Chapter 11: Ice and Fire Competition (6)
The pine forest was tall, with tree canopies connecting, and in the dense areas of the woods, the space between the trees was filled with large webs of the Green Tree Spider Star Beasts.
These star beasts had low scores in the competition and posed little threat, but they were quite troublesome.
The tree spiders hunted using toxins.
Their toxins couldn’t penetrate mecha armor and wouldn’t harm the pilot, but the webs were made of a special material that was hard to cut and had a strong adhesion to mecha metal. A mecha ensnared by these webs could not break free and would be trapped, waiting for rescue, essentially forfeiting the match.
The most troublesome part was that the tree spider webs had strong camouflage properties and were difficult to detect. Therefore, most people would choose to pass through areas where the trees were sparser, and the spider webs fewer.
This route was also the most suitable location for an ambush.
Rong Mi looked up at the steep, upward slope, thinking about the ideal spot for an ambush.
Behind the large boulders halfway up the mountain, in the narrow valleys of the pine forest, and further out in the open area several miles away, beneath the snow…
Rong Mi set his sights on the ambush location below the snow-covered ground.
When passing through the narrow forest valley, everyone would instinctively become more vigilant. But once they returned to a more open area, where it was harder to be ambushed, they would inevitably relax their guard.
It was the perfect time for an ambush.
Moreover, this open area was very close to the final gathering point. Any mecha pilot who could avoid or break free from the tree spider webs was certainly skilled, and their points would likely be considerable.
The black mecha then started up and nimbly entered the pine forest.
The location of the gathering point was carefully planned by the production team.
The director had already anticipated that some, if not many, contestants would choose to ambush in the woods.
The final stretch of the race would be a fierce battle for the mecha pilots, and for the survival competition’s production team, it was a major point of interest.
Cameras had been secretly set up by the production team throughout the pine forest, ensuring that every movement in the vicinity was captured.
In the commentary room, the security robots still had their guns raised.
The live-stream assistant, Fen Ge, was drenched in sweat. In his earpiece, the director’s breathing was steady, but he said nothing.
The commentator was terrified on the inside but forced a calm expression.
“We can see that Rong Mi has arrived at the pine forest,” he said dutifully. “Now, he seems to be setting up an ambush for other contestants passing through this area…”
“Rong Mi has chosen an extremely difficult path! Instead of avoiding the spider webs, he is heading straight toward the densest part of them…!”
The live stream audience: “…”
“Rong Mi is truly immersed in the competition… his mindset is completely unaffected!” The discussion in the comments section was still heated, “Incredible! I just watched… aside from Rong Mi, all the contestants who encountered the ‘Ice Butterfly’ in the storm called for rescue and quit. Looks like the program’s holographic projection really scared everyone!”
“Not gonna lie, that holographic interactive projection has some serious damage! I saw some contestants get seriously injured!”
“There aren’t many contestants left in the game… maybe a dozen or so. Most of them were just lucky enough not to encounter the Ice Butterfly! My God. Only Rong Mi seems unaffected after meeting the Ice Butterfly, still here ‘enjoying the peace of the world’!”
“Am I the only one who thinks the Double A powerhouse is right?! The Ice Butterfly might really be real! Otherwise, why wouldn’t the program team release an official announcement?! The StarNet popularity has already exploded!”
In the past hour, the Ice and Fire Mecha Combat Survival Competition’s live-stream had skyrocketed in popularity and was going viral.
“Real or fake? Special effects or real terror?! The Ice and Fire competition planet’s holographic projection shows a massive number of Ice Butterflies! Imitating the Insect Planet!”
“Click here to see the super-cool Ice Wolf appearing on the icy plains, freezing the snowfield with its psychic power before mysteriously vanishing!”
“Incredible, high-energy! Watch the replay of one contestant killing nearly 10,000 Ice Butterflies in a single mecha, complete with uncensored music! Click the link below…”
One hot topic after another was trending on the StarNet public community. Even people who weren’t interested in the competition or mecha clicked on these headlines.
People who clicked on the first link mostly thought it was just a marketing stunt to grab attention and laughed it off.
Those who clicked on the second link assumed it was a new star beast-themed action movie and came to see the fluffy creatures.
People who clicked on the third link mostly thought it was a fake.
The onlookers in the comments: “Let me see, who killed nearly 10,000 Ice Butterflies alone?! I just checked, and if I’m not mistaken, the event mentioned in the title is just a casual competition, right? It’s just a holographic projection of Ice Butterflies. And they dared to put a title like this?”
After a minute of watching the video, all kinds of comments turned into various-sized exclamations and question marks.
“Is this edited? Special effects? No one moves that fast!”
“…It doesn’t seem to be. I went to the competition’s official website, and this video is real. The contestant before this one used a laser blade to kill dozens of Ice Butterflies in just seconds.”
“…But this looks so real! My sister’s a mecha pilot in the military, and she watched it with me. She said it could be real… She’s already gone to the military to submit a report for investigation!”
