Graduation Rate

Chen Miemie and Liu Bo looked at each other in dismay.

What the hell?

A guy like Yue Junyang, who looked like a villain at first glance, actually sent someone to my house to protect me?

So you're an ally after all?

"Why did you send someone to my house to protect me?" and "Why did you send someone to his house to protect him?" Chen Miemie and Liu Bo asked in unison.

Yue Junyang now also began to realize that something was wrong. "The day before yesterday, in divination class, wasn't it prophesied that Chen Miemie would face a fatal tribulation within a day?"

Liu Bo nodded. "No one would believe that old fraud's words, right? Even he didn't believe that divination result himself, saying that Chen Miemie would be killed twice. Bah, a person dies after being killed once, how can they be killed twice!"

"Be more polite to Teacher Jing who teaches divination," Yue Junyang smoothed things over, then lowered his voice and continued, "Actually, I wasn't that convinced either, but I wanted to get the extra credit from the divination tutor, so I made some arrangements based on his divination result."

"Hmph, so you just wanted to kiss that old fraud's ass," Liu Bo curled his lip.

Chen Miemie's focus was different. "What did the person you sent look like?"

"I contacted a professional bodyguard company that works with my family, and they sent a top-tier bodyguard codenamed King Kong."

"King Kong? A man?"

"Of course it's a man. Could this codename belong to a woman?"

"I suggest you'd better ask about the situation. The person who went to my house last night was a woman."

Yue Junyang's expression changed, and he immediately sent a message on his watch.

He soon received a reply: King Kong's body has been found. The estimated time of death was yesterday evening, and the location of discovery was near the building where Chen Miemie lived.

Chen Miemie's mind was a tangled mess right now.

King Kong's death was normal. An assassin had broken into his house, so as a top-tier bodyguard, he was naturally taken out.

But Ash hadn't told him about King Kong's death at all, which was very abnormal.

You have to know, Ash had already sworn to the moon, tied a yellow silk thread to her heart, and even confessed what color underwear she was wearing at the time.

How could she have omitted the fact that she had taken out a bodyguard before entering the house?

There was only one possibility—

The one who took out King Kong was someone else, someone hiding in the dark that night, completely undetected by both him and Ash.

After taking a deep breath, Chen Miemie asked Yue Junyang, "Where can I find that Teacher Jing from the divination class?"

"You can't find him. Unless it's during class time, even the principal can't find him."

"Then when is the next divination class?"

Liu Bo and Yue Junyang exchanged a glance and both shook their heads.

As the class monitor, Yue Junyang knew the schedule by heart:

"It's completely unfixed. Divination class is an elective among electives. Only when a cultural studies teacher is sick will Teacher Jing suddenly appear to substitute. It's said that just wanting to attend the divination class requires divination itself."

Liu Bo added, "The reality is, no one wants to take divination class, and no one cares when it's held."

Chen Miemie noticed a suspicious point. "Since this course is so unimportant and has nothing to do with the students' assessments, what is the purpose of offering it?"

Liu Bo shrugged. "That's not something for us students to worry about."

Since the person Yue Junyang arranged had an accident, he had his own mess to clean up. He quickly regained his posture as the class monitor, tossed his head, and left.

Liu Bo led Chen Miemie toward the homeroom teacher's office.

The entire academy was far from being as large as Chen Miemie had imagined.

Originally, according to Chen Miemie's thoughts, an academy that was the only one in the city should at least be on the scale of a university campus from his previous life.

From entering the main gate until now, he had already mentally yelled "what a scam" four or five times.

The massive warehouse-like outer wall was like an eggshell, wrapping around a large ring-shaped building structured like the Chinese character "Hui".

The building wasn't too tall, visually about seven stories.

How should he put it? Chen Miemie felt that it was like taking four L-shaped high school teaching buildings and connecting them end-to-end to form a closed-loop structure.

Scam or not, Chen Miemie actually quite liked this teaching-building-like architecture.

It couldn't be called grand or majestic, but at least this was the first building he had seen since coming to this world where the exterior corridors weren't sealed off by high walls.

In the corridors, most of the people passing by were students. There were no uniform school clothes, so all sorts of bizarre outfits emerged endlessly. It was just that the age span seemed quite large; there were teenagers as well as people who looked like middle-aged uncles and aunties.

"What, you don't even remember this place? I'm starting to believe you really don't remember me," Liu Bo teased.

"Don't worry, even if I've temporarily forgotten, with your sarcastic face, I'll get to know you again in a minute."

"Hehe, I can't help it, this is called personal charm.

By the way, amnesia boy, let me introduce our school to you.

Our Sixiang Academy is divided into six grades in total. We are sixth-grade graduating students. We don't have a fixed classroom; according to the schedule, we go to the corresponding classroom for whatever class we have.

The school offers over a dozen public courses. Students can freely choose one to three major courses and minor in up to five other courses. Some teachers who take a liking to talented kids will also open private classes in the form of taking apprentices, teaching their exclusive, unrevealed skills to their disciples.

There are many detailed rules that the lower grades have to pay attention to, but since we are in the graduating class, they are useless to us, so I won't bother nagging about them. We'll talk about them when we encounter them.

Our classes are usually on the fifth or sixth floor. The seventh floor is the teachers' activity area, which is very dangerous. It's best not to go up there without an invitation.

For us graduating class students, there are only two main tasks.

One is to pass the graduation assessment for our major courses. However many you chose, you must pass that many.

The other... is not to die, and not to go mad."

"Die? Go mad? If you want to graduate, there will be danger?"

Liu Bo rarely put away his playful smile:

"Yes, every year about half of the prospective graduates choose to complete their studies rather than graduate. They can avoid the danger, but their ceiling in the city in the future will just be basic management.

Among the half who choose to graduate, half will die, and a third will go mad.

Among the remaining one-sixth who survive, we still have to filter out the severely disabled injured. Those who truly graduate intact are less than one-tenth."

Chen Miemie looked thoughtful. "So you're saying the chance of successfully graduating is less than 10 percent? Wait, why are there only one-sixth alive? What about the one-third who go mad?"

Liu Bo was expressionless. "Those who go mad not only lose their value, but are also prone to joining anti-social organizations, so they are artificially disposed of."

"With such a low graduation rate and so much bloodshed, can the adults in the city accept this?"

Chen Miemie found it somewhat hard to believe. Are parents willing to watch their children, whom they've raised for over a decade, participate in a survival game with only a 5 to 10 percent survival rate?

Liu Bo sighed. "If given a choice, whether it's the young people or the parents, who would be willing? But there's no other way. Our Sixiang City is already ranked in the top ten for graduate survival rates among the hundred cities."

The topic suddenly became very heavy at this point. For a moment, Chen Miemie actually found it hard to continue asking.

Third floor, Zone C, Room 1.

"This is it."

Chen Miemie looked at the door in front of him. The sign posted on it read "Academy Infirmary."

"The head teacher is supposed to be our homeroom teacher, right? But here? The infirmary?"

Liu Bo placed both hands on Chen Miemie's shoulders, his tone heavy.

"Brave warrior Miemie, I have shown you the way. You must walk the rest of the path alone. I'm leaving now. Don't try to stop me; even if you beg, I'm not going in there with you."

Liu Bo ran a few steps away, then looked back, clenching his fist in a gesture of encouragement. "Good luck, you've got this! Let's just hope you don't end up spending the night lying in the infirmary."

Chen Miemie looked back at the infirmary door.

Even someone as hyperactive as Liu Bo and as outwardly reserved but inwardly wild as the class monitor would clam up in sheer terror at the mere mention of their head teacher. Just what kind of person was he?