Evolution - Chapter 52
Chapter 52
Within a three-kilometer radius, the light dots of point items automatically appear on a candidate's wristband. To circumvent this three-kilometer curse that revealed one's position, Ji Changqing chose a steep cliff face and used a lightness skill to land directly in a small stone cave at least five kilometers above the ground.
The small cave was less than two meters deep, and less than a meter in both width and height. To call it a cave was a bit of an overstatement; it seemed to have been formed by weathering. A massive rock that was once whole had suddenly split, but the fractured piece hadn't fallen away, resembling an opened clamshell. The broken-off rock now slanted over the hollow it had left behind, conveniently concealing it.
This area of the planet was one of the Fourth Military's training bases and was occasionally used for entrance exams. There were always discerning people like Ji Changqing who would choose this auspicious spot.
Thanks to the efforts of past Fourth Military alumni, the hollow had been continuously deepened, eventually becoming a magical place spacious enough for one person to lie down comfortably, or for two to squeeze in if they didn't mind being cramped, helping everyone successfully lie low.
Though the cave was small, Ji Changqing still inspected it carefully. She then gazed out from her high vantage point to check for any activity in the surroundings. After confirming it was safe, she sprinkled a circle of insect repellent along the entrance, took out a blanket, wrapped herself into a ball, and fell into a deep sleep.
When she awoke, she checked her light-brain; it was just past four in the morning. Ji Changqing glanced at the score rankings and felt a slight pang in her heart. Gu Changge had been right—her rank was low, outside the top 300,000.
Information asymmetry, insufficient intel… she could only fumble forward like an idiot.
Fine, him it is. Time to team up.
The sky was still pitch-black at four in the morning. With Ji Changqing's eyesight, she could vaguely make out objects within a three-meter radius. She leaped down from the cliff and returned a short while later with a pile of dry firewood. She lit a fire at the cave entrance and began to roast some meat.
During the roasting, she added some of the spices Gu Changge had shared with her yesterday.
Less than an hour later, Gu Changge arrived, drawn by the aroma. He was in high spirits and looked to be in an excellent mood.
He looked up from the base of the cliff and called out, "Morning, teammate!"
Ji Changqing raised an eyebrow. "Come on up for breakfast, teammate!"
Gu Changge laughed heartily. He held his breath, gathered his energy, and with a few leaps, landed steadily at the cave's entrance.
"Hmm, not a bad spot," he said, looking around. His gaze fell on the dry firewood scattered to one side. It seemed this brand-new teammate of his had more cards up her sleeve than he'd thought.
For a specially trained military academy student, climbing such a high cliff wasn't difficult, but it wasn't exactly easy either. To casually carry a large bundle of firewood up here suggested her lightness skill was quite accomplished.
The Alliance had countless cultivation techniques, but not everyone could afford to acquire them.
Even if one could, relying solely on self-cultivation—integrating, repeatedly refining, and modifying a technique to suit oneself—was a long and arduous process.
Thus, a suitable cultivation technique was as rare as finding a renowned master.
After all, the basic Physique techniques, which were most suitable for the ABO constitution, were derived from the body-tempering arts of the cultivation world and integrated with the internal energy circulation of the martial arts world. It had taken hundreds of the Alliance's high-level masters several decades of collaborative effort to finally revise and perfect them.
Considering Ji Changqing was from Blue Star, she was truly a 'God of Luck'! Completely different from unlucky folks like them!
Gu Changge couldn't help but reach out with both hands, tightly gripping a stunned Ji Changqing, who was fighting the urge to send him flying. "God of Luck, please let me rub off some of your good fortune!"
Ji Changqing followed her heart and swatted him away. "Get lost! When it comes to the luck of being born, you're the real God of Luck."
She wasn't stupid; she could naturally guess that Gu Changge came from a good background. It was normal for a candidate born and raised in the Alliance to know more than her, but to know so much, with such depth and insight, was impossible for an ordinary candidate.
But what did that have to do with her?
