Su Qi didn’t say anything about prying into matters that weren’t his business. Everyone had their own secrets. He just patted Old Li’s shoulder and said, “I’ll be off then.”
“Go ahead.”
……
On the way back, Liu Yuan was burning with curiosity, biting back her questions several times.
Finally, Su Qi couldn’t take it anymore. “Just ask if you want to. That ‘curious kitten’ look of yours is driving me nuts.”
“Hmph… More like you just want to show off how much you know…” Liu Yuan muttered, but quickly dropped the act. “Is it about last night? Was it that serious?”
She suddenly remembered Su Qi’s message had mentioned something.
“Go to sleep. I doubt this training camp will continue. We’ll probably be evacuated first thing tomorrow—don’t oversleep.”
And today, for once, Su Qi woke up early instead of lazing in bed. Clearly, he was certain the training wouldn’t proceed.
Su Qi spoke slowly, “You know about cultists, right?”
Liu Yuan shook her head.
Su Qi’s prepared explanation froze midair. “Did you not pay attention in class?”
Liu Yuan did have a habit of texting him during lectures. No amount of scolding had changed that.
“No, it wasn’t in the textbooks.”
Su Qi wondered if the curriculum had been revised. He tried another term. “What about the Descendants?”
Liu Yuan shook her head again.
Su Qi quickly switched tactics. “The Cornered?”
“The Fugitives?”
Seeing Liu Yuan’s increasingly dazed expression, Su Qi felt a pang of defeat. What kind of education system was this now? Teaching them nothing?
He took some time to explain what cultists—or the Descendants—were.
“Last night, it was a seventh-tier cultist.”
“Luckily, I was a step ahead.”
Liu Yuan’s heart clenched.
The way Su Qi said it so casually…
But that was seventh-tier.
Su Qi was only sixth-tier…
A single misstep, and he might not have come back.
“Who knows what they’re scheming? Investigations take time, so this Source Realm is off-limits for now.”
Liu Yuan nodded vaguely. This wasn’t a topic she could contribute to. So she steered the conversation her way.
“Brother, what are the Cornered?”
Su Qi’s tone was light. “We are the Cornered.”
Liu Yuan blinked, confused. “Huh?”
“No need to be surprised. We’re the ones fighting with our backs against the wall.”
“Think of Blue Star as one big arena.”
“The Source Realms are the endless beasts thrown at us…”
“The Fugitives are self-explanatory—those who flee, find another human civilization, settle down, and assimilate.”
“Honestly, these are just textbook terms.”
“In reality, these groups have nastier names for each other: Cultist mutts, Cornered pigs, stinking rats.”
But Su Qi didn’t say this mockingly.
A realization struck him.
Liu Yuan’s generation’s textbooks had even stripped out such fundamental knowledge?
Coupled with the brainless education reforms these past few years…
All the clues pointed to one thing.
Something catastrophic must have happened on Great Xia’s frontlines recently.
So catastrophic that the nation was on the verge of collapse.
Forcing Great Xia to rush the training of new recruits while suppressing panic among the populace…
Heaven…
Was it about to fall?
No, no—Su Qi, why bother with this?
Even if the sky falls, it’s not your problem.
Someone will shoulder the burden.
But…
What if there’s no one left at the front?
“Brother…”
“Brother…”
Su Qi snapped out of his thoughts at Liu Yuan’s voice. “Hmm?”
Liu Yuan looked worried. “I was about to ask you the same thing…”
“You looked… kind of…”
“You’ve been spacing out the whole way. Didn’t sleep well last night?”
“We’re home.”
Liu Yuan pushed the door open and paused at the entrance.
But Su Qi made no move to enter. “I’m heading out.”
“Where to?”
“To ask your ‘future sister-in-law’ a few things.”
Liu Yuan: ???
Liu Yuan’s face flushed crimson—for the hundredth time!
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
lities. One day, Qi Yuan was buying groceries when he unfortunately came face-to-face with a monster. Just when he thought he was going to die on the spot, he suddenly heard the monster's thoughts... "This aura, he's definitely not an ordinary master!" "So terrifying, so terrifying." "A fight with my back against the wall, I can't take it anymore." Qi Yuan: Ah, no one told me that my awakened ability isn't telepathy, but rather the stronger my enemies imagine me to be, the stronger I truly become. PS: Zhou Hai in the first chapter is not the protagonist.
lanned to earn money steadily and take life at a slower pace. But he never expected... his father's remarriage, and the stepmother bringing along a dependent, would completely disrupt his life's plans...
