The Real Daughter Just Wants to Pilot Mechas - Chapter 28

The first place was Peng Ji.

She turned to look toward the center of the crowd.

Peng Ji looked away.

[The exam is about to begin. Now announcing each person’s total points.]

[Peng Ji, total points: 4; Lu Xuemiao, total points: 3… Jiang Momo, total points: 2…]

In the entire exam hall, only Peng Ji had 4 points. Jiang Momo looked over at him. He was squinting his eyes, enjoying the admiring gazes from others.

“I heard in the second round, it was just the two of them and Peng Ji turned the tide and won.”

“I remember Peng Ji said before the third round that it was thanks to his teammate?”

“No way! His teammate couldn’t even assemble a D-grade mecha properly. You must be mistaken. He just said it himself that it was all his doing. We all heard it.”

“He’s really impressive. Even with a weak teammate, he still won. That’s strong.”

Past the crowd, Peng Ji finally looked at Jiang Momo who at that moment had her head down and was no longer looking at him.

Peng Ji smiled.

Due to confidentiality rules, the recruitment exams never publicly released the process. Peng Ji had everything arranged in advance. Once the exam started, paid trolls would start hyping him up online as a star teacher.

[Total point results have been fully announced. If you have any objections, please raise them within 30 seconds.]

[Countdown: 30 seconds.]

…

[Countdown complete. Now announcing the exam rules. This exam will involve creating a B-grade mecha. During the exam, the school’s material library will be open for free selection. Wasted materials must be compensated for at full price after the exam.]

[The base time limit for the exam is ten days. Each point can be exchanged for five additional days, with a maximum exam time of 30 days. Early submissions are not allowed. Each participant can only exchange their points once, so please choose wisely.]

Once the rule was announced, reactions were mixed. Those who hadn’t earned any points in the previous two rounds immediately started wailing.

“There’s no way you can build a B-grade mecha in ten days! Why not just eliminate me directly?”

“Right now, even the Federation’s average time to make a B-grade mecha is 30 days. Doesn’t that mean only Peng Ji can pass this?”

Peng Ji, hearing his name mentioned again, revealed a smug smile.

In that room, there were no more competitors for him. He had already inquired about the other exam rooms and none had anyone impressive. The admission that year was practically in the bag.

Jiang Momo, squatting in the corner, quickly did some finger math after hearing the rules. She now had two points, which meant up to 20 days. Judging from how she previously assembled a mecha arm with three energy pathways in one day at the Jiang family’s household, creating a complete B-grade mecha with just one pathway should be more than doable.

In fact, she might even have time left over to show off a little in front of her new good friend, Professor Ge Qing.

She’d build a super B-grade mecha.

[Final results will be based on a comprehensive score: mecha completion rate, production time, performance, and material utilization.]

[The material library spans B1 to B7. Please go there on your own. No limit on the number of trips. Please minimize waste. Thank you for your cooperation.]

[The exam officially begins.]

The mechanical voice ended its announcement. The scene in the exam hall didn’t change at all. Everyone looked at each other.

“What’s going on? Aren’t we supposed to take the exam separately? We can’t even touch each other. What’s the point of this projection?”

“There’s no sound isolation either?”

“Maybe we’ll be split up after grabbing materials?”

While everyone was still discussing, Jiang Momo was the first to walk toward the elevator.

The doors closed, cutting off all sound.

She selected B1. The door quickly opened.

There were already a few people in the materials library, none of whom Jiang Momo recognized. She glanced back and the elevator doors hadn’t closed. Feeling something was wrong, she quickly moved aside.

The next second, a flood of people rushed out of the elevator like a mudslide, swarming into the materials library and knocking over several shelves.

Clattering noises rang out nonstop.

Jiang Momo stood far away in a corner and quietly began moving deeper into the materials library.

The way materials were arranged there was completely different from the Mecha Maintenance Center. There was no visible logic, just utter chaos.

One shelf might be crammed haphazardly with parts for every kind of mecha component.

Jiang Momo frowned.

Even when she was on the desolate planet digging through junk to build things, there was still a personal logic to her setup. No matter how messy, she could always find what she needed. But this?
This was a nightmare.

She took a deep breath.

Meanwhile, in the invigilator’s room, Ge Qing was observing Jiang Momo. Other teachers surrounded the two of them and the atmosphere among the invigilators was tense, with frequent exchanged looks.

