Chaoyang, who had been listening nearby, seemed unsurprised. He simply added calmly, “I’m with her.”
The beautiful staff member had already guessed as much. Another set of generous complimentary services followed, and in the end she personally escorted the two of them through a special passage, arranging seats for them directly in the business class cabin.
Watching how she and Chaoyang had practically received green lights the entire way until boarding the plane, Qi Bai couldn’t help forming several guesses in her mind.
What kind of school was Imperial Capital University exactly, that an admission letter alone could really let someone attend school without any obstacles?
Whether compared to China’s top universities like Tsinghua or Peking University, or foreign institutions like Harvard and MIT, this still seemed a bit exaggerated.
After all, even if these students were top-tier talent reserves, they were still just reserves.
There was no guarantee they would bring any special profits to the airport in the future.
Before Qi Bai could voice her doubts, Chaoyang began speaking on his own.
“Status is really a strange thing.”
The comment came out of nowhere, but Qi Bai quickly formed a guess.
Could it be that a university admission letter here was the key to class mobility?
Combining that with the tutoring advertisements plastered all over the streets and the special travel channels opened specifically for university students, it wasn’t hard to conclude.
In this world, studying was extremely important.
For people at the bottom of society, crossing class boundaries was incredibly difficult, and education might be the only path.
“Status can be a goal, but it can also be a tool.”
The thought flashed through Qi Bai’s mind, and before she realized it, she had spoken it out loud.
Chaoyang looked at her in surprise, his expression deepening slightly before he smiled thoughtfully.
“That’s the first time I’ve heard someone say it like that…”
He paused briefly, as if choosing his words carefully.
“I always thought everyone should believe that status is supreme. After all, teachers always repeat it our society naturally has ranks and hierarchies.”
While he spoke, his eyes seemed to casually glance toward the upper right corner. The movement was subtle, but Qi Bai still noticed it.
Her heart tightened.
Out of the corner of her eye, she also looked upward. In the blurred edge of her vision, a faint red light blinked.
That was…
A surveillance camera.
Thinking back to what Chaoyang had just mentioned about “universal education,” she also recalled a phrase teachers often repeated: “Status is predetermined by heaven and sacredly inviolable.”
Placed in a modern context, the idea felt extremely strange.
Could this actually be a traditional feudal society disguised with modern appearances?
Looking at the young man in front of her who outwardly seemed like a model student Qi Bai suddenly felt cautious.
Although he seemed to be reminding her to watch her words, he clearly wasn’t the kind of naive, harmless university student she had initially imagined.
Just as Qi Bai had sensed something odd, Chaoyang himself was also puzzled.
Of course his meeting with Qi Bai hadn’t been pure coincidence.
In his plan, he intended to find an ordinary “travel companion” who was also heading to Imperial Capital University, befriend them, and stage a flawless performance that would help him smoothly enter the student council.
Who would have thought that although he found a companion, she was anything but ordinary? They had barely met, and she had already nearly triggered a disaster.
Discussing the concept of status was practically jumping on certain people’s nerves. His plan to avoid attention had nearly collapsed.
How dare she say something like that?!
And then another thought echoed in his mind.
How dare I respond like that?!
Qi Bai also asked herself the same question internally.
Perhaps because the outward appearance of this world wasn’t too different from the era she came from, she had almost spoken herself into trouble just now.
Although installing cameras in airplanes was normal, Qi Bai didn’t dare rely on luck.
She needed to quickly understand the rules of this world, and all her previous experience would have to be discarded.
Both of them intentionally ended the topic. With the surveillance camera constantly watching, Qi Bai lost interest in continuing the conversation. She found an excuse and went to rest on her own.
A projection screen in the cabin was playing recent news.
“Recently, the Special Capture Department successfully conducted an exploration operation within the Abyss. A total of 150 team members were dispatched, with 73 returning. This marks the lowest casualty rate in history for such an exploration…”
Several unfamiliar terms immediately caught Qi Bai’s attention.
The news report sounded more like a work summary mentioning the casualties and briefly stating that the gains were substantial. As for the process or actual footage of the exploration, there was none at all.
Even though Qi Bai had countless questions, she could only keep them to herself and quietly remember the key information.
The news segments passed quickly. Overall, they were divided into four types.
Government activity reports.
Religious activity reports.
Special school events.
Wanted notices.
Yes just like the bounty lists in ancient times, a portion of time was devoted to broadcasting the government’s wanted list.
It included descriptions of suspects’ appearances, and sometimes even photographs.
But it never mentioned the bounty amounts.
Qi Bai felt a little disappointed.
Although what happened earlier had already shown that being a freshman at Imperial Capital University could practically function as money, years of working life had made her uneasy whenever her wallet was empty.
Most government news was like the earlier report broad summaries with very little detailed explanation.
This revealed an obvious problem: people watching the news would find it difficult to form any emotional connection with the events being described, because they simply didn’t know what had actually happened.
This would make it hard for the public to understand or accept many government policies.
From this, Qi Bai inferred that the government probably didn’t rely heavily on popular support.
Combined with Chaoyang’s obvious caution about the airplane’s surveillance cameras, Qi Bai formed a bold hypothesis.
If the government didn’t rely on the masses, then perhaps it ruled through authoritative power instead. In that case, monitoring people’s every move would be perfectly normal.
After all, even certain countries often used navigation systems to spy on citizens’ privacy.
Having formed a logical explanation, Qi Bai felt slightly relieved.
It seemed she had simply been unlucky ending up in a place with completely different political norms, and accidentally saying something risky.
But even after comforting herself, she couldn’t fully relax.
Because she remembered a piece of news she had just watched.
It was classified as a special school event.
The story came from Heze City No. 3 Middle School.
A teacher had suddenly announced a regulation.
To comprehensively improve the school’s physical education standards, the entire school would conduct a full-time survival competition for the next month.
Students with failing results would face serious consequences for their advancement to higher education.
The news broadcast used real footage of the competition, interspersed with commentary.
In the footage, fourteen- and fifteen-year-old teenagers ran frantically across the campus in disheveled conditions. Some formed teams, while others fought alone like lone wolves.
Their confrontations escalated from bare-handed fights to threats with weapons.
Bloodshed appeared throughout most of the broadcast.
Qi Bai found it difficult to associate the fierce, twisted faces of those youths with the word students.
Wasn’t school supposed to be a place for education?
Even if they wanted to test students’ survival abilities, shouldn’t they send them to conquer nature instead?
Some countries even organized survival training activities by dropping children on deserted islands.
Yet here, on national news, footage of students fighting and competing violently against each other was broadcast openly.
The commentary even praised a particular student for his courage because he had successfully seized food from five other students in succession.
Listening to it, Qi Bai could only feel that the whole thing was utterly absurd.