Ou Youning, who had a basic understanding of mechanical principles and initial hands-on skills, carried a portable welding machine, temporarily acting as a repairman, jumping up and down quickly patching the cracks on the military storage box caused by the impact of the Crystallized Pangolin.
A few minutes later, when Ren Zhong and the others finished their tasks, the Crystallized Pangolin inside reluctantly died.
Then everyone restarted their high-efficiency hunting.
Around five in the afternoon, another mutation occurred.
While walking, Ren Zhong noticed that the people behind him were missing.
His first reaction wasn’t panic. Instead, he immediately realized he had encountered a Ruined Beast, one unlike any before, capable of affecting his thoughts.
A slight heaviness overcame his vision, a momentary darkness. When Ren Zhong opened his eyes again, he was sitting in a spacious and bright exam room.
There were few desks in the exam room, and few people, each desk spaced apart quite widely.
Outside the window of the exam room grew a large elm tree, its leaves turning yellow, branches swaying with the wind, autumn leaves drifting.
Ren Zhong briefly forgot what he was doing earlier, his gaze once again focused on the exam paper in front of him.
He immediately remembered.
Back when he was in the second year of high school, he was participating in the final of the National High School Physics Competition. It was the last major problem on the test.
The difficulty of this problem wasn’t great, but the knowledge point exceeded the syllabus, involving an extremely obscure physics principle.
Although he had heard the principle’s name and roughly understood what it summarized, he had never seen the detailed formula, which led to him feeling immense disappointment the moment he finished reading the question.
In his life, he had never left a blank in any exam, only scoring 100 because the tests only had 100 points. He was about to experience a Waterloo here, leaving an incomplete blank.
For twelve-year-old him at the time, there was only one thing intolerable in his pure life, and that was handing in a blank sheet.
Ren Zhong was first consumed by terror, but then quickly invigorated, starting to rack his brains, re-reading the question, attempting to deduce the physics principle he had only heard of from the existing knowledge points.
Something marvelous happened; a vast array of knowledge points surfaced one by one in his mind, and his thinking speed was unprecedentedly fast.
In just a minute, he derived the principle he previously knew only by name but didn’t know the specific formula for. Most top academicians in small towns have this ability to make inferences, the difference is merely speed. The examiners weren’t really trying to kill the participants; this out-of-syllabus knowledge point was already built upon the physics knowledge system of the Olympiad. Those who studied it could find shortcuts, while those who didn’t had to force their way through; those who could push through were real go-getters. The purpose of the Olympiad was to select these go-getters.
This terrifyingly difficult question, which was a massive gap a minute ago, turned into a smooth road leading straight to Rome.
The panic and fear within Ren Zhong’s heart vanished completely.
Just as he picked up the pen to start answering, the scene before him quickly shattered.
When he opened his eyes again, he saw an eyeless insect, about the size of a small calf, with six alloy long legs, a small head, a large abdomen, and blade-like teeth, clawing forward trying to break through the mid-range crossfire net formed by the automatically responding guns and cannons augmented from the Second Level armor.
Ren Zhong immediately recognized the creature as a Maze Bug.
He glanced at the parameter display on his mask and found that the ammunition supply was about to run out, so he quickly pulled out his dagger and charged forward, engaging in combat with the Maze Bug.
The bug wasn’t very large, but its body structure was extremely resilient, forcing him to break three Shock Daggers and smash two small round iron-shield bucklers.
Using a fully amplified input, he channeled all 600 kilowatts of output power into the last Shock Dagger and finally managed to sever it in half.
Throughout the confrontation, Ren Zhong kept trying to wake his teammates through the communicator.
However, they all stood motionless, as if in a daze.
It wasn’t until nearly a minute after Ren Zhong killed the bug that the others came back to their senses, and began weeping uncontrollably, with Chen Hanyu crying the most hysterically.
Ren Zhong wanted to wait for them to recover before persuading them, but worried about the Crystal Chip expiring, he had no choice but to brace himself, grab Chen Hanyu by the shoulders, trying to shake her awake.
He removed his helmet visor, exposing his face, shaking and shouting, "Chen Hanyu, wake up! I’m Ren Zhong! There’s a Fourth Level Maze Bug waiting for you to dismantle it! Wake up! Hurry up and wake up! It’s going to expire!"
In her daze, Chen Hanyu saw Ren Zhong’s face clearly. Instead of stopping, her crying grew even louder.