Chapter 37 Preliminary Round 2 (Part 2)
"Leave."
Mingyu felt someone shaking his shoulders. The movement was very light, but with a force that could not be resisted.
"One minute left to play."
Mingyu: “…”
Mingyu: “!!”
He suddenly opened his eyes and jumped up from the sofa.
The person in front of him quickly stepped back, leaving a shadow at the end of his hair, perfectly avoiding the tragedy of a collision of the two heads.
Mingyu was startled by this scene. He blinked and saw that it was Mu Baixing standing next to the sofa, who was leaning over to look at him.
The man's complexion had returned to normal. He stepped back a little, picked up the thick bottle-bottom round glasses that Mingyu had put aside before going to bed, and handed them to Mingyu.
"Plain glasses?" Mu Baixing raised his eyebrows.
He saw the designer's eyes focused on his face, and when he took the glasses, he didn't look like he was extremely nearsighted and couldn't see clearly.
Mu Baixing then thought of Mingyu's beautiful eyes in real life.
Mingyu: “…”
"There's a free props column for creating virtual images. It would be a shame not to choose it." He took the glasses and said as a matter of course, pretending to touch Mu Baixing's fingertips casually.
It was warm, not as frighteningly cold as when the men were vomiting blood in the mines.
Mingyu smiled and asked, "Are you feeling better?"
Mu Baixing hummed: "It's done."
"Have you taken the supplement?"
"That's too expensive, Brother Mu!" Mingyu said immediately upon hearing this. "I don't need such a high-purity auxiliary. I bought a more affordable one of normal purity myself. The package you sent me is unopened. Can I apply for a return?"
Mu Baixing frowned.
"It's useful." He watched Mingyu stand up from the sofa and motioned him to leave the lounge and board the ship.
"Your mental strength is exceptional, and you may need to advance to a higher level soon. You need to make the most of your time to replenish your nutrition."
Mingyu: “…Ah?”
"You had a problem when your spiritual power was awakening." The man's voice was slightly deep. "You were in the emergency room?"
Mingyu: “…”
Mingyu: "...Wow." He said in disbelief, "Brother Mu, did you install surveillance cameras in our house?"
Mu Baixing turned his head to look at him with an unhappy look, dissatisfied with his joking answer, and did not explain any further.
The two have reached the starship departure port.
The colorful-haired people stood in front of the strikingly black circular starship, their faces filled with excitement.
"Brother LU!" The red-haired man said with a twinkle in his eyes, feeling both satisfied and dissatisfied. "Why did you only paint the edges red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple, and not paint the entire outside of it in rainbow colors—!"
Mingyu: “…”
"That's too exaggerated!" Ming Yu refused. "I don't agree with the starship designed by my men looking like that!"
The group boarded the starship one after another.
Zimao left the cockpit as he wished and went to the logistics cabin at the rear, which had been empty the whole time. Inside the logistics cabin, a screen monitoring the overall data of the starship was lit, and there was also a call device connected to the cockpit, providing any support services to the cockpit at any time.
"Twenty seconds left in the race—" The numbers on the Star Race timing screen in the center of the cockpit were jumping down, "Ten seconds—"
"Five—four—three—two—" the plush rabbit shouted excitedly, "Our contestants! Set sail!—"
Mu Boxing pulled down his driving helmet.
Mingyu sat beside him and also pulled down his helmet.
Blue and gold mental power flowed into the starship from the pipes connected to the two people's helmets, intersected at one place, and entered the mechanical heart of the starship.
Then they touched each other.
The moment the golden spiritual energy came into contact, Mingyu once again felt the warmth and the urge to absorb its energy. However, after several days of intensive training, he had been able to control his spiritual energy threads, preventing them from entwining with Mu Baixing's spiritual energy like an inextricable vine.
For some reason, Mu Boxing's mental power had a fatal attraction to him.
Mingyu took a breath, calmed the desire in his spiritual realm, and used all the control skills he had learned in the past two days. Finally, he managed to make his spiritual power stay close to Mu Baixing's spiritual power thread and did not do anything inappropriate.
