Chapter 223

Chapter 223

Changying’s assigned team, tasked with guarding the reconnaissance equipment, was clearly not a particularly strong squad.

Or rather, when Shen Geng arranged opponents for Team A01, he hadn’t picked any formidable teams.

So after seeing their leader eliminated, the remaining four mechs briefly panicked. But Lin Lie didn’t capitalize on it. Instead, he let the rest of his team engage the Changying mechs one-on-one.

Lin Lie himself raised his cannons and aimed at the mechanical engineers.

The laser beams activated, stiffening all the engineers—marking them as irreparable.

The signal tower being built by the engineers was a secondary build lacking damage detection. Not bothering to expend energy, Lin Lie simply had his mech kick it over, toppling the half-built lookout tower.

He didn’t even glance at his destroyed target. He looked toward Bai Xingshu.

Bai Xingshu’s fight was a mess—clumsy, even desperate.

He seemed like the weakest fighter in the entire squad.

Most shots hit non-critical areas, but his mech only got more erratic from its poor performance.

Then, in full view, he made a mistake.

A jerky maneuver, and Bai Xingshu’s mech collided sideways with the enemy’s to their shock.

The deafening clang made the other Changying squad members whip their heads toward the unexpected crash.

This was a serious incident.

Though the friendly match was supposedly live combat, allowing losses and even casualties, both sides were ultimately Empire students. Neither side actually wanted anything bad to happen.

The ideal scenario was like how Lin Lie had taken out the enemy leader—blasting them with energy fire to force them to stop fighting.

Energy weapons were safer, but physical collisions could cause real accidents.

And everyone saw that the impact point involved the cockpit.

Changying’s squad quickly called out over internal comms: “Nanshuo, you okay?”

The pilot grumbled, “I’m fine. Just lost the arm connection. Total damage at 15%, Weapon Slots 3 and 5 are trashed.”

His voice turned exasperated. “How is a Shoujun B-lister this bad?!”

To him, it was a freak accident. Worse yet, he could hear metal screeching as it grated—his Shoujun opponent’s mech still struggling against his.

He was done.

He tried to break free, but after a few attempts, gave up.

The enemy mech had somehow welded itself to his. Any movement dragged it along. No way to shake it off.

What kinda glitch is this?!

Scoffing, he wondered how he’d gotten stuck with this clown, completely missing how the collision point near his cockpit hatch had been right at the entrance.

And now...

That door opened.

Back during the freshman tournament, Bai Xingshu had once performed the act of boarding an enemy mech and breaching the opponent's cockpit.

Of course, Shen Geng had nixed Bai Xingshu's boarding tactic now, but the uncanny feeling of having their own collaborators inexplicably replaced and grouped with the enemy—something the Combat Department had experienced firsthand—still earned Shen Geng's approval.

Thus, Bai Xingshu's original plan of jumping onto the mech and prying open the hatch was modified into this: Bai Xingshu would align his own cockpit hatch precisely with the enemy's, jolting both hatches open and allowing him to transition between them.

As for whether such surgical precision could be achieved in practice...

Put it this way...

This was "Where there's a will, there's a way."

And so, this combat strategy for the exhibition match against Changying was approved by the Combat Command Department.

When the A01 squad members received the detailed battle plan just before deployment, connecting with the command center, they were speechless: "..."

Ahem.

As those who had experienced it during their freshman year, they were actually quite looking forward to it.

Soon, the Changying student noticed that the jarring metal-on-metal scraping in his ears had stopped.

Startled, he quickly exclaimed over the squad channel, "Shoujun's mech isn't moving anymore—is their operator down?!"

His voice was full of concern. But the moment he finished speaking, an alabaster-smooth hand reached out from behind him and, under his stunned gaze, pressed the squad comms button.

Killing the comms.

The student froze as if witnessing a horror scene, his neck stiffening like servo motors seizing up as he slowly turned to look in the direction the hand had come from.

What met his eyes was an angelic yet chilling face.

Bai Xingshu smiled gently at him, his voice soft and sincere as he thanked him, "Thanks for your concern. I'm perfectly fine."

"X-Xingze will arrive?!" The student's eyes widened in shock, his last sight being the hand descending toward his neck.

Then, he lost consciousness.

Bai Xingshu efficiently restrained him and stowed him in crash position within the cockpit.

Secured. By now, this was second nature!

In less than ten seconds, Bai Xingshu swiftly assumed controls.

At the same time, Lin Lie, with perfect coordination, quickly towed the disabled unit the moment Bai Xingshu's mech fell silent.

The four Shoujun mechs made a show of emergency response, hastily retreating with their "injured" comrade for extraction.

Soon, the Changying squad channel buzzed with voices that were both relieved and uneasy: "They've pulled back—must've extracted their casualty."

"If they got him out that fast, even if he was hemorrhaging, they could stabilize him in the golden hour. He should be fine," another squadmate reassured, addressing Bai Xingshu's side in a soothing tone.

Bai Xingshu, now the mech's new pilot, smirked and pressed the comms button again. Mimicking the original pilot's voice tight with simulated panic, he asked, "What's our play?"

Bai Xingshu looked a little lost here.

The only bummer was that he didn’t know the name of the eliminated team captain, so he merely muttered dejectedly, “The signal tower’s destroyed too…”

As soon as those words left his mouth, the squad channel fell heavy with the sting of failure. Silence lingered for a moment before someone finally said, “It’s fine, the match just started. You should head back first—go to the repair zone. Your mech’s too damaged to fight effectively now. We’ll check other areas to see if anyone needs support.”

Hearing this, Bai Xingshu grinned outright.

That was exactly what he wanted.

That’s why he had deliberately crashed his mech so severely.

“Alright,” he replied, then made a beeline toward the core area where Changying’s command center was located.

Watching everything unfold from the monitoring room, the teachers from both schools fell silent…