Gu Changge also skipped over the topic, grinning as he took out his treasured pot. "Come, come, my beef soup! It's not as good as bone broth, but it's not bad!"
He then produced neatly tied bundles of wild vegetables. "These are all edible and taste great. We can blanch them. Eating just meat is too heavy."
"Did you go pick these in the dark last night?" Ji Changqing first poured herself a cup of soup. Yes, that's right, she was that kind of no-frills girl, drinking water from a cup and soup from a cup too.
Gu Changge was quite smug. The refined boy had his own set of tableware. He ladled himself a bowl of soup and used chopsticks to pick out the tender stewed beef. "I found them before it got completely dark. After picking all the vegetables in that patch, I just slept nearby."
He didn't hold back. While drinking soup and eating stew, he accepted the roasted meat Ji Changqing handed him and ate with great relish. To have a hot meal during the entrance exam was such a wonderful thing; it filled him with a love for life.
When they had nearly finished the soup, they tossed the vegetables in to blanch and ate them, feeling utterly satisfied.
A breakfast with meat, vegetables, and soup—the start of a happy life.
After breakfast, the sky had begun to lighten. The two of them got their bearings and, using their lightness skills, began to advance toward the first destination they had marked out yesterday.
Their luck was good. The first spot hadn't been touched yet. The two of them frantically collected a wave of point items, watching with satisfaction as their scores soared into the four digits.
After sweeping the area, Gu Changge checked the time. "Let's go, on to the second spot. If there are no surprises, we can sweep up some points and then have lunch."
Hearing him say that, Ji Changqing suddenly had a bad feeling.
The Chosen One of Misfortune truly had profound skills. They had only made it halfway on their swift journey when Ji Changqing stopped, her expression as pained as if she had just lost a hundred million. "More than one team has already gone to that spot. Shall we head to the third one?"
Gu Changge nodded with a shared sense of sorrow. He made a hand signal, indicating he had found traces of at least three teams heading that way, each with no fewer than three members.
At this, Ji Changqing's tolerance for this guy's bad luck rose to a new level. After all, she had only spotted the tracks of two teams, and one of those was just a wild guess.
In the face of real strength, a little bad luck was just a little bad luck. They could probably handle whatever was thrown at them.
"Shall we go to the third spot?" Gu Changge paused, looking around, trying to pinpoint the correct location of point items in the vast sea of forest.
One that wouldn't make him run for nothing.
Ji Changqing felt it was time to put her own ability to seek fortune and avoid disaster to use!
She pulled up the map Gu Changge had drawn of the warship distribution, the projected landing points of the seed candidates, and the general distribution of all candidates. She hesitated between the third and fourth spots, then looked at the positions of the fifth, sixth, and seventh spots.
"We won't stop for lunch. We'll eat rations on the move." She tapped the map. "We'll go to the fourth spot, then straight to the seventh. At our speed, we should be able to get to both before them. The seventh spot is a bit dangerous, though. There's a high chance of running into that one team."
Originally, they had planned to give up on the seventh spot, not wanting to encounter a seed team so early.
But plans change, and now, to secure the points, they had to take a risk.
Gu Changge's jaw tightened at the thought. That specially marked seed team was the one with that guy he was naturally incompatible with, the one he could never see eye to eye with.
He shrugged, ever the flexible one, and chuckled slyly. "We'll grab half and go. It's only the second day; they won't abandon the points."
Half the points would be enough to keep them occupied. He was so clever.
Ji Changqing saw no problem with that. The two happily reached an agreement and sprinted toward the fourth spot.
The journey to the fourth spot was much more arduous.
At first, it wasn't noticeable. The two of them traveled side by side, and Gu Changge was still at ease, secretly comparing their skills and thinking to himself with delight that his lightness skill wasn't bad at all.
But as they entered the treacherous terrain, the closer they got to the fourth spot, the wider the gap between them grew.
