Chapter 16: First Preliminary Match (Part 6)

Mu Baixing held Mingyu in his arms, his fingertips still pinching the designer's pair of round-frame glasses with thick bottle bottoms.

The young man in his arms sensed the bright lights in the maintenance cabin and buried his face in Mu Boxing's arms. Without opening his eyes, he asked sleepily, "...Is everything done?"

The symptoms of mental overload had disappeared, but the strain on his body during that time was real. Mingyu didn't listen to Mu Baixing's advice and rest immediately. Instead, he waited until the modeling instrument completed its calculations, confirmed that the feasibility test had passed, and submitted the design draft to the system before curling up on the sofa and taking a nap.

He talked to Mu Boxing before going to sleep, and asked him to wait for the star navigation system to send down the new engine and tail wing, and wake him up after the repair and assembly were completed.

Mingyu, half asleep, thought he was still on the sofa in the modeling room. He struggled slightly, feeling something was wrong beneath him. Just as he was struggling to open his eyes, he heard Mu Baixing say, "No."

The man lowered his voice and said, "I'll call you when I'm done."

Mingyu thought that the system had not yet distributed the new parts, so he continued to sleep peacefully.

The colorful hairs turned around together: "..."

They met Mu Boxing's gaze, then looked away and made the same gesture as if they were zipping their mouths.

Zimao raised his arm again and pointed in the direction of the starport, indicating that the starship had been fully inspected.

Mu Baixing nodded and gestured to board the ship.

The group walked towards the starport in silence.

Mu Baixing walked in front holding Mingyu in his arms. He walked lightly and took Mingyu into the sleeping cabin inside the starship.

The sleeping cabins in the starship were extremely small, with narrow beds, barely wide enough for one person to lie down, and reaching their heads when they sat up. Mu Baixing fastened the waist and limb restraints for Mingyu, then raised the sleeping cabin door and turned up the air conditioning by one degree.

While he was doing this, the colorful-haired guys were all peeking in from the end of the passage. Mu Baixing closed the door of the sleeping cabin and glanced back at them.

"Go to the cab..." Red Hair coughed dryly and quickly pushed his brothers to turn around, "Let's take our positions, everyone take our positions——"

He sat in the spotter's seat and saw Mu Baixing passing by him from the corner of his eye. He said for no apparent reason, "Boss, where are we going?"

Mu Baixing opened the star map.

The resource supply status on the star map changes in real time. During the nearly eight hours they had been repairing the starship, many resource supply points had disappeared from the star map, indicating that the resources within them had been taken away.

Mu Baixing checked the latest information of the starship.

After Mingyu's redesign, the starship's maximum cruising speed was very fast. The full-load maximum speed was increased from eight star miles per hour of an ordinary exploration starship to fifty star miles per hour.

An improvement that cannot be ignored.

"Fill all the empty loading slots on the starship with backup energy." Mu Baixing's finger slid across the edge of the star map.

Their starships only have the most basic weapon systems, making them unsuitable for immersing themselves in popular areas and competing with others for resources. But those resources in distant star regions that other teams cannot harvest because they don't have the time to travel back and forth...

Because of Mingyu's design and modification, they can all get them.

*

"Finally, another starship is heading towards Area Z1!" In the Star Navigation Competition live broadcast room, the rabbit host clicked on a light screen, zooming it in. A gray exploratory starship was sailing through space.

"It's just an ordinary exploration starship. The number of resources it carries is not high, only in the single digits." The rabbit host's tone was a little disappointed. "It seems they made an irrational choice."

He didn't cut off the screen for the moment, but explained to the audience outside, "Z1 area is located at the outermost edge of the entire competition map. The resource stations there are scattered, and the resource storage capacity of each resource station is very low, so the round-trip time is very long."

"At the speed of an ordinary exploration-type aircraft carrier, even if it takes three days, it can only explore two or three resource stations in the Z1 area. The amount of resources obtained is extremely small, and there is a high risk of being eliminated."

"Of course," Mr. Rabbit added sternly, "if a strangler appears in the late game and most teams are eliminated, they can win just by staying alive."

"However, there are no safety stations or supply depots in the entire Z1 area. If this starship is attacked mid-flight, it will have nowhere to escape, and no place to repair or refuel." He called up the data of the exploration starships, pointing them out to the audience one by one. "Please look, this is the exploration starship's defense level, energy consumption rate, and maximum cruising speed..."

"...Wait!" Mr. Rabbit paused as his peripheral vision darted across the screen. He stared at the starship's changing coordinates, surprised. "Wait... How could it change so quickly? With the speed of an exploratory starship, it couldn't have changed two coordinates in just a few minutes..."

