The Birth of a Legendary Sky Network Thread

"I'm famous?"

Urged on by Liu Ming, Xu Lingqu climbed into the pod and logged into the Sky Network.

The Sky Network's forum was well-crafted, offering multiple modes for online discussion: forum posts, voice arguments, and even full-immersion PK rooms. If you had a beef with someone, you didn't need to track them down in real life—you could just settle it online with a quick brawl.

The formats were flashy, but plain forum posts still drew the most traffic. Xu Lingqu, still using her unregistered ordinary account, followed Liu Ming's directions into the military academy league section. The first thing she saw was her own name.

"This Year's Best Commander/Chief Commander—I'm Betting on Xu Lingqu." The reply count had already reached one thousand.

At the top of the forum, there was always an Imperial Eight Academies Commander Approval Ranking. Xu Lingqu had already climbed to third place, most likely thanks to that thread.

Sensing something off, she clicked into the post to investigate. Sure enough.

The OP had started out quite seriously, posting his predictions like everyone else—threads about the strongest individual fighter, the best analyst, and which team would take the championship. His post was perfectly normal.

Unfortunately, a troll wandered into the thread.

[Who the hell is this Xu Lingqu? And she's the best commander?]

Naturally, the OP wasn't about to tolerate that tone and shot back immediately.

[What does my prediction have to do with you? Do you have to taste a dog's shit on the roadside just to check if it's salty?]

A troll being a troll, he had to argue to the bitter end.

[Looked her up—she's this year's reported Chief Commander for Moye. Jesus, Moye's actually daring to dream now?]

Then the two of them started slinging insults for hundreds of floors. The constantly bumped thread drew the attention of passersby—some came in to watch the drama and fan the flames, others genuinely tried to play peacemaker, and a few sincerely asked who Xu Lingqu even was.

In the end, the troll got banned by forum moderators for excessive vulgarity, but a thousand-floor thread was born, and Xu Lingqu successfully carved out a presence on the Sky Network forums.

[I also think that troll was an idiot, but I really want to ask—how do you stay so confident in this unknown Xu Lingqu when Gu Tingzhi and Jia Xiangying are both in the running?]

To which the OP replied with a single line at the end.

[Just watch the matches. Every time she blows your minds, I'll bump this thread.]

That stirred up some discontent among a minority of readers, who left comments saying they'd mark this thread and come back to roast the OP every time Xu Lingqu messed up.

Xu Lingqu finished reading all the floors, then turned to Liu Ming. "That OP isn't you, is it?"

Liu Ming waved his paws frantically. "How could it be me? When you're not around, I only come on to watch, not talk. And I only watch the arena livestream section."

The mighty King Rabbit's "Awoo" popularity showed no signs of fading. Logan Bill naturally wouldn't ruin that account, so he wisely closed all challenge requests to play hard-to-get, only logging in to bask in everyone's admiration whenever he wanted to show off.

If it wasn't Liu Ming... Xu Lingqu suddenly recalled that when the eliminated students had left that day, one of them had said they'd take on a hundred opponents for her on the Sky Network forums. It was most likely that person.

"You're really famous now—people are opening threads to analyze you." Liu Ming showed her another post, and sure enough, a hundred-floor thread appeared claiming to have fully dissected Xu Lingqu's tactics.

She clicked in. The OP spent the entire main post sneering, claiming that since she sat in the Chief Commander seat yet handed the first match's command to Feng Bu, he could conclude she was a talentless schemer who gave away command to others to avoid responsibility when they lost while still claiming credit when they won.

Xu Lingqu figured it was either Sun Liao or Feng Bu himself who wrote that. But given that one had been hauled off by Ares for a family talk and the other was locked up in the hospital undergoing psychological counseling, this OP was probably one of the few kindred spirits they had left in the world.

The post was pure malicious trolling, and even the passing spectators began to find it hard to watch.

[I looked it up—only the first match's command was handed to Feng Bu. She commanded all the others herself.]

[What level is Feng Bu? Did the OP not watch last year's league? Probably a cloud spectator.]

[Honestly, she was just supporting a commander she believed in. The way you're all bashing her out of nowhere is making me think Xu Lingqu might actually have something.]

Threads about Xu Lingqu thus carved out a steady niche in the military academy league forum. But most people treated her with the attitude of watching a spectacle or joking around—no one actually believed she was that impressive, since a quick search showed her Psychic Power Level was B, and she commanded Moye, the bottom-ranked academy.

"Hating on someone is still fame." Liu Ming patted her shoulder. "I think you're what they call a trouble magnet. You haven't done anything, but there's always a crowd fighting over you."

"Well, thank them for me, I guess." Xu Lingqu had grown tired of the circular arguments in her own threads and started browsing the forum homepage for other people's discussions.

"Gu Tingzhi, Psychic Power A+, Longyuan's face, commander's light." Xu Lingqu clicked into the highest-traffic post about a commander. It was reviewing last year's battle between Longyuan and Du'e. The OP believed that after the communications hack, Gu Tingzhi had found the best solution, leading his team into blind combat and winning through sheer hard power.

A few Jinfang Taibai fans appeared in the replies, sneering that Gu Tingzhi was nothing but a brainless brute and demanding the OP stop indirectly bashing Jinfang Taibai.

The OP ignored them and continued analyzing Longyuan's final match against Lianda.

[I've always respected Qike Meilin as an opponent—he's strong enough. But has anyone else noticed that the Sky Network battle maps are trending more and more toward physical combat? This is also what Federation academies are prioritizing in training. That final match had no advanced weapons—just firearms with limited ammo, and it devolved into hand-to-hand combat by the end. I wouldn't be surprised to see a melee weapon map in this year's finals.]

The subsequent discussion shifted to Sky Network map design. Some thought the OP was overthinking it, having felt none of what he described. Others agreed deeply and voiced approval of this trend, saying more physical combat was definitely more entertaining for the audience.

Xu Lingqu skimmed through it. There wasn't much genuine tactical analysis of Gu Tingzhi himself, so she exited. But on the homepage, she saw her own name again.

That tall thread, "This Year's Best Commander/Chief Commander—I'm Betting on Xu Lingqu," had been bumped once more. At the same time, a new thread had appeared.

"Why Isn't S+ Shen Shouli This Year's Moye Chief Commander?"