Mu Baixing held the armrest of the chair with one hand, tilted his head towards Mingyu, and raised the corners of his lips slightly, revealing a fleeting smile.
Mu Baixing: "Not bad."
Designers learn quickly and achieve great results.
Mingyu: “…”
He realized that his mental agitation had been discovered by the man.
Mingyu pretended not to understand Mu Boxing's words, saying "oh" and not taking the bait. He tried his best to ignore the feeling of being pressed against Mu Boxing, a face-to-face embrace, as his mental energies intersected, and extended his mental thread out of the starship.
His mental acuity and scalability, having reached A-level, were incomparable to their previous state. However, his C-level endurance was his shortcoming, so Mingyu didn't waste time arranging his mental threads into a film of light and stretching them outward from the starship's surface.
His bright blue mental threads grew sparsely outward, forming a connecting ring around the outer ring of the starship. From this ring, they stretched outward, extending even further...
The entire starship turned into a beautiful blue jellyfish.
"There's something." Mingyu whispered.
"There are a lot of them, swimming towards us. They must be in a low-energy state, and I can't even see their mental threads clearly. I only know that they are everywhere..."
"I can't see anything," said Red Hair. "There's no response from the detector at all?" He looked out the porthole as he spoke. "There's nothing I can see with my naked eyes..."
"Spotted Snail."
Inside the Human Resources office on the second floor of the Central Star Region Star Navigation Department, a brown-haired young man stared at the competition screen. He couldn't help but cross his arms, revealing a look of disgust. "Why did Gao Siqi put this thing into the virtual star map..."
"Minister Gao just loves these old things," a colleague sitting across from him at the desk chimed in with a hint of disdain. "Those are from before the Dawn War, from a previous era. Who cares about them now? If you ask me, Minister Gao's selection criteria are way too outdated."
The brown-haired young man shook his head in disapproval. "Anything can happen in space travel. Even rare species of interstellar beasts, as long as humans have encountered them and have detailed records, they should be aware of them."
The colleague sneered and shook his head: "You and Minister Gao are talking in exactly the same tone."
"Hey, Xiaofan." He pushed the live broadcast screen aside and gossiped in a tone of watching the fun, "I heard you've recently taken a fancy to a new team? And you even reported to Minister Gao that they want you to pay close attention to them?"
Wu Xiaofan nodded.
"Colorful," he said honestly. "Their designers and pilots are all good. Their encounter with the Ranger in the last match was quite exciting."
colleague:"……"
"Ranger is no match for them." He said contemptuously, "What are the Mu family? If they had met Ming Yan in that match, they would have been eliminated immediately."
Wu Xiaofan knew that this colleague had been supporting Ming Yan since the last Star Navigation Competition, so he didn't argue with him. He just quietly looked back at the competition screen.
"Just look at this," the colleague continued, "that colorful conch that you and Minister Gao both like. You might even get stuck in it..."
The starship's hull was rubbed against the biological shell, whose energy fluctuations were almost negligible. At the same time, the black gears on the starship's outer layer were stained with reddish-brown spots that resembled rust.
Mingyu: "...This stuff is corrosive." He whispered, "Brother Mu?"
The starship made a slight buzzing sound, and the ring-shaped cutting layer popped out.
Sharp gears, supported by high-density metal, spun, casting a shadowy shadow, creating an additional circular protective layer around the starship's exterior. Above the ring, the sharp cutting blades were coated with a silver film, temporarily isolating the bio-corrosive energy strands from colliding with the seemingly empty void.
"Sizzle—"
A bright spark flashed in the darkness.
"Hiss. There really is something." Red Hair took a breath and said, "I can see the flash of light..."
"Sizzle, sizzle—"
Sparks lit up one after another on the gear cutting layer.
The brightness wasn't intense, like the sparklers many people like to play with during New Year's. It just came one after another, the frequency increasing, until after a few seconds it practically covered the entire gear cutting surface.
