Inside the Academy of Sciences training room, fifty soldiers were sweating profusely, while a line of sparrows perched on the windowsill outside chirped noisily.
Everyone had initially thought that participating in this project might more or less disrupt their daily training routines, but only now did they realize how naive they had been!
Even if their mental strength truly wasn’t good enough to rise to super-S-grade or above, training at this intensity for three months would at least allow them to return as elite soldiers…
Soldiers with a frontline background handled it relatively better—though the intensity was high, they were used to it in their daily lives and could keep up with effort.
But commanders and the occasional mech pilot were a different story; after a single day of training, they felt like their bones were falling apart!
One incident even saw someone—clearly boasting S-grade mental strength and S-grade physical fitness—pass out from exhaustion in front of everyone. How embarrassing…
It was then that they sincerely admired Huang Yan. They could barely endure a single day of this life, yet that child had reportedly endured it for over a decade?
Even if he had never reached this intensity before, everyone knew that as mental strength and physical fitness increased, personal limits also rose; the overall experience couldn’t be too far off.
For active-duty soldiers, basic endurance and explosive power training was routine, but the static training added by the Academy was the most agonizing!
Suspended hanging from a bar, plank holds with double gravity, or wall sits, then combining those with interval training…
Dean Xue, just what are you trying to ask? We’ll confess already!
“Huff, huff… no, I can’t do it anymore…”
“You can!”
“I really can’t…”
“You really can. According to measurement results, you can hold out for at least another two minutes. Push through.”
“…I hate calculations.”
The birds on the windowsill watched for a while, then flew off.
In another area, at the Isolation Control Center, Li Qin sat motionless by the window, watching an instructional course on his optical brain.
Half an hour later, he stood up to stretch his stiff body, rubbing his eyes.
Human bodies were truly fragile. Maintaining one position for too long led to back and muscle pain, and even eye discomfort.
Their insect race could stay still for years.
“Li Qin” pondered while moving around. Most other courses on the StarNet were easy to understand—human history, politics—but knowledge related to mechs was far too scarce.
Posts and videos comparing performance were common enough, but actual manufacturing and teaching courses were few, and those that existed were mostly theoretical basics.
He couldn’t make heads or tails of the numbers, symbols, and instrument data inside!
Whenever he searched for a symbol, it branched out into a whole pile of related knowledge. Mastering this stuff on his own would take years…
He walked to the window and touched the birds outside.
“Heh.”
The Federation wanted to mass-train soldiers above super-S-grade?
Utter nonsense!
A fierce look crossed Li Qin’s face. He wasn’t afraid of some inexplicable 3S-grade Chief Commander—the old geezer would eventually die anyway. If he really wanted to escape, no one could trap him.
But now they wanted to remake humans to be like them, even with higher mental strength than theirs?
What right did they have? Didn’t humans already own enough?
An insect subordinate outside the window asked if they should directly parasitize a few soldiers.
“No. Not for now.”
In human terms, it would be easy to alert the enemy.
He would wait until he understood mech manufacturing and upgrade principles… or found a suitable mech pilot.
Then the weapons humans could use, they could also use, ensuring they would remain undefeated.
That man who built isolation shields seemed promising, but the Isolation Control Center was now heavily guarded. Aside from already-parasitized personnel, he couldn’t contact anyone—and thus couldn’t parasitize or infect them, or bring them under his control.
His hands swiped across the optical brain, finally stopping on the mech competition page.
That Wang Tianwei seemed to be a step ahead of the military in building mechs.
Young, talented, never served, not an official soldier… nurture her to build mechs for the insect race—no one was more suitable than her.
Just as this thought occurred, a sharp pain shot through the empathetic nerve,
“Ugh!”
Li Qin knelt on the ground, the gold in his eyes almost spilling over. It was that old man again!
Meng Chongyun entered and saw the Alpha Gold Crown lowering its head, leaning against the glass to rest. The surveillance personnel said it had been in this state frequently lately, which sparked a strange feeling in their hearts.
Hadn’t the insect race been fighting humans for over a century? Were they really a species that needed so much rest?
In his view, and that of several military region commanders, both humans and the insect race were currently in a developmental stage.
They were now carrying out the mental strength improvement plan, which required time—but if both sides kept pace, humans had a chance!
Next, he had military affairs to attend to and likely wouldn’t be able to visit for a long time.
With this thought, he decided to intimidate the insect again.
“Qi Chengyan” had been searching for Wang Tianwei’s situation through Li Qin’s eyes, but when interrupted, he was pinned to the ground by mental strength.
“Chief Commander, there’s no need to prove your arrival like this!”
Meng Chongyun suddenly sensed that this Alpha Gold Crown and “Qi Chengyan” might not be linked only by a parasitical relationship.
Its body was extremely sturdy, and its wounds healed exceptionally fast—totally unlike other parasitized soldiers.
An ordinary person hit with this force would have at least a few broken bones, but this “thing” didn’t—even the bruises on its face from earlier had vanished…
“The two people you treated still haven’t woken up.”
“Qi Chengyan” felt that the man was just here to make unreasonable trouble!
“I only told you to remove the brood parasites. Whether they wake up depends on their own condition. You blame me for that? I’m not your Federation doctor!”
“Bang!”
Relying on the injection of medicine he took yesterday, Meng Chongyun applied full-force suppression today, forcing “Qi Chengyan” to temporarily withdraw most of his consciousness from Li Qin and strain to infect the old bastard in front of him!
“I told you, this trick doesn’t work on me.”
“Hah!”
The youth opposite nearly burst out laughing. The old geek was still pretending nothing was wrong. If he weren’t afraid of some mishap, why would he suddenly want to train so many super-S-grade soldiers?
Meng Chongyun held his breath and viciously beat down the core insect inside the sealed isolation zone.
“Next time you deal with the brood parasites, be careful.”
With that, he strolled out slowly, just like the first time.
The Alpha Gold Crown lifted its bruised and swollen face from the ground, eyes full of hatred.
Hold on a bit longer, and I’ll use your mental strength and flesh as my nourishment!
