Chapter 161: College Entrance Examination
Looking at the APP interface that kept jumping back and forth, a big question mark appeared on everyone’s faces.
What was this doing?
They waited for a while, yet the interface still did not stabilize. Instead it flickered more and more frequently:
Second-tier university, first-tier university, second-tier, first-tier…
Zhang You frowned: “This situation… could it be that the graders haven’t finalized the score yet?”
They remembered the white eyeball had said that whether the entrance examination passed or not would be determined by the grader responsible for each question.
Tang Xinjue: “Possible.”
Then the next second, the wildly flickering phone screen went black.
“……”
This was no longer a matter of whether the grader changed the score or not. It looked more like the university city’s network cable had been blown up while changing the score.
“No matter what, at least what we can confirm now is that we successfully passed the promotion exam. It’s just that we still don’t know whether it’s second-tier or first-tier.”
Tang Xinjue slid the phone screen and discovered that the black screen only covered the personal information section. Other functions could still operate normally.
Zheng Wanqing scratched her head: “Report it to customer service?”
Tang Xinjue pondered for a moment: “Tomorrow is Sunday. If the game doesn’t cause trouble again, we still have one day of rest. If it hasn’t recovered by tomorrow, we’ll contact customer service then.”
After all, customer service had also raised its price now. Two credits couldn’t be wasted easily.
Fortunately there were still a whole room of “packages” and newly credited reward points. It was also the long-awaited upgrade and purchasing session. Soon the four were distracted by the busy matters in front of them.
“I opened one 30%-off coupon, three 20%-off coupons, and four 10%-off coupons.” Zhang You raised the items in her hand. “There’s also a small folding storage basket with compressible space.”
She estimated that about eighty percent of the items in the dormitory that were temporarily unused could be placed into this storage basket that was less than thirty centimeters in size.
Zheng Wanqing had opened all large items. She was currently excited and continued Zhang You’s words: “I also got something good!”
She raised her hand high. Everyone looked up and saw a dark iron shovel more than one meter long.
Zheng Wanqing: “Why aren’t you all speaking?”
She happily demonstrated: “Don’t look at how small this shovel is. It weighs at least dozens of jin. One swing could definitely smash a head. What a great weapon!”
She carefully placed it aside, then opened the next large package and took out an iron spade.
“Wow! This one looks even better!”
By the time she continued opening, Tang Xinjue and the other two had already finished their side and simply sat on the floor watching Zheng Wanqing open prizes and pull out weapon after weapon.
Shovel, spade, iron hammer, pickaxe, wooden club, awl…
Guo Guo could not help asking sincerely: “Our next exam… isn’t going to make us work in farmland, right?”
Zhang You: “If it’s an ancient history course, it could also be a peasant uprising.”
She then asked Guo Guo: “What about you? What did you get?”
Mentioning this immediately woke Guo Guo up. She shifted her position and revealed a small pile behind her arm: “Look!”
All snacks!
Although they were the most common small snacks in real life, inside the game they were already rare delicacies. Thinking about this, Guo Guo felt her saliva beginning to secrete. She picked up a bag of beef jerky full of anticipation: “Should we eat dinner now?”
Tang Xinjue was currently flipping through the "Television Program Manual" she had obtained. Hearing this, she raised her head: “Not yet. We still have the most important thing to do.”
—Spend money.
Points were the most universally accepted currency in the game and also the basic condition that determined students’ quality of life. Simply put, if you had enough points, you could even play the survival game like a vacation.
But the game obviously would not give examinees the chance for currency inflation. After a dungeon, at most they only earned a few dozen points.
Every time they thought they could finally become rich and live a better life, the remaining balance after buying props and upgrading skills poured cold water over their heads:
Wake up. You can’t even afford a jar of Lao Gan Ma. Go back and chew compressed biscuits.
So at this moment, when the four saw their account balances, they once again felt the illusion of peasants turning over to become masters.
One, two, three… a full three-digit number of points!
Each person received 100 points from the competition reward and also gained additional bonuses according to their contributions. Tang Xinjue, who had the highest output, received 200 in one go. The others had at least 150. Adding the previous remainder, the four together had nearly 700 points.
A flash of silver light appeared. Zheng Wanqing immediately upgraded her fist again without hesitation.
[Congratulations, you have successfully upgraded this skill to the highest level: “Locomotive-Like Fist”! No one wants to greet an oncoming train on the railway tracks. Likewise, no one wants to endure a punch carrying your full strength.]