The creatures lost their disguise due to energy fluctuations and revealed their true forms.
Their starship was trapped in a dense swarm of snail-like star beasts.
They looked like the edible snails served on plates in some restaurants, but they were much larger. Looking out the porthole, they were densely packed, hundreds of them, and there seemed to be no end.
They have a soft body that is white with yellow spots and a hard shell of the same color. A rusty red slime is secreted from the bottom of the soft body, and more slime bursts out when they are strangled by the cutting layer and hangs on the cutting edge.
Mingyu almost wanted to completely retract his mental power.
"It's all in front." He said, pinching his nose.
It would have been fine if they hadn't seen it, but seeing it was somewhat disconcerting. The snails were so densely packed that there was no end in sight, forming a strange sea that piled up in front of the starship, and their speed had unknowingly slowed down.
"Hurry up, hurry up," the red-haired man couldn't help but say, "This slime is quite corrosive! I'm warning you, the cutting film on gear blade number 31 is getting thinner. Boss! Should we increase the engine power..."
"No." Before Mu Baixing could speak, Mingyu spoke.
He used his blue mental thread to push the two snails apart. "I know this thing..."
This star beast was mentioned in the course materials on the history of spacecraft design because it once promoted the development of cryogenic engines.
"The scaly snail," Mingyu whispered. "Their size changes with temperature... This star beast is said to have been extinct for a long time. I didn't expect it to be on the star map of the Star Navigation Competition!"
Mu Baixing: "Is the starship's hull thick enough?"
"Enough!" Mingyu, the designer, responded decisively. He had designed the starship's defenses using the highest-quality materials available, leaving no stone unturned.
After all, from what he had seen of Mu Boxing's style of doing things...the starship shell cannot be durable!
Ming Yu: "Brother Mu! Don't fire! Although I have strengthened the barrel this time, it will be difficult to identify the direction in the chaos..."
"Know."
Mu Baixing hooked his finger on the lever and pulled it down, shutting down the starship engine.
He is very good at fighting, but he doesn't like to use force unless it is necessary.
Then the round starship floated quietly in the sea of stars.
"Wow, Acropora, what an unexpected first challenge!" In the live broadcast room, the rabbit commentator stood on the stage, shielding his eyes with one hand, and looked at the light screen carefully through the gaps between his claws.
He was surrounded by dozens of light screens, each crammed with densely packed snails. To ensure viewers could understand what was happening on the star map, the Star Navigation Competition live broadcast system used special technology to clearly project each individual snail onto the screen.
"I'll have to talk to the organizers later—" Every hair on the big rabbit's body stood up. A closer look revealed the fluffy fur peeking out from Mr. Rabbit's suit trembling with his body. "This scene is really not friendly to those with trypophobia. One screen is enough for me! And there are so... so many of them. I really want to close my eyes... Wow!"
"A starship has accelerated! What an unwise choice!" he shouted. "This team obviously didn't recognize this special species..."
In their respective independent light screens, several starships accelerated one after another, their engines spraying flames backwards, trying to quickly escape the siege of these soft-bodied creatures.
But the endless sea of snails surrounding the starship didn't leave them behind. On the contrary, these snails, already tightly packed together, rapidly expanded, starting from near the starship's engines. Black teeth sprouted from their soft, yellow bodies, biting into the starship's hull.
The gray starship looked like a crispy cookie with a large piece of crumbs falling off.
"Hiss..." The big rabbit tried his best and maintained his professionalism, but in the end he did not close his eyes.
"The scaly snail once caused us great trouble in the early days of human space travel," he explained diligently. "They don't rely on planets to survive. They can move freely in the vast universe. They have a strong reproductive capacity and a life cycle of only three days. For every hour of activity, they sleep for an hour, and within that hour of activity, they spend half an hour mating."
