Chapter 72: Everyone’s Got A Trick Up Their Sleeves
The on-board communicator was useless. Both the communication and positioning equipment they brought were unusable.There were no parachutes, and the emergency cockpit could not be accessed. Logically speaking, the pilot sitting inside the cockpit would not be feeling too well either.
This was exactly what the officers wanted to see. In this almost completely desperate, isolated and helpless situation, the students’ inner self would normally be exposed more truthfully.
The officers were looking forward to seeing the reaction of these four fellows, but contrary to their expectations, reality threw them a harsh slap across the face.
Never mind about Knight. He most definitely had a certain level of understanding towards this type of situation, and the fact that he was able to face it calmly was not beyond their expectations. However, Ci Jincheng was even calmer than Knight. At the least, Knight had expressed more or less some worry for his fellow companions, but Ci Jincheng had no such worries at all. The instant the power went out Ci Jincheng coolly took out a book and began reading with great relish. Before he started reading, he did not forget to nod and smile politely once at the direction of the hidden camera. This caused the faces of the officers inside the monitoring room to fall.
Downer.
They looked at Lung.
After the power system had gone down, young master Lung froze for two seconds before he began expressing his greatest disdain, “To think that our grand army would buy such substandard goods. But, I remember that the army’s resource allocation was pretty good, could it be that there are only defective goods left when the resources are passed down to this area? Or maybe…”
Lung kept talking to himself incessantly and paid no attention to the falling fighter aircraft at all. In the end, he even came to an astounding conclusion – as he thought, the army stationed at the borders were all raised by their stepmothers!*
*Meaning to say that the children of stepmothers are usually not loved.
Although the quartet’s communicators could not be used due to interference, there were hidden cameras in the cockpit, and hence, the officers heard very clearly every word young master Lung was saying.
The team leaders inside the monitoring room all looked sympathetically at the base officers. It wasn’t that they agreed with Lung, but that they sympathized with them for being scorned upon by Lung.
The base officers nearly spat blood from sheer anger. Our Sector is nothing like the primitive zones of the borders of the thirteen backwater Sectors, and even if this place is at the border, it is still the border of Sector B and Sector C. How the hell could it possibly be compared to those primitive borders?! Not to mention that their highly weaponized fighter aircrafts and other armed vehicles were not placed within the student camp, but somewhere else.
It was completely beyond their imaginations that, not only did they fail to intimidate Lung, they were instead harshly scorned upon, and worse this was but the beginning of it. After Lung was finished slighting the army, and the fighter aircraft had descended until roughly ten thousand meters above ground, Lung suddenly took out a small square box and ejected it out of the fighter aircraft through a small exit. The small square box split into five smaller blocks outside the aircraft before sticking themselves onto the aircraft’s wings, body and tail respectively.
Lung held a palm-sized controller in his hand, and when he pressed a button on the controller, huge wings stretched out from the five smaller blocks. The fighter aircraft’s descent speed slowed abruptly, and in the end, it almost drifted like a piece of thin paper floating in the sky. While using the controller in his hands, the block at the tail of Lung’s aircraft began spitting out some white smoke.
And so, the officers in the monitoring room watched Lung piloting the aircraft that, despite losing its power system, was floating about slowly, until a huge smiley face was drawn in the sky.
Gerrard continued to facepalm. He seriously did not know what to say about this Andrea Family young master.
As for Cillin, the moment the power went out, he swept a glance around the cockpit before he opened up a spot, took apart the remote controller inside, opened the control panel, and began entering a new decoding program on the control terminal which screen had winked into existence in order to reassume control.
At the same time, the fingers of the person in the monitoring room in front a screen danced as he entered his own control program to stop Cillin’s decoding.
Fifteen seconds later, the screen inside the monitoring room displayed the word ‘Connection Terminated’. This meant that the plane’s access rights had fallen completely into Cillin’s hands. The officer in front of the screen blushed bright red, unable to utter even a single word for a long while. He was actually taken out by an academy student, and in less than twenty seconds, no less!
Gerrard slapped his shoulders, and said, “There’s nothing to be ashamed of. His mentor is that old Mo, Mo Heng. Give him a small purpose knife and he’ll be able to take apart the entire aircraft into its base components, and reassemble it as good as new.”
Gerrard’s words might have been exaggerated a little, but there was no denying that Cillin’s ability had truly astounded them.
After reacquiring access rights of the fighter aircraft, and reactivating the power system, Cillin piloted the plane and flew downwards. It didn’t take long before Cillin saw Ci Jincheng and Knight’s aircrafts both regaining flight capabilities and their respective power systems returning to normality.