[Passive buff “Tears Behind Iron Bars” has upgraded to “Power of the Railway”: This is a railway track. A train will crush five people if it goes this way. If it goes the other way, it will crush only one person. Will you choose not to change the route, or smash the train away with one punch? Activating this buff immediately grants the blessing of the railway. Critical damage increases by 50%.]
This time, an arm about the size of a normal person’s arm appeared beneath Zheng Wanqing’s right arm. Its movements were smooth and natural; only its entirely silver color revealed it was not original.
When it clenched, a gigantic phantom that nearly filled half the dormitory suddenly appeared. Everyone instantly felt a pressure descending over their heads. Yet when they looked up, the oppressive feeling disappeared.
Zheng Wanqing scratched her head: “Sorry! I forgot to adjust the range when using the ability just now. Now it separates attack form and normal form. As long as I’m conscious, I can keep this state all the time! Cool, right?”
Seeing her so happy, the dormitory atmosphere also became very lively. Although Zheng Wanqing never mentioned it, the loss of her right hand had always been a hidden pain for them.
Now this gap had finally been perfectly filled, and everyone felt happy inside. Zhang You observed it for a moment: “Want to change it to a normal skin color?”
Zheng Wanqing shook her head like a rattle drum: “No! This one looks the best.”
She happily went to study her fist. The remaining three continued exchanging items. Guo Guo was browsing casually when she suddenly heard Zhang You say:
“Wanqing’s skill gave me some inspiration.”
Guo Guo looked up blankly: “What inspiration?”
Zhang You: “More precisely, it’s the common point between Wanqing and Xinjue—they both specialize in a certain skill and continuously upgrade it. But raising the level of the same skill does not simply stack strength. It’s a transformation from quantity to quality.”
In theory, no matter how ordinary a skill might seem at the beginning, when it reaches the highest level it will reveal extremely powerful effects.
Guo Guo understood: “So you mean we should also focus on upgrading one skill?”
Zhang You nodded: “Most special abilities that awaken on their own cannot be upgraded through the shop, like my [Old Item Recycling] and Xinjue’s toilet plunger. But the ones exchanged from the shop can.”
After speaking, she took out the brick-like account book from her storage bag. Along with the sound of a successful purchase from the phone, a small light cluster the size of a fingertip entered the account book.
Guo Guo stared without blinking as Zhang You opened the book.
…Nothing changed.
Zhang You coughed lightly and closed the book: “I missed a step just now. Again.”
This time she exchanged several healing skill cards. She casually opened a page and pressed the cards into it. Inside the book a transparent space suddenly appeared, with four card slots floating within.
“Originally the book could only store two cards. Now it can store four cards, and the buff effect has also increased.”
Since explosive output was not possible, having both offense and support was not bad. Most importantly, it did not affect the book’s most basic function.
“Exactly!” Guo Guo nodded vigorously. She touched and flipped through the account book with great interest and soon discovered another upgrade change: “Zhang You, this book can customize its name! Quickly think of a cool one!”
Zhang You took it over and saw that it was indeed true. Before Guo Guo could gather the other two to brainstorm, she directly filled one in. When Guo Guo returned, she saw a row of bright and simple characters written on the book:
[606 Accounting Use Only].
Guo Guo: “……”
Where did the magic account book go? That huge mysterious cool magic book?
Zhang You ruthlessly shattered her fantasy: “It’s still an account book after all. It has to keep accounts.”
The principle of becoming rich through frugality was not to waste the use value of any item, especially things bought with money.
Guo Guo slumped back to her position and muttered slightly unconvinced: “Then why don’t you take Xinjue’s toilet plunger to unclog the toilet…”
Tang Xinjue, who was inexplicably hit by friendly fire: “?”
When she heard Guo Guo’s muttering, she had just finished selecting her own shopping cart: a mental skill set—[Gate of Illusions] and [Blade of Spirit].
One focused on illusion control, the other on mental attacks, perfectly compensating for the deficiencies and flaws in her self-developed abilities.
If she encountered Gao Ying from the Friendship League again now, the other party might suffer backlash the moment she tried to probe Tang Xinjue. As for others, it would be even easier.
Of course, nothing in the world was perfect. Objectively speaking, these two skills also had one obvious flaw:
Too expensive.
After purchasing them, Tang Xinjue directly closed the shop. Because her account balance had once again returned to zero. Looking at any skill would only make her upset since she could not afford them.
Since she was idle anyway, she used her final achievement points to exchange for a bottle of hair-growth agent and walked to Guo Guo’s side: “Guo Guo… Guo Guo? Guo Guo!”
