It's Not Easy to be A Man (466+)

470

470 Ling Xiao's Pride and Troubles!

The imperial operator's words received his partner's approval. Ling Lan's amazing performance had moved the two initially unperturbed and indifferent imperial operators, making them reconsider taking in students themselves. Yes, maybe next time, when the First Men's Military Academy took in new students, they could go over there to see if there were any good seedlings ...

In the meantime, a heated debate of whether 51 shots or 52 shots had been fired had broken out among the audience. Ling Xiao, who had been quietly seated at the rostrum, showed no change in his expression, but those familiar with him realised that the corner of his lip was slowly but surely tilting upwards, the smile on his lips becoming increasingly tangible. This meant that he was in an extremely good mood ...

Of course Ling Xiao would feel good, because he had seen — and he was the only one who had seen — that there was a trick behind Ling Lan's last shot. Using a special-class mecha, she had successfully gone beyond the boundaries of her level to pull off a skill that could only have been executed by an ace mecha — Synchronous Shooting!

Synchronous Shooting was a skill that allowed an operator to shoot two beam shots at the same time. Besides the muzzle of the gun being lighted up just that little bit more while shooting, the posture and shooting frequency looked exactly as when shooting an ordinary single beam shot. As such, Synchronous Shooting was one of the hardest long-range offensive skills to detect. It was just so stealthy that even the most experienced mecha masters could not confirm for sure whether someone was actually performing Synchronous Shooting or just shooting a single shot. This was also one of the reasons why Synchronous Shooting managed to become an ace level top-class skill. It was just too hard to deal with — truly a technique that just could not be effectively defended against.

Another reason Synchronous Shooting managed to become a top-class ace level skill was that it was very difficult to execute. To successfully use Synchronous Shooting, a mecha master's hand speed needed to be at the peak of ace level. Without that level of hand speed, the mecha master would not be able to perform Synchronous Shooting even if he wanted to. Of course, even with the required hand speed, the skill might still fail. The mecha's A.I. must also be reliable — even a delay of 0.01 second could cause an attempted synchronous shot to end up as two ordinary beam shots.

Ling Lan's success made Ling Xiao feel both proud and a little helpless at the same time. His daughter seemed to have already entered the rebellious phase his parenting book had mentioned.

Ling Xiao had long known that Ling Lan had already advanced into ace level. Still, executing Synchronous Shooting with an ace mecha versus executing it with a special-class mecha were two completely different concepts. With a special-class mecha, the demands on Ling Lan's finger speed was much more stringent, because the A.I. of a special-class mecha was a hair weaker than the A.I. of an ace mecha. Do not underestimate this thin hairs-breadth of difference — it required an operator to pay several magnitudes the cost to execute an ace technique.

Since Ling Lan managed to successfully execute Synchronous Shooting, in the end, her One-Point Sustained Shooting had successfully fired 7 beam shots. In other words, Ling Lan had fired 53 shots in total and not the 52 or 51 shots as everyone else believed. This number had drawn even with the record set by Ling Xiao in the past. How could Ling Xiao not be proud? This amazing genius mecha operator was none other than his very own daughter! Who said girls could not match up to boys? Ling Xiao believed that his daughter would definitely create a miracle!

However, after the pride he felt subsided, Ling Xiao began to fret. For his daughter's own safety, he had advised her to show a little restraint. On the surface, Ling Lan had indeed seemed to have listened, but in actual fact, this move had displayed her rebellious streak — even if she had to show restraint, she would show it in her own domineering way!