Translator: ryuxenji Editor: H2dH2mr Ling Lan nimbly jumped into the cockpit of her mecha, and then swiftly closed the cockpit and activated the mecha. Three minutes later, at the bottom right corner of the display screen, the three minute countdown appeared once again. It flickered on and off, reminding Ling Lan of its existence.
This time, Ling Lan only glanced at it, not because that string of numbers made her nervous or anxious. She just calmly watched the final image on the screen.
Sure enough, the image on the screen changed, and Ling Lan once again arrived at the entrance to the tunnel test. The learning space did not give Ling Lan much time to prepare. The countdown at the bottom of the screen began to roll, and the countdown had begun...
This time, Ling Lan did not try to increase her hand speed to rush out as fast as she could out of her impatience. Instead, she chose to slow down her hand speed. This speed was definitely not fast, and there were even a few pauses in between. Her two hands worked closely together, and facing the narrow tunnel, she controlled the rabbit mecha to jump lightly into it!
This step was very short, not even reaching the length of her rabbit mecha. However, this caution ensured that she did not make any mistakes this time, landing steadily in the middle of the tunnel without any deviation.
Ling Lan was not in a hurry to make the next jump. Instead, she calculated the distance of the tunnel before her before waving her fingers and controlling the mecha to make the next jump.
Calming down, Ling Lan was no longer affected by the three minute countdown. Only then did she notice that this seemingly straight tunnel actually had some twists and turns. It was just that when moving at high speed, the naked eye would not be able to notice this.
By then, Ling Lan already understood why she had been running into walls all this time. She had not noticed the twists and turns of the tunnel, so even if she had used the coordinates provided by the mecha to jump to the coordinates provided by the data, it would have been useless. This was because, in reality, she had already jumped off-course — what awaited her was only running into the wall.
Three minutes wasn't a long time, but it wasn't a short time either. Ling Lan had just jumped about 30 metres into the tunnel and avoided a few obstacles when the time was up. However, what Ling Lan did not know was that this time, the learning space strangely did not punish her when the timer hit zero. The electric shock did not appear, nor did it expel Ling Lan back to the starting point. Instead, after the timer hit zero, it did not stop, but continued to count down until it became negative...
All of this happened silently. Ling Lan, who was completely focused on operating her mecha, did not notice it at all... until she had jumped several times and penetrated several tens of metres deep into the ground. Only then did she suddenly remember to check the countdown timer, because Ling Lan felt that the three minutes this time seemed so long.
Ling Lan deliberately glanced at the countdown and found that it was still counting down. However, this time, the number was not getting smaller and smaller. Instead, it was getting bigger and bigger. Ling Lan's heart skipped a beat, and she abruptly stopped her flailing arms. The rabbit mecha instantly stopped moving and went into a prone position.
Only then did Ling Lan see that the countdown timer was already in the negative, which meant that she had long since exceeded the three minutes mark. Ling Lan began to ponder. Earlier, because she had been impatient, she had tried her best to increase her speed and barge around, so much so that she had neglected her surroundings. As a result, she had repeatedly slammed into walls, and in the end, she had been punished by the system with an electric shock after the countdown ended, and then expelled back to the starting point... why was the learning space not reacting now, as if it was giving her the freedom to do as she pleased?
Ling Lan thought back to the conversation she had had with Instructor Number Three when she had pushed open the mecha door. She thought back to how she had been so easily misled by Instructor Number Three, thinking that there would be a punishment if she did not complete the mission after the three minutes were up, and so she had driven her mecha with all her might... how bloody stupid!
She had actually forgotten that in the learning space, there was no punishment for failing a mission before the time was up! Seven years of learning experience... she had actually forgotten all about it in that instant just now... no wonder the learning space was angry. It had to be said that ever since she had successfully obtained Ling Xiao's legacy right under the noses of the military, she had become somewhat complacent, causing her to lose the caution she should have had.
Ling Lan suddenly mocked herself, "How embarrassing! I actually overlooked such an obvious hint, and that trap that could have been discovered just by thinking about it... is it because of my mental imbalance? Is it because I think I'm stronger than the average person, so I became arrogant... "
Is it trying to use those punishments to tell me that I don't have the right to be cocky? Ling Lan had an epiphany — this electric shock was not a punishment for her failure, but rather a punishment for her recklessness and carelessness, as well as for her mental imbalance. This was a warning from the learning space!
Ling Lan's lips quirked up slightly, her eyes shining brightly. Although the learning space was sometimes very unreliable, it would still stop her from making mistakes at crucial moments. She felt that she was truly lucky to have been able to obtain the learning space.
Having thought things through, Ling Lan's mental state was now even calmer. She no longer cared about the so-called countdown, but instead focused on operating her mecha to slowly explore this passageway. At the start, the passageway was narrow enough for only one mecha to pass through, but towards the end, although the passageway was getting wider and wider, the number of obstacles also increased. There were even piles of obstacles that required continuous leaps to pass through.
