TL: Hua

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Chapter 41

“You?” A flicker of mockery crossed Harvey’s face.

Ji Xuan said, “Chen Shuo is a logistics staff member without professional training. If you fight him, even if you win, it wouldn’t be considered honorable.”

“An Omega wanting to stand up for a Beta? That’s a new one.” Harvey looked Ji Xuan up and down, his tone laced with undisguised contempt.

The auxiliary soldiers behind him were the same acquaintances who had caused trouble at the warehouse last time. Having already held a grudge, they let out a few ill-intentioned laughs in coordination. In the eyes of these rough men who spent their years between the fortress and the front lines, a logistics Omega, even one from Mars Military Academy, seemed far too delicate.

Pei Yingye, long accustomed to their narrow-mindedness, let out a scoff with his arms crossed. “So much talk. Could it be you’re afraid to compete, Captain? Do you only dare to bully clerks like our comrade Xiao Chen?”

“Afraid?” Harvey was easily provoked by this taunt. His voice rose sharply. “When I was out on missions on the front lines, you military school brats were still home drinking milk! If we’re going to fight, then let’s fight.”

He glared fiercely at Pei Yingye before turning to Ji Xuan. “Omega, don’t say I’m bullying you. We’ll use the basic training mecha on the field. Whoever is knocked out of the boundaries first or is judged to have lost combat capability loses. Don’t go back crying.”

“Fine,” Ji Xuan said coldly.

“Ji Xuan…”

Although he knew that military students who could be stationed at North Star Fortress were no ordinary people, Chen Shuo couldn’t help but worry. Harvey might be annoying, but to be a captain of the auxiliary defense force, his combat experience was real.

Pei Yingye patted Chen Shuo’s shoulder reassuringly. “What are you standing there for? Let’s go watch the show.”

Chen Shuo opened his mouth, unable to understand how Pei Yingye could be so calm.

The group moved to the adjacent mecha training ground. The area was brightly lit, with training fields of various sizes and purposes arranged in a circle, housing different models of mecha. Harvey opened a two-player combat field at the front desk and entered the cockpit of one mecha with practiced ease.

“5th Gen model. It’s the same type Lai Zhou had you test back then, but it should be easier to operate than the one he modified,” Pei Yingye whispered into Ji Xuan’s ear.

Ji Xuan gave a faint acknowledgment and said no more, walking unhurriedly toward the other mecha. As he climbed the ladder, his loose scorpion braid swayed gently, possessing an elegance that felt out of place in the cold, industrial environment.

Pei Yingye’s gaze followed Ji Xuan until the cockpit door closed with a hum.

The basic training mecha carried no thermal weapons, perhaps to help soldiers practice close-combat skills, or perhaps simply to slow down the wear and tear on the mecha and the field. The two mecha stood at the center of the training ground. After a brief system self-check, the battle began.

Harvey clearly wanted to end the duel as quickly as possible to teach this arrogant Omega a lesson. As soon as the prompt finished, he maneuvered his mecha to charge forward. A massive mechanical arm swung toward the head of Ji Xuan’s mecha with a fierce, whistling wind—a standard military combat opening.

The auxiliary soldiers watching let out excited low growls, as if they could already see the other mecha being floored by a single punch. Chen Shuo closed his eyes in tension.

However, at the very moment the mechanical arm was about to strike, Ji Xuan’s mecha suddenly moved.

He didn’t retreat, nor did he block it head-on. Instead, with the lightness of a reindeer, he slid half a step to the right. Harvey’s sure-hit blow grazed past the outer armor of the mecha without even making the sound of metal grinding.

“Crap!” an auxiliary soldier shouted in disappointment.

The strike having missed, Harvey maneuvered the mecha into an immediate horizontal sweep, a mechanical leg kicking toward the waist.

Ji Xuan seemed to have anticipated this. The treads suddenly slid and braced, and the entire machine performed a short side-flip in midair. Not only did he avoid the sweep, but he also put several meters of distance between himself and Harvey.

“Damn it, slippery as an eel!” Harvey cursed in the public channel, charging forward once more. His fists slammed out in a sequence like heavy hammers.

Ji Xuan’s mecha consistently maintained a strange rhythm. He didn’t attack; instead, he tilted, slid, or performed small jumps, always avoiding Harvey’s attacks at the critical moment.

It was like he was walking a dog.

To everyone outside the field, the mecha under attack appeared composed from start to finish. Conversely, Harvey became increasingly frustrated after consecutive misses, his offense gradually becoming frantic like a rabid dog in a state of powerless rage.

