian was just about to start, the seniors who had graduated from the Central Scout Academy made a move which flabbergasted all the cadets — they collectively withdrew from the faction. This move reduced Dwotong"s numbers by almost one-fifth, also causing Dwotong to fall to the dusty depths from their position in the top four. Both in terms of numbers and strength, Dwotong was now pretty much equivalent with the other middling factions.

Meanwhile, those Central Scout Academy students who had left Dwotong unsurprisingly all joined the Lingtian Mecha Clan. This boosted the strength of the Lingtian Mecha Clan greatly, and those other factions which had still considered Lingtian"s success a consequence of sheer dumb luck at the start now no longer dared to underestimate them.

"Gu Jinxing ... Jinxing, cautious-action, caution in acting — Gu Jinxing really does not live up to his name." Zhang Jing-an, who was currently devoting all his attention into his enlistment applications, broke out into a cold smile when he heard the news from a member of his battle clan. He said, "Ling Lan"s group is not so easy to deal with. He is really quite stupid, actually completely oblivious to the other side"s tactic."

Zhang Jing-an"s words confused his clan member. Seeing this, Zhang Jing-an could not help but shake his head, sigh, and say, "Our Dwotong is lacking a good strategist. It"s likely that even Wuji, Tianji, and Leiting have seen and understood what Lingtian was doing. Timely provocation combined with emotional investment, and then by pushing things to a head, under this entire series of calculation, Dwotong can be considered done for. That fellow Ling Lan ... his methods are as vicious as ever. Either he does nothing, or else once he acts, it"s like a thunder strike. This kind of person is very scary as an opponent ..."

His team members were rather disgruntled. "Even so, our Dwotong is overall still stronger than Lingtian. Our Dwotong has over two thousand members, while Lingtian won"t have even a full thousand even if they add in those members of ours who quit to join them ... our Dwotong still has the better chance of winning in the challenge fight."

Zhang Jing-an chuckled dryly. "How can it be that simple? I can bet with you that the final outcome will be Lingtian"s victory." This fellow Ling Lan had never ever lost before ... unless he gave up on purpose.

Just as Zhang Jing-an predicted, the final victor was the Lingtian Mecha Clan. Even though Dwotong"s regiment commander Gu Jinxing had learned from Leiting"s example and gave up on the elite 12-man team format to choose the 50-man mecha battle, Dwotong"s fate was even worse than Leiting"s. At least Leiting and Lingtian had fought till both sides had only one man left standing. At the time Dwotong"s team was completely eliminated, Lingtian"s side still had seven people remaining.

The remaining seven included all the four regiment commanders without exception, and the two senior special-cla.s.s operators Zhao Jun and Li Lanfeng. No one was overly surprised that these six had remained till the end — after all, the strength of these six had already been acknowledged by the cadets. What truly surprised the audience was the seventh survivor on Lingtian"s side. It was not one of the team leaders of the various battle clans in the Lingtian Mecha Clan, nor was it any of the primary fighters in the various battle clans. It was one of the secondary fighters in Ling Lan"s battle clan — that enchantingly beautiful, delicate and slender Luo Lang.

But when they thought back on Luo Lang"s performance during the fight, everyone could see how reasonable it was for him to have survived. When Luo Lang got into the groove of fighting, he was extremely tenacious and was also willing to be ruthless at the same time, not only towards others but also towards himself. Many times, when he was forced into a disadvantageous situation, just as everyone believed he was sure to lose, he would fight his way out with frighteningly explosive combat power that verged on the edge of harming himself in the process. That att.i.tude of never giving up gained the admiration of everyone there.

Dwotong"s fragmentation before the battle and their defeat in the battle was a wake-up call to all those mecha clans that were thinking of taking advantage of Lingtian. Though there had been an element of luck involved in Lingtian"s victory over Leiting, in reality, Lingtian"s strength was not as weak as these other factions had believed. Additionally, after taking in one-fifth of Dwotong"s men, it could be said that Lingtian was now fully qualified to rank among the rest of the top-line factions.

Under these circ.u.mstances, the third place Wuji silently retreated. Han Yu was wary of Lingtian"s soaring power, and was also apprehensive over Li Lanfeng"s scheming ways. He was certain that Li Lanfeng had a hand in orchestrating Dwotong"s tragic outcome.

After much consideration, Han Yu decided to give up on this chance to represent the First Academy in the Grand Mecha Tournament. Of course, the reason Han Yu could give up so easily was that he had long heard that even if their Wuji defeated Lingtian, in order to ensure the best team represents the academy at the Grand Mecha Tournament, the school administrators would still specially arrange a fight between Wuji and Tianji. The final victor of that match would be the faction which would really represent the academy.

The academy administrators definitely wanted to choose the strongest faction in the team to represent the academy. If Leiting had not lost to Lingtian so publicly, thus preventing the administrators from enforcing any hidden manipulations, they would not have had to back down and make do with Tianji. Han Yu was a clever person — he was not willing to benefit Tianji with the fruits of his efforts.

