Yun Ruoxi fully accepted their kindness.
She carefully selected a few ships that weren’t too badly damaged and had Class Nine’s students attempt some emergency repairs.
If something truly couldn’t be fixed, they’d dismantle it and take away any usable parts.
As for the captured students from Class Four and Class Five, their hands and feet were tied up, ready to be taken away together later.
Although the remaining forces of Class Four and Class Five were already finished, as long as their bases hadn’t been destroyed, technically, they hadn’t been eliminated yet.
Naturally, Yun Ruoxi and the others couldn’t just leave them here.
The Viper, who had followed Yun Ruoxi, was in charge of interrogating them about their base information at her signal.
Well, calling it “interrogation” might be an overstatement.
In reality, it was little more than child’s play, just for show.
Class Four and Class Five pretended to be unwilling to talk, and after the Viper applied just a little pressure, their leaders, under the pretense of caring for their classmates, exposed the base locations.
This farce served no real purpose, except to let the instructors of the war camp know they’d done their best.
The audience, however, watched with great interest.
“It’s really like playing house. How amusing.”
“It felt so official before, life-and-death struggles and all, and now it’s just collapsed like this.”
“If you’re going to act, at least make it look real—give them a little shock or something ()”
“I won’t tell you anything, ahhh~~~”
“Alright, that’s all the usable parts we have.”
After a busy period of frantic repairs, Lin Zhen and the others managed to restore three ships in the end.
But they collected a huge pile of spare parts.
Lin Zhen and Shun Ying discussed the matter.
***
In the end, they decided Class Six would take two ships, while Class Three would get a larger share of the spare parts.
This was a distribution that satisfied both sides.
After all, Class Six wasn’t like Class Three, who had Lin Zhen; no matter how wrecked a ship was, he could fix it as long as he had the parts.
They preferred to take the intact ships directly.
And after that.
The three leaders—Yun Ruoxi, Lin Zhen, and Shun Ying—conferred for a while and decided that Class Three, Class Six, and Class Nine would form an official alliance to confront the other groups.
They would depart immediately, heading straight to the bases of Class Four and Class Five to eliminate them completely and use their remaining ships to make up for the losses from the recent ambush.
They had just come out of a brutal, chaotic battle, so this decision seemed a bit reckless on the surface.
But after all, Class Four and Class Five’s losses were far greater; their strongest members had already been eliminated.
Besides, they could rest for half a day on the way, enough to recover their star energy and physical strength.
Most crucially, Class Nine’s fighting strength was completely untouched, and Yun Ruoxi, the war camp’s strongest, was with them.
So even someone as cautious as Lin Zhen didn’t think the remnants of Class Four and Class Five could stir up any trouble while unaware.
And reality proved this to be true.
The joint fleet of the three classes pushed their curvature engines to the max, and after a day and a half of continuous assault, they easily captured the central bases of Class Four and Class Five.
They barely encountered any real resistance along the way.
When Lin Zhen used the central bases of Class Four and Class Five to order all their ships outside to return, almost no one even questioned it.
Each one obediently returned to base, only to be met at the docks by waiting students who aimed their weapons at their heads, making them join the ranks of the captives immediately.
“We really got our blood back this time!”
Looking through the monitors at the more than thirty ships docked in Base Four’s shipyard, Lin Zhen nodded in satisfaction.
He tapped away on the projection for a while, entering his Base Three master key.
The construction cost for a Permanent Space Station like this was no small matter; the war camp would never allow them to casually destroy things just for the sake of the assessment.
So as long as they captured the other bases’ central controls and entered the master key, it meant the other side was effectively eliminated.
After that, the base and its affiliated ships would belong to the conquering class.
Now, everything in Class Four belonged to Class Three.
“Beep, quantum light network established with Base Three. Star map is updating.”
As Base Four and Base Three were linked, the star maps of the two classes were integrated as well. The previously dim regions lit up in large swathes.
Because Class Four liked to set traps and hunt other groups,
Their exploration had been much more aggressive, and the regions lit up on the star map were much larger than Lin Zhen had expected.
He was overjoyed, staring at the star map, hoping for clues about the ancient battlefield to appear.
But in the end, he saw nothing.
A wave of strong frustration washed over Lin Zhen, but he forced himself to suppress his negative emotions.
He turned to Yun Ruoxi, who had come with him.
“Xiao Xi, are you sure you don’t want Base Five?”
Taking over another base would give them one more safety net.
But Yun Ruoxi surprised both him and Shun Ying by directly refusing to let Class Nine take over Base Five.
“Since we’ve formed an alliance, we should consider our allies’ feelings too.”
Yun Ruoxi smiled lightly, “Don’t you think?”
“Class Nine and Class Three are already close. If we occupy Base Five as well, no matter how indifferent Shun Ying seems, I’m afraid he’d feel uneasy.”
“After all, he has to look out for his whole class.”
“As for me, I can just take over the next base that gets defeated.”
“That’s true. I didn’t consider that.”
Lin Zhen was taken aback for a moment.
Then, as if seeing Yun Ruoxi in a new light, he gave the blue-haired little fluffball a serious, up-and-down look.
The little girl who used to cry all the time—now she could think things through this deeply.
He really hadn’t expected it!
But then again, it had been two years; she was twelve now and had grown up a lot.
“Are you planning to leave now, or rest here for a bit? As allies, Base Three and Base Four are always open to you in Class Nine!” Lin Zhen asked with a smile.
“Mm . . .” Yun Ruoxi thought carefully, unconsciously twirling her long hair around her finger as if lost in thought, and after a long while, she spoke uncertainly:
“How about—I stay here for the night?”
“Stay the night? Xiao Xi, listen to yourself! What are you even saying!”
“No way, Xiao Xi, you’re only twelve! Are you really going to just ‘A’ right in? Isn’t it a bit too soon!”
“Jealous, meow, so jealous, meow!”
“Sure! I’ll arrange quarters for you and everyone else right away—it’s pretty much empty here now.”
Lin Zhen wasn’t surprised at Yun Ruoxi’s answer.
To be precise, if she had chosen to leave right away, that would have surprised him.
After dinner in the base’s cafeteria,
Yun Ruoxi said she was tired and went back to her room to rest.
The students who’d come with her, having nothing else to do, also took advantage of this rare chance to return to their rooms and get a good rest.