Chapter 71: Not Bad

Chapter 71: Not Bad

Chen Feng followed the instruction and selected the flat farmland terrain.

The view inside his transparent visor swirled. First, a hazy glow enveloped everything, briefly taking away his sight.

Then the light faded, and the scene “outside” the visor changed into a vast, endless stretch of farmland.

Rows of green rice seedlings stretched from his feet into the distance.

Sometimes sparrows flew up from the rice paddies, sometimes insects flitted through the fields, and from the ditches in the middle of the ridges, frogs croaked now and then.

Through the Simulator Armor’s sensors, Chen Feng felt the soft ground beneath his feet. He slowly controlled his body to crouch down and looked at the rice seedlings.

He was shocked.

It wasn’t because of how realistic the outside scene was.

After all, he had played plenty of those unspeakable holographic games before when he came here before. He was mentally prepared for the display technology of this holographic helmet, which far exceeded the resolution limit of the human eye.

Anyway, it could all pass for real, making it hard to tell reality from illusion.

But the texture of this rice paddy was much stronger than in ordinary games. It really felt like a movie, not a game.

Outside, Ding Hu chuckled and quietly complained to Professor Ouyang, “I bet five hundred credit points, his first step will definitely be a fall. He doesn’t even bother to adapt properly and is looking at rice instead.”

Professor Ouyang smiled proudly. “Well, it’s only because the scene simulation I made is too real.”

Ding Hu promptly flattered, “Isn’t it because you completed the most workload when participating in making the scene simulations that our base gets twice the simulators? You’ve worked hard, Professor Ouyang.”

“It’s nothing, a small matter.”

Right then, Chen Feng inside spoke up. “Who made this scene simulation? This really lacks common sense. That’s how you grow wheat in ridged fields, with the middle raised and small ditches. Rice needs paddy fields, okay? All the rice plants should be on the same flat plane.”

“Also, since the rice is still green, it means the season is summer. The water is drained only after summer, into autumn, when it’s time to harvest the rice. Also, the environmental monitor shows this whole huge expanse of rice paddies is all connected. There aren’t even any drainage outlets reserved?”

Professor Ouyang’s slightly proud smile from a second ago froze on his face. He was really embarrassed.

Yes, this was what shocked Chen Feng.

His feeling was off.

A game, no matter how realistic the graphics, will feel wrong if it goes against common sense.

Like if the sun in the sky was square, could you get into that game?

Professor Ouyang was unintentionally mocked by Chen Feng until his face turned red. He had lived most of his life, learned countless things, but had never actually seen what a rice paddy really looked like. No one had raised this issue before.

Just then, Chen Feng in the scene moved.

He abruptly lifted his leg and took a step forward.

Something unexpected happened. He did not fall over as Ding Hu had anticipated due to the soft, yielding feel of the soil underfoot.

They saw him skillfully controlling the leg structure of the Simulator Armor with a slight tremor, steadying himself.

Chen Feng sighed with admiration. “This simulator is amazing. This soft, giving sensation underfoot is simulated through force feedback from the mechanical arms, right? Amazing, amazing. It’s just like when I was a kid… uh…”

He wanted to say it felt exactly the same as when he was chased after stealing fruit and had to run for his life through the wheat fields in the countryside. But he suddenly remembered this was a thousand years later—who knew if there were even country folk in this world anymore—and quickly shut his mouth.

Then he silently took two more steps forward.

Although inside the square simulator, both he himself and the Simulator Armor were suspended, his movements, combined with the visual effect of plants receding on both sides in the visor and the force feedback from underfoot, were truly no different from the experience of real walking.

Ding Hu was dumbfounded. “How can he walk so steadily? He didn’t even stumble once?”

In the room at the base where the new recruits were, they could see two holographic projections.

One showed Chen Feng himself wearing the Simulator Armor. The other showed a silvery-white metal armor steadily advancing in the vast “rice paddy.”

