44: Real battlefield, or virtual?

Lin Chen landed and immediately left at top speed.

No sooner had he left than the landing spot was enveloped by overwhelming gunfire, and even beneath the ground, powerful explosion shockwaves surged skyward.

Mechanical Star, a steel planet, a planet ruled by Mechanical Clan lifeforms.

Currently, Lin Chen was completely in the dark; apart from knowing that this planet was called Mechanical Star and that the Mechanical Clan lived on it, he knew nothing else.

As for establishing strongholds and counterattacking the Mechanical Clan, that was an even more difficult task.

Fighting in a foreign land was extremely challenging.

No matter what action Lin Chen took, he would encounter attacks from all directions; it could be said that the entire planet seemed to be resisting him, filled with intense malice towards him.

"This won't do. I must find others as soon as possible and unite to fight the enemy. If it's just me, the Mechanical Clan can wear me down to death."

Thinking this, Lin Chen quickly moved towards other areas where gunfire roared, attempting to rendezvous with others.

The Mechanical Clan would not sit idly by.

Hundreds of thousands of six-tier lifeforms of the same race descended from the sky. Originally, for the Mechanical Clan to kill a single six-tier lifeform, they had to deploy powerful weapons.

If the enemies descending from the sky (Human Race) were allowed to converge, the Mechanical Clan couldn't figure out how to eliminate these extremely powerful individual lifeforms.

Therefore, the Mechanical Clan dispatched a large number of ground combat units to frantically encircle and suppress isolated Wu exam candidates.

For the gathered candidates, they were temporarily left alone. Once the number of gathered candidates exceeded 10, strong destructive weapons would be used to annihilate them in one wave.

The Mechanical Clan had an upper limit of seven-tier destructive power, but this upper limit power was not abundant. Conventional weapons could only contend with four to five-tier lifeforms, while sub-peak weapons could contend with six-tier.

However, because the war came too suddenly, the Mechanical Clan had very few sub-peak weapons in reserve.

Furthermore, because flying out of the planet and colonization plans occupied a large amount of resources, even if they wanted to mass-produce sub-peak weapons now, it was like a clever housewife without rice for cooking.

Lin Chen broke through one encirclement after another, dodging one attack after another, and finally encountered someone else caught in the same encirclement.

"Classmate, are you also a Wu exam candidate?"

"Classmate, I am a Wu exam candidate from the Azure Dragon Starfield. How about you?"

The two communicated while fighting against the swarming Mechanical Clan combat units. Although it was their first meeting, their cooperation was quite tacit.

"I am also a Wu exam candidate, from Blue Star."

"Oh my, so it's a fellow from the ancestral land, my apologies, my apologies."

Lin Chen felt a bit uncomfortable; the other Wu exam candidate seemed to be mocking him, but he couldn't tell where the mockery was.

"Buddy, your tone makes me want to punch you."

"Sorry, it seems you don't frequent the Virtual Divine Realm Youth Forum and haven't debated there."

"… … …"

Lin Chen was slightly speechless. The two skipped this regional topic and began to exchange the information they had gathered.

The information they obtained at the beginning was the same; other information could only be collected by themselves.

Currently, Lin Chen had collected very little information. He used his spiritual power to penetrate the ground, confirming that from the surface of Mechanical Star to a depth of five kilometers, it was all steel constructs.

Numerous underground passages of different specifications connected, forming a complex labyrinth of passages. Countless mechanical constructs traveled through the passages, and various attack-oriented objects were continuously transported from underground to the surface.

Bai Wuyue, on the other hand, provided important information: when she landed, she encountered an attack that could destroy a six-tier martial artist. Such attacks were rare, but not nonexistent.

"Lin Chen, what do we do next?"

"Find more Wu exam candidates, team up to go underground, penetrate the enemy's lair, destroy the enemy's regeneration capability, and cut off their war capability."

"Then let's get to it."

Bai Wuyue was somewhat of a social butterfly and a chatterbox. She had only known Lin Chen for less than two minutes but was already very familiar, pestering Lin Chen with questions about Blue Star, completely ignoring their surroundings.

This was also due to their sufficient strength; even when facing attacks from the Mechanical Clan's sub-peak weapons, they were in no danger at all, moving through a hail of bullets as if on flat ground.

Across the entire Mechanical Star, only peak weapons capable of destroying seven-tier lifeforms posed any threat to them. As long as it wasn't fatal, neither of them was afraid.

Although Mechanical Star was very large, the movement speed of six-tier martial artists was not slow. As long as they weren't foolish, they would first seek out teammates and act in groups.

Of course, there were always lone wolves. Some lone wolves had already entered the underground passages, gotten lost in them, and encountered even fiercer attacks.

Half an hour later, Lin Chen followed the main group into a Human Race stronghold.

