Fang Fei was completely stunned, and after a long while, she stammered, "Gu Ya, if you practice each basic movement fifty thousand times, you'll have reincarnated several times over!"
Gu Ya said calmly, "I have my ways. I can finish it in three months."
"Three, three months?! Fifty thousand repetitions for each of the 384 basic mech operation movements! Did I hear that right?" Fang Fei's eyes widened in disbelief.
Gu Ya gave her a sideways glance and offered no further explanation, quickly ducking into his mech and leaving the training ground.
Fang Fei chased after him, yelling, "Hey! Where are you going? Teach me how to do fifty thousand repetitions in three months! No! 384 times fifty thousand repetitions!"
Time was of the essence, and Gu Ya could not afford any distractions.
"First, I'll find Dou Mei and try to learn three months of theoretical knowledge in one night."
The surge of excitement within Gu Ya rose again. The feeling of chasing a goal was exhilarating, as if it had activated some kind of switch in his body, filling him with vigor!
In less than twenty minutes, Gu Ya found Dou Mei in her office.
The two of them took off their jackets, rolled up their sleeves, and began their battle for the night.
Though Dou Mei usually had a thousand faces, was alluring and seductive, and never spoke formally,
when she got serious, she was in no way inferior to Gu Ya's full mental concentration.
Gu Ya also focused all his energy, blocking out all external interference, and listened intently to Dou Mei's explanations.
"Start directly with what we need to learn tomorrow," Dou Mei said quickly and clearly.
For each knowledge point, Gu Ya spent a few seconds storing it in his [Star Structure Blueprint] for repeated simulation training later.
They battled on until dawn without a break, finally finishing all the lectures, leaving Dou Mei with a dry throat and a hoarse voice.
Gu Ya took out a special throat-soothing medicine from the system store and handed it to her, instructing her to take it on time.
As they parted, Dou Mei asked, "What are your plans?"
"Go outside the city and find a secluded place for closed-door cultivation," Gu Ya replied calmly.
Dou Mei leaned back in her chair, her eyelids heavy, and asked weakly, "What about food and water?"
Gu Ya suddenly realized. He had been so focused on training that he hadn't solved the problem of eating and drinking! In the entire Xianxia Kingdom, apart from the 24 cities, the rest of the land was barren Gobi Desert.
He was supposed to procure three months' worth of food and water that morning and transport it in containers. As long as the containers were stored in the [Void Package], the system would automatically consider them as items from reality.
However, procuring three months' of food would indeed take some effort, and his training time was already tight.
Dou Mei, with half-closed eyes, smiled tiredly, "I'll arrange for someone to send it to you..."
Gu Ya blinked. This was a good idea; he wouldn't have to worry about it himself.
Dou Mei nudged Gu Ya and said with a smile, "Hurry up and go. Don't be shy. As long as you think of Xianxia and eradicate the Black Star, we'll always be comrades on the same front. Helping you is helping Xianxia."
Gu Ya nodded solemnly at Dou Mei and turned to leave quickly.
Dou Mei watched Gu Ya's receding figure and smiled dreamily, "This silly boy... With what you said that day, I'm completely satisfied."
Flying out of Xianxia City in his assembled mech, Gu Ya found an ideal training spot in a barren mountain hundreds of kilometers away.
After sending the address to Dou Mei, Gu Ya shut off all communication signals.
Since it was the God of War selection competition, the most formal mech battle in the country, he had to use a dedicated mech.
His current mech, "Youyin," was already the most advanced in the world, significantly ahead of the domestic mech repair level.
If he brought it out, mech pilots who didn't understand mech repair wouldn't notice anything unusual, but the mech repair masters would immediately spot something amiss.
This would surely cause trouble, with the mech repair masters clamoring to ask Gu Ya where he got the mech.
He had to be low-key!
It was time to switch to a dedicated mech that matched Xianxia's current mech repair level but wasn't too technologically advanced.
Gu Ya searched patiently in the system store, still worried about buying spare parts from the future.
"The external armor can be a bit ordinary, as it's just for show and deception. The internal structure and components must be the best."
"Decision made, that's how it'll be..."
Thirty minutes later, a grey-blue mech appeared before Gu Ya.
Seventeen meters tall, with robust upper limbs and an inverted triangle torso, it appeared exceptionally magnificent.
Four beam swords were sheathed in the leg armor, with the hilts exposed for easy gripping.
The overall appearance retained Youyin's low-key style,
while strengthening the armor at weak points, such as the neck armor and thruster materials, to make it more durable.
The main thruster on the back and the auxiliary thrusters on the limbs, similar to the Nightingale mech, could rotate freely within 90°,
while the shoulder, arm, and knee armor, inspired by ancient mechs' blade designs, could eject beam shoulder blades, beam arm swords, and beam knee blades.
