Volume One, Chapter Eighty-Eight: The Wanderer Returns Home

Su Ziwen could no longer remember how many laps she had run around the track, just as she could no longer remember which questions the examiners had asked in the final interview after the combat assessment, or how she had answered them.

At Tianshui High School that day, when the dismissal bell rang, not a single cheerful voice could be heard anywhere on campus. Everyone stumbled out of the gates in silence, some even supporting one another in pairs and trios.

From a distance, they looked like a horde of zombies leaving a cage.

Feng Shichu looked at the gaunt, near-lifeless children beneath the teaching building and could only smile bitterly. “The assessment they came up with is far too absurd. After that much exercise, they still set up a question-and-answer interview. I’m afraid the kids were so dazed they could barely even hear the questions.”

“When I saw the assessment plan, I raised it with Master Feng right away, but even he had no way around it. These procedures weren’t even proposed by the superpowered university. At first, all they wanted was for us to test the students’ power levels,” Cheng Shanhai said, taking a sip of tea.

“The reason given from above was this: only after fully exhausting one’s stored power and stamina can a person lower their guard and reveal the thoughts deepest in the heart. If you ask me, that’s practically at the level of military selection.”

Feng Shichu was so exasperated that he almost laughed, yet there was nothing he could do. One look at such a blunt, brutal testing process and it was obvious it had not been devised by the superpowered university. Most likely some bigwig from the military had inserted himself into the matter again, using these oddball tests to sift out promising youngsters with strong willpower, intending to lure them into enlistment afterward.

“Oh, right. I’ve revised the participation notes for that little guy tomorrow. Take another look?” Feng Shichu said, taking out a sheet of paper and handing it to Cheng Shanhai.

“More or less. If the requirements are any stricter, it would be a bit too much,” Cheng Shanhai said, looking at the page in his hand with satisfaction.

And this still isn’t absurd enough? Feng Shichu’s mouth twitched as he began to sympathize a little with Morde and those hot-blooded young instructors.

He wondered whether tomorrow it would be the instructors tormenting Morde, or Morde tormenting the instructors...

...

Stiffly opening the door, Su Ziwen dropped her backpack at once and braced herself against the wall as she made her way inside. Passing through the hall, she saw the black cat crouched on the back of the sofa, wagging its tail at her. The girl merely gave a weary wave before continuing into the bathroom.

With effort, she peeled off her sweat-soaked clothes, turned on the bathtub faucet, and then slowly sat down beneath the shower head, letting the warm water wash over her exhausted body.

After a long while, enough sugar was supplied back to her stalled brain, and the girl finally shook off that dull, drained haze, gradually regaining her ability to think.

What a brutal day this had been. After running the final hellish marathon, she had no idea how many pounds lighter she would be.

Yet when she pinched her flat little belly and the firm skin of her thighs, Su Ziwen sadly discovered that if she truly did lose that much weight, then the two already less-than-promising fat strongholds on her body would probably shrink by another degree or two.

People grow fatter in the face first; when losing weight, it is the chest that goes first. This had long been a distressing problem for Su Ziwen.

It seemed she had not inherited Su Mom’s excellent genes. The development of her two small assets could only be described as sluggish, and ever since entering high school, they had only become more stubborn and uncooperative.

Submerging herself in the bathtub filled with hot water, her worries and fatigue were both dispersed by the warmth. She was indeed spent today; as for the troubles of the body, they could wait to be dealt with later.

Oh, right. She must not forget that tomorrow, when she met him, she had to hand over the recorded assessment notes to that fellow Morde.

The girl narrowed her eyes, enjoying the soak, but failed to notice a faint, hazy gleam suddenly flicker across her chest.

At the same time, after adjusting its barrier frequency, an aerial shuttle flew straight through the protective boundary around Qin City and headed for the shuttle terminal in the city center.

On board, Morde was sleeping like the dead. In the midst of his dream, he likewise failed to notice that as the shuttle crossed the barrier, a transparent film briefly appeared and vanished on the stone sheath of the realm-space blade lying across his knees.

Mu Qing, sleeping against Morde’s shoulder, seemed to sense something. Groggily, she lifted her head and looked around, but found nothing unusual; only the vast city of Qin spread out beneath the shuttle below.

“Wake up, hey, wake up...” Mu Qing said as she wiped the saliva from the corner of her mouth, trying to rouse Morde.

It had been a long time since he had slept so soundly, and Morde was almost reluctant to wake.

After all, when they had first been stranded in the desert, Morde and Mu Qing took turns keeping watch, wary of the dangers that might come with the lunar tide. Then, after arriving at East Sand Village, because he worried about the village’s safety, Morde slept very lightly every night.

At last, when the lunar tide finally ended and the two of them set off with the expedition team for Zhuoyi City, Morde thought he could finally sleep well without standing watch, only to once again underestimate Mu Qing’s terrible sleeping habits.

Without the huge pillow that Cuihua girl had sent over, Mu Qing seemed to lose all restraint; every night she tormented Morde to no end.

Every time he fell into deep sleep, Morde would have the same nightmare.

He would slip and plunge into a black, bottomless sea, where the waters all around pinned him to the seabed with crushing force. Countless enormous tentacles would surge toward him out of the darkness, binding his arms and legs and sealing shut his mouth and nose.

In the dream, no matter how he struggled, he could never escape that shadowlike entanglement. And when Morde finally woke from the nightmare, choking for breath, he would discover that Mu Qing had somehow crawled out of her sleeping bag and was lying on top of him like an octopus.

Even a body made of iron could not withstand prolonged sleep deprivation. So once he boarded the shuttle, Morde was immediately overcome by drowsiness, his eyelids growing heavy, and soon he was asleep and oblivious to the world.

It took Mu Qing quite a while to get him awake at last. After stretching contentedly, Morde looked out through the glass window at the city scenery and said happily, “We’re finally back. It’s been how many days now?”

He turned back toward Mu Qing, only to find her acting a little strangely, her head tilted unnaturally to the left.

“What’s wrong?” Morde could not quite tell what pose she was trying to strike, but she answered honestly, “I slept with a crick in my neck.”

“Turn around. I’ll massage your shoulders,” Morde said with a sigh, feeling more and more as though he were caring for a child—making three meals by day and tucking in the blankets by night, truly playing both father and mother.

After Mu Qing turned around, Morde reached out with both hands and gently kneaded the stiff muscles of her shoulders and neck, working the blood and sinew loose again and again.

Only, while Old Man Morde massaged Little Mu Mu, he did not notice the small patch of moisture on his own right shoulder.

“Dear passenger, hello. The shuttle will be landing shortly and is about to arrive at Qin City Airport...” A notification sounded, and the voice of a flight attendant came over the broadcast, announcing that the journey was approaching its end.