At that moment outside the school gate, as the suffocating pressure on Chu Wutian dissipated, the students of Lanjiang No. 3 High School finally drew deep breaths and, still shaken, streamed onto the bus.
Lu Sheng walked forward with one hand in his pocket and an expression as usual, and He Wanying walked beside him.
The two of them looked like a couple and instantly drew countless curious, admiring, and jealous gazes.
If someone watched carefully they would notice that He Wanying deliberately fell half a step behind Lu Sheng as she walked, and this normally aloof ice-goddess in the eyes of other students now resembled a loyal guard by Lu Sheng’s side.
The two boarded the bus, and Lu Sheng went straight to the back and chose the corner window seat, looking out of the window, while He Wanying naturally sat beside him in the aisle seat.
Her movements were quick and without hesitation, as if that seat had always belonged to her.
As soon as she sat down, He Wanying thought a thought and a faint blue light flashed across her palm, and a delicate food container with excellent insulation appeared in her hand out of thin air.
This was an item she had previously put in her Backpack.
After awakening, class holders not only had the class holder panel of Personal Information, but also gained several additional panels… Friends, Trade Center, Auction House, Backpack, Mount, Pet, Regional Channel, and so on.
When He Wanying opened the food container, an enticing aroma immediately wafted out and made the nearby students unconsciously swallow.
“Ma… Lu Sheng,” He Wanying said softly with a faint trace of expectation and nervousness.
She almost blurted out the title Master and a barely perceptible flush rose on her cheeks, but she quickly corrected herself and continued.
“Do you want to have breakfast? I made it this morning.”
She carefully scooped a large piece of amber-colored caramel pudding with a silver spoon, and it was garnished with a small tender green mint leaf, looking quite exquisite.
Beside the caramel mint pudding was a slice of bread toasted to golden crispiness, crispy outside and tender inside, containing a soft-boiled egg fried into a heart shape, and nearby were a few peeled fresh shrimp tails, accompanied by glistening purple grapes and some plump cherry tomatoes.
The color, aroma, and taste were all there, and every detail revealed how much care He Wanying had put into preparing this breakfast.
She had gotten up two hours early to prepare it by hand and it had almost exhausted the last of her meager savings.
After resigning last night she rented a small room with the few coins she had left, and she used the rest to prepare this breakfast.
At this moment she had no money left.
She was counting on collecting some valuable materials in the newcomer secret realm trial today to sell for money.
Of course, it was also possible that she would earn nothing at all in the newcomer secret realm trial today, in which case she would have to consider spending a night under a bridge tunnel.
As for whether a beautiful woman like her would be in danger sleeping under a bridge tunnel, given that she had awakened an SSS-tier class, anyone who had ill intentions toward her would be the one to be unlucky.
He Wanying looked at Lu Sheng anxiously, blinking and asking cautiously.
She had intended to call Lu Sheng Master, but Lu Sheng had refused that in front of everyone because it would look bad, and he had ordered her to call him by name.
As for private conversations, it did not matter to He Wanying how she addressed him.
“I already ate, you eat it yourself,” Lu Sheng said without lifting his head as his gaze stayed on his phone screen and his voice remained calm and flat.
“Oh… okay… fine,” He Wanying said.
The light in He Wanying’s eyes visibly dimmed a few degrees, and a barely perceptible look of disappointment flashed across her face, and she did not argue with Lu Sheng’s words but responded directly.
However, this scene sent the other male students who had been secretly watching He Wanying into stunned disbelief.
“Holy shit! Does this Lu Sheng kid even know what he just did?!”
“That’s He Wanying! She made it by hand! A love breakfast! The pudding even wobbles! The soft-boiled egg is heart-shaped! Love, love!”
“He… he actually refused? Refused the obvious gesture of the big campus belle?! I’m literally dissolving with jealousy!”
“Beast! A wild beast struck by heaven’s lightning! Such waste! If big campus belle He made me breakfast, I wouldn’t just eat it, I’d lick the box inside and out three times and preserve it as a family heirloom!”
