The Real Daughter Just Wants to Pilot Mechas - Chapter 13

As Ling Yelin left with Ling Wenlin and a large entourage, Jiang Momo was walking alone on her way to the Central Mecha Academy, munching on a rolled-up pancake she had bought from a street vendor.

She had received the message about her Capital Star Residency rights at 5 a.m. When she read it, she immediately sprang up, pried open the window, grabbed her belongings, and rushed to the Central Mecha Academy.

Jiang Momo had no psychological burden about ditching Ling Yelin.

From the beginning, she had no intention of meeting him again.

Once the Capital Star Residency was secured, it couldn’t be revoked and Ling Yelin had been merely charmed by the resources she had shown him. She knew that once they got closer, he would eventually realize the truth.

“What a shame, though, the spaceship didn’t come along. Its noise was too loud,” Jiang Momo mumbled, chewing on her pancake as she looked at the floating screen in front of her.

The household robot’s shell was too bulky, so she transferred Little Eight’s data from the robot to her light brain for easier transport.

At that moment, the small light brain’s artificial intelligence, Little Eight, resembled a short-legged, cartoonish Siamese cat, munching on a bag of data seeds and scattering shells everywhere as it comforted Jiang Momo in between bites, [Don’t mind that, there’s nothing valuable inside.]

“True,” Jiang Momo accepted the comfort.

[I think you could run a few steps.]

Hearing Little Eight’s voice, Jiang Momo instinctively started running. Once her body was in motion, she remembered to ask, “Didn’t we calculate it? If I walk over, I’ll arrive an hour before the registration starts.”

[I just decrypted the surveillance at the entrance of the Central Mecha Academy, take a look.]

On the light screen in front of her, the Siamese cat swiped its paw and the entrance of the Central Mecha Academy appeared.

The plaza in front of the gate was packed with people, the line winding for several hundred meters.

Jiang Momo was confused and glanced at the time in the corner of the screen while running. “Did I see that right? It’s only 7:30!”

***

When Jiang Momo arrived at the academy gate, there were even more people. From the roadside signs, she could see that there were eight registration lines. According to the academy’s rules, registration was not divided by major. After passing the first round of screening, students could then choose their major.

At that point, every line was packed with people, making it impossible for anyone to squeeze through.

Students wearing the Central Mecha Academy’s Student Council’s uniforms were managing the order.

Jiang Momo, remembering Little Eight’s advice not to cut in line and to follow the rules of the Capital Star, quickly moved through the crowd, trying to find a line with fewer people.

Soon, she found a registration entrance at the edge of a line with only a few dozen people.

“Are you here to register?” A student standing at the end of the line in a Student Council uniform asked as he glanced at the ‘Teacher Recruitment’ sign beside him. Seeing Jiang Momo nod, he waved at her, “Hurry up, the registration forms are almost gone.”

“Wow, thank you! I’m so lucky today!” Jiang Momo wiped the sweat off her face and quickly joined the line, taking the registration form from the student.

“What do I use to fill this out? Do you have a pen?”

“You can just input it on your light brain.”

Jiang Momo followed the instructions. Her light brain immediately emitted a laser and her personal information appeared on the registration form.

Once she finished filling in the details, the student took out a silver box containing over a hundred light brains of various models.

“Put your light brain in here and you can pick it up after the test.”

Jiang Momo took off her light brain and placed it inside.

Little Eight had gone silent as she neared the academy, likely due to the signal being blocked.

“Your academy is pretty strict about admissions,” Jiang Momo remarked with a smile.

“Well, not exactly. It’s mainly because you’re here for a test, right?” The student casually explained before walking towards the next person.

Jiang Momo didn’t find anything odd about his words and turned her head to look behind her. She noticed a few more people had joined the line, so she quickly moved forward a couple of steps.

“Wasn’t registration supposed to start at 10?” Jiang Momo wondered aloud.

“You must be mistaken. It started at 8,” the student said while collecting light brains from the people behind. “It’s already been going for a while now. If you’re any later, it’ll be closed.”

A man standing behind Jiang Momo also joined the conversation, “I think this year’s recruitment method is great. It doesn’t look at past academic records. Anyone with Capital Star Residency can register.”

Jiang Momo turned to look at him, puzzled.

The student seemed a bit old. Didn’t people from the Capital Star usually look younger, like the Jiang family?

“Oh, I didn’t realize when looking at your back but you’ve really taken care of yourself well. Unlike me, I spent some time on the second-tier planet during the break and got so tanned I feel like I aged a lot.” How did you make yourself look like a student?

Peng Ji, standing behind Jiang Momo, smiled and touched his thick beard, then thought for a moment, and decided not to finish his sentence.

“This school’s teacher salaries aren’t high, though,” he casually mentioned.

Jiang Momo looked at him in surprise.