What she saw was Guo Guo with eyes tightly closed, body trembling. Both hands formed a seal and clutched her own neck tightly, as if she were trapped in a nightmare!
Tang Xinjue immediately pressed heavily on the center of Guo Guo’s forehead. Guo Guo gasped sharply and woke up, her frightened gaze landing on Tang Xinjue. Only after several seconds did her focus return.
At this moment Zheng Wanqing and Zhang You also rushed over. Guo Guo’s face was pale as she exhaled a long breath: “Jue Shen, luckily you came over. Otherwise I might have been scared to death just now!”
It turned out that when she was browsing skills earlier, she became interested in a discounted skill called [Heavenly Eye].
From the description it looked like another version of Yin-Yang Eyes. She planned to buy it to upgrade her Yin-Yang Eye ability. But the moment the skill landed on her, she fell into a terrifying illusion.
“I saw a lot of black fog. They crawled out from underground… and then inside there were a lot of noises, laughter, crying. After that all I could see was darkness. Nothing but darkness.”
Guo Guo could not fully describe what she had seen. She could only summarize it as a chaotic dance of demons.
In the strange and terrifying scene she tried to grab her pendant to wake herself up, but she could not find it. Instead she could feel countless ghosts in the darkness.
They could hardly even be called ghosts. They were more like the most primitive collection of malice. They left the ground and transformed into various monsters, then rapidly spread through the darkness, expanding and approaching…
Snap!
A snap of fingers pulled Guo Guo back to reality again. Tang Xinjue pressed her shoulder: “Don’t sink into those visions. You’re not yet adapted to them.”
Excessively strong perception must be paired with sufficient mental endurance. Otherwise it would backfire on the user.
Guo Guo nodded with teary eyes. She did not forget to quickly grab the hair-growth agent from Tang Xinjue’s hand and curl her entire body into the chair: “Luckily the discounted skill didn’t cost much.”
If it had been extremely expensive, she could have gone to cry in University City tonight.
When Guo Guo finally calmed down, it was already evening.
The four had almost finished organizing their skills and supplies. After simple cleaning and washing up, they prepared an unprecedentedly rich dinner—dormitory hotpot.
Compared with their consistently poor meals during the past week, this meal was unbelievably luxurious: from hotpot base to ingredients everything came from the shop, meant to reward their hard work and abundant gains from two consecutive dungeons.
Before eating, they signed their names on the [Dormitory Renovation Voucher] and deliberately placed it in the most conspicuous central position in the dormitory, in case the construction team could not find their client when arriving.
After finishing everything, they sat around the table. The pot boiled, ingredients went in, cola was opened, and the television turned on. Amid the rising steam they ate heartily.
If the game situation were ignored, this moment almost felt like an ordinary day in the real world: finishing classes, homework, and club activities, the four sitting in a small room ordering hotpot takeout while watching shows and eating steaming food.
Days once taken for granted had now become rare happiness.
“Recently, the first entrance examination of University City has officially begun. Various universities welcome students to actively register. Enrollment activities will also begin soon. Please stay tuned…”
On the television screen, the long-tongued ghost reported the news as usual.
“Some residents reported that recently multiple University City residents claiming to be debut idols have been dancing in residential areas, affecting normal schedules nearby. In response, they have applied for the Ministry of Education to open a separate talent show program and gather these disturbing individuals together…”
“According to insiders, the course teacher in University City who previously issued a bounty to capture the whistleblower has now withdrawn the bounty. Has he successfully bypassed multiple identity protections and found the whistleblower? Let us continue to follow…”
Steam continued rising slowly, blurring the air above the dormitory and covering the four gradually falling-asleep figures below.
“Ding ding ding, dang dang dang…”
Tang Xinjue opened her eyes and discovered that all around was an empty pure white space without any visible boundary.
Where was this?
Hadn’t she just been eating hotpot with her roommates?
There was only blankness everywhere. Only a crisp bell sound rang in the distance, as if calling her to approach.
Tang Xinjue followed the sound. Gradually other figures appeared in her field of vision: Zhang You, Guo Guo, Zheng Wanqing. They were also walking over with confused expressions, completely unaware why they had appeared here.
When they reached the place where the bell sound originated, they finally saw several tiny figures on the pure white ground.
These were… several little puppets?
The puppets raised their heads with effort. On their round wooden heads appeared enthusiastic smiling faces. Opening their arms, they made cheerful sounds:
“Dang dang dang, welcome to your new dormitory!”
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