So frequent, in fact, Ge Qing couldn’t ignore it even if he tried.

“If you have something to say, just say it,” Ge Qing said directly.

The lanky teacher jumped in, “Dean Ge, we heard Jiang Momo worked as a repair technician at your center?”

“Yes,” Ge Qing admitted casually. “Your sources are pretty quick.”

“You met with her during the exam. Isn’t that unfair to the other candidates?” the lanky teacher pressed.

“How is that unfair?” Ge Qing looked at him. “First off, I never revealed the test questions. And even if I did, do you think someone could learn to build a B-grade mecha in two days? Could you?”

“So you admit you leaked the questions?” the teacher shot back.

“You’re twisting my words. I said I didn’t.” Ge Qing gave him a side glance.

The other teachers clearly didn’t believe him.

“We saw her take a jacket.”

The lanky teacher added, “A thick one.”

“Really? I didn’t notice. It must’ve been a lucky guess,” Ge Qing said, a bit surprised. “Then let’s change the question.”

“Alright.” The lanky teacher smiled and pulled out a megaphone he had clearly prepared in advance.

Jiang Momo was craning her neck to look at the parts on a shelf when suddenly a sharp noise pierced her ears.

It started loud like a siren and then shifted to the sound of nails scraping metal, a sound sharp enough to make your scalp tingle and your gums itch. After a while, it abruptly changed to an explosion.

Jiang Momo had heightened senses, so the moment she heard it, she immediately covered her ears and squatted down.

Around her, curses broke out in waves.

“Scared the hell out of me! Why is this year’s exam so twisted? There’s not enough time and now this jump scare crap!”

“I was just about to figure out the first pathway and then this! How are we supposed to concentrate?”

“I’m losing it! It’s so noisy! When will it stop?!”

In the midst of all the swearing, Jiang Momo suddenly frowned and stood up, continuing to look at the materials she hadn’t finished checking.

“I can see again,” she mumbled.

Just like Ge Qing said last time, after her mental energy had been used up, she’d vaguely figured out a way to use it again. So she tested it and sure enough, she could now see the energy pathways again.

Learning from her past mistakes, she planned to check each item one by one this time.

“Jiang Momo’s endurance is incredible. From the looks of it, her senses are way stronger than the average person and she recovered so fast,” said the chubby teacher, adjusting his noise-canceling headphones.

“Her tolerance really is high,” Ge Qing calmly agreed. He recalled the surveillance clip the receptionist had sent him and how a drop of blood had been found during cleaning, prompting them to pull up the footage.

Even with her eyes in that condition, she’d still managed to find the remaining parts and assemble the mecha before leaving. With her stamina, she was born for this work.

Originally, the plan was to test the applicants’ ability to build mechas under environmental stress by lowering the temperature. But this method seemed pretty effective too.

The lanky teacher, hearing this, turned off the noise. As everyone let out a collective sigh of relief, a few moments later, he turned it back on again, sparking another round of swearing.

Among them all, only Jiang Momo remained motionless, as if completely unaffected. Her expression didn’t even twitch.

“That’s not normal! Does she have a hearing problem or something?” the lanky teacher exclaimed. “I request another test method!”

Ge Qing looked at him sideways. “Are you targeting Jiang Momo? Just because she’s someone I favor, you’re picking faults?”

“No, of course not.” The tall, thin teacher never imagined that calm, mild-mannered Ge Qing would suddenly say something like that in front of everyone. He panicked and quickly explained, “I just think her talent is so outstanding that I wanted to see where her limits lie. I absolutely didn’t mean to target her!”

“I believe you. You’re a good teacher,” Ge Qing patted his shoulder, his tone as calm as ever. “Come on, let’s go check on the next person.”

***

At that moment, Jiang Momo really couldn’t hear anything.

Back on the desolate planet, because there were many types of alien beasts, their sleep and active schedules were all different and they howled 24 hours a day. Jiang Momo, with her heightened senses and acute danger awareness, often had trouble sleeping.

Little Eight believed that sleep was crucial during growth, so using its AI abstract thinking, it made a small modification to Jiang Momo that allowed her to close her ear canals at will to block out external noise.

In simpler terms, she could shut her ears off herself.

Later, Jiang Momo asked Little Eight why it didn’t just build a soundproof room on the ship back then.