The quartet looked for a parking spot and landed their aircrafts. Knight also explained to Cillin and the others about the trick that the army often used. Most of the time, the new students’ fighter aircrafts were tampered with, and could be remotely controlled. Sometimes the plane would break a wing, sometimes its power system would fail, sometimes its energy would suddenly fall to zero, and so on. It was all just a trick played by the officers on the students, although it was also how the officers reevaluate a student’s ability.
“Ceh, they just have to make everything oh-so-mysterious. My grandfather once said that one must not completely rely on someone else during a crisis. They must learn how to save themselves, and save up for a rainy day.” While juggling with the little square box in his hands, Lung gave Cillin a huge thumbs-up, “That being said, Cillin sure is impressive; snatching back access rights of the fighter aircraft just like that. It’s like giving that mastermind a direct slap to the face. Awesome!”
When the quartet returned to the camp, the gazes of the surrounding students were obviously different from before. The news that they were played by the officers but remained safe and sound and dealt with the situation with ease had spread. Sird, Hard, and a few other people were impressed by the feat. If they had been the victims, they would have definitely made a fool out of themselves in front of those officers. Although they did not know how the quartet had actually dealt with the situation, it did not affect their opinions about them.
The gazes of the military academy students were even more complicated. It wasn’t just anyone who could cause their officers to flip out, and judging from their faces, no one but colonel Gerrard looked happy today.
“Sigh, I really wanna know how they did it.” Yue Lou leaned against the railing and sighed.
“Ah, I can’t wait.” Feng Haicao clapped the display device close in his hand. The device could only display the flight status of the fighter aircraft, yet not the pilots’ reactions inside it.
There were quite a few people whom Knight knew inside the military academies, such as the Second Military Academy’s Stantine. During dinnertime, Knight was called down by Stantine for a drinking game, and he wasn’t gone for long before Cillin and the others’ communicators began to ring.
“Come down quickly, fuck, these shameless bastards are planning to use sheer numbers against me!”
The Second Military Academy’s accommodation was at the sixth floor, and Seven Lights’ accommodation was at the eighth. When Cillin and the others went downstairs, they saw Knight and ten other people from the Second Military Academy surrounding a table inside the common living room of an accommodation. Knight had one foot on the stool and an arm on his waist. His face was already red from drinking, and when he saw Cillin and the others walking towards him he let out a grunt of laughter, “Say hello to my accommodation’s brothers. Today the four of us are gonna go all out against ya! Let’s see who falls first!”
“Fuck off and get a few more people over here already, otherwise you’re gonna complain that we dropped you with mere numbers again… Isn’t there still a girl at your place?” Stantine let out a cunning snicker.
“No need. The four of us are enough!” When Knight’s stubborn temper flared up, no one could change his mind.
“Yeah, the four of us will do. I’ll take four, and you guys split the remaining six among yourselves.” Cillin walked beside the table and said.
Bang!
Before the Second Military Academy students could offer an opinion, Knight had already slammed a fist on the table and said, “I’ll take four, and the rest of you take the six!”
Lung patted Knight’s shoulders and said, “Hey, there’s no need to fight amongst ourselves. We’ll take three each and leave the last guy for Ci Jincheng.”
Ci Jincheng lifted his eyebrows but said nothing.
“How should we drink?” Cillin asked.
“What nonsense are you spouting, of course we’re gonna down a whole bottle at a time! Don’t tell me you’re gonna drink sip by sip like a girl?” Stantine yelled.
Without a word Cillin took a bottle, and downed the whole thing in five seconds.
“Alright, you’re the real Shadow X alright, I’ve been wanting to fight against ya a long time ago.” Stantine took up a bottle of his own and began pouring it down his throat.
On that night, the Second Military Academy’s leading officer had an expression so dark he looked like a brooding storm.
The ten of them actually lost the drinking game to their opponent’s four people!
Knight really drank too much, and went down after taking out three people by himself. He was dragged back to his bed by Cillin. Lung also drank too much, but his drunk performance was different in that he became overly excited, yelling that he’s “gonna play cards” and if he didn’t get to play cards, he’s “gonna sing” and if he didn’t get to sing, he’s “gonna make a scene and refuse to leave.”
Cillin dragged Knight upstairs first before coming back to grab one of Lung’s arms each with Ci Jincheng, forcefully dragging him back upstairs.
That night, Lung sang love songs for the entire night. Thank goodness every room had excellent sound insulation, or the instructors might have just pumped a bullet down his throat.
They had their fun. When the people of all ten institutes were gathered, the integrated warfare contest officially began. The Second Military Academy students rubbed their fists and wiped their palms. They lost in the drinking game and were called up by their officer to ‘sober up’ at midnight. They must take revenge.