Lu Mingfei doesn't want to be a superhero

The 3E exam lasts for three hours, and because everyone enters a state of spiritual vision, there is no concept of "submitting the paper early." There are also surveillance cameras in the classroom, prohibiting students from reading or playing on their phones. It's really boring to keep waiting like this—especially since the girl who was dancing has stopped, and Lu Mingfei can't even watch the dance.

He had originally wanted to call Zero, the only one who was sober, to play Gomoku on his exam paper to pass the time, but he eventually gave up on this tempting idea—not because he was worried that it would be disrespectful to the exam, but because he was afraid that Zero would ask him again if he was a lolicon.

And so, Lu Mingfei waited idly for nearly half an hour. Finally, with a crisp ringing of a bell, the music from the speakers stopped abruptly, and Norma's voice came through: "The 3E exam is over."

Professor Mans then entered, followed closely by Nono, and then several school doctors wearing masks and white coats.

Professor Mans and Nono started collecting the papers quickly from both ends of the classroom, while the school doctors tried one by one to wake up the students who were still in a state of spiritual vision.

Those who weren't too affected had already snapped back to reality after the ringing of the bell and Norma's prompting. Students who were more deeply in a state of spiritual vision needed to be manually shaken awake, while those in more serious cases needed a wake-up injection—it's said that this injection can also quickly revive people who have been anesthetized by Frigga's bullets.

Lu Mingfei walked over and shook Su Xiaoqiang's shoulders, who was still "playing the violin": "Little fairy, wake up, the exam is over, little fairy..."

Su Xiaoqiang wasn't deeply affected. Lu Mingfei jolted her awake, and she opened her sleepy eyes as if she had just woken up. She seemed a little confused: "You... Lu Mingfei?"

"Oh no, little fairy, have you gone stupid?" Lu Mingfei complained.

"Weren't you just behind me? How did you suddenly appear next to me..." Su Xiaoqiang asked, confused.

"What's behind you? Can you still see me in your spiritual vision?" Lu Mingfei asked curiously as he stepped forward.

As Lu Mingfei moved closer, Su Xiaoqiang suddenly woke up, leaning back slightly: "Why are you so close!"

Lu Mingfei took a slight step back: "Little Heavenly Maiden, you can still see me in your spiritual vision?"

Su Xiaoqiang's cheeks flushed slightly—her spiritual vision only showed one image from beginning to end: she was standing in a magnificent concert hall, with Lu Mingfei standing behind her. The tall Lu Mingfei could easily reach out and hold her hands from behind, and she was nestled in his arms, being taught to play the violin "hand in hand" by him...

I'm going to die! Why is my vision showing scenes straight out of a romance novel? Could it be because I secretly read too many romance novels and read too many comics in the past?

Su Xiaoqiang, upon regaining consciousness, inwardly wailed.

"Little Heavenly Maiden, why aren't you saying anything? Do you still have me in your spiritual vision?" Lu Mingfei kept asking.

“Yes, I dreamt that the school held a marathon, and I left you several laps behind!” Su Xiaoqiang said.

"You're running and playing the violin at the same time, right?" Lu Mingfei teased.

However, he didn't press the matter further. Spiritual vision is similar to dreaming; all sorts of bizarre and fantastical scenes can occur. He'd heard of someone dreaming they were a mushroom and waking up to find themselves with a desk on their head.

There's a theory in the hybrid race academic community that "Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream" actually refers to Zhuangzi, a hybrid with a very high bloodline, who, in a state of deep spiritual vision, excavated the memories of ancient dragons from the dragon blood within his body, thereby learning many secrets of the dragon race. Later, because the amount of information received was too great, his consciousness wandered in the long dragon memories for too long, so that when he woke up, he couldn't tell whether he was still dreaming.

Because of this experience, he wrote about a giant creature called "Kunpeng" in "Free and Easy Wandering". This is actually a description of the magnificent scene in ancient times when the king of the ocean and water gave birth to a giant dragon body and broke through the sea to take off. He saw this scene in his spiritual vision and wrote it into the book.

Of course, this is merely a speculation by scholars of the Secret Party about this Eastern philosopher from two thousand years ago, and whether it is correct or not is difficult to determine.

In order to collect the exam papers as quickly as possible, Nono and Professor Mans collected them from both ends toward the middle. Lu Mingfei's seat was right in the middle of the classroom. When they were collecting the papers, Nono and Professor Mans met in front of Lu Mingfei's desk.

Blank paper?

Nuonuo frowned slightly, looked at Lu Mingfei not far away, and reminded him, "Lu Mingfei, did you accidentally lose your answer sheet somewhere?"

“No.” Lu Mingfei walked from Su Xiaoqiang to his seat. “My answer sheet is on the table.”

Nono winked at him: "Was there some accident that prevented you from answering the questions? If there's an accident, you can tell the school, and they can extend your exam time or reschedule the exam!"