Sure enough, after confirming that Wuji had given up on challenging Lingtian, Tianji issued their challenge. The challenge mode they chose was like Leiting, the 12-man elite team battle. However, unlike Qiao Ting"s self-centred and overconfident approach, Tianji chose to send out a whole team of special-cla.s.s operators as its representative, the strongest 12 Tianji had to offer.

Before the challenge fight, everyone thought that Lingtian"s good fortune was about to be ended here — this time, Lingtian would lose for certain. After all, Lingtian only had three special-cla.s.s operators — Ling Lan, Li Lanfeng, and Zhao Jun — and no matter how strong the others were, they were still only advanced mecha warriors. 3 versus 12 ... no matter how you looked at it, the Lingtian Mecha Clan had no chance of winning. But the results made everyone"s eyes fall out of their sockets — the final victor was still Lingtian. Moreover, there were two members who survived the battlefield: Ling Lan and Zhao Jun.

It should be said that this challenge fight was not as one-sided as everyone had a.s.sumed. Even though nine of Lingtian"s members were advanced mecha warriors, those nine people worked together extremely well. The battle had not started for long before they had managed to group themselves into three team formations. In comparison, the Tianji members reacted much slower — not only did they not get into formation successfully, three of their number had been taken out by Lingtian"s formations not too long after the start of the battle. If the regiment commander of Tianji had not picked up on how bad the situation was and ordered all his members to retreat and regroup, Lingtian might have had even more members survive till the end of the battle.

It was only after Tianji had a.s.sembled themselves into formation that Lingtian found themselves caught in a precarious situation. The nine advanced mecha were successfully killed by Tianji, but the members of the Lingtian Mecha Clan were extremely ferocious — even when they died they did not forget to pull their enemies down with them. In the fighting, Tianji also lost two mecha.

However, even as the nine advanced mecha of Lingtian were being besieged and killed, Lingtian"s one and only formation made up of special-cla.s.s mecha similarly revealed its fearsome side, successfully killing off the opponent"s mecha formation it encountered.

At this time, Tianji"s upper hand was completely gone. 4 against 3 — although Tianji had one extra member, in this situation where both sides were special-cla.s.s operators, that one additional member was not enough to decide the ultimate victor yet. In the end, the two teams simply ended up pitting blunt force against blunt force — the 7 mecha clashed in a melee battle. In order to protect Ling Lan, after he defeated one mecha, Li Lanfeng used his battered mecha to bring down another mecha in mutual destruction.

Meanwhile, Zhao Jun engaged the regiment commander of Tianji in a bitter fight with his strength as the second rank in mecha. Of the three Lingtian special-cla.s.s operators left, Ling Lan, the weakest one in the audience"s eyes, ended up having the easiest time of it. He fought against another special-cla.s.s operator from Tianji who also was not very strong for up to several hundred rounds.

Finally, half-crippled, Zhao Jun found an opening in the other"s defence and defeated his opponent. It could be said that Zhao Jun and the regiment commander of Tianji were about equal in strength — it would not be surprising for either side to win; it all just depended on who was luckier that day. And in this battle, Zhao Jun"s luck was indisputably better than that of the Tianji regiment commander as he had managed to catch the other"s weakness a step earlier.

At the same time that Zhao Jun defeated the regiment commander of Tianji, Ling Lan also successfully killed her opponent, clinching the final victory for Lingtian. In contrast to Zhao Jun"s beaten up mecha, Ling Lan"s mecha was almost undamaged, only slightly drained of power.

The spectators were very curious about this because, during the battle, Ling Lan"s opponent had previously managed to land a hit on Ling Lan. When struck by mecha of the same level, even the st.u.r.diest mecha armour would also inevitably be scarred. With this question in mind, everyone began rifling for information on Ling Lan"s mecha, and only then did they discover that Ling Lan"s mecha was a modified mecha.

Of course, all they could find out was the line saying that it had been modified; as for more detailed information, they could not find anything. The mainframe had to protect the privacy of its users.

However, just this point alone was enough to make the cadets think they had found the answer. They believed that Lingtian was just too lucky in having managed to recruit the modification prodigy Chang Xinyuan, thus obtaining such a tough and fearsome modified special-cla.s.s mecha. As a consequence of this battle, Chang Xinyuan"s reputation unexpectedly soared within the military academy ...

This was notably the first time that a mechanic who could modify special-cla.s.s mecha had appeared in the First Men"s Military Academy. As such, Chang Xinyuan shot to fame overnight, becoming the most sought-after person in the area. Many factions all began to inquire about the nature of the contract Chang Xinyuan had signed with the Lingtian Mecha Clan. They were hoping that Chang Xinyuan had only signed a temporary collaboration contract with Lingtian so that they would have a chance to bring this future maestro of mecha modification into their fold ...古谨行: The "gu" character here is the character"s family name, but it can also mean "old/traditional". The character "jin" means "careful/cautious", while the "xing" means "action/move". Of course, as with most Chinese characters, there are other viable readings as well, but the one I"ve outlined is what the author is referring to here.Haha, I kept this phrase quite literal. Meaning should be obvious enough, right?