At this moment, there was only one thought in her mind.
I’m rich!
E-rank materials usually sold for only 1–5 copper coins per piece, and drops like the E-rank Sand Snake Tail or Venomous Snake Fang from a Sand-Soaring Snake were worth only 1 copper coin, whereas D-rank materials were different and could sell for at least 10 copper coins per piece.
He Wanying looked at the haul in her backpack… 4 pieces of D-rank Sand Snake Tail and 8 pieces of D-rank Venomous Snake Fang, with a total value as high as 120 copper coins, which was 10 times the profit from killing Sand-Soaring Snakes under normal circumstances.
Not to mention there was also a piece of D-rank equipment… 『Sand Snake Leather Boots』!
『Sand Snake Leather Boots (D)』
『Equipment type: Boots』
『Equipment level: 0』
『Equipment requirement: None』
『Base attributes: strength +1, agility +3, constitution +1』
『Affix (D-rank): agility +2』
『Set: Not activated』
This piece of equipment alone had a market price of at least several thousand copper coins!
She owed all of this to Master’s unbelievable strength!
He Wanying’s heartbeat quickened slightly, and a hint of burning fervor ignited in the depths of her eyes.
He Wanying had a certain intuition.
If she could continue to follow Master, how could she be satisfied with merely taking 1st place in the school’s Newcomer Trial rewards?
It was as if she already saw an infinitely bright future.
…
Outside the Secret Realm, in the monitoring room of the steel fortress.
Chu Jianghe sat upright and stern, his sharp gaze sweeping across the 300 surveillance screens in front of him.
The screens clearly projected every student from Lanjiang No. 3 High School who had entered the Poison Fog Desert; some were nervously fighting monsters, while others were carefully searching for resources among the sand dunes.
On the large leaderboard light-screen directly opposite him, the data kept flickering.
『Personal Ranking』
『1st place: Zhao Qingtian, 36 points!』
『2nd place: Qin Yanran, 19 points!』
『3rd place: Lu Ningyu, 9 points!』
…
『9th place: Lu Sheng, 4 points!』
『10th place: He Wanying, 4 points!』
…
『Team Ranking』
『1st place: Zhao Qingtian Team, 55 points!』
『2nd place: Lu Ningyu Team, 33 points!』
…
『26th place: Lu Sheng Team, 8 points!』
…
The Newcomer Secret Realm trial had only been underway for a little over half an hour, so points were generally low, but Zhao Qingtian’s team was already far in the lead, leaving everyone else far behind.
Chu Jianghe’s brows furrowed almost imperceptibly as he took in the tactics of Zhao Qingtian’s team.
The two B-rank tank warriors… Fang Tong and Zhang Yan… were treated by Zhao Qingtian and Qin Yanran like human sandbags, pushed to the very front to endure the monsters’ attacks, allowed only to take hits and forbidden to strike back, while the final blow to kill each monster was reserved exclusively for Zhao Qingtian and Qin Yanran.
This was also why the points for Zhao Qingtian’s team were all concentrated on him and Qin Yanran.
If it was Zhao Qingtian taking the kills, that was still understandable; the fireballs from his basic attacks were fast and astonishingly powerful, and he could kill a monster in just 3 to 5 hits.
But when Qin Yanran wanted points, her holy light basic attacks could not even break through a monster’s Defense and each strike could only inflict a forced 1 point of HP loss.
Against monsters whose constitution was generally around 10 points… where 1 point of constitution equaled 10 points of HP… she needed to attack nearly 100 times to finish a kill!
During that time, Fang Tong and Zhang Yan were often beaten until their faces were bruised and swollen and their bodies were covered in wounds.
What was even more suffocating was that when a monster was on the verge of death, they did not even dare touch it for fear of stealing Qin Yanran’s points.
And Qin Yanran only begrudged using a healing spell to raise their HP when the two of them were seriously injured and on the brink of danger, high-soundingly claiming that “an A-rank class holder’s blue bar is more precious than a B-rank tank warrior’s HP” and repeatedly insisting that she had to save her skills for the most important member of the squad, Zhao Qingtian.
