Chapter 30 : Chapter 30
Chapter 30: A Drudge in the Investigation Division! Heading to Qingfeng City!
The moment they heard those words, both Liu Boyan and Zhou Wei were instantly stunned.
A student... had been decorated?
Each word was easy enough to understand on its own, but put together, they somehow became hard to believe.
Zhou Wei hurriedly asked, "Say that again?"
The teacher delivering the message said timidly, "Commander Chang said that Teacher Liu's student was awarded a Bronze Medal."
"He also said the school should put it on a campus headline page..."
"And which student was it?" Zhou Wei pressed urgently.
Deep down, he already had an answer, but he did not want to admit it.
The teacher replied, "It was Ye Ze..."
It was as if something had exploded in his head. Vice Dean Zhou Wei's mind seemed to freeze completely.
At that moment, the broad-shouldered Chang Zhengping strode in, glowing with excitement.
"Old Liu, you really introduced a talent to me!"
Behind Chang Zhengping stood Ye Ze, yawning.
Liu Boyan's expression turned exaggeratedly strange as he looked at his old comrade Chang Zhengping.
"What happened? What do you mean by decorated?"
I only asked you to look after Ye Ze. Who told you to decorate him?
Could this get any more absurd?
Seeing the look on Liu Boyan's face, Chang Zhengping burst into hearty laughter, as if he had long been waiting to witness his shock.
He beckoned to Ye Ze and said, "Hahaha, come on, show your teacher!"
Ye Ze took the Bronze Medal out of his pocket and placed it in front of Liu Boyan.
At the sight of it, Vice Dean Zhou Wei abruptly stepped forward and stared at the medal as well.
"Bronze Medal... awarded by the Scout Camp..."
"In recognition of Ye Ze's outstanding contributions to the clearing of No. 19 Contaminated Land?"
Holding the medal and reading the inscription on it, Liu Boyan's confusion quickly turned into irrepressible excitement.
It really was a Bronze Medal awarded by the Demon Suppression Army!
In the entire Linyuan City, with its population of hundreds of thousands, there were fewer than twenty people who possessed a Bronze Medal!
And most of them were veteran soldiers of the Demon Suppression Army...
Yet now, a high school student had actually been awarded one?
Chang Zhengping patted Liu Boyan on the shoulder and said, "Old Liu, do not get too excited. Do you not have one as well?"
Liu Boyan steadied himself and gave a slight shake of his head.
The Bronze Medal he had received had only been awarded to him when he was on the verge of retiring from the military.
The meaning of that was completely different from Ye Ze receiving one while still only a senior in high school.
Even if Ye Ze's college entrance exam results ended up ordinary, this medal alone would entitle him to treatment equivalent to a top one hundred ranker in the exam!
At the very least, he now had a solid guarantee.
Liu Boyan let out a long breath and was just about to say something...
Only to discover that Ye Ze was dozing in his chair, paying no attention at all to the matter of the medal.
"...This brat."
As for Vice Dean Zhou Wei, all color had drained from his face in shock.
Just moments ago, he had been preparing to cancel Ye Ze's chance to enter the Group Dungeon?
Cancel the rightful benefits of a student who had contributed to the fight against the Abyss and possessed a Bronze Medal?
How was that any different from demolishing military family housing by force?
Yet within moments, Zhou Wei forced his face into a broad smile and said approvingly, "I knew it. A student capable of clearing Hell difficulty is destined for an extraordinary future!"
"You all know this. I have always been the biggest supporter of students going into the Contaminated Land for real combat practice!"
Liu Boyan let out a cold snort.
Seeing this, Chang Zhengping frowned and asked, "And who are you?"
Zhou Wei's smile instantly froze.
Liu Boyan said bluntly, "Vice Dean Zhou, you should hurry back and focus on your elite class."
Seeing that no one was paying him any attention, Zhou Wei's expression grew increasingly awkward, and he could only slink away in embarrassment.
After that, Liu Boyan put the Bronze Medal back into Ye Ze's pocket and immediately called to him, "Wake up first. You can sleep once you get on the high-speed rail."
Ye Ze had not actually fallen asleep. He had merely been resting with his eyes closed. Hearing that, he looked puzzled.
"High-speed rail? I do not need to take high-speed rail just to go home, do I?"
Liu Boyan's face was full of helplessness. "To Qingfeng City, of course! You did not forget about the super-large group dungeon, did you?"
"Is that not tomorrow?" Ye Ze was startled.
"It is almost midnight already! We are in Linyuan City! Just the high-speed rail ride takes five hours!"
Damn!
Because he had barely ever traveled to other cities, Ye Ze had nearly forgotten.
Linyuan City was the most remote city in the entire East China Region.
As a result, when students from Linyuan City had to go to other cities for examinations or dungeons, they usually had to leave in the middle of the night.
Chang Zhengping said casually, "It is fine. If Nephew Ye Ze wants to sleep, let him sleep a bit longer. I will personally send him there when the time comes!"
Nephew?...
Liu Boyan gave him a suspicious look.
Still, he nodded. "That would work."
