Well, as long as I stay in the academy grounds, I will be safe.

Even Qi Fu Ren wouldn"t dare step into the academy grounds now that he had been officially recognized as a criminal. The academy was under the protection of Princ.i.p.al Xiao Zhang and dozens of teachers-masters. Even with three s.e.xagenaries of artificial qi, it would be utterly suicidal for him to barge into the academy.

That was why he was forced to escape in the first place when Teacher Jiao arrived.

Unfortunately, I was too naïve. While I continued my usual regime of training, purifying my innate qi and increasing my capacity for Heaven and Earth Absorption (which comprised of both drawing natural qi from the surroundings and stealing a bit of qi from my opponents), I dwelled under the illusion of safety without realizing it was going to be broken.

"As you are all second year students, this will be very important for you."

That illusion of safety was shattered one morning when Teacher Jiao stood at the front of the cla.s.sroom, his hands splayed over his desk as he studied us. It was homeroom, and Teacher Jiao was going through the administrative matters.

"It"s about three months into your second year now, and you"re about to enter the next semester soon. Your first year, which is basically your honeymoon period, is over. During that time, you had two large-scale practical cla.s.ses where the academy brought you all out to Sen Lin Forest to gain much-needed combat experience."

Several of my cla.s.smates nodded, but I sank into my chair and gulped. I had a bad feeling about this…

"From the second year onward, you will no longer be partic.i.p.ating in such large-scale practical cla.s.ses. Those resources and manpower will be reserved for the current batch of first year students instead. Since you have all obtained quite a bit of combat experience over the past year, you"re deemed ready for the real thing."

"Real thing?" Ban Zhang blurted out, bewildered. Teacher Jiao nodded.

"Middle school second year students onward are required to complete at least one academy mission every year. Don"t worry, I am announcing this early on purpose. You can prepare, train and cultivate until the ninth or tenth month if you need that long. As long as you complete the academy mission before the academic year is up, you will be considered as having pa.s.sed this major segment of your curriculum."

"What happens if we don"t complete the academy mission before the year is up?" Tu Zi Yi raised her hand and asked anxiously. Teacher Jiao shrugged.

"You lose your privileges as a Wu Ling Academy student and will get relegated to being a student in the normal stream…the dropouts, in other words. You will no longer have access to the academy"s martial arts resources."

A worried murmur swept through the cla.s.s and they all looked at each other nervously, wondering how we would be able to solve the dilemma.

"Eh…"

"Aren"t academy missions dangerous?"

"I don"t want to…"

"But I don"t want to drop into the normal stream either…"

Teacher Jiao allowed the chatter to go on for a while before clearing his throat and drawing our attention back to him.

"No matter what kind of academy mission it is, there will always be a risk of danger. Of course, the risk varies depending on the mission – the low-ranked missions will be less dangerous than the high-ranked missions, but obviously the rewards will also be lesser." He smiled as he placed his hands on his hips. "High risk, high reward. Low risk, low reward. No pain, no gain. You guys should be familiar with this concept by now."

"Yes~"

That much was obvious. The students nodded without argument.

However, that didn"t abate my concerns. I knew that academy missions involved sending us after criminals…such as Qi Fu Ren. Even though I had survived Sen Lin Forest and came away with a few benefits, I was aware that the world was a vast place. There were countless experts and strong people out there. Any stronger martial artist could easily wipe the floor with me, despite me learning Heaven and Earth Formula.

I had best improve my abilities and martial arts before I take on any mission…

To not do so otherwise would be a ma.s.sive mistake.

Teacher Jiao waited for the excitement to die down a little before he continued.

"To check what missions are available, check your tablet." He gestured toward the tablet on our desks. We also had a similar one in our dormitory rooms, so we could use that to access the Internet. "The missions will be uploaded into the academy website. I"ll send you the link and you can check that page out and choose an appropriate mission."

"Whoa!" Zhu Jiao blurted out suddenly when he clicked on the link that Teacher Jiao had sent us. "Reward is a thousand gold coins?!"

That was insane. One gold coin was equal to a hundred US dollars. A thousand gold coins would therefore mean a hundred thousand US dollars. While there was a lot of things we could do with such an enormous sum of money in my former timeline, we were required to spend such absurd amounts of money on upgrading ourselves. In other words, purchasing martial arts techniques or cultivation skills, spirit pills, armament or weapons.

Unfortunately, each of those things cost thousands of US dollars…or dozens of gold, sometimes hundreds. Apparently the higher your level, the more inflated the prices of these martial arts goods were. I wasn"t going to bother with most of them, especially since I had better things to spend my money on. Like a good weapon.

I wasn"t interested in doping and relying on drugs, nor did I need any more martial arts techniques or cultivation skills. My present priority was only to master Heaven and Earth Formula. Once I did that, I should be able to wring it.

