Chapter 157 Finals (XI)

In this line of text, the dice are blue, the monsters are red, and the smiley face symbol at the end is plain white.

Below the multiple-choice questions, there is a palm-sized target hanging.

Most of the target's area is blocked by the fluorescent green laser grating in front, with only the center of the target coinciding with the gap in the grating.

The three colors of blue, red and white appeared alternately on the target rings and the bull's eye, so fast that they merged into one, leaving afterimages on Mingyu's retina, making Mingyu dizzy.

"It depends on your eyesight and reaction." Mingyu rubbed his eyes.

The colors blended together. Because they changed so quickly, the young man's eyes hurt, so he simply closed his eyes and observed only with his mental vision.

After a moment, the young man turned to Mu Boxing and said, "The intervals between color changes aren't completely equal. There's a regular cycle. There are three groups of red, blue, and white with different durations. The red appears the longest in the first group."

"Hmm," Mu Boxing replied, recognizing the pattern the young man had discovered. His finger rested on the fire button, and he said calmly, "Red monster?"

"Okay." Mingyu nodded in agreement. "I think it should be red, too."

To pass the maze and find the Star Tournament badge, all teams need at least two things.

One is sufficient energy to support the navigation and combat of starships.

The other is the direction of the end of the maze.

The Star Navigation Tournament didn't provide a star map when the team entered the maze. Without any assistance, reaching the center of the maze and obtaining the victory badge would rely solely on luck and memory.

This kind of randomness is too strong, and it doesn't seem like the setting for the Star Navigation Competition.

The purpose of choosing dice and monsters is to reduce randomness and provide them with navigation assistance and guidance.

The monster option is obviously for fighting.

Since it is a fight, energy must be consumed.

Therefore, the monster option definitely does not represent energy supply, but navigation assistance information that can help you get out of the maze.

"Besides the monsters, the other dice option should represent energy supplies," Mingyu guessed. "The supplies you receive will probably be related to the number rolled on the dice."

They have no shortage of energy now, so of course they have to choose monsters.

The people with colorful hair all showed a look of sudden enlightenment in unison.

"Brother LU is amazing," said Red Hair admiringly, "What you said makes perfect sense!"

If he were to choose, he would probably have to take a blind look before he could figure out the clues.

Redhead scratched his head, looking at the round target in front of him that was about to blind people, and asked curiously, "What's that white smiley face?"

Mingyu thought for a moment and said, "Maybe it's... a punishment?"

"So white is actually a punishment!" On the live broadcast platform, commentator Rabbit was also explaining to the audience. His explanation was exactly the same as Mingyu's.

"At this moment, most of the participating teams have arrived at the Dice Monster's selection point!"

"If you have to choose, the team must hit the bull's eye when it changes to the corresponding color!"

"To do this, the observer must be sharp enough! The driver must also have quick reaction ability and accurate shooting skills."

"Also... they need to calculate the time to shoot in advance!"

"And to avoid contact with the laser barrier, the ship must fire from three stars away. Although the time it takes for the laser cannon to travel through three stars is very short, but... but we can all see that the color of the target changes very quickly!"

The plush bunny spoke rapidly, exuding nervousness from the commentary booth. "Actually, I can't even see the colors on those discs right now! If I'm not careful, I'll hit the wrong color!"

"Whether it's wanting red to hit blue, or wanting blue to hit white... wow! Just like Team Swift right now!"

The Swift was one of the fleets that completely abandoned attacking the opposing faction during the first phase. Their single-minded focus on reaching the finish line meant they were the first to cross the river, unhindered by the Colorful.

Although the three teams arrived at the finish line four or five hours later than the colorful team due to the lack of space travel technology, if calculated based on the three months of extinguishing the burning energy river, they still had a huge time gap with the team behind them.

After communicating with Wucaibanlan about the game compensation, the Star Navigation Competition also asked the three teams, including Xunji, that were not intercepted by Wucaibanlan, for their opinions on the compensation method.

After discussion, the three teams all accepted the colorful plan.

"The burning of the Energy River wasn't our team's fault in the first place." They all maintained a positive attitude. "Being able to snag enough energy to set off for the second stage was a pleasant surprise. If it weren't for the Colorful Blossom burning the Energy River, our points ranking would probably be much worse than it is now."

"Although our chances of winning would be greatly increased if only five teams were competing for the top three... it would still be an unfair victory!"

"That's right!" Team Swift's observer, still a supporter of Slayer and Eggplant, said as if it was a matter of course, "If we just eliminated Slayer and Eggplant like this... to be honest, I'd feel a little guilty."

"Blue, red, blue, white, blue, blue, red... Fire!" The observer, now nervous, quickly indicated the changing colors of the target to his pilot. The pilot pressed the fire button, but just as the laser cannon was about to hit the bull's eye, the color suddenly changed from red to white.

In an instant, thousands of arrows were fired.

The central casings of the laser designators on the left and right sides of the starship flipped up, revealing additional firing ports. From these ports, instead of the emerald green laser barriers that marked the boundaries, white high-intensity energy cannons were fired.

"It's not easy to dodge such a dense barrage of energy cannons in a narrow channel!" the rabbit commentator shouted. "The porthole in front of Swift was hit! A crack appeared! To prevent further damage to the starship, Swift chose to crash through the green grating on the side of the channel and leave the channel!——"

"Swift has been penalized for violations! Must remain where you are for two hours!"

"Oh! The Red and White Roses opened fire too! They were aiming for the blue one, representing the energy supply, but they also accidentally hit the white bull's-eye, putting them in the same predicament as Swift!"