Little Eight’s exact words were because it wanted Jiang Momo to have a unique talent that no one else could possess.

Jiang Momo didn’t understand at the time what use the talent would be but now, not long after leaving the desolate planet, it was already proving useful.

‘Thanks, Little Eight,’ Jiang Momo muttered in her heart.

A complete B-grade mecha has its core in the cockpit, which consists of the front and rear sections. The front is the sensory control room while the rear contains the power and sensory hubs.

Only by determining the core can you find the starting point of the energy pathway and then decide on the materials for the limbs and head.

That was the conclusion Jiang Momo came to by observing where the other contestants were looking and recalling the B-grade mecha structure diagrams Little Eight had shown her before.

The mechas she assembled in the past were never so complicated. There was no need to think much, just pick up parts and build. Wherever you started, the result looked the same.

She had originally planned to do the same this time but seeing the other contestants all focus on the core materials made her realize the key point immediately.

By now, some people had already identified several core materials.

“Huh? No assistant robots? How do we move the materials?”

“Yeah, are we really expected to carry them one by one? That’s such a waste of time!”

Amid the complaints, the mechanical voice rang again, [Supplementary notice: Mecha construction tools and assistant robots can only be used inside the exam room. The materials library does not provide such equipment.]

“What?! We really have to carry them ourselves?!”

“We’re mecha manufacturers, not porters! It was fine last round when the materials were close. We just made a couple of trips. But this warehouse is huge, so how are we supposed to move everything?”

“Materials for D-grade mechas are way lighter! Do the invigilators even realize how heavy B-grade parts are?!”

“Nobody moves anything! Let’s see how the academy deals with this!”

Everyone was shouting.

Meanwhile, Jiang Momo, still with her ears shut, couldn’t hear a thing. After picking out the materials she needed, she slung them over her shoulder and walked out on her own.

The pile of materials was taller than she was but she seemed to carry them effortlessly and stepped into the elevator like it was nothing.

The entire room fell silent for ten seconds.

Not a sound was heard in the material storage room.

Only the sound of wood being sawed in the background continued to screech unpleasantly.

Jiang Momo brought the materials back to the exam room where a few other participants had already arrived.

They were squatting on the floor, making motions like they were carving energy pathways, but the area around them was empty, which looked a bit eerie.

You could see the people in the exam room but not the materials?

Jiang Momo thought for a moment, then casually dropped her materials on the floor, and began carving pathways with practiced movements.

While working, she quietly opened her ears again and noticed that the sharp noise was gone, so she resumed her hearing.

A mecha assistance robot assigned to her glided over and began organizing the materials she brought back.

Jiang Momo quickly drew a jagged-looking energy pathway.

Once finished, she didn’t even look at it and just moved the materials aside before the robot could reach out.

The robot paused for two seconds, then begrudgingly picked the materials back up, and began checking the pathways she had drawn.

***

Meanwhile, in the evaluation room…

“No matter how many times I see it, it’s still shocking. How does she know about multiple energy pathways so early on? And she draws them so fast!” The tall teacher was unwilling to accept it. “When I was her age, I didn’t even know what an energy pathway was.”

“You only learn how to build A-grade mechas after mastering B-grade ones. It’s the Federation’s way of protecting us,” the chubby teacher replied. “The failure rate for complex pathways is extremely high. Knowing about them too early spreads your focus and repeated failure can destroy a mecha manufacturer’s confidence.”

“Maybe.” The tall teacher crossed his arms, unconvinced.

In front of them, over a thousand screens displayed exam progress in each separate venue.

At that moment, aside from the two of them, the rest had already entered Jiang Momo’s exam room to observe her closely.

“Huh? She told the robot not to check and to start assembling right away? What does that mean? Is she really in that much of a rush?” One invigilator crouched beside Jiang Momo, puzzled. “It only takes a minute to check a pathway. If something breaks halfway, she’ll have to take everything apart. Isn’t that more time-consuming?”

“Her success rate with pathway carving last time was 100%,” another teacher said.

“But those were basic pathways! She’s too confident. Anyone can make mistakes. I’d wager even Dean Ge couldn’t maintain a perfect success rate with complex energy pathways.” The teacher turned to Ge Qing. “Dean Ge, can you do it?”

“I can,” said Ge Qing.