Chapter 190: The First

The 210th day after the document was released, Dongzhou City, Longyin Research Institute Eastern Branch Test Field.

Six-thirty in the morning, the sky was just bright, and there was already a long line outside the test field.

There were young people in delivery platform uniforms, construction workers with paint on their work clothes, fresh graduates, and even a few old engineers with gray hair.

Everyone was staring at the huge electronic screen at the entrance of the test field.

Golden characters scrolled on the screen:

"The First 'Longteng Cup' National Mech Competition—Finals Day"

A line of small text below: "Organizers: General Administration of Sport, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Science and Technology Department, Longyin Research Institute."

"Total prize money: 10 million yuan. Grand prize extra reward: Longyin Research Institute internship quota + one personalized mech."

Wang Hao, wearing a T-shirt sponsored by a sponsor, holding a microphone, had just stood on the temporarily built host stage.

His eyes immediately widened: "Damn... there are too many people here, right?!"

Standing next to him was Chen Guang, who looked expressionlessly at the data on the tablet in his hand:

"There were 870,000 registered participants in the national selection, 330,000 passed the initial screening, and after three rounds of online selection, these three hundred people who were carefully selected are standing here."

"Three hundred people fighting for one grand prize in the last round?" Wang Hao gasped. "This is harder than getting into Tsinghua."

"Not fighting for one," Chen Guang corrected.

"It's fighting for ten grand prizes and one hundred excellence awards, and the rest also have participation awards, after all, they were selected from hundreds of thousands of people."

"But everyone wants that internship quota; Longyin is only recruiting thirty fresh graduates this year, and one quota here is worth ten offers from big companies outside."

As they were talking, Feng Yan walked over.

He wasn't wearing a suit today, but casually wore a work jacket from the institute, and if you didn't look closely, you'd think he was an ordinary staff member.

"Brother Feng, why are you here too?" Wang Hao leaned over.

"Didn't you say there was a design review meeting for the 'Bi'an-Type 3' today?"

"Pushed it," Feng Yan looked at the crowd outside the field. "This is more important."

"It's just a competition..."

"This isn't just a competition," Feng Yan interrupted him.

"It's also a selection. 'Torch Dragon' has been monitoring national mech operation data, and there are quite a few folk experts who operate mechs in very special ways, not the routines we taught."

Li Yang also walked over from the side, holding a tablet: "Indeed."

"During the selection phase, there was a delivery rider who used a Class I exoskeleton to perform maneuvers that even the instructors of the 'Dragon Cavalry' guard were stunned by."

"They said that wasn't content from the standard operation manual at all, but 'wild paths' the rider figured out himself."

"'Wild paths' are precious," Feng Yan said.

"Our training system is too standardized, standardized to the point of limiting creativity."

"And these people who use mechs to work on the front lines every day, they are the ones who know best how to bring mechs to life."

At eight o'clock in the morning, the finals officially began.

Three hundred contestants were divided into thirty groups, ten people per group, competing in three rounds:

Round 1: Basic Control—Mech Obstacle Cross-Country.

Round 2: Precision Work—Mech Assembly Challenge.

Round 3: Collaborative Combat—Three-person Team Simulation Mission.

The venue was the largest comprehensive test field of the Longyin Eastern Branch, covering five hundred acres, simulating various environments such as cities, wilderness, and construction sites.

The mechs used in the competition were unified "Competitor-Type 1," competition-specific machines modified based on Class I exoskeletons, with all work modules removed.

Only mobility and response speed were strengthened, but the power was still limited to a safe range.

When the first group went up, the whole venue went quiet.

Ten silver-gray painted competition mechs lined up behind the starting line, and the contestants were all wearing unified sensor suits.

The judges were the "Torch Dragon" system plus three retired instructors from the "Dragon Cavalry" guard, ensuring absolute fairness in the competition.

"Competition start!"

Ten mechs rushed out simultaneously.

The obstacle cross-country route was designed very trickily:

First was a 100-meter straight sprint, then a sharp turn into the simulated street area, needing to bypass virtual "pedestrians" and "vehicles";

Then was the climbing area, a six-meter-high simulated building exterior wall, needing to use the mech's palm suction function to climb up;

Finally was the balance area, a "log bridge" only thirty centimeters wide, with a (virtual) ten-meter-deep pit underneath.

Most contestants followed the standard movements taught during training:

Maintain constant speed during straight sprints, decelerate in advance for turns, three-point fixation during climbing, and small slow steps when crossing the bridge.