How could Ding Hu know? Chen Feng used to pilot old-style mechas whose control difficulty was N times greater than the Azure Dragon Armor, and he was very proficient at it. Now, switching to the better-coordinated Azure Dragon Armor, in farmland he had run through as a child, how could he possibly trip on flat ground right out the gate?

The Azure Dragon Armor exerted more pressure on the pilot’s body, but right now he wasn’t attempting extreme maneuvers. He was as steady as an old dog.

Next, Chen Feng began performing various basic movements.

Crouching, jumping…

Bending over, starting to run!

Ding Hu’s eyes widened, and his mouth fell open.

“Goodness, I was actually bragging earlier. Back then, it took me ten days just to stand steady, a month to walk, and three months to learn to run and jump. How can this guy be so skilled?”

Professor Ouyang thought for a moment. “This is probably the talent of one hundred percent adaptability.”

Ding Hu swallowed. “Yes, he’s a genius.”

If Chen Feng inside could hear their conversation, he might shed two lines of moved tears.

Living next to Zhong Lei, he spent his days being someone’s enlightenment teacher while, at the same time, feeling inferior, thinking his talent was just average, ordinary.

Now, finally, someone called him a genius.

Although this talent point could only be used a thousand years later in a certain timeline, still, he was a genius now.

But Chen Feng soon fell back to earth.

Making movements at the intensity of an ordinary person running was easy. But when he tried to command the Azure Dragon Armor to cooperate with his own actions and perform maneuvers beyond human limits, he suddenly lost his balance and thudded to the ground.

To create a sufficiently strong sense of realism, several mechanical arms curled into arcs, simulating the feel of mud, and smeared it onto his helmet visor.

But Ding Hu didn’t feel like laughing at Chen Feng in his heart.

Back then, he dared to attempt super-limit maneuvers only after practicing for a full three months, and he fell much more miserably than Chen Feng.

Now Chen Feng also learned to be more careful. He no longer set the super-limit ratio so high, but increased it slowly by 5%.

Getting familiar bit by bit, adapting little by little.

Fifteen minutes later, he adapted to a 10% super-limit ratio.

Summarized in terms of the hundred-meter sprint, that meant he could, with the support of the Azure Dragon Armor, run a hundred meters in just over eight seconds.

The ultimate speed at which the Azure Dragon Armor assists human running is starting from zero, performing uniformly accelerated linear motion at 20G acceleration, requiring less than one second to run a hundred meters.

But that requires injecting serum and wearing the real Azure Dragon Armor to withstand that intensity of acceleration.

Slowing down works the same way.

Of course, the Azure Dragon Armor’s ultimate speed is far more than that, but that involves flying off the ground, and it’s gradually increased to the ultimate speed. After stabilizing, it’s uniform linear motion, unrelated to acceleration. In close combat, you can’t just keep flying forward—that’s called running away, not maneuvering.

In scientists’ arguments, assuming an Azure Dragon Armor pilot needs close-quarters combat with an imaginary enemy, needing constant warp jumps and direction changes in a confined space, continuously accelerating and decelerating, it would place an enormous load on the human body.

About three hours later, Chen Feng stepped down from the Simulator.

His steps were a bit unsteady, and his body swayed.

Ding Hu quickly supported him.

“Brother Hu, how was my performance?”

Chen Feng asked with a smile.

Ding Hu, who was supporting him, curled his lip. “Not bad.”

“Only ‘not bad’ again?”

“Of course. Right now, your zero-start hundred-meter run still takes over six seconds. That’s terribly weak. You do the math. This is just a simulator. With a maximum acceleration of 5G, what should the time be?”

Chen Feng asked, “A little over two seconds?”

“See? You haven’t even pushed the simulator’s limits, so of course it’s just ‘not bad’.”

“Oh, I see.”

Watching the backs of these two walking away side by side, Professor Ouyang was filled with deep emotion.

Running within seven seconds on the first day on the machine—Chen Feng was truly a monster.

Professor Ouyang knew that Ding Hu, like himself, had subconsciously raised their expectations for Chen Feng even higher.