The cla.s.s went on without issue, and after school, I stayed back a little to check out the various missions on the website.

Wu Ling Academy has really gone hi-tech, huh? I mused to myself as I browsed the webpage. To think they were putting up mission requests on electronic bulletin boards now. Then again, this was a modern world, and even martial artists had to catch up to contemporary technology. Why would they not use something so useful?

This was more realistic rather than having medieval stasis where worlds remained in the medieval or ancient periods for eternities. As proud as China was throughout its 4,000 years of history, it still had to face technological advancement and innovation. New things were being invented each year. It was impossible for it to remain in stasis and perpetuate the whole "civilizations that last for thousands of years without developing" trope that was so common in xianxia webnovels. Furthermore, it wasn"t just the Chinese xianxia webnovels but western fantasy stories too. Come on, don"t you think people would eventually develop guns, vehicles and electricity after thousands of years instead of their technological state remaining stagnant?

Moving on from rambling, I focused on the missions at hand. As I suspected, most of them were requests to hunt down criminals. There was one who requested that we track down and apprehend or kill a martial artist from the Xie Du Sect, who cultivated poison and was responsible for the ma.s.sacre of several villages. There was one asking for students to track down and arrest or slay the three Xiong Brothers, notorious robbers who had pillaged several villages to the north, stole a highly valuable martial arts technique, and raped several women. And there was another who requested students to hunt down yet another martial artist from the Zei Sha Sect, who was a murderer who brutally killed three martial artists and several civilians.

Scary…

I gulped as I read the descriptions of these missions. Was it just me, or was the crime rate in this timeline unusually high? There were literally hundreds of requests begging Wu Ling Academy students to hunt down and slay expert criminals who seemed pretty powerful. I also noted that this website was shared by the high school students, who no doubted had the same requirement. In fact, I wouldn"t be surprised if it was mandatory for them to take two or more academy missions per year. Even then, the sheer number of missions posted on this site was more than enough for the combined populations of the middle school and high school divisions.

"Oh, they also have the ranks here."

I raised an eyebrow when I saw how the academy missions were categorized. Similar to what Teacher Jiao told us earlier, the missions were divided into ranks. Instead of the usual E to S rank that was so often used in j.a.panese isekai or fantasy-adventure anime, the missions" difficulties were ranked according to stars.

Middle school students were only allowed to take one and two star missions, which made sense, given our young age and relative lack of experience. High school students and above (probably university students) had access to three stars and above, and the highest ranked mission was five stars. Which was the ones that provided the thousand gold reward that Zhu Jiao was ogling earlier. In contrast, one star missions provided a meager ten or so gold. Two star missions were a little better, raising the reward to fifty or so gold.

But the difference in difficulties was worlds apart. One star missions weren"t blatant enough to request that Wu Ling Academy students hunt down rogue martial artists and fight them. They usually consisted of hunting magical beasts or demonic creatures, usually a Dark Panther, or a pack of Silverback Wolves, or Demonic Boars that were plaguing a village. Enemies too insignificant for the Imperial Army and professional martial artists to take care of. Or perhaps a request to venture deep into the more dangerous parts of Sen Lin Forest to pick medicinal herbs and valuable plants. Or maybe hunting a magical beast like an Infant Tiger for its organs, which would be harvested by the alchemists to concoct potent spirit pills.

The two star missions did begin to request for the apprehension or slaying of criminals, but they were usually the "weaker" martial artists, those at Qi Essence Stage or whatever. I paid no attention to those. All these stages or realms or power levels were meaningless to me. The enemy was either stronger or weaker than me, and the gap in strength couldn"t possibly be quantified neatly into stages or levels.

However, I didn"t outright ignore or dismiss them either. Even if I didn"t believe in the quantification of strength, I could roughly use this as an estimate to judge whether the opponent was much stronger than me or slightly stronger than me. If it was the latter, then I would be able to make up for the slight gap in strength with tactics or something else. Otherwise, it would be too risky to challenge someone who was several times stronger than me.

"Hmm…well, it seems that I can just take the collecting herb missions and get this done and over with."

While the monetary rewards were extremely tempting, they weren"t exactly worth my life. And to be honest, I came from a timeline where I never had to kill anyone. Come to think of it, I don"t believe I had killed anyone here either. Not even Qi Fu Ren, despite me really, really wanting to. But now that I thought about it, the reason why I didn"t hold back against him was because I subconsciously knew he wouldn"t die from my attacks.

Well, let"s start slow.

There was no limit to the number of missions we could take. Theoretically, we could take a few hundred missions per year if we wanted, as long as it didn"t interfere with our cla.s.ses or with our training. Of course depending on the type of mission, we were allowed to take a few days off cla.s.s to hunt down a criminal.