"Aaaah! Sis, hey, Sis, wait for me!" Gu Changge was about to go crazy. Ji Changqing was running at full tilt, not even bothering to turn. She crossed water by treading on its surface and went straight up and down cliffs, giving a masterclass in what it meant to cross mountains and seas, to bore through peaks and forests.
Why was her lightness skill so damn awesome! He was so frustrated! He felt like punching a wall.
Ji Changqing didn't slow down. "What if someone beats us to it? You take your time, I'll go ahead and wait for you there!" The more she thought about Gu Changge's bad luck, the more likely it seemed. She accelerated again, her voice drifting back on the wind, "I'll leave half for you!"
When a panting Gu Changge finally reached the fourth spot, Ji Changqing shoved a large handful of point items at him and greeted him enthusiastically. "Quick, no one's here yet. I've found almost everything on this side, just that small area over there is left."
With such a proactive teammate, Gu Changge couldn't just be a slacker. He gritted his teeth, cheerfully accepted his teammate's gift, and followed her to roam around, searching for point items in untouched areas.
In less than half an hour, guided by the alluringly flashing dots on their wristbands, they had collected all the point items in the vicinity. Ji Changqing's eyes were practically glued to the point total on her wristband.
"Wow, this spot is so generous! We've struck it rich overnight!" she murmured, completely ignoring the 'I need a break' waves Gu Changge was emitting from the side. With a grand wave of her hand, she declared, "Let's go, on to the next spot!"
Gu Changge lunged forward, grabbed the belt of her protective suit, and turned himself into a dead weight, holding on for dear life. "Sis, Sis, we don't have to rush so much! We still have time, we still have time."
Look at your teammate! He's about to collapse from exhaustion!
Ji Changqing looked down at his handsome face, now scrunched up into a ball, and mercilessly pried him off. "Brother Gu, do you really want to have an unexpected encounter with the seed team that badly?"
Gu Changge shook his head frantically.
"How about this? Like with this spot, I'll go ahead and collect a batch first. Don't push yourself," Ji Changqing suggested tentatively, seeing his look of despair.
If he dares to agree, I'll just ditch him! she thought to herself.
Gu Changge kept shaking his head. "Sis, do I look that shameless to you?"
Ji Changqing couldn't help but laugh. She stopped, peeled Gu Changge off her, and sat down casually.
"I'll give you fifteen minutes to regulate your breathing." She propped her chin on her hand and said, rather puzzled, "Even if we leave together, you might not be able to keep up along the way."
So why was he trying to hold her back?
Gu Changge quickly took out his multi-functional pot, gathered some nearby deadwood to start a fire, and gestured for the still-energetic Ji Changqing to get more firewood. "Half an hour. Sharpening the axe doesn't delay the work of chopping wood."
Ji Changqing couldn't help but chuckle. She took out about ten kilograms of beef for him and went to play the part of a woodcutter.
This time, Gu Changge didn't roast the meat; he was getting tired of it. He sliced the beef thinly, prepared a dipping sauce with his own seasonings, and waited for the water to boil for hot pot.
They had eaten military rations while on the move earlier, so they weren't actually hungry. It was just that Gu Changge felt so miserable that he needed the comfort of good food. Besides, the seventh spot was far away. They needed to maintain a certain level of stamina for the journey and the search for point items, to be ready for any potential surprises.
Like, for example, running into another team that had just arrived, leading to a big fight.
As he swished meat in the pot and ate, the guy sighed dramatically. "Today I finally understand. When a top student scores a 98 and a genius scores a 100, it doesn't mean the gap between them is only two points. It's because the test is only out of 100."
Ji Changqing's meat-swishing motion paused for a moment. She asked, puzzled, "Didn't you say that although the military academy's requirement is Level 6 proficiency, to have a better chance of getting in, most candidates in the entrance exam are Level 7, and there's a small handful who are Level 8?"
So, do you have some kind of misunderstanding about what a 'top student' is? You're not in that small handful of Level 8s, yet you've mistakenly placed yourself in the top student category..
Get instant access to all the chapters now.
Comments
Post a Comment