Fang Tong and Zhang Yan’s faces were ashen with anger, and they felt unbearably aggrieved in their hearts; they were B-rank class holders after all and would undoubtedly be core members in any other team, yet they had fallen so low, but when they thought about how quitting the team early would be judged as a failure in the Newcomer Trial, the two of them could only grit their teeth and endure this humiliation.
By contrast, the other teams cooperated much more normally: the tank warriors took the damage, the supports healed in time, the damage-dealing classes coordinated their output, and the points were distributed in turn.
Chu Jianghe’s gaze finally fell on the names of Zhao Qingtian and Qin Yanran, and he sighed inwardly; dissatisfaction was dissatisfaction, but the two of them were, after all, the school’s only A-rank class holders this year, and the school’s results still had to rely on them.
He shook his head and shifted his gaze to another surveillance feed… Lu Sheng and He Wanying.
“Huh??”
With just one glance, Chu Jianghe’s pupils instantly contracted, and his body subconsciously leaned forward!
In the image, Lu Sheng was leading He Wanying through the boundless yellow sands, and their route was extremely strange, twisting and turning as if they were avoiding some invisible thing.
What shocked him even more was that after he pulled up the surveillance replay to confirm, he found that these two had actually not taken any Basic Antidote Pills.
“That has to be fake, right? Avoiding the poisonous miasma? How is that possible?!”
Chu Jianghe could not help exclaiming in a low voice.
The dark green miasma of the Poison Fog Desert mixed with the air and spread everywhere, and in the past even the military stationed here had dispatched a class holder with the A-rank skill 『Domain Analysis Expert』 to try to unravel it, only to ultimately declare failure.
Yet the scene before his eyes…Lu Sheng’s seemingly casual footsteps were actually allowing the two of them to pass through the deadly poisonous miasma completely unscathed!
Could it be that he had mastered some kind of inconceivable method of evasion?
“Are an E-rank Seeker’s Basic Detection Skills really this effective?”
An extremely bold, even somewhat crazy thought exploded in the heart of the veteran soldier Chu Jianghe like a clap of thunder.
“If he can even avoid poisonous miasma, then what if…what if this ability can see through the boundless fog shrouding the territory of Great Xia Country?!”
After the great upheaval of Blue Star, the territory of Great Xia Country had been sealed off by a boundless, eerie mist and was completely cut off from the outside world.
It was said that S-rank, and even SS-rank, top powerhouses of Great Xia had once gone deep to explore it, but in the end they all vanished without a trace and were completely lost.
Now, after so many years, the monster Secret Realms that kept emerging within the borders of Great Xia were steadily shrinking humanity’s living space, and if this continued, the people of Great Xia would one day completely lose their habitat and be forced to enter the fog, where even top powerhouses could not survive, in search of hope.
The ability Lu Sheng was displaying at this moment was like a ray of light in the darkness.
Chu Jianghe’s heart started pounding violently; if… if this young E-rank Seeker could truly see through the fog that had plagued Great Xia for hundreds of years…
Then he would be a hero who could bring a sliver of hope for survival to all of Great Xia.
“This matter concerns the fate of the nation and must be reported!”
Chu Jianghe instantly made his decision, but for the moment he forcefully suppressed his surging emotions and tightened his grip again on the bead in his hand that shimmered with a gentle luster.
『Barrier-Breaking Pearl (S)』
Effect: Within the Poison Fog Desert inside the Secret Realm, it can forcibly teleport a target at specified coordinates to the user’s side. Forged by: Guo Weihua (S-rank Master Smith).
This special item, provided by the Poison Fog Desert garrison squad and specially crafted by S-rank Master Smith Guo Weihua, was the key trump card that allowed Chu Jianghe to dare choose the Poison Fog Desert as the venue for the Newcomer Trial.
If any student met with an unexpected danger, he could rely on this official strength to forcibly pull the student out of the Poison Fog Desert before they were on the brink of death.
However, in order not to let the students grow complacent, he had not told them about this, so that they would still maintain a sense of awe.
Although his speculation about Lu Sheng’s ability was very important, right now, as principal, his top priority was to ensure the safety of every single student.
His gaze once again locked tightly onto the surveillance feed of Lu Sheng and He Wanying.