Why did the teacher’s salary relate to the students coming there to study?

“Don’t worry about that. They probably have side jobs,” Jiang Momo said.

She remembered that when she was fixing mecha before, the receptionist had referred to the person beside her as Professor Ge.

“Haha, true.” Peng Ji awkwardly laughed, “You don’t seem like someone who’s short on money.”

On the Capital Star, people who looked younger were typically wealthier. It was an ironclad rule.

And wealth meant they had more time and resources to study, which made them fierce competitors during recruitment.

Jiang Momo found him a bit strange, so she turned around and ignored him.

“Big Sister? You’re here to register too?” Jiang Yingying’s voice sounded in her ear. “You suddenly disappeared this morning. The family was worried sick and Dad even came back from the second-tier planet.”

Jiang Momo felt a chill run down her spine. She turned around and saw Jiang Yingying walking past calmly.

When Jiang Yingying passed by, she glanced at the line Jiang Momo was in, then looked at the ‘Teacher Recruitment’ sign nearby. She covered her mouth with one hand and couldn’t help but smile widely in a rare, slightly inappropriate way, then quickly left.

Jiang Momo was confused with many questions unasked.

“Your sister? Now that I look closely, you two do look a bit alike,” said Peng Ji, leaning in from behind.

“Not familiar,” Jiang Momo replied.

“She must’ve been mistaken. Her family is really rich. See, she didn’t even need to stand in line to register. She just walked straight in.”

Jiang Momo followed Peng Ji’s pointing finger and saw Jiang Yingying walk past the long line and enter the registration entrance without even submitting a form.

***

Soon, Jiang Momo also reached the registration entrance.

The teacher collecting the forms glanced at the paper in Jiang Momo’s hand and paused for a moment.

“Don’t joke around, this…” He looked up and saw Jiang Momo’s face.

She looked very familiar. After thinking for a moment, he realized she was the person from the surveillance footage the Dean had brought back for them to study the day before.

“Really young,” the teacher looked at Jiang Momo’s age, sighed, stamped the form with an approval mark, and handed it back to her. “Go to classroom B356.”

“Thank you,” Jiang Momo said as she took the form and walked towards the direction indicated by the sign.

She originally thought B356 meant classroom 356 on the third floor but when she arrived downstairs, she realized there was only one classroom on the first floor of the school.

So she took the elevator to the 356th floor.

The 356th floor was a spacious classroom, about 8000 square meters, without any partitions. The entire room was white, with a metallic shine on the ceiling, walls and floor. Several huge mechanical arms curled up on the ceiling.

The room was sparsely filled with two thousand desks scattered far apart, with dozens of invigilators and assistant invigilator robots patrolling the room.

As the elevator doors opened, the invigilators and early-arriving applicants all turned to look.

As soon as Jiang Momo stepped out of the elevator, she was met with countless gazes. She casually scanned the room and then handed her registration form to the nearest invigilator.

The invigilators exchanged glances.

Just the day before, they had seen Jiang Momo’s face in the surveillance footage but now that they saw her in person, they realized how young she really was.

“Eighteen…” The invigilator holding Jiang Momo’s form looked up with a complicated expression. “You can sit anywhere. There’s twenty more minutes before the test starts.”

Test? Wasn’t today just for registration?

Jiang Momo sat down at the nearest desk, surprised.

On the desk, there was a lone pen.

As she studied the pen, the invigilators huddled together and whispered.

“It’s her, right? She’s so young.”

“Eighteen and not even half my age. I couldn’t figure out how she managed to find those few hidden pathways so quickly last night.”

“It must be talent. Ordinary people like us can’t even imagine it.”

“Should we tell Dean Ge about her applying?”

“Maybe but our light brains were all confiscated.”

“I’ll go find him. You stay here.” One of the invigilators hurriedly ran off.

Jiang Momo looked up at him and happened to make eye contact with Peng Ji who had just walked in.

“Ah, this seat is too far,” Peng Ji sat down in the nearest seat next to Jiang Momo, winked at her, and made a ‘mutual help’ gesture with his mouth.

Jiang Momo didn’t understand and buried her head in studying the pen in her hand.

About ten more minutes passed and the exam was about to begin. The teacher who had hurried away earlier quickly returned and whispered to the other teachers, “Dean Ge said he’ll be here soon.”

Jiang Momo had good hearing and caught the word ‘Ge.’ She looked up.

The teachers dispersed.

“We’re handing out the test papers now. Once the exam starts, don’t look around or whisper to each other. Anyone caught doing so will be considered cheating and the mechanical arms overhead will escort you out.”

The robots approached each applicant’s desk one by one, pulled out sealed folders from their bellies, tore them open, and placed the test papers on the desks.

Jiang Momo picked up the test paper.

Instantly, her head started to spin.

She didn’t recognize most of the words!