"No," Lu Mingfei shook his head.

Nuonuo twitched the corners of her mouth, thinking to herself that she had already done more than enough. It was her own fault for not appreciating the opportunity, so she couldn't blame herself.

Professor Mans picked up Lu Mingfei's exam paper and looked at him with some surprise: "Why is it a blank paper?"

“I have no reaction to Long Wen,” Lu Mingfei said honestly.

Nono was somewhat surprised. Generally speaking, only hybrids whose bloodline is so weak that they cannot even reach the D-rank would be unable to generate spiritual vision even if they heard dragon script. This is not a good thing, because it means that they may not even be able to awaken the power of words.

"As expected of an S-rank, it can even ignore the influence of dragon runes," Professor Mans remarked.

Nono:......

Why don't you talk to the principal and ask him to take Lu Mingfei on as your student?

……

In the afternoon, at the Equipment Department's ground base.

The equipment department's base was originally underground. The part above ground was just a small decorative building with two elevators that could take you directly to the base, which was a hundred meters below the ground.

However, in order to welcome the students who wanted to participate in the war, the equipment department temporarily renovated the small building into a "registration office". Inside, there were two impressive counters, one black and one white, for the mature women party and the loli party respectively.

Director Akadula and Deputy Director Karl personally sat behind the counter to process the registration.

“Deputy Director, I’ve brought you a newborn with an A-grade bloodline.” Lu Mingfei walked behind the counter, and Zero followed closely behind him with almost the same pace.

"And she's a beautiful, legal loli too!" Lu Mingfei took a half step back, revealing Zero behind him, striking a pose as if to welcome a "celebrity to the stage."

Deputy Director Carl turned to look at them and nodded: "Oh, very good, this gives us another chance to win."

"Aren't you a lolicon? Why aren't you excited at all?" Lu Mingfei asked, puzzled.

“We don’t have a thing for real-life lolis, and neither does the mature woman cult next door,” Deputy Director Karl pointed to the long line in front of Director Akadula’s counter. “There are several girls in there with good figures and pretty faces. Do you think the director is interested?”

Lu Mingfei looked over and, sure enough, Director Akadula was in deep meditation, completely focused on processing the paperwork.

But then Lu Mingfei's gaze shifted, and he suddenly noticed something was wrong: "Damn! Isn't our line a little shorter than the one next door?"

“That’s right,” Deputy Director Karl nodded. “Because attracting supporters is a very important factor, we agreed with the mature women faction that, apart from not recruiting D-level personnel, there would be no restrictions on the number of people recruited, nor would we require the number to be the same. Moreover, we couldn’t offer more compensation. Recruiting more people was a skill in itself. But we didn’t expect…”

Deputy Director Karl slammed his fist on the counter: "I didn't expect the students to have such poor taste. So far, there are 221 people in the 'Mature Women' faction, while our 'Loli' faction only has 153. There's still one day left to register, and the gap will probably widen even further..."

"Why are there still so many people who like lolis? Why are there so many people who like lolis? I'm about to despair of this school full of loli lovers!" Lu Mingfei said with a look of regret.

Even though he himself is a lolicon, it's really not normal for a school to have so many lolicon members, isn't it? It's almost making you want to call the police!

“Actually, we had another secret weapon. If it could be completed smoothly, it could at least take on a hundred enemies,” said Deputy Director Karl. “Unfortunately, its research progress has been stalled for a long time, so it’s probably difficult to put it to use.”

"What is it?" Lu Mingfei asked curiously.

"Come, I'll show you around."

Deputy Director Karl had another researcher sit at the counter in his place, and led Lu Mingfei and Zero into the elevator, all the way down to the second to last floor of the underground base, stopping in front of a small metal door.

After verifying the deputy director's fingerprints and pupils, the metal door opened, and Karl led Lu Mingfei and Zero inside.

Lu Mingfei looked into the research room, his eyes widening: "Fingal! What are you doing here!"

Fingel, who was standing in front of a computer, turned to look at Lu Mingfei with a look of surprise and delight: "Junior brother, you're here!"

“Don’t we not accept D-level personnel? How did this thing sneak in?” Lu Mingfei pointed at Fingel and looked at Deputy Director Karl.

“Your words are hurtful. After all this time, junior brother, don’t you know I’m 'F-rank'? What does it have to do with me being an F-rank if you don’t accept D-ranks?” Fingel argued vehemently.

“There’s been a calculation error with the secret weapon I told you about,” Deputy Director Carl said. “This good-for-nothing dog has failed every year and repeated a grade, but he always gets full marks in math, so I’ll let him give it a try.”

"Isn't it a bit too hurtful for me to call myself a useless dog to my face?" Fingel said, dissatisfied.

"Don't forget, after we win, I'll help you pay off your credit card bill," Deputy Director Karl said casually.