Pei Yingye was all too familiar with this maneuver of Ji Xuan’s. After all, during the basic combat segment of the annual assessment, Ji Xuan had toyed with those ill-intentioned challengers in the same way.

“Damn it… damn it…” Another strike missed. Due to his intense momentum, Harvey nearly crashed out of the boundaries. He managed to drag himself back only by turning the mecha sharply at the last second.

The treads dragged a grayish-black mark onto the ground, the piercing sound echoing through the arena.

“Can you only hide, Omega?!” Harvey roared. He maneuvered the mecha into a ferocious collision, attempting to ram Ji Xuan out of the field.

Right then, Ji Xuan, who had been on the defensive, suddenly sharpened his gaze. He no longer retreated or dodged. Instead, meeting Harvey’s charge, he crouched low and lunged forward at a bizarre angle.

“Is he crazy?!” someone exclaimed.

The two mecha crossed paths in an instant!

In that flash of a second, a terrifyingly powerful surge of mental power, like a flood bursting through a dam, swept toward Harvey’s mecha!

With a vroom, Harvey didn’t even have time to react before the mental link connected to his mecha snapped like a lute string. All feedback from the mecha vanished instantly. He felt as if he had been tossed from a noisy world into a silent abyss. A massive, terrifying sense of nothingness and weightlessness crawled up from his feet. He had completely lost control of the mecha.

In the eyes of the others, the fiercely charging mecha came to an abrupt halt, as if its soul had been snatched away.

How could an Omega possess such formidable mental power?!

Shock, intense pain, and terror surged in like a tide, but Harvey was experienced in actual combat after all. He immediately attempted to reconnect to his mecha.

However, without giving him any time to react, Ji Xuan had already flashed in front of him. With a sweeping kick, he sent the out-of-control mecha flying!

“BANG—”

The massive mecha crashed to the ground. Harvey stubbornly continued trying to reconnect; sharp stabs of pain radiated from his brain as a mountain-like mental power pressed ruthlessly down upon the mecha’s chassis, rendering him completely unable to move.

Maneuvering the mechanical leg into another whirl, Ji Xuan stomped heavily onto the cockpit. The battle screen above displayed the mecha’s damage levels, which had not yet reached the victory threshold.

Ji Xuan raised his leg again, preparing to kick Harvey out of the arena bounds. But whether due to the previous intense fighting or the impact of Harvey’s fall, an inconspicuous part on the shoulder of Harvey’s mecha loosened with a “clack” and fell to the ground.

Ji Xuan’s gaze was drawn to this tiny accident, and a bold, absurd idea suddenly took root in his mind.

The next second, the mechanical leg stepped lightly onto the midsection of the mecha’s torso, and Ji Xuan once again released a surging wave of mental power.

“…What—what are you doing!” Harvey desperately pushed his own mental power, trying to re-establish control over the mecha and flip over the godforsaken machine stepping “on top” of him.

However, his mental power felt as if it had slammed into an invisible yet indestructible alloy wall. Not only could he not break through, but he was violently repelled by that even more vast and boundless power, causing his brain to throb and his vision to go black.

Ji Xuan slowly raised the mechanical arm. Then, a shocking scene unfolded.

Without any physical contact, a crack actually appeared at the junction where the shoulder armor and the cockpit door met. The outer shell, being pried upward, let out a tooth-aching “screech,” sounding like the eerie twisting of metal. Slowly, the gap began to widen, and the buckle securing the cockpit door abruptly snapped open!

Mecha Damage: 20%.

Ji Xuan did not stop the release of mental power. He maneuvered the mecha to lean down, hovering the mechanical arm over the metal shell that had been forcibly pried open by pure mental power.

Mecha Damage: 28%.

Under the crushing weight of a mental power several times higher than his own, Harvey let out a hoarse howl.

Mecha Damage: 37%.

“CRACK! ZZZZT—!”

The mecha’s outer shell emitted a piercing, unbearable sound of tearing.

Just as Ji Xuan was about to physically rip open the cockpit, the battle screen flashed the result of the duel. Immediately, both mechas let out a “hissing” sound and simultaneously ceased operations.

“To reduce the difficulty of mecha maintenance at the training center, the duel will be forcibly suspended when mecha structural integrity drops to 60%.” The system notification rang overhead. Ji Xuan raised an eyebrow, allowed the AI to take over the mecha, and pulled back away from Harvey.

The cockpit popped open. Ji Xuan stood at the threshold, retracting his mental power, looking down at the fallen mecha from a height. “Shall we continue, Captain?”

His voice echoed through the hollow training hall, tinged with a chilling, metallic edge that made one’s heart skip a beat.