One murderous look after another was cast at Lu Sheng, and if looks could kill, Lu Sheng would already be full of holes.
Under the envious and resentful gazes of his classmates, He Wanying could only take small bites and finish the breakfast gracefully, her long lashes lowered as if deliberately hiding her inner disappointment, which made the boys around her ache with heartbreak.
Lu Sheng did not say a single word during the entire time He Wanying ate, and he did not even glance at her once, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on his phone screen while his fingers occasionally swiped, which made the students who thought he was playing hard to get lose their composure again.
When He Wanying finished and wiped her mouth and put the food container back into her Backpack, she noticed the hostile looks the boys were giving Lu Sheng and her brows slightly furrowed as she slowly spoke in a cool voice.
“Don’t stare at Lu Sheng like that; you will disturb him from playing his phone games!”
He Wanying spoke each word seriously and earnestly.
The surrounding male students lost it again.
What the hell was going on?!
They had been defending big campus belle He, but He Wanying blamed them for disturbing Lu Sheng’s phone time.
How could the gap between people be this large?!
For a moment their looks toward Lu Sheng grew even more plaintive.
Lu Sheng himself paid no attention to the looks of his classmates and continued watching his sister’s streaming room.
“Thanks to the boss for the Heart Bunny!”
“Thanks to the boss for the Drink More Hot Water!”
“Babies who want to queue up to log in don’t need to rush, scan the code later~”
Lu Xueyao’s voice was full of excitement and incredulous joy, because since last night her streaming room had experienced an incredible streak of luck… gacha crazily rolled triple-golds and dungeon bosses dropped a flood of high-quality rare equipment… and her popularity had soared by more than 200,000 followers overnight, catapulting her from obscurity to one of the top streamers of the game.
“Ahem! I didn’t expect my Data God ability to still take effect while I’m streaming, truly deserved to be an SS-tier class,” Lu Sheng murmured with a faint smile at the corner of his mouth, and others thought Lu Xueyao was just a lucky charm, but only he knew the truth.
It was all his ability; a simple thought of his could raise Lu Xueyao’s game rewards by one tier, and this ability had almost no cost and affected him not at all.
As long as his consciousness remained focused on Lu Xueyao’s gaming, the effect would continue.
Lu Sheng’s Data Ascension ability continued to take effect, and the streaming room kept seeing gacha flashes and constant rare drops from dungeons, and Lu Xueyao’s cheeks in the stream flushed with excitement and she beamed, clearly dizzy from the overwhelming luck.
About two hours later, amid the bitter resentment of the boys, the bus steadily arrived at a seemingly endless suburban plain.
The bus doors opened and a gust of dust-laden, hot wind blew in.
They had arrived at their destination, and the students disembarked in orderly fashion, nervously and curiously scanning the surroundings.
The scene before them made them hold their breath.
They looked out to see a wide but slightly desolate plain, and in the center a huge circular metal structure stood silently, reflecting a dazzling silvery-gray shine under the sun.
The building entrance was guarded by several layers of heavy alloy gates and high-voltage electric fences forming checkpoint after checkpoint, and dozens of fully armed, battle-hardened Class Holder Administration Bureau official team members patrolled the area.
On the top of the building, an energy vortex with a radius of over 5 meters emitted an unstable pale blue glow and turned slowly.
It was the Secret Realm Entrance Teleportation Channel.
As the students disembarked from the bus one after another, the class holder squads from the Administration Bureau around them also cast scrutinizing looks that made the students’ scalps tingle.
Each member of these Profession Administration Bureau teams was a powerful class holder of Second Ascension or above, and a single glance from them made people’s spines chill.
At this time Principal Chu Jianghe was already standing outside the bus with a smile on his face, and he looked at the students and said, “Classmates, welcome to your first battlefield after becoming class holders… the Poison Fog Desert!”
To simulate the random Secret Realm mode of a city-level Newcomer Class Holder Tournament, Principal Chu Jianghe had not disclosed the destination in advance, and there were more than a dozen newcomer secret realms outside Lanjiang City, so no one knew which one they would go to.