But one contestant was different.

Serial number 047, data showed he was a warehouse manager for a logistics company, named Zhou Ming.

When he sprinted straight, the mech didn't accelerate steadily, but had an obvious "start burst" like a sprinter.

Later data analysis found that he deliberately tilted the mech's center of gravity forward at the moment of starting, using reaction force to gain extra initial speed.

When turning, others slowed down, but he not only didn't slow down, but performed a drift-like tail flick.

With the mech's left leg as the axis and the right leg sweeping across, he forcibly traced an arc on the ninety-degree turn, and the speed hardly decreased.

"Damn!" Wang Hao stood up directly on the commentary stage. "What kind of operation is this?!"

Chen Guang quickly pulled up the data: "This operation is theoretically feasible but the risk is extremely high."

"The center of gravity offset of the mech exceeded the safety threshold by fifteen percent. Once out of control, it would be a rollover. But he actually controlled it."

In the climbing area, Zhou Ming's operation was even wilder.

He didn't climb obediently like others, but treated the mech as a parkour tool:

Kicking off the wall for leverage, turning in the air, and even once jumping directly from one windowsill to another three meters away.

The audience erupted in cheers.

Finally, crossing the log bridge, others were cautious and inching forward, but Zhou Ming... just ran across.

The mech sprinted straight across the thirty-centimeter-wide bridge at twenty kilometers per hour, without falling off the whole way.

"Time: two minutes seventeen seconds," the big screen displayed the result. "Group first, refreshing the preliminary record."

The audience applauded thunderously.

Feng Yan was in the backstage monitoring room, staring at Zhou Ming's data stream, thoughtful.

"His operation mode... is completely treating the mech as an extension of his own body," Li Yang analyzed on the side.

"Look here, the center of gravity adjustment during the turn isn't relying on automatic balance by the algorithm, but he anticipated the mech's center of gravity change and made a reverse compensation in advance."

"What does this explain?" Feng Yan asked.

"It explains that he has reached the level of human-mech unity, a level higher than the operators we trained," Li Yang paused.

"It's no longer the mech assisting him, but him truly mastering the mech."

The first round ended, and half of the thirty groups of contestants were eliminated.

Zhou Ming's result ranked third on the overall list.

Ranked first was a female operator from a construction site, named Liu Fang, thirty-eight years old, who had been operating engineering mechs for over half a year.

She showed terrifying stability in the obstacle cross-country, with speed fluctuations not exceeding three percent throughout, as precise as a clock.

Round 2, Precision Work.

The venue changed to an indoor workshop.

Mission: use the mech's mechanical hand to assemble a small gasoline engine within ten minutes, over a hundred parts, including screws, gaskets, pistons, connecting rods...

This tested not strength, but precision.

Most contestants adopted the standard approach: classify parts first, then assemble in order, confirming step by step.

But there was a young contestant, serial number 112, a small worker at an auto repair shop, named Li Xiaolong (yes, that was his name).

His method was actually... blind assembly.

Not really closing his eyes, but not looking at the parts tray, relying entirely on the tactile sensors of the mech's palm to identify parts.

The mechanical hand grabbed something in the pile of parts, and the sensor instantly fed back the shape, weight, and material, so he knew what he had grabbed and where it should be installed.

So the audience saw a magical scene: Li Xiaolong's mech worked with both hands simultaneously, the left hand grabbing the piston, the right hand taking the connecting rod, installing them into the engine block at the same time.

The movements were dazzlingly fast, but every assembly was precisely in place.

"Was he a car mechanic before?" Wang Hao asked.

Chen Guang pulled up the data: "Worked in an auto repair shop for five years, specializing in engine repair."

"Last year, the shop bought a Class I exoskeleton for auxiliary transport, he mastered it in a month, and later even modified the mechanical hand sensor himself."

"Used vibration motors and gyroscopes dismantled from old mobile phones, the cost was less than fifty yuan."

"Fifty yuan?!" Wang Hao's eyes widened. "Our sensor module costs five thousand each!"

"So there are experts among the folk, didn't we also develop step by step from folk assembly?" Feng Yan said.

Li Xiaolong finally completed the assembly in six minutes and forty-three seconds, and the engine ignited successfully on the first try.

Overall ranking, he rushed to first place.

Zhou Ming second, Liu Fang third.

Next was the third round, Collaborative Combat. ===== CHAPTER 191 =====