The people in the hall watched the projection. It was obvious that no one had the time to appreciate this ballet on the knife’s edge. Duchess had maintained a tense, stern, expressionless face, but at this moment, her composure finally broke. Her clenched fingers dug deeply into the flesh of her palm.

The old monsters present had sweaty palms, and even their breathing grew heavy.

No one knew who it was that broke the deathly silence with a startled cry. On the recorder’s footage, the mech’s doom finally arrived—the main body of the mining facility dragged itself toward the red 9 mech. Like a dinosaur about to stomp on a person no taller than its toe!

No one dared to breathe.

The image shook violently. The mech pilot carrying the recorder was clearly highly skilled, and now, throwing caution to the wind, lunged toward the mech, seemingly trying to save it. But it was like a clay Bodhisattva crossing a river—unable to save itself. Just as the red 9 mech was about to be crushed to powder by the mining facility’s main body—

A black shadow. So suddenly, without warning, it darted out from the invisible depths of the storm.

No one had yet seen what the black shadow was, or who it belonged to. Like a bandit snatching a maiden, the shadow hoisted the red 9 mech over its shoulder, smashed the thruster on its back with a backward strike, then suddenly leapt forward, charging straight toward the dragging mining facility.

“Courting death!”

“Madman!”

These were the gasps of people in the room, finally able to breathe again.

Amid the violent shaking of the recorder, the black shadow that seemed to have “hijacked” the red 9 mech gradually revealed its true form.

Everyone present swore they had never seen such an “ugly” mech!

The main body was an irregular sphere, as if a discarded single-person landing pod had been refitted, covered in dents and patchwork marks. The mech’s arms were even more of a mess—exposed exoskeletal hydraulic structures, even the crankshafts were clearly visible, and the legs and feet looked like a hodgepodge of mismatched parts.

By comparison, the imperial red 9 mech clutched at its waist looked like a perfectly dressed, elegant noble, while the battered mech couldn’t even be called a shirtless, shabby bumpkin—it was already at the level of a cripple!

But what happened next left everyone dumbfounded.

This disgrace to mech fluid aesthetics, ugly in their eyes, charged into the floating mining ruins with the red 9 mech in tow. Sometimes it crawled like a spider, four legs bent in reverse joints, dodging flying steel rods, weaving through the skeletal remains of steel buildings in the mining ruins, evading the onslaught of metal cascades.

Sometimes it leapt left and right, took giant strides, ran, jumped, crouched, sprang up, dashed forward.

With the red 9 mech in its arms, it was like a crippled man dancing with a graceful lady in a torrential downpour.

A waltz in the storm.

Dancing in the storm, carrying another mech—how could it not get its feet wet? So this mech was often struck by the storm, sending sparks flying. It was even hit square in the chest by the wreck of a giant bus at high speed, immediately knocked to the ground, its chest caved in over a large area. For a moment, people thought the pilot inside must have perished.

But then it wobbled, got back up, and continued fleeing with the red 9 mech. Only then did everyone realize that this ugly mech wasn’t just misshapen. Its cockpit was actually crooked too!

As things went on, people gradually realized that this mech was not a case of “shabby outside, gold within.” It wasn’t more advanced than the imperial fourth-generation mech it carried, but it benefited from its knowledge of the terrain! When it needed to go prone, it did so without hesitation; when it found cover, it always managed to slip in at just the right moment. Its familiarity with the terrain and timing was the reason it could keep going in the storm while carrying another mech for so long.

And whenever it couldn’t avoid the metal turbulence, this mech always managed, at the most critical moment, to dodge the most lethal blows.

Until the recorder cut out. The last image was of the mech carrying the recorder suffering heavy damage, crashing to the ground, and then the battered, ugly mech carrying the red 9 dashing away—despite broken arms and crippled legs, it ran like the wind! Leaving everyone in the dust.

The lights came back on.

The room remained silent for a long time.

Duchess took a deep breath, suppressing the emotions she hadn’t been able to calm since just now. She looked around at everyone present and said, “What do you all think?”

“Unbelievable luck… incredible!”

An old man with a spectacular wall of medals on his chest spoke after a moment of silence. “I have no intention of judging this person’s mech skills, because some of the techniques I saw were even too raw in my opinion. Some mistakes not even academy rookies would make. However, I must say, for this… impressive mech to achieve what it did is truly rare. Did you see its ugly structure… Please forgive me for using the word ‘structure’ instead of ‘design’—these structures completely defy fluid dynamics, yet it could charge through the storm. Besides its mastery of the terrain… there’s one more thing that’s impressive: the extent of God’s favor upon him!”