Fingel: "Woof woof woof!"

Lu Mingfei covered his face, avoiding looking at Fingel, and looked up at the enormous steel structure in the center of the research room.

It was a vertical mech nearly four meters tall, roughly humanoid in shape, with a rounded shape because its body was the cockpit, and it was covered with heavy weapons.

"What is this?" Looking at this behemoth, Lu Mingfei thought of an old friend.

“This is our secret weapon, a rideable war robot. The specific name hasn’t been decided yet, but the project code name is X99,” Karl explained. “Because we can’t turn the battle into a modern war, both sides have agreed that there can be no wheeled or tracked weapons, which means there can be no armored vehicles or tanks.”

“But the X99 is different. It walks on its legs and can be deployed on the battlefield. We started developing it a long time ago, but unfortunately, humanoid combat weapons are too difficult to develop. The progress is stuck on the movement mode. If we don’t solve this problem, it will probably fall over.” Deputy Director Karl said helplessly.

“I can’t do anything about it either,” Fingel said, shrugging.

“Hmm…” Lu Mingfei narrowed his eyes slightly and said, “I might be able to give it a try, but I’ll have to modify its model and structure…”

"Will we make it in time?" Deputy Director Karl asked with some concern.

"Try it."

Lu Mingfei walked to the test bench, retrieved the X99 drawings, and began making modifications.

Deputy Director Carl and Fingel stood by and watched.

Fingel went from being thoughtful to looking completely bewildered.

Deputy Director Carl's mouth gradually opened wide.

"Done!" Three hours later, Lu Mingfei clapped his hands.

“This…this…” Deputy Director Karl stared wide-eyed at Lu Mingfei, “How did you do that!”

“One of my interests is machines. I’ve envisioned a combat robot before, but I lacked the necessary resources to build it. Now it’s a good opportunity to give it a try,” Lu Mingfei said.

"It's perfect! It's even more perfect than we originally envisioned!" Deputy Director Karl exclaimed. "Mingfei, have you given your idea a name?"

"Hmm..." Lu Mingfei pondered for a moment, "How about we call it Iron Monarch?"

190. Chapter 189 Star Antimony, Gaotingen Family

Inside the research room of the Equipment Department's underground base.

Lu Mingfei and Deputy Director Karl stood next to the iron lump that had been named "Iron King".

"We're only a few days away from freedom. Is it too late to make changes now?" Lu Mingfei reached out and tapped Iron Monarch's body.

“Don’t underestimate the industrial capabilities of the Equipment Department!” Deputy Director Karl said confidently. “If necessary, we can operate at full capacity and build a fighter jet within ten days without any problem! Besides, your modification plan for the Iron Monger is quite simple. If nothing unexpected happens, the modification can be completed before noon tomorrow.”

Lu Mingfei nodded.

After Obadiah's Iron Monger was destroyed, Tony retrieved the machine. Most of the Iron Monger's technology was copied from his Mark I armor. Of course, he himself looked down on such a bulky and crude machine. The retrieval was only to prevent people with ulterior motives from obtaining the technology inside the Iron Monger.

But later, after Lu Mingfei started learning from Tony, the Iron Monger had a new purpose—Tony had Jarvis scan the Iron Monger's blueprints and then gave them to Lu Mingfei to use as teaching material.

Learning from blueprints is not difficult in itself; any qualified professional can assemble something according to the blueprints. The real difficulty lies in understanding all the principles behind the blueprints. Just because someone can assemble a machine according to the blueprints does not mean that they are capable of applying the technology in the blueprints to other areas.

Tony clearly didn't want to train a Lu Mingfei who could only look at blueprints; he wanted to train a "super genius" who, like him, could come up with dozens of improved versions of something just by looking at its blueprints.

At first, Tony used the blueprints of the Iron Man suit as teaching materials, but even with his Mirror Eyes activated, Lu Mingfei was still a bit confused. So later, Tony changed the teaching materials to the blueprints of the Iron Monger. Compared to the Iron Man suit, which was extremely complex and like cutting-edge technology, the blueprints of the Iron Monger were much simpler and more suitable for Lu Mingfei, who was still a rookie at the time.

Because of this, Lu Mingfei is very familiar with the structure and principles of the Iron Monarch, and can even easily modify some of its internal structures and transplant them onto this X99. That's why he calls this big guy the "Iron Monarch".

Of course, this thing is still not as good as Obadiah's Iron Monger.

Putting aside everything else, it has absolutely no flight capability; it can't even jump. Judging from the blueprints, as long as it has a microreactor for power, Obadiah's Iron Monger could probably fly to an altitude of 10,000 meters, although it would most likely eventually stop operating at low temperatures due to a lack of antifreeze measures.

In addition, Lu Mingfei deliberately controlled the vehicle's flexibility, speed, and power output to prevent it from reaching the level of the Iron Monger.