"Eggplant Flower hits the blue! Heading to the resource recharge station! Slayer... I don't know if the Slayer accidentally touched it or didn't want to recharge, but chose red instead!"

"And the colorful... colorful hit the red! Their starship was the one that stayed in front of the target the shortest! Let's rewind one minute!"

"Look here! The silver-white starship took only forty seconds from spotting the target to hitting the bull's eye! And it seemed to do it with ease and effortlessness. The colorful starship is heading towards the right fork in the road!" The rabbit commentator locked onto the colorful follow-up camera, "Let's see! The 'monster' released by the Star Navigation Competition at the fork in the road is..."

"It's a flat star monster!"

A transparent, flat, special energy creature lurks quietly above the waterway. When its body is stretched out, it is twice as large as a starship.

The star monster's head was facing the silver-white starship, with a huge oval eye in the center. The transparent round pupil in the eye was slowly shrinking as the starship approached.

The back half of its body was curled up, ready to spring forward at any moment and pounce on the starship.

This is a special star beast that is extremely good at camouflage.

It would ambush in the space lanes and attack passing starships, biting them to pieces with its huge mouth on its abdomen.

In the depths of the universe, every year several exploration team starships are attacked by flat star monsters and destroyed in the starry sky.

But this kind of thing obviously couldn't fool Mingyu and Mu Baixing.

Before the flat star monster suddenly appeared, Mu Baixing had already followed Mingyu's guidance to see its location clearly.

The dark golden energy cannon ignited it and burned it to ashes.

The colorful silver starship passed through the flames, and a light screen was seen in the center of a new fork in the road not far behind the star monster.

"Badge location, lower left thirty." Mingyu glanced at the prompt on the light screen, "Let's go down."

"It seems that at the next fork in the road, I should try to choose the left or downward channel."

The silver starship continued to sail in the direction indicated and passed through several checkpoints one after another.

There was no shortage of energy in the colorful world, so every time they chose the "monster" represented by red. Some of the star beasts in the maze were indeed difficult to deal with, but for Mingyu and Mu Baixing, even the most difficult star beasts here did not require much effort.

They passed the level very quickly, following the prompts, and did not encounter any other teams along the way.

On the live broadcast screen, their figures were seen traveling unimpeded.

"The changing red, blue, and white targets slowed down quite a few teams," the Rabbit commentator lamented. "Even the Killer and Eggplant had a few instances of accidentally hitting the white bull's-eye, wasting time dodging fire. But the colorful choices never went wrong!"

"Mu Boxing and LUCE are truly excellent drivers and observers, and a very tacit partner!"

As he spoke, he turned the live broadcast camera to the Killer Team.

"Let's see!" the rabbit commentator shouted, as if he was afraid of chaos. "Eggplant Flower and the Killer are about to meet at the same fork in the road again!"

"During the second stage of the competition, there were many such close encounters! Because the channel is narrow, battles often ended with one team colliding with the channel edge and choosing to stay there for two hours to make way for the other team."

"Of course, there are teams that get shot down and crash during battles like this, and are forced to withdraw from the competition. But regardless, such chaos has nothing to do with the colorful world!"

"Because they passed the levels so quickly, they avoided the chaos. Although Wucai can only show the direction but not the distance, I can actually tell that they are only three levels away from reaching the center of the maze!"

"I think the finance ministries of each star region should be counting their own accounts and thinking about how to 'repay' the colorful ones." The plush rabbit had obviously already bet on the colorful ones to win the championship, and said half-jokingly and half-seriously.

He was in a relaxed mood and jokingly said, "After all, according to the agreement between Wucaibanlan and the competition organizing committee, they need to pay double the first-place prize!"

"Colorful has reached another checkpoint!" The commentator Rabbit saw that Qiehua and the Killer hadn't met yet, so he switched back to the original camera and followed Colorful's movements. "Not surprisingly, they chose red again! Let's see what the 'monster' in this lane is..."

His words were suddenly interrupted by a prompt tone.

"beep!--"

An ominous red light flashed on the game screen in front of the rabbit-eared youth.

"Alert!" The image of the colorful silver starship moving forward was obscured by a thick bright red light. "A team has issued an emergency distress call!"

"A team has requested emergency help?!" He was slightly startled and quickly pulled up a detailed prompt. "The Star Navigation Competition has received an emergency help request! The team requesting help is... Slayer?!"

The rabbit commentator was stunned again.

After so long in the competition, everyone knew how fierce the Killer's style was. This team was made up of muscular men from top to bottom, who loved to attack with all their might and would never retreat easily.

Making an emergency call for help during the competition means automatically withdrawing from the finals. Unless a killer encounters a life-threatening emergency, he will not press this button.

The rabbit commentator didn't know what was happening on the field, but he had an ominous premonition in his heart.

He quickly switched the screen to the Killer Team's tracking camera, but the screen in front of him flickered briefly before suddenly going out.

Plush rabbit: "..."

"The Killer and the tracking camera's signals have been lost!" The plush rabbit said nervously, "The Star Competition rescue team has already set off. I don't know what happened at the competition venue! But a minute ago, the Killer just finished the suspension penalty after accidentally touching the white bull's eye and then the laser barrier..."

"That section of the waterway should be very safe. In other words, even if there were a 'monster' in the waterway, the killer shouldn't have to rush..."

"beep!--"

The shrill alarm sounded again.

"Alert! A team is using SOS!"

The plush rabbit moved quickly, opened the detailed information prompt again, and then took a deep breath.

"Ranger is sending out an emergency call for help," he muttered. "Ranger's communication signal... has also disappeared?!"