Lin Chen was not a leader type, so after joining a team, he automatically concealed himself, becoming an inconspicuous member.

Although called a Human Race stronghold, it was actually a temporary base created by destroying Mechanical Clan surface structures and then modified by Wu exam candidates with hands-on abilities.

The stronghold was just a foothold and didn't have much use. It didn't even have the function of sending assembly messages to Wu exam candidates in the surrounding area; its builders could only dispatch individual Wu exam candidates to recruit people.

Lin Chen joined the team with only one goal: to obtain intelligence information he didn't know.

In fact, he could have activated Spiritual Stealth, reducing his presence to only 28%.

At this level of presence, even with the Mechanical Clan's advanced technology and strong monitoring methods, only a few cutting-edge monitoring devices could detect him; other conventional monitoring methods were ineffective against him.

Upon entering the stronghold, Lin Chen did not find any familiar faces. In fact, he was the only Blue Star native in this stronghold; everyone else was either from the Three Realms or the Hundred Domains and Myriad Regions.

However, this did not hinder his objective of gathering information.

Human Race talents were strange and varied; there was always someone whose talent allowed them to acquire information unconditionally. And in this Human Race stronghold, there was one such Wu exam candidate with this talent.

This Wu exam candidate would directly publish every new piece of intelligence he obtained.

His goal was simple: to get assists.

If someone made a significant contribution in this war through his intelligence, he, as the intelligence provider, would also share in the credit, and his final Wu exam score would certainly not be low.

Everyone understood that this war was an examination.

Since it was an examination, there was naturally an evaluation standard.

Therefore, in this war, all actions effective for the war would be calculated as contributions, which would ultimately be converted into Wu exam scores.

So everyone was striving to contribute.

Providing intelligence, gathering teams, striking important enemy facilities, destroying important enemy production buildings, and even establishing strongholds belonging to the Human Race.

All these actions were contributing to winning this war; everything was for the purpose of completing the examination and achieving an ideal score.

Lin Chen had now collected the information he wanted.

Mechanical Star was entirely composed of various metals.

The Mechanical Clan born within it were consciousness-based beings.

The earliest Mechanical Clan evolved from ordinary metals; they were just ordinary metal blocks that gained consciousness. Later, with the passage of time, the metal bodies began to interlock, becoming more complex existences.

Generations of the Mechanical Clan continuously created new generations of Mechanical Clan, whose bodies were more advanced and whose consciousnesses grew larger.

However, limited by the environment of Mechanical Star, the Mechanical Clan found outward expansion very difficult, but not impossible.

Thus, the expanding Mechanical Clan happened to be discovered by the Human Race Expeditionary Force, and their information was marked and thoroughly investigated.

The Human Race and the Mechanical Clan had negotiated. The two could actually coexist and co-thrive; their required resources were not of the same type and could be completely complementary.

However, the Mechanical Clan was too rigid, somewhat similar to a purge protocol, believing that the world belonged to the Mechanical Clan originating from the world itself, and all other lifeforms were parasites of the world, parasites that consumed resources without producing them.

Therefore, the negotiations could not proceed.

The Human Race was not a benevolent entity. If you do not recognize my coexistence philosophy, then only destruction can be given to you, otherwise, if you are allowed to develop, you will inevitably go to war with the Human Race and cause some trouble for them.

Upon receiving this news, Lin Chen was somewhat skeptical of the current situation.

He suspected that he was not in the Virtual Divine Realm, but this possibility was not high.

The greatest possibility was that he was still in the Virtual Divine Realm, but in a distant starfield frontier, the projected bodies of their current batch of Wu exam candidates were on Mechanical Star, synchronizing their actions.

Using a real battlefield to assess this batch of Wu exam candidates was something the Federal Ministry of Education was perfectly capable of doing.

A real battlefield is filled with unexpected events; although there is a script, the process and outcome of the script are not immutable.

To achieve a desired outcome, the participating Wu exam candidates must strive and fight for that desired outcome.

Using 850,000 six-tier Wu exam candidates to attack a planet with a seven-tier combat power limit is not outrageous; on the contrary, too much force has been invested, after all, these are the Human Race's top talents of this generation, with considerable strength and intellect.

Since this war could be chosen as an examination question, it means that Mechanical Star must have a trump card, and this trump card might have the probability of annihilating 850,000 six-tier Wu exam candidates.

Lin Chen made a deep association; he suddenly realized that the time they had left was limited, and they had to defeat the Mechanical Clan as soon as possible.

Otherwise, once the Mechanical Clan realized their demise was a matter of time, the rational and cold Mechanical Clan would inevitably calculate and ultimately choose a mutual destruction approach.

Dragging the enemy down with them is the ultimate expression of consciousness that intelligent life can unleash when facing life-or-death danger.

Mutual destruction, dust to dust, ashes to ashes.

A double loss is better than a single win.