Fishing Alone Through a Thousand Rivers of Snow - Chapter 6

After conferring, the remaining Alphas decided to change their order.

They moved Bai Yujing from the very end of the line straight to the front, while several candidates who had originally been ahead of her retreated to the rear.

I looked at the university administrators with an ambiguous smile.

One of them wiped the sweat from his temple and forced himself to explain. “Er… because Student Bai received the best score in the preliminary screening, we… we decided to let her go first.”

“I see.”

I did not ask why the best performer in the preliminaries had originally been placed last.

Discrimination against beastkin in the Imperial Capital was an open secret. I did not need to ask to know that the students who had moved back were children of its aristocratic families.

When they had expected a chance to show off, they had scrambled to stand as close to the front as possible. Now that humiliation seemed likely, they wanted to hide at the back and let someone else set the stage. Even if none of them succeeded, at least their failure would not look quite so disgraceful.

And if enough students were crippled along the way, perhaps the university would intervene and stop the later candidates from entering at all.

These petty schemes bored me.

I glanced at the steward, who immediately handed me a specially formulated energy drink.

I drank in silence. The laboratory had developed it specifically to ease my symptoms when I was unwell.

…It treated the symptoms, not the cause, but that was better than nothing.

Under everyone’s watchful eyes, Bai Yujing entered the mecha.

I turned to the internal video feed. Her flawless face appeared on the high-definition screen, and my gaze drifted helplessly toward her two pointed ears.

So soft and fluffy. So adorable.

If only I could touch them once.

Unfortunately, she was terribly vigilant. I had tried several times and never succeeded.

My fingertips rubbed together unconsciously.

From the moment she entered the cockpit, excitement had glittered in Bai Yujing’s pigeon-blood-red eyes, no matter how hard she tried to restrain it.

She began feeding mental power into the mecha.

Almost instantly, the gauge filled.

Every light on the instrument panel came alive. The spectators rose to their feet without realizing it.

Her performance was astonishing, especially in contrast with the two before her.

One corner of my mouth lifted.

She tried to move the mecha, but it remained perfectly still. Her brow furrowed.

Then she quickly realized that driving it required mental power one rank higher.

She poured in more.

A blue bar appeared over the full green gauge, racing across it and reaching the end in an instant.

One administrator clutched the arm of the sofa in excitement.

The mecha moved.

Bai Yujing drove it through a few motions, but only simple ones. Compared with an ordinary mecha, it was as clumsy as a rusted lump of iron.

No one in the audience dared to laugh. Bai Yujing was the first person who had managed to move it at all.

As for why this supposedly cutting-edge machine was behaving so strangely… everyone decided not to rush to judgment.

They would keep watching.

Large beads of sweat rolled down an administrator’s forehead. He turned to stare at me.

“Professor Qian, what… what is happening?”

“Oh. She hasn’t established a mental link with the mecha, so it hasn’t granted her full access. It can only perform the most basic movements.”

His scalp looked ready to explode. “What? She’s already injected two levels of mental power, and that still isn’t enough for full access?”

“I told you, this model has a little temper.” I lazily took another sip to soothe my throat, which felt as dry and sharp as a razor blade. “It acknowledges only the strongest. What can I do about that?”

The administrator regarded me in horror.

He had finally realized that the new mecha was essentially a Venus flytrap in disguise, a carnivorous flower that fed exclusively on top-tier Alphas.

He began to panic. He could not bear to lose three elite Alpha students in succession without even getting the machine properly started.

“Professor Qian, this is… this is outrageous! Why didn’t you tell us such an important detail at the beginning?”

I gave him a cool glance.

“Before they go to war, will the insectoids inform them of every trap they’ve laid?”

He had no answer.