This is one of the little tricks of the War Camp.
Knowing that when Mo Yuan and Yun Ruoxi meet, if they don’t start fighting immediately, it already counts as both of them being extremely calm.
So, there was never any fear of Class Nine and Class One joining forces to sweep away the other teams.
But that would be unfair to the rest of Class Nine.
After all, Class One had far more top experts than Class Nine, and Class Nine’s real strength only lay in Yun Ruoxi alone.
If the two teams clashed, and Yun Ruoxi was stuck guarding the base, unable to take action, Class Nine would definitely suffer, perhaps even disastrously.
She had been thinking about how to leave the base anyway, planning to go to the Ancient Battlefield to look for Lin Zhen, and now—
…This gave her an open and legitimate reason to leave the base.
Not bad. Very nice.
The War Camp should have more of these little tricks.
Yun Ruoxi narrowed her eyes, suppressing the urge to laugh.
Just then, a communication request from a spaceship came through Central Control again.
“Beep beep beep!”
Yun Ruoxi glanced at the screen and saw it was Spaceship 15. Instantly, she felt the urge to ignore the call.
Spaceship 15 was the one where Gangmu was stationed.
For the past four days, Aili had called her almost every day.
It wasn’t that she found her annoying; Aili was very good at reading Yun Ruoxi’s mood and never made her feel bored.
It was more that she worried this might have a “bad influence.”
But, considering Gangmu might really have something urgent, Yun Ruoxi still chose to connect the call.
“Central Control, this is Spaceship 15. We’ve discovered another team’s spaceship…”
“Oh?” Yun Ruoxi hadn’t expected it to actually be important, so she immediately zoomed in on Spaceship 15’s location.
It wasn’t at the Ancient Battlefield, but rather in the direction directly opposite it.
“Did the other side show any hostility?” Yun Ruoxi asked.
“They haven’t—” Gangmu hadn’t even finished his sentence when a massive explosion suddenly thundered through the channel.
“Damn it, there are more ships here! Another team has set up an ambush here!”
They’ve already started hunting this early?
Yun Ruoxi’s expression tightened. “Run for now! I’ll immediately dispatch nearby ships to support you!”
As she spoke, her fingers flew across the star map, rapidly issuing commands.
A large number of their own ships in the area received her instructions and started moving toward Spaceship 15.
Compared to the ships’ defenses, the War Camp hadn’t outfitted them with high-spec weapons.
Trying to destroy a ship in a single instant—even if five or six ships focused fire together, it wouldn’t be easy.
So, in these team battles, boarding raids were the main method of combat.
This was also because the War Camp knew the students weren’t strong enough to survive in deep space filled with high-energy beams, so it was intentional.
After all, compared to the first academic year, every official student now had a lot of resources invested in their training.
Losing even one would make the instructors ache with regret.
Otherwise, in the past, if a student dared to desert, they’d be killed on the spot—no need to catch and re-brainwash them.
With top-hundred students like Gangmu present, Yun Ruoxi wasn’t too worried about Aili’s safety for the time being.
The main reason was also that worrying wouldn’t help.
She couldn’t just teleport there.
Second after second ticked by. In the communications channel, explosions and angry shouts from Gangmu and his crew kept coming, one after another.
Yun Ruoxi calmly watched the star map, periodically checking in with Gangmu for updates.
Finally.
The lone green dot on the star map, using the gravity slingshot for acceleration, managed to break out from the five or six red dots encircling it.
Gangmu’s voice came through, still shaken.
“Central Control, we’ve escaped the encirclement, but the warp engine is destroyed and the hull’s seriously damaged. We’re considering a forced landing on a nearby planet.”
“Permission granted. I’ll send people to pick you up immediately!”
Hearing Yun Ruoxi’s response, Gangmu breathed a sigh of relief and nodded to the other crew members.
Honestly.
After this encounter, he felt extremely stifled.
He and Hain were a great team and strong to boot. If they could just get close for a boarding fight, they’d have wiped out the other side.
But the enemy was so slippery—kiting them the whole time, never giving a chance for a proper boarding fight.
They almost lost the whole ship and became the first team eliminated.
“Kiting and ambushes…”
Yun Ruoxi listened to Gangmu’s full report, nodded knowingly, and had a good idea which team they had just run into.
This was the style of Class Four under Instructor Mori Eiji—the very class that 319 had belonged to before she crushed him.
That 319 could turn out that way had everything to do with Mori Eiji’s treacherous character.
Under his influence, Class Four’s style was to play dirty, favoring sneak attacks and ambushes.
In the original storyline, in this very arc, Class Four was supposed to clash with Class Three.
They found out the general location of Class Three’s base, hunted down other teams, and tried to frame Class Three.
Hoping to use the trick of setting tigers against wolves to get rid of Class Three.
Luckily, Lin Zhen saw through it in advance.
What’s more, the team they manipulated was Class Six, whose roommate was on good terms with Lin Zhen.
***
In the end, they brought disaster on themselves.
Class Six and Class Three joined forces and crushed Class Four, and Class Six became Class Three’s first ally.
She just hadn’t expected that with so many changes to the storyline, Class Nine would end up clashing with Class Four first.
Yun Ruoxi knew all this intel but couldn’t say it.
No matter. If Class Four was ambushing Class Three, it meant there would be plenty of clashes coming up.
She would have lots of chances to deal with them.
“If the plot’s corrective force is still in play,…maybe I can use this to get in touch with Class Three!”
Yun Ruoxi thought silently.
On the tenth day of the team battles.
As each team finished scouting the surrounding ten-light-day region, they began running into other teams one after another.
Some met and immediately started firing passionately, losing themselves in the chaos of battle. Naturally, others met peacefully and formed alliances.
Lin Zhen’s Class Three was doing fairly well.
With his fine control, he’d already gotten a good idea of the surrounding teams.
At the moment, Classes Five and Six were around him.
There were some skirmishes, but nothing serious. Right now, he was trying to form an alliance with Class Six, where his roommate was.
But in contrast to the smooth progress of the exam, he still hadn’t found a single clue related to the Ancient Battlefield.
It seemed…this starfield didn’t have that thing at all.
It was possible.
No matter how many Ancient Battlefields there were, this part of the galaxy was even vaster.
Stumbling into a starfield without an Ancient Battlefield was probably the most likely scenario.
Although Lin Zhen was frustrated, he couldn’t say anything about it, so he poured all his dissatisfaction into work.
“Whew… Once the first team finishes scouting this area, we should have a general idea where Class Five’s base is.”
The young man kept zooming in and out on the star map, muttering to himself.
A purple-haired girl walked in carrying a stack of thick sandwiches and a huge cup of milk, and set them down with a bang in front of him.
Lin Zhen blinked in surprise. Zi Jiu spoke up:
“A-Zhen, it’s time for dinner. You’ve been so busy you forgot the time again. If I’d known you’d work yourself into exhaustion like this, I never would’ve let you be the leader.”