"This is a modified starship!" Mr. Rabbit became excited again.

"Oh my god—" he exclaimed in disbelief. "Its engine must have been completely modified! According to the coordinate grid, its speed is at least five times that of an ordinary exploratory starship! It might even be faster than the 'Ranger' that headed to Zone Z1 a few hours ago!"

"As everyone knows, in previous Star Navigation Competitions, most designers focused their modifications on starships, focusing on weapons and external defenses. As for engines, those delicate starship engines, few dared to touch them! After all, even the slightest carelessness in design could lead to unpredictable consequences. But this starship's engine has been modified!"

"Wow, I'm looking forward to their showdown with the Rangers who've already headed to Area Z1!" Mr. Rabbit stretched out his furry paw and clicked on the information about the starship in the live broadcast. "Although I don't think they have much of a chance of winning, let's take a look at the names of this team! They are!—"

Mr. Rabbit paused in his excited tone and wrinkled his nose.

"Hmm... the 'Colorful' team," he said, "it's a somewhat dreamy name!"

*

Mingyu dreamed again of the day when his spiritual power awakened.

Despairing, intense pain, my parents' cold, terrifying words, a pitch-black sky, and rolling thunder that seemed to never stop...

Mingyu jerked, jolted awake. He felt the tug of the restraints on his waist and limbs. For a moment, he thought he was still lying on the treatment bed in the Ming Family Manor's treatment room.

But he soon realized something was wrong.

Even a treatment bed wouldn't be this narrow, and the treatment room wouldn't be as dark as it is here.

Mingyu bent his body and tried to sit up. The intelligent device detected that this was an active action on his part and not due to the turbulence of the starship, so it unfastened the restraints.

The light strip on the floor at the end of the bed lit up.

Mingyu realized that this was a capsule space, completely occupied by a bed. He sat up, hugging the quilt, and was stunned for a moment.

This should be the sleeping cabin of the starship. Mingyu thought, it was much more cramped than the sleeping cabins of the civilian starships he had been on.

The horrific dream faded, and real memories surfaced. Mingyu remembered taking a nap in the modeling room of the safety station, and then...

He seemed to hear Red Hair's voice in the middle, but Mu Baixing told him that it was not time yet and he could continue sleeping.

Mingyu: “…”

He was confused at that time and didn't know where he was. Now he was completely awake and understood it all at once when he recalled it.

It was Mu Baixing who was holding him.

Mingyu: “…”

Mingyu didn't want to speculate how he got on the starship! There was no way he had sleepwalked up there!

Mingyu rubbed his face.

He had never been so close to anyone before, not even his parents or siblings.

From childhood to adulthood, even before the truth was accidentally revealed, his parents had never been as close to him as other parents. He had a difficult relationship with his brother, and because he was not an awakened human, he had never made any close friends.

Today, his contact with Mu Boxing was too much and too intimate.

He had memorized the other person's scent so deeply that he couldn't help but recall the feeling of contact with Mu Boxing. It was like taking a bite of food that tasted strange because you didn't eat it often, but it seemed quite delicious...

Mingyu: ...

Mingyu shook his head vigorously.

He stood up, but the floor beneath his feet suddenly tilted. Mingyu was thrown back onto the bed and quickly reached out to grab the sturdy handrail beside the bed.

"'Colorful'! They really did encounter the 'Ranger'!" The rabbit host shouted in the live broadcast room, "It's the Ranger——!"

"Rangers! One of the star teams in the Central Star Region! The team's pilot is Mu Lian, the only son of the Mu family patriarch. The observers are Vincent Bai and Yang Haoyuan. The starship designer is Cui Xiaoduo, known for his talent since childhood. The starship maintenance technicians are the three calm and reliable Kari brothers. I believe everyone who follows the Star Navigation Competition will be familiar with them!"

"Five years ago, the members of this team were all freshmen who had just enrolled in school. They made it all the way from the preliminaries to the finals. Although they didn't make it into the top five, their achievement was already remarkable!"

"What's really interesting is that all the members of this team are from Capital Star University. They didn't attend military academies, nor did they receive the special training at Star Navigation Academy. Their success has given countless young people who couldn't attend military academies or Star Navigation Academy hope that they can still pursue their dreams!"

"Now, as they are about to graduate, this original team is making a comeback! Let's see what they will bring us... Wow——!!!"

The white plush rabbit hopped up and down, shouting excitedly, "'Ranger' was almost hit!!!"