Harvey’s lips trembled. Looking up at Ji Xuan, all his arrogance had been shattered, leaving only the terror of being suppressed by a superior mental power and a chill that reached his marrow. He shook his head with difficulty, unable to utter a single syllable.

“Then please, in the future, treat the members of the Logistics Department with kindness,” Ji Xuan said. He then leaped down from the cockpit door.

Pei Yingye had already moved to the exit of the training ground to wait for him when the mechas were forcibly stopped. Seeing Ji Xuan approach, his blue eyes looked as if they were filled with fallen stars, shining with incredible brilliance.

He spoke nonchalantly, his tone hiding none of his admiration: “Impressive. To force open a mecha with pure mental power, weren’t you afraid of fainting like last time?”

Ji Xuan glanced at him. As he walked closer, Pei Yingye noticed a few stray beads of sweat on his brow and a complexion paler than before. The excitement on Pei Yingye’s face instantly faded, replaced by an inconspicuous frown.

But Ji Xuan said lightly, “Don’t I have you? You should be able to carry me out like last time, right?”

Pei Yingye was momentarily choked by this casual attitude. He badly wanted to ask: Have you not suffered enough from mental damage? There were clearly easier ways to end that fight, yet you insisted on looking for trouble. What if you actually got hurt? But the moment he met Ji Xuan’s dark, heavy eyes, he found himself unable to say a word.

Furthermore, the sight of Ji Xuan treading on the opponent’s mecha and prying the cockpit open with mental power was, indeed… extremely badass.

He leaned in closer. Whether it was his imagination or not, he seemed to smell the faint scent of Ji Xuan’s pheromones leaking out due to the high mental power consumption. He hurriedly reached out to help adjust Ji Xuan’s neck collar up a notch.

Chen Shuo came running up, his eyes full of gratitude and lingering fear. “Ji Xuan, thank you! And… are you alright? Your face?”

“I’m fine,” Ji Xuan interrupted him. After a pause, he added, “They probably won’t come looking for trouble with you again anytime soon.”

“Ah?” Chen Shuo froze. “That, that’s not the point. It’s you…”

He chased after the two, offering several rounds of concern, terrified that Ji Xuan had suffered some mishap because of him. Eventually, he left only after Pei Yingye’s repeated assurances, agreeing not to disclose today’s events to Director Lin. After all, while mecha duels weren’t technically private brawls, it would be detrimental to both of their training scores and Chen Shuo’s own job hopping.

Watching Chen Shuo leave, the atmosphere finally became quiet. Pei Yingye leaned in a bit closer to Ji Xuan again, his shoulder intentionally bumping into the other. He spoke with feigned nonchalance: “If you’re really feeling unwell, I can carry you back like last time.”

Ji Xuan tilted his head back, resting it against Pei Yingye’s shoulder. He lazily scanned the other’s eager eyes and let out a light laugh. “Forget it. I’d like to keep some of my dignity.”

However, his consumption was indeed high; all he wanted now was to go back and rest.

Little did they know, in the training ground they had just vacated, an unusual guest was sitting.

Ying Xun had finished watching the surveillance footage of the duel in the command center with a blank expression. The officers beside him remained silent.

No one knew why the general, who had just returned to North Star Fortress today, would suddenly decide to inspect the training grounds on a whim, especially during a semi-open hour that didn’t belong to official soldier drills.

“Gen—”

One officer was about to speak when he heard Ying Xun ask in a calm tone: “This should be your younger brother, correct, Colonel Ji?”

Ji Jingche, being called out, was taken aback. He then stepped forward, nodded, and replied, “Yes, General.”

“I recall that when you entered the Azure Bird First Guard, your mental power test intensity was 2S?”

Ji Jingche said, “Correct.”

Ying Xun let out a soft laugh. “His mental power… it should be 3S, maybe even… How did this year’s top-ranked student in Mars Military Academy’s annual assessment end up in the Logistics Department?”

No one answered him.

“Because he is an Omega?”

When he spoke, he didn’t really sound like a space soldier stationed on the front lines all year; he sounded more like a humanities professor in a university—unhurried and measured, his tone neither urgent nor heavy. Yet, due to decades of military life and his 3S-grade Alpha status, he carried an undeniable, natural authority.

The officers looked at each other, none of them knowing how to respond.

Ying Xun continued, “Don’t you think we’re wasting talents by placing such powerful mental power in the Logistics Department?”

“Then where do you feel it would be more appropriate to transfer him, general?” Finally, an officer took the initiative to ask.

Ying Xun didn’t give a direct answer. Instead, he raised his hand to dismiss the others, leaving only Ji Jingche behind.

“Regarding the weapons smuggling case, we need a few fresh faces. What do you think?”

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