On the other hand, such missions were dangerous, exhausting, time-consuming and risky, so n.o.body in their right mind would attempt to take a few hundred three or four star missions trying to hunt down every single rogue martial artist on the site. It was just physically and spiritually impossible. And we needed time to recuperate after each mission too.

Fortunately, missions such as collecting medicinal herbs and spiritual gra.s.s weren"t as time-consuming and deadly. While danger still existed in the form of magical beasts and demonic creatures roaming around the areas where such herbs were found (why do you think they request martial artists to gather the herbs instead of picking them themselves?), if one was smart and stealthy enough, they could avoid the worst conflicts.

Having survived two months in the deepest depths of Sen Lin Forest, I had experienced enough to build up adequate knowledge on how to navigate around and avoid these lethal predators, and defeat them if necessary.

"Hey…"

"Hmm?"

I realized that Zhu Jiao was calling out to me. Turning around, I bowed apologetically.

"Sorry, I was too engrossed in reading this. What"s up?"

"The missions?" Zhu Jiao peered over my shoulder and frowned. "Shouldn"t you wait until you"re a little stronger before you take them?"

I gave him a weird stare. "Why do I need to obtain more strength just to pick a few medicinal herbs in Sen Lin Forest?"

"Huh? Herbs? You"re seriously taking those one-star missions?" Zhu Jiao looked back in stupefied disbelief. "But they don"t pay very well."

I wasn"t sure if it was greed or efficiency or capitalism, but except me, the entire cla.s.s had unanimously decided to go for the "grow stronger then take the two-star missions to hunt down Qi Essence Stage criminals" route.

Certainly, completing those missions would earn them gold on the magnitude incomparable to the pitiful amount I would get from collecting herbs. Gathering medicinal herbs was only worth one gold. Hunting a Qi Essence Stage criminal would be fifty gold. To earn as much as my cla.s.smates, I would have to gather medicinal herbs fifty times. That honestly was not very efficient and took up a lot more time than spending a week or so required to hunt down the criminal.

By the way, we weren"t allowed to take two or more missions simultaneously. We could only take on a new mission if we finished our current one. So I couldn"t just go and gather fifty types of medicinal herbs and finish the fifty requests at one go.

In any case, people found it baffling that I chose the inefficient, cheapskate, time-consuming and less rewarding route. At least Zhu Jiao did, anyway.

"You sure about this?"

"It"s not as if we"re limited to just one mission per year. I just want to complete this for my obligatory mission for the year and not have to worry about it. Maybe later in the year, if I become strong enough, I"ll just take another mission and fight rogue martial artists. That"s not against the rules, and is probably encouraged."

Zhu Jiao made a face. "But you"re wasting quite a bit of time…time you can spend cultivating, you know? And when you"re outside, you"ll be exposing yourself to danger. Remember, Qi Fu Ren is still out there somewhere."

The teachers had failed to catch him after he escaped, after all. I nodded.

"I"ll take my chances, and then quickly return. Then I don"t have to worry about leaving the academy and running into him for the rest of the year."

"Oh, there is that…but you"ll only earn a gold for that, you know?"

"That"s fine." I scratched at the side of my head and chuckled. "I"m not that interested in money, anyway."

"It"s not the matter of being interested or not!" Zhu Jiao reprimanded me. "We all need the gold to purchase more resources! Otherwise we"ll be left behind!"

"Don"t worry," I a.s.sured him. "I"ll figure it out."

Zhu Jiao looked unconvinced, but he relented. Shaking his head, he sighed.

"Okay then. Good luck."

I waved at him, and then submitted an acceptance application online for one of the herbs-gathering mission. I received a mail informing me that my acceptance had been registered and I could begin right away.

Rising from my desk, I left the cla.s.sroom and headed toward the gate.

*

It was night by the time I returned. Relying on my past experience living in Sen Lin Forest for two months, I was able to avoid the deadly predators that slunk through the woods and reach the Blue Star Herbs without incident. Having also learned the best places where such herbs would grow, I stumbled upon a gold mine.

Harvesting a little bit more than the required amount, I planned to keep some for myself so that I could use them for alchemy experiments or something. I didn"t want to rely on doping, but Blue Star Herbs were also good for healing. They were also good for counteracting poison, but apparently my body had adapted to venom through the consumption of the h.e.l.lfire Badger almost a year ago, and me learning Heaven and Earth Formula.

"Where do I submit this?"

Hefting the heavy haversack that was chocked full of Blue Star Herbs, I glanced around the academy grounds. By now, evening had fallen and the campus was wreathed in a dull shadow. There were very little students around and even less activity.

If I recall correctly, I should be submitting loot, evidence or requested items to the main office in the central building…

Remembering that little detail from the webpage, I began heading in the direction of the aptly named central building that was located right smack in the middle of the academy. It was pretty easy to find, being the most visible building because of its sheer size.

