A Poor Imitation

"The people from Moye Military Academy are all madmen."

In the VIP seating area, Jiang You sighed.

No one refuted her, for the scene on the big screen was genuinely startling.

Under Shen Shouli and Jin's control, Lianda's Lipu had swung its own quantum oscillation blade and hacked viciously into Lianda's own command ship.

The command ship had no room to dodge, and the blade cut straight into its hull. But Shen Shouli and Jin's fighters were running low on fuel, their own hulls damaged, and the thrusters' power was fading. The blade didn't cleave the ship clean through; it stuck halfway.

That gave Tansen Meilin a chance to escape. According to the rules, once the command ship was damaged, the commander was allowed to abandon it.

Originally, Tansen Meilin hadn't anticipated that anyone from Moye would be able to destroy Lianda's command ship this early. He'd assumed he could only leave the command ship once the speed-race channel opened three hours later.

So he'd prepared himself the best-performing XQ-7 scout ship in advance—the fastest and most agile of all existing starships, capable of ten minutes of "stealth."

Now, with the situation what it was, he was both furious and embarrassed that his specialty—space combat—was being crushed by Moye Military Academy, and secretly relieved that he could finally go pilot a starship instead of being "trapped" in the command ship.

Tansen Meilin fled without hesitation, leaving a bunch of Lianda people staring at each other in the half-cleaved command ship.

Lianda's fighters kept trying to close in on Jin and Shen Shouli, wanting to kill those two madmen outright, but Moye's forces shielded them tightly.

Xu Lingqu pulled all of her fighters and scouts over, deliberately exposing the two Qiwei-class ships and Moye's command ship, practically taunting Lianda's fighters, "Come on, then."

For a moment, with Tansen Meilin fleeing and no clear, unified command, Lianda's fighters split into factions.

Some thought the command ship was still salvageable—kill Moye's seasoned fighters, Shen Shouli and Jin, and protect the command ship at all costs.

Others believed the command ship was as good as scrapped, so rather than waste time on them, they should attack Moye's energy shield directly, and perhaps destroy Moye's command ship as well.

The number of fighters had already dwindled after the prolonged battle. At this critical juncture, the disagreement split their forces, and neither side achieved its goal.

Liu Zheng, piloting a fighter, and Xu Xiqin, piloting a scout, managed to break free once a portion of Lianda's fighters peeled off. They quickly joined Shen Shouli and Jin, jamming their starships against Lianda's Lipu, shoving the throttle to the floor, and charging at full speed.

The quantum oscillation blade, which had stalled, activated again. This time, with enough power, it completely cleaved Lianda's command ship in two. The remaining Lianda personnel exposed to space were all eliminated.

Tansen Meilin had escaped successfully. Seeing this, he ground his teeth in fury, but there was little he could do. Only an hour and a half had passed in the match, and at least another hour and a half remained before the speed-race channel opened.

He had to survive—survive until the channel opened. If he could just enter the speed map, he could win!

Tansen Meilin gritted his teeth and, for the first time, spoke to the rest of Lianda in a "humble" tone: "If everyone can protect me until the speed channel opens, we can win. Don't lose heart, don't give up. No matter the cost, you must protect me. Put your lives aside."

He was thinking of Moye's match against Shaji, when at the final moment Xu Lingqu had suddenly appeared on Moye's channel and said those words to her students.

If Xu Lingqu could make Moye's students willingly lay down their lives for her like that, then he, Tansen Meilin, could do it too!

"That Tansen Meilin is really asking for a beating," Guan Chuanjun said, his fists itching as he looked at Tansen Meilin's face on the big screen. "How does he manage to say those things while still looking so condescending and high and mighty?"

"He's been doing a poor and laughable imitation of Xu Lingqu," Jia Xiangying said suddenly.

The young lady's words—when she spoke, it was always something striking.

"That's it, I thought there was a weird familiarity. He's actually imitating Xu Lingqu from the Shaji match, when she told her students to hold on for five more minutes," Yun Yao said, catching on immediately and sneering. "Too bad his true nature still shows. One extra sentence at a moment like this gives it all away. 'Put your lives aside'—that's just too funny."

Guan Chuanjun hadn't expected to get dragged into this here, so he wisely shut his mouth.

"But really, the more you watch Xu Lingqu's matches, the more you get the urge to imitate her. It's like she's got some kind of magic," Li Muyi said, who had also replayed Xu Lingqu's matches multiple times. "Sometimes during a match, I'll space out and think, if it were Xu Lingqu, how would she arrange this?"

Actually, Gu Tingzhi was the one who'd felt the temptation to imitate Xu Lingqu the most, but he was currently in a pre-battle briefing with Longyuan's people. Fighting Qingjun wasn't like fighting Zhicheng—it wasn't something you could just breeze through.

"It's fine to simulate Xu Lingqu's thinking, but trying to copy her outright is pointless," Ye Yu said, looking at the big screen. "Tansen Meilin will only end up humiliating himself."

Tansen Meilin's motivational speech to the Lianda students wasn't entirely useless.

But to say it inspired everyone and gave them strength? No, not really.

His usual style was to boss people around and swear at them over the slightest displeasure. The fact that he could stay calm and talk nicely now—at least not cursing them out for no reason—already surprised the Lianda students.

They weren't fools. Anyone could hear Tansen Meilin's real intention: to make everyone protect him at all costs, let him enter the speed map, and once again showcase the glory of the Merlin family.

That idea wasn't wrong. With the Lipu and the command ship completely scrapped, this was Lianda's only remaining path to victory. Even if Tansen Meilin hadn't said it, the surviving Lianda members would have fought desperately to protect him if they still wanted to win.

But by stating it outright, he'd created a strange feeling—basically announcing to everyone, "Your lives don't matter. Only mine does. You should protect me with your lives."

Some things were better left unsaid, left for everyone to digest silently. Saying it directly only stirred a nameless resentment in many hearts.

Because at the root of it all, Tansen Meilin held the record only because his surname was Merlin, giving him access to the special route honed by the Merlin family's accumulated experience, and thus he'd broken the record.

That was the cruel reality of the Federation, which boasted freedom, democracy, and equality: a life bearing the name Merlin was always worth more than anyone else's.