Ling Lan overcame them all one by one, but a new problem appeared. A large boulder appeared before Ling Lan. The space on both sides of the boulder was simply not wide enough for the large rabbit mecha to pass through. Not only that, the bottom of the boulder was also littered with several uneven little rocks, completely preventing the challenger from passing through from the bottom.
Ling Lan only needed one glance to know where the passageway was. At the top of the boulder, there was coincidentally an opening, enough space for the rabbit mecha to leap through. Note, leap through. In other words, this time, the rabbit mecha would need to jump high enough and fly over the boulder at an extremely fast speed, otherwise it would be very easy for it to crash into the boulder.
Ling Lan had the rabbit mecha's A.I. analyse the route it would need to take for this jump, as well as the method of control. She simulated it repeatedly in her mind, and only after she felt that she had a grasp of the situation did she prepare to move.
She operated her mecha to retreat more than 10 metres back. The boulder was too tall, so she needed to run up for support. On the first try, Ling Lan ran up, but when she reached the jump point, she felt that her position had deviated, so she made an emergency stop. The mecha stopped when it was 0.01 metres away from the boulder, scaring Ling Lan into a cold sweat.
On the second try, the jumping position was correct, but due to insufficient strength, the mecha was unable to reach the required height. Luckily, Ling Lan's reaction was quick — when she crashed into the boulder, she controlled the rabbit mecha to push off the boulder with all its four limbs. With a flip, she controlled the mecha to land safely, avoiding the tragedy of crashing into the boulder...
The two failures gave Ling Lan confidence. On the third try, Ling Lan's mecha had grasped all the key points, and she successfully flew over the opening at the top of the boulder. At this moment, Ling Lan did not know that after overcoming all sorts of obstacles, Ling Lan's control of the rabbit mecha was becoming more and more adept. From her initial wretchedness to her current ease in dealing with all sorts of sudden situations — Ling Lan's improvement was lightning fast.
Meanwhile, Ling Lan was also adjusting. In order to deal with all sorts of situations, she had unknowingly begun to integrate the combat moves she had learned in the real world into her mecha control. And this was the ultimate goal of this passageway mission.
In the learning space, the passing standard for a mecha operator was that a mecha operator must be able to control a mecha as if it were their own limbs, as if the mecha was their own body. And this was something that not many people in the real world could achieve.
Thus, if Ling Lan wanted to pass, she still had a lot of practice to do in her mecha control! This also made Ling Lan think that her mecha control was terrible...
After breaking through a few more obstacles, Ling Lan finally arrived at the end of the passageway, and had walked through the entire passageway once. The time she had used was not even 32 minutes and 13 seconds. Of course, this time was very different from the 3 minutes required by the mission. However, Ling Lan was not too worried, because she knew very well that she had limited her hand speed, only maintaining it at a normal level. The first time, she had been trying to understand the passageway and familiarize herself with the situation inside, so she had wasted a lot of time at each obstacle. However, the second time was different.
Reality proved that, as Ling Lan had predicted, on the second time, Ling Lan had managed to compress the time to 23 minutes. The third time was infinitely close to 20 minutes, but this time, she had reached a limit. The following fourth, fifth, and sixth times all maintained this result, unable to break the 20 minute barrier.
To ensure that she did not make a mistake and crash into the wall, Ling Lan did not lower her hand speed, continuing to operate the mecha with the same hand speed as she had at the start. However, after several attempts to modify her jumping plan and still being unable to break the 20 minute barrier, Ling Lan decided to raise her hand speed by one level.
However, after raising her hand speed by one level, Ling Lan made a mistake. Although she operated extremely carefully, at a certain sharp turn, she lost control of her mecha and slid out, crashing into the wall. However, Ling Lan reacted very quickly. Unlike at the start, she did not crash uncontrollably into the wall. Instead, she used all four limbs to kick against the wall, and with a rebound, she returned to the correct path. Of course, this also had to do with the fact that her speed had not reached the limit yet, still within Ling Lan's reaction range.
Just like that, she stumbled her way through the passageway. She found that the time had not increased, and was even slightly slower than before, about 21 minutes. However, Ling Lan was not discouraged — a new speed would always need some adjustment. During the adjustment, it was normal to make mistakes, and the time delay was also within her expectations.
By the time she had fully adapted to the new speed, Ling Lan believed that she would definitely be able to reach within 20 minutes.
Thus, Ling Lan maintained this speed, practicing again and again in the passageway, adjusting again and again...
The night passed uneventfully. Ling Lan did not even know when she had been kicked back by the learning space. The next morning, other than the few classes that she had to attend, Ling Lan spent the rest of her time in the learning space, training to pass the level.
Of course, to reassure her mother, Ling Lan lay down in the login pod of the virtual world, pretending to be in the virtual world. Of course, Ling Lan did not forget to instruct Little Four to imitate her and go to the various university science centers to collect information. She still had not forgotten the threat from the military — she could not let the other party discover any flaws.
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