The head armor was no longer a simple round head like Youyin's, but had some unique aesthetic elements added, making it more visually appealing.
"Hmm~ Not bad, this is indeed Nightingale's sister mech~ Hehe!"
"What should I name it? Since it's a sister mech... Nightingale... Night Blade? No, too common. Demon Blade Thousand Blades? No, that requires royalties..."
"Then I'll call it 'Moon Nightingale'... Who cares if it's common, as long as it's useful!"
Gu Ya quickly slipped into the cockpit and, after a series of operations, successfully started the mech.
Touching the control stick, Gu Ya recalled Ye Ying's pure and lovely face one last time.
With a woman in his heart, his blade naturally becomes divine. To complete his arduous closed-door training within three months, Gu Ya had to be single-minded.
"I won't think of you for these three months, Ye Ying. Wait for me to finish my training..."
As the words fell,
Gu Ya closed his eyes, quietly concentrating all his mental energy. After a long while, when he opened his eyes again, his gaze was incredibly clear and shone like the moon.
All worries were discarded at the furthest edge of his consciousness.
Now, his mind was pure white, devoid of any distracting thoughts, with only one idea in his head: Training!
Gu Ya slowly gripped the control stick and executed the first mech movement.
To practice all 384 basic mech movements fifty thousand times within three months, simply training blindly wouldn't work.
Gu Ya had only suddenly remembered it last night, after the Xianxia God of War had left,
that he possessed a mech pilot skill that was an absolute cheat but rarely used: [Preemptive Piloting].
This was the first skill Gu Ya had automatically learned after his transmigration.
[Preemptive Piloting] not only allowed Gu Ya to pilot a new mech as soon as he encountered it but also helped him simulate all the movements of that mech.
Moreover, each movement only took 0.8 seconds to go through his mind.
And that wasn't all of his usable abilities!
After Gu Ya was upgraded to an elite-level mech mechanic, his [Active Mind] could accelerate his thinking to 130 times normal within 2.1 seconds.
And the cooldown for Active Mind was 3.3 minutes.
Completing fifty thousand repetitions of each movement within three months was entirely feasible!
But Gu Ya wasn't just relying on [Preemptive Piloting]. After all, it was a mental simulation and couldn't achieve true muscle memory.
Moreover, thinking consumed brain cells, and using too many skills would overload his brain.
Therefore, Gu Ya decided to perform one hundred actual training sessions after every one thousand mental simulations, complementing each other and balancing rest and work.
Gu Ya estimated that this entire process would make fifty thousand repetitions equivalent to about ten thousand actual operations.
As Gu Ya went through simulations and actual training sessions repeatedly,
his operating speed became increasingly swift and precise.
The first night arrived, and he had completed his first movement training.
Gu Ya's arms were sore, and his fingers trembled slightly. While [Pain Numbness] helped him block out pain, it couldn't alleviate muscle fatigue.
"Not enough..." Gu Ya's gaze was firm and pure, and he said in a low voice, "I need to complete at least 4.5 movements every day to finish all the training within the three-month deadline and have time to participate in the God of War selection competition and the mid-term assessment..."
Gu Ya took out joint soothing special medicine from the system store, chewed it down, and swallowed it. He couldn't taste the bitterness of the medicine at all; at this moment, he had only one thought in his mind: Training.
"Again!"
The dawn of the second day broke over the land,
and in this hidden mountain hollow, the "clack-clack-clack" sounds of the mech executing movements echoed.
Gu Ya had stayed up all night, driven by his goal.
Full mental concentration could block out all distractions and senses, allowing for endless training, but it couldn't prevent his physical condition from deteriorating.
When the sun was directly south, Gu Ya was so exhausted that he couldn't think and had unconsciously fallen asleep.
When he woke up again, it was already seven in the evening.
"Damn it!" Gu Ya jolted up, gasping for breath, filled with immediate regret, "How could I be lazy... No, training endlessly like this will eventually break down my body."
"I must create a training plan and regulate my lifestyle. Meals, rest, and training, none can be missed!"
"Alright, I'll take three seconds to make a plan!"
Three months seemed like a long time, but in Gu Ya's mind, it felt like cramming a completely new subject before the college entrance examination; every second counted!
"From now on, rest time will be adjusted to midnight to 5 AM. I'll use [Active Mind] to quickly enter deep sleep."
"I'll only eat twice a day, with each meal lasting five minutes, including eating and drinking. The intake for each meal will be kept at the minimum level to sustain my body."
"Uh... A person has urgent needs. I need to adjust my biological clock and concentrate on clearing internal impurities after meals and before sleep."
"It's 7 PM now. I'll train for another 5 hours before sleeping. Everything is difficult at the beginning. The first day will be like this, and tomorrow, we'll start officially!"