"They prefer low temperatures, and therefore spend most of their time living in the cold tide regions of the stellar sea. If the temperature suddenly rises in their area or nearby, they sense an invasion. Their cellular activity increases with the rising temperature, and they begin to expand and grow, growing aggressive fangs to devour the invaders until their bodies swell to the size of small stellar fragments, then explode... Just like this—!"
"Bang!" The entire screen in front of him was illuminated in white, and the names of several teams corresponding to the screens disappeared from the list of the Star Navigation Competition because they were eliminated after crashing in the starry sea.
"Of course, you can't just sit there and do nothing, completely shutting down the starship and letting them lie on your hull." Mr. Rabbit shakily pushed out a few more light screens and stuffed them in front of the camera in the live broadcast room. "The mucus in their soft bodies is corrosive. If they cling to the starship for a long time, they may even penetrate the hull..."
On the screen, a starship that dared not open fire was suspended in the universe, watching a small hole being corroded in its shell.
A conch fell inside the starship, followed by the second, the third, and groups of them swarmed towards the cockpit.
A few minutes later, those in the cockpit were forced to escape and abandon the starship, and were also ruled out.
"Well, the best solution at this point is to shut down the engines and hope that the starship's shields are thick enough."
"Although such temperatures will allow them to grow, the growth rate is acceptable. They won't expand much before their active period ends and they enter a dormant period."
"At this time, they can't feel the temperature change and fall into a deep sleep, so the starship can leave at full speed."
"Look at 'Ranger' and 'Colorful', they did it just like that. It's a very standard solution. The only cost is a little time..."
In the human resources office of the Star Navigation Department, Wu Xiaofan was writing and drawing on the recording screen.
"They're all a bunch of cowards," his thorny colleague complained. "Why doesn't that ugly rabbit give the camera to Lieyang..."
As if knowing that many viewers wanted to see the performance of the seeded teams, the rabbit host switched the light screen at this time.
The troublesome colleague immediately sat up straight, stopped talking, and looked at the screen intently.
"Or... if you truly believe in your own abilities and are willing to cause trouble...!"
"Oh!" he shouted excitedly, "Liang Yang and Slayer! I knew it was these two troublemakers! Ming Yan Fei Lun from the Central Star Region! And the White Elephant Flying Squirrel from the Southeast Star Region! You must always believe that they love direct and violent crushing the enemy the most!"
"These two teams opened fire at full force, using their psychic weapons to blast the expanded snails into smithereens—!"
"I have to say! The scene is quite spectacular! They're quickly leaving the cold tide zone where the swarm of swarming snails are! But I want to say! The existence of these swarms of swarming snails is more than just a man-made obstacle. If you could have carefully examined the star map before the show begins or before you leave...ah!"
"..." The big plush rabbit blinked, and the voice suddenly paused. He looked at the live broadcast screen belonging to Lieyang in disbelief.
"Lieyang's luck is truly terrible!" Rabbit twitched his ears, frozen for a moment, and finally shook his head with a sigh, "Mingyan and the others' escape direction was exactly the opposite of the direction heading into the star sea! They just... escaped from the Dead Star Sea...?"
Rabbit explained: "..."
Wu Xiaofan: “…”
A troublesome colleague: "..."
"You know, although escaping the Dead Sea is a requirement for passing this competition, the degree of information we gather about the energy of the Dead Sea is crucial to the resources available for construction and design in the next competition."
"As the first team to escape the Death Star Sea in this competition... uh... the progress of energy information exploration is... 0.5."
"At least it's not zero, haha." The rabbit host said awkwardly and couldn't help laughing.
"We can only express our apologies to Team Lieyang," he said, scratching his head. "They've barely gathered any information on interstellar energy. Their available resources for the next round of starship design will undoubtedly be at the bottom of the list."
"Given the temper of the competition organizing committee, I'm afraid we'll see a... uh... Lieyang who can't use any intermediate or advanced materials to design a starship... uh..."
"If they don't want to reduce the combat effectiveness of their own team, their starship designers must make extra efforts."
“I wonder if designer Song Lan, who has always been surrounded by high-end materials, can handle this difficult task?”
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