“I just went to the competition’s live stream. The official team hasn’t made any announcement, but a Double A certified mecha pilot in the comments said the military has indeed issued an investigation and combat task. The military ships near the wasteland star are heading there now, and the nearest fleet will arrive in two hours.”
“Wait, wait, wait, I wanna ask… where’s the Ice Wolf?! That wolf was so cool, where did it go?! I saw the rescue team leaving when Rong Mi had already gone. Did he pick up the wolf?”
Various discussions flooded the screen, quickly covering the video itself.
The entire video lasted for over ten minutes, and every second was filled with dense comments, until the very end of the video.
Thousands of comments turned into one sentence: “Big boss. Worship. Kneel.”
Even with the holographic interactive projection, the mecha operation, speed, and psychic strength—
it still made people kneel.
After seeing these trending topics, the audience demanding the program team announce about the Ice Butterfly, cursing the program for allowing the dangerous Ice Butterfly while continuing the competition, those wanting to see Rong Mi in action, and those hoping to see more fluffy star beasts all flocked into the program’s live stream. Their eyes inevitably focused on Rong Mi.
In the footage, Rong Mi’s black mecha had already entered the mountain forest.
Worried that someone might be ambushing in the forest, Rong Mi did not choose the obvious and safest mountain route but instead plunged into the dense pine forest.
Here, the density of the tree spider webs was terrifying, stretching from the ground all the way up to the tree canopies. The webs were colorless and transparent, and even in the psychic vision, they were hard to detect.
The deep green, palm-sized tree spiders hid beneath the branches that supported the webs, waiting silently for prey.
Rong Mi could roughly assess the density of the tree spider webs, but he couldn’t accurately pinpoint the location of every single web.
The threads of these webs were woven with the spiders’ psychic power, and in the psychic vision, the entire forest’s energy field appeared tinged with green.
He had to destroy these webs, or he couldn’t move forward.
The psychic vision was obstructed in this way, preventing Rong Mi from sensing his surroundings.
The mecha stood still in the forest. In the floating battle pet ball, the silver wolf turned its head and looked at the young man in the pilot seat.
The wolf slightly raised its head, seemingly wanting to help, but then realized something, scratching its psychic collar fiercely with its paw.
The wolf couldn’t use psychic power right now.
Rong Mi turned to the silver wolf and smiled.
“Are you worried I can’t handle it?” The young man’s face showed little distress. Through the floating battle pet ball, he lightly tapped the wolf’s forehead. “Just watch.”
Burning the webs with psychic power wouldn’t work—it would be too noisy and too slow.
But he had another method.
When he was the main fleet’s mecha pilot, the battles with the Ice Butterflies had been so intense that he learned a different way to use psychic power.
With a thought, the psychic slots on his black mecha—from the shoulders and arms to the palms and fingertips—began to glow brightly.
Purple psychic energy shot from Rong Mi’s fingers, like a steel cable with hooks at the end, piercing several webs and embedding itself into the nearby tree trunks.
The light surged, and the psychic threads vibrated, emitting a subtle sound wave.
It felt as if a wind had begun to stir in the forest.
Every leaf trembled with small, rapid motions. One after another, green tree spiders were stunned by the sound waves, falling from the trees and hitting the ground.
The webs woven throughout the forest began to break, their fragile structures shattered, losing their special adhesive properties.
The black mecha hovered off the ground, sweeping past the spiders and webs, continuing forward. Its steps barely slowed, quickly ascending the steep slope covered by trees.
Rong Mi’s movements were swift and graceful.
Not only did the contestants lying in ambush on the mountain path not see him, but even most of the production team’s cameras stationed in the forest failed to capture his presence. Only a shadow passing by the edge of one camera was caught by the live stream assistant, slowed down and tagged as Rong Mi’s mecha.
“…How did Rong Mi get there? Is there any camera that can show me the full view? Isn’t that where the tree spider webs are concentrated?!”
“Wow! You can do that?! Control your psychic threads to vibrate at a specific frequency and directly destroy the webs in the area… How strong must his control be?!”
“The key is, how did he know what frequency to vibrate at? By feel?”
“By feel,” someone suggested in the comments. “I heard some powerful people with high psychic strength have extremely sharp sensitivity and can analyze unfamiliar energy threads or psychic threads’ frequency spectrum in just a few minutes or even seconds.”
“…Help, I really have to look at Rong Mi in a whole new light!”
“Stop being amazed! Look! Rong Mi suddenly stopped… He’s at a cliff, and below is an ambush point… But it seems someone is already there.”
“Is Rong Mi going to break into someone else’s ambush?”
In the footage, the black mecha crouched on a tree branch at the end of the cliff.
Its figure blended into the shadows, facing a patch of snow-covered ground in the forest below.
In his psychic vision, Rong Mi saw a black shadow beneath the snow layer.
A competition mecha was crouched in the soft white snow, waiting quietly for someone to step into the snow and fall into its trap.