“You’re a real hard worker too, huh? Triple effort, even!”
“Triple is nothing. Two hundred times the effort, now that’s insane.”
“Everyone knows the Anvil trains seventy-two hours a day.”
The barrage might be full of jokes, but there’s no real malice toward the Anvil.
Everyone’s seen how hard he’s worked all this time, and honestly, the progress he’s made is about what you’d expect.
It makes sense.
Not like that runaway general—one line about ‘two hundred times the effort,’ and suddenly he jumps from street-side nobody to lieutenant general level overnight.
There wasn’t much footage of the Anvil; the camera soon shifted back to Lin Zhen and the others, focusing on their ability training.
In the war camp, ability training mainly focused on extreme development—pushing cadets to exhaust their Star Energy through high-frequency use, and holding a pure ability Monthly Duel each month to hone real combat skills.
Time flew by on camera; nearly a whole year was shown in less than ten minutes.
As expected, Yun Ruoxi swept all her duels. When it came to Star Energy Index, her overwhelming power was simply unmatched.
Coupled with her versatile telekinesis, almost no one could last more than a few moves against her.
Her points kept rising with each duel.
And in her final match against 0001—Mo Yuan—they battled fiercely for over ten minutes. With another victory, she finally narrowed the gap between them to within ten points.
It could be said: as long as she faced Mo Yuan again, Yun Ruoxi would be able to claim the 0001 seat.
But the year’s term ended. Before the next Monthly Duel, the Year-End team battle arrived first.
The fight for war camp’s number one could only be decided there.
Meanwhile—
Relying on secret techniques, Lin Zhen’s Star Energy Index also soared, earning him impressive results in battle.
Still, his ability had more inherent limits, so his performance fell short of Yun Ruoxi’s.
But his improvement was even more dramatic.
From NO.99, he clawed his way up to NO.32, surpassing Zi Jiu, who was NO.33.
Funny enough—
The person just above him was his first roommate: that socially awkward short guy, 0032.
But now, he should be called “Zeng Yan.”
Over this past year—
Doctor Forefinger would occasionally return to the war camp, custom-designing new development paths for Lin Zhen.
Sometimes, he’d even share precious alloy formulas, encouraging Lin Zhen to try synthesizing them with his ability.
Simply put—
The resources funneled to Lin Zhen far outstripped those available to any other cadet, even 0001.
“Prison Lin really gets the VIP treatment, huh.”
“Well, he’s the protagonist, after all.”
“Still… he’s not as good as little Xi.”
“How could he compare? Little Xi not only has high stats, but her stats are higher than anyone’s! How’s Prison Lin, with his support-type ability, supposed to compete?”
“Prison Lin can already hand-craft Tier-2 alloys. Think he’ll be able to hand-craft a Gundam someday?”
“Feels like Prison Lin is on the Mechanist Route!”
“Anyone notice Prison Lin’s redeemed a ton of blueprints and knowledge related to spaceships? I think he’s planning to run.”
“They even gave him a close-up before—guess he’s got something up his sleeve.”
“This hellhole’s always trying to get you killed. If you don’t run, what are you even doing?”
***
After the production team gave Lin Zhen a special close-up, sharp-eyed viewers in the barrage had already caught on.
That’s right. Lin Zhen had started preparing to escape.
The war camp was located in the Asa Star System, which was in the Negative Universe.
Though the camp never revealed the coordinates, it was an open secret among the cadets.
After all, only the Negative Universe—the origin of the Star Energy system—could provide such an abundant environment for Star Energy.
And the Stargate, connecting the Positive and Negative Universes, was a vital point, sure to be tightly guarded by the Hand of Saint.
So Lin Zhen understood perfectly: if he wanted to escape, he needed a ship that didn’t rely on the Stargate, but could instead lock onto weak nodes between the Positive and Negative Universes and execute a Positive-Negative Foldjump directly.
Lin Zhen’s ability allowed him to control alloys.
So—
As long as he understood the structure of a ship well enough, and prepared the non-alloy parts in advance, he could even hand-craft a spaceship himself.
This provided the theoretical basis for his escape plan.
That’s why, over the past year, he’d thrown himself into studying spaceship knowledge, redeeming all kinds of blueprints, hoping to use his ability to forge his own vessel.
But reality proved he’d underestimated the difficulty.
Forget the Positive-Negative Light Engine required for Foldjump—even the most basic conventional spaceship engine, he hadn’t managed to create a single successful one all year.
It wasn’t just because the war camp didn’t provide engine parts—every spaceship-related class was held in virtual space, with no hands-on work or chance to hunt down parts.
With the base’s omnipresent surveillance network, he couldn’t even secretly build large components.
Lin Zhen’s escape plan had gone on for a year, yet seemed to have stalled, inching toward failure…
“Positive-Negative Light Engines are the key to the Empire’s rise. Only thanks to Positive-Negative Foldjumps could ships cross the perilous Negative Universe, covering tens of thousands of light-years in a short time… and continually expand their territory.”
“Yet frequent Foldjumps strain the spacetime nodes, causing the Positive and Negative Universe membrane to merge. This paved the way for the dominant race of the Negative Universe—the Sky-Eye Clan—to invade.”
In the virtual space, Lin Zhen was reading a classic called .
At first, he’d just wanted to find scattered information about Positive-Negative Light Engines in the book.
But as he read on—
He became more and more fascinated by the five-hundred-year war that led the Empire from glory to decline.
“A war lasting five centuries ended in victory for the Empire, but left trillions of battlefield relics throughout the Positive and Negative Universes.”
“Some of these spaces were torn asunder, others sealed away by dimensional reduction—dangerous beyond any attempt at traversal. They stood like tombs, marking the two dominant races’ once-great eras.”
“Yet the countless wrecked ships buried within sparked a vast reclamation industry.”
“That, in turn, created mountains of junk worlds and gave rise to hordes of adventurers and star pirates, completely shattering the Empire’s foundations. In the end, it was the poison of war that truly destroyed the civilization.”
Reading this, Lin Zhen’s mind rang like thunder—he felt as if he’d stumbled upon something, and his eyes snapped wide open.
Countless memories from his childhood flashed by.
Freighters filled with abandoned ship hulls sailed across the sky, dumping worthless metal scraps below.
Yet there were always tales of lucky souls in the junkyard who discovered a working engine inside a derelict hull—and struck it rich overnight.
“Ancient Battlefield—this is it!”
A fiery light blazed in Lin Zhen’s eyes.
He clenched the page, heart pounding. “The upcoming team battle is supposed to be a space battle, right? The camp won’t give us ships equipped with Positive-Negative Light Engines—but who says I can’t go find one for myself!”