Ye Ze immediately waved his hand. "No need. I had better go along with everyone else."
On the drive back just now, Commander Chang had managed to praise the East China Army and the Zhubei Regiment once every three sentences.
He had practically built up immunity to it.
If Commander Chang sent him all the way again, Ye Ze did not even want to imagine it.
He casually asked, "Teacher, are you not going to Qingfeng City?"
Liu Boyan let out a deep sigh and pointed at the stack of files on his desk.
"No. 17 Contaminated Land has shown some strange phenomena. The Section Chief took people over there for an on-site investigation, and now all of their work has fallen onto me..."
"I am basically a drudge in the Investigation Division..."
Ye Ze tossed out that comment, then quickly slipped away and headed for Linyuan City's high-speed rail station.
...
At that moment, Ye Ze's body had transformed into a mass of shadow, weaving through Linyuan City.
To travel faster, he had directly copied the squirrel's Shadow Meld skill.
The sensation of Shadow Meld was somewhat like swimming, and somewhat like floating through the air, except that no one would notice him.
"I did not expect that I would actually be heading to the mantis's homeland."
"Though for that homeland... its memories are probably not very good."
Qingfeng City was the city that had captured the Extreme Blade Mantis.
It was also the only city in the East China Region that housed a level 10 super-large group dungeon.
And the Blood-Red Plains where the mantis had been born lay more than a hundred li outside Qingfeng City.
But with the mantis currently in a state of slipping into the Void, it was obvious that it no longer cared in the slightest about that so-called homeland.
He had arrived at the high-speed rail station.
In truth, in this world, because there were technology-oriented classes such as Machinists, transportation was quite advanced.
But the more advanced the transportation, the more energy it required, and the more expensive everything became.
High-speed rail, by contrast, was economical and practical.
And the Academy even covered two trips for the students, so they did not have to pay out of pocket!
When he stepped onto the high-speed rail platform, he could see that it was filled with senior students from War Academy's ordinary classes.
As for the elite class, they naturally had their own special means of travel, and they would not be doing the group dungeon together with the ordinary classes.
The moment Ye Ze stepped into the carriage, someone cried out in shock.
"Damn! Ye Ze!"
"It really is him! I did not see him at all today, so I thought something had happened to him!"
"I thought Zhao Xuan had lost money and hired someone to get revenge on him..."
Because of Ye Ze's record of achieving the first clear of a Hell-Difficulty Dungeon, he was still something of a legend in the eyes of the students.
But after a full day had passed as a cooling-off period, everyone was clearly far more rational now.
If this had been yesterday, there probably would have been quite a few people rushing up to ask for his autograph.
Ye Ze swept his gaze across the carriage. Most of the students were only around level 3, while level 4 already counted as outstanding among the ordinary classes.
In the end, his gaze settled on a twenty-four-year-old woman.
Xia Qing, age twenty-two, was an intern teacher from Ordinary Class Three and also one of the teachers leading this trip.
Compared to the high school girls in the carriage, her figure, already fully matured, appeared especially graceful and slender. Her features were gentle, and she wore a light green dress.
Ye Ze walked over, and Xia Qing noticed him as well, lifting a hand in greeting.
"Teacher Xia, where should I sit? Somewhere quiet enough to rest would be best..."
As he spoke, Ye Ze wore an utterly harmless smile.
Xia Qing was momentarily taken aback. After glancing around, she looked at Ye Ze's clean and handsome face and could not help saying,
"Then... you can sit here with me."
This high-speed rail train was divided into several compartments, each able to hold four to six people, and people could freely group themselves when choosing seats.
Ye Ze did not have any especially close friends to sit with. He only wanted to rest on the way...
Which meant that the place least likely to be disturbed was naturally the teachers' compartment.
Ye Ze was thoroughly satisfied. "Thank you, Teacher Xia!"
Seeing Ye Ze enter Xia Qing's compartment, quite a few male students immediately began to feel envious and resentful.
Xia Qing was a university student on the verge of graduation, the kind of delicate and charming beauty whose voice was gentle and whose looks were sweet.
Among the boys just beginning to awaken to romance, she had always been extremely popular.
Watching someone reach a place they could only dream of, and seeing Ye Ze get there first, they could not help feeling heartbroken.
In a compartment not far away, two boys and two girls were discussing something animatedly. The topic was still Ye Ze.
"Tell me, just how strong do you think Ye Ze must be now, if he could already solo a Hell-Difficulty Dungeon yesterday?"
"Oh, give it a rest! He did not even enter a dungeon at all today. For all we know, he has already given up."
The speaker was a thin boy wearing assassin light armor. He was level 4, clearly having spent the entire day grinding dungeons, and he sounded rather full of confidence.
But the priest girl sitting across from him did not agree.
"Ye Ze got the first clear of Hell difficulty. I do not think there is a single high school student in all of East China stronger than him!"
"Who says there is not? Someone is way stronger than him!"
The thin level 4 boy immediately shot back.
"My uncle told me that someone truly terrifying showed up at the Scout Camp today!"
"Right there in No. 19 Contaminated Land, he could casually one-shot even level 15 elite fiends..."