However, before I could make it halfway there, a flurry of activity caught my attention. Several shapes flew over the academy walls and landed halfway in the courtyard. Turning around, I saw several seniors sprinting. There were about four of them, and one of them was carrying a young man whose face had turned black.

That"s…

I frowned when I noticed the strange pallor. Having read a lot of stuff in Wu Ling Library and also through my experience in Sen Lin Forest, I recognized the symptoms of poisoning. Worse, the darkness was spreading rapidly across whatever skin was visible.

"Isn"t that Senior Zhong Du? What happened to him?!"

"Whoa…he"s severely hurt!"

The few students who had lingered in the academy recognized the unconscious young man. They drew closer in concern or curiosity.

"Out of the way!" one of Zhong Du"s comrades bellowed. "He has been poisoned from someone from the Xie Du Sect! He suffered a hit from that b.a.s.t.a.r.d"s poison martial arts! If we don"t get him to the infirmary quickly, he"ll die!"

Realizing the gravity of the situation, the other students hastily stepped back and allowed the train to charge through.

"I hope Teacher Yi Liao will be able to heal him…"

"Come on, Teacher Yi is the best healer in Wu Ling Academy. There"s no way she won"t be able to heal Senior Zhong Du. As long as you"re not dead, she"ll restore you to one piece, no matter how seriously injured you are."

"Still…Senior Zhong Du is fairly lucky. Every year, many Wu Ling Academy students are slain by these demonic martial artists. To be able to return alive…he really is blessed."

"Ugh…don"t remind me. In another month, I also have to complete a mission. I hope it will go smoothly."

The students were shaking their heads and muttering bitterly to each other as they watched the ensemble rush toward the infirmary with Zhong Du in tow.

I felt a vein twitch in my temple. What was wrong with these idiots? If you were that scared of death, then just take the d.a.m.ned One Star missions and collect herbs? Why bother with chasing criminals and demonic martial artists?!

Apparently, my mindset differed because I came from a different timeline, but I understood later that those students who picked the herb-picking missions were considered cowards. They were viewed as lazy dudes who took the easy way out, who were too scared to fight against real, live opponents, and always chose to play it safe. They were mocked as errand students, and were looked down upon, particularly by the seniors.

Since I already had a One Star Const.i.tution to begin with, and was unable to receive artificial qi, my reputation was already rock-bottom. In the days to come, I would hear whispers like, "as expected of the One Star Const.i.tution trash, of course he would pick the easiest missions."

"Can you blame him? With no talent, and being unable to absorb artificial qi…this is his only way of completing the mission."

"How lame…why hasn"t he dropped out yet?"

"So thick-skinned. If I were him, I would have applied to drop into the normal stream, or leave the academy altogether."

I ignored them and went back to the cla.s.sroom.

"You all right?" Zhu Jiao asked, raising his head when I stepped inside. I smiled and waved at him, as optimistic as ever.

"Yeah."

"Fei Wu!"

I turned to see Tang Qi Hong rushing forward, her pretty face scrunched in anger and shock. I involuntarily took a step back.

"Is it true that you took a One Star mission to collect herbs?"

"Yeah?"

Tang Qi Hong groaned and clutched her face.

"Why? I mean…if you"re so desperate enough to fulfil the requirements, you could have approached me! We"re allowed to form teams to take academy missions together, and we will share all the credit and rewards!"

Oh, right. Teacher Jiao did mention that yesterday, but I didn"t pay much attention because it never occurred to me that I should try that out.

"Sorry. There was a bunch of herbs I wanted to collect anyway, so…"

Tang Qi Hong sighed. "I see. But next time, let me know. I"ll put you in my team." She raised her head and glanced at Lian Rou. "You"ve no problem, right, Lian Rou?"

"Of course not." she waved back from her seat. "Bring along Zhu Jiao, Tong Xue and Ban Zhang while you"re at it."

"Sure!"

"…I appreciate it," Zhu Jiao said with a smile. "But I"ve already arranged to go on another mission in a few months" time."

"I"ll be going with my fellow disciples from the Black Tortoise Sect. Sorry." Ban Zhang looked a little guilty.

"Heh, then it"s just the four of us!" Tong Xue grinned. He winked at Lian Rou, who giggled and shyly looked down with a slightly flushed face.

"Uh, okay. Let me know."

Tang Qi Hong sighed. "Don"t be an idiot. We still have nine months before the deadline. Use that time to prepare yourself and grow stronger. Don"t rush it, okay?"

"Yeah. Thank you."

I bowed my head gratefully and watched as Tang Qi Hong returned to her seat beside Lian Rou. She was such a great girl. Maybe one day I would ask her out.

But first, I needed to be a man worthy of her partner, because as I was right now, I would only bring her shame and embarra.s.sment.