Only when Chu Jianghe himself announced the Secret Realm did everyone suddenly understand.
However, when this was said, a few students immediately turned pale and exclaimed in alarm, “What?! Poison Fog Desert?! Principal Chu picked this place for our newcomer secret realm trial; does he not fear none of us will return?”
Lu Sheng stepped off the bus and looked into the distance.
A heavily guarded Secret Realm teleportation channel came into view.
“Poison Fog Desert, I didn’t expect this to be the Secret Realm,” he said.
He Wanying, who had gotten off the bus behind Lu Sheng, frowned and said, “It’s this place; this will be troublesome.”
“Is this Secret Realm that bad; is it very difficult?” a student who had not heard of the Secret Realm asked the one who had exclaimed earlier.
The student who was asked was named Bai Xiaosheng and he was a student of Class 1 at Lanjiang No. 3 High School who had awakened a C-rank class, Scholar, and who loved researching things related to class holders, earning him the nickname Baixiaosheng.
Bai Xiaosheng’s face turned extremely unpleasant as he shifted expression several times before he slowly spoke, “It’s more than difficult; although Poison Fog Desert is classified as a Newcomer Secret Realm, its difficulty is nearly comparable to a city-level Newcomer Class Holder Tournament.”
“When this Newcomer Secret Realm was first discovered it was known as the newbie meat grinder because its difficulty was so extreme, but as it still fell under the Newcomer Secret Realm category, very few newcomers ever came here to trial, which is why this Secret Realm is not very well known.”
As soon as he said this, the surrounding students involuntarily drew in a cold breath.
Difficulty comparable to a city-level Newcomer Class Holder Tournament? Wouldn’t that mean a death rate as high as 30%?!
If three people went in, one would die; was this still a Newcomer Trial Handbook?
“Are you kidding me, Bai Xiaosheng?” a student asked in disbelief.
“Call me your son if I’m lying,” Bai Xiaosheng said seriously, “Poison Fog Desert, as the name suggests, contains a poison that never dissipates, and you must take a Basic Antidote Pill every half hour to resist it; otherwise the toxins will accumulate and within ten minutes you will die from poisoning. That’s just the environment. Besides that, deserts are already the most dangerous type of region Secret Realm, and although we class holders need not worry about dehydration or getting lost, the monsters hidden in the desert are the greatest threat. Sand-Soaring Snakes, Red Sand Scorpions, Six-Eyed Sand Spiders, Flaming Red Ants… this place is a paradise for poisonous creatures, and they like to hide under the sand or in shadows and silently approach you. Once you enter their attack range, they will ruthlessly launch lethal sneak attacks, which is why the death rate stays high.”
“If the people who go in are poorly coordinated or inexperienced, they are basically dead meat; the last time a mass of newcomer class holders entered this Secret Realm was 13 years ago from neighboring Baihe City’s Baihe No. 7 High School, where 527 people entered and only 226 survived.”
“Is this a trial? This is playing with death, Principal!”
Bai Xiaosheng’s words made many students turn pale, especially the girls who were already afraid of bugs, and many of them shrieked and wanted to withdraw.
Principal Chu Jianghe did not stop Bai Xiaosheng from spreading fear but quietly waited for him to finish.
Seeing the students wanting to back out, Chu Jianghe had expected this and remained calm.
He looked at the students and his voice rose to cover everyone else.
“Everyone be quiet!”
“The path to becoming a class holder is a series of life-and-death trials, and if a mere threat of death scares you like this, do you really think you can rise to the top and become a highly respected class holder?”
“Besides, we of Great Xia have an old saying: the bigger the storm, the bigger the fish!”
“To motivate everyone, this principal has prepared generous rewards for each member of the top 10 teams in the overall ranking, and I dare say that with these rewards you will be able to advance your standings in future city-level Newcomer Class Holder Tournaments!”
“Aren’t you curious about what rewards I’ve prepared for you?”