73: Chapter 73 Baptism at Dragon Gate
With every point he increased, he felt his consciousness become clearer and sharper. To his perception, the entire world seemed to have had a veil lifted, becoming unprecedentedly clear and thorough.
He could "hear" the accelerated heartbeat of a Student on the other end of the cabin, caused by nervousness.
He could "see" that Teacher Liu Qing had developed an unprecedentedly strong confidence in him.
"These five thousand pay-to-win points were well worth the cost," Wang Pingan thought to himself.
The intermediate mental cultivation technique was truly extraordinary. Just reaching proficiency had caused his mental power to undergo a qualitative leap. If he were to cultivate it to perfection, what kind of scene would that be?
Just as he was immersed in the pleasure of his surging mental power, a thought with a hint of scrutiny, like a needle prick, swept across his mental sea of consciousness without warning.
Wang Pingan's heart skipped a beat.
His newly condensed "Star Sea" instinctively contracted and withdrew in that instant, all its light dimming instantly to become a piece of profound nothingness, perfectly masking his surging mental power fluctuations.
He slowly opened his eyes.
He saw Lin Zhan, who was sitting opposite him, also open his eyes at the same time.
Lin Zhan's brows furrowed imperceptibly, and a trace of doubt flashed in those eyes that were as still as an ancient well.
Just now, he seemed to have felt an extremely vast, yet fleeting, mental power fluctuation.
But when he tried to perceive it carefully, he couldn't find anything.
Was it an illusion?
Lin Zhan's gaze lingered for a moment on Wang Pingan's calm and waveless face, before finally closing his eyes slowly.
Wang Pingan's heart, however, was not as calm as it appeared on the surface.
That mental probe just now definitely came from Lin Zhan.
This guy actually cultivated a mental cultivation technique too? And judging by the proficiency of that probing technique, his attainments were not low.
It seems that no one who can be selected for Xuanyuan University is a simple character.
The rest of the voyage was uneventful.
A dozen or so hours later, as the shuttle ship slowly exited the subspace channel, a slight sensation of weightlessness arrived.
Teacher Liu Qing's gentle voice sounded inside the cabin.
"Students, we have arrived."
"Welcome to Xuanyuan Martial Arts University, Tianshu Star Freshman Special Training Base."
Everyone, including Wang Pingan, subconsciously looked out the porthole.
Then, in that moment, everyone's breath was tightly constricted by an invisible hand.
A blue planet, so huge it was impossible to describe with words, floated quietly in the pitch-black universe.
And in the synchronous orbit of that planet, an even larger, more magnificent ring-shaped space station, composed of countless metal structures and energy light belts, like the dwelling of gods, was slowly rotating, emitting a brilliant light that made people's souls tremble.
The scale of that space station was more than ten times larger than the space station in Galaxy City! (Dear lords, the author only wrote this to show off.)
Countless ships of various sizes, like industrious bees, shuttled endlessly between the various ports of the space station, forming a magnificent picture full of sci-fi atmosphere.
"Is... is this the Tianshu Star base?" a Student from another city on Galaxy Star asked with a trembling voice, his face filled with disbelief.
"No," Teacher Liu Qing smiled and shook her head.
She pointed at the magnificent ring-shaped space station, her tone filled with a hint of pride.
"This is just an external transportation hub for our Xuanyuan Martial Arts University."
"Our true freshman special training base is on that planet."
Teacher Liu Qing's words plunged the entire cabin into dead silence.
Everyone was completely stunned by the terrifying scale of Xuanyuan University.
Just a transportation hub was more magnificent than the capital space station of their Galaxy Star. Then how spectacular must the true university headquarters be?
The shuttle ship smoothly entered a huge spaceport.
When the hatch opened and Wang Pingan and the group of more than eighty geniuses from Galaxy Star walked down the gangway, a surge of spiritual energy, several times richer than that of the Galaxy City Special Recruitment Camp, rushed towards them.
Wang Pingan greedily took a breath, feeling all thirty-six thousand pores on his body expand at this moment, letting out excited cheers.
Inside the spaceport, senior Students responsible for reception were already waiting.
They were led onto a levitation train with a huge internal space.
The train silently sped along a transparent pipe towards the blue planet below.
Through the train window, Wang Pingan saw countless architectural complexes floating above the clouds, full of technological sense. He saw teams of Students with powerful auras conducting some kind of actual combat drill between the mountains and rivers.
Everything here was full of vitality and a sense of power.
About half an hour later, the levitation train slowly stopped in front of a huge valley.
At the entrance of the valley stood a giant rock one hundred meters high.
On the giant rock, four large characters were carved in a vigorous and cursive style: 【Dragon Gate Valley】.
"This is the place where you will live and study for the next year," a senior student responsible for reception introduced to everyone.
"Passing through this Dragon Gate, you will face the first test of your freshman enrollment."
"It is also the most important assessment that will determine your resource allocation for the next year."
"'Dragon Gate Baptism'."
Just then, on the other side of the valley, another levitation train slowly stopped.
Another group of equally young, but more unruly, boys and girls walked off the train.
There were more of them, numbering in the thousands.
And their bodies all radiated a powerful aura that made the geniuses from the "countryside," like Wang Pingan and his group, feel somewhat oppressed.
"Those are geniuses from other main stars in our Xuan Yuan Galaxy System, such as Sirius, Vega..." Teacher Liu Qing explained softly from the side.
"You are competitors."
Wang Pingan's gaze swept quickly through that group of people.
【Eye of Truth】 was quietly activated.
In his field of vision, those hundreds of geniuses turned into humanoid light sources of varying strength.
Most of them were blue, representing the late Third Grade.
Among them were a considerable number of deep blue ones, representing Peak Third Grade!
And what made his heart sink the most was that among that group, there were seven figures, like bright moons in the night, emitting extremely brilliant, extremely condensed, pale golden light, representing the strength of a Fourth-Rank Martial Artist!
They were like kings standing out from the crowd, just standing there casually, they naturally became the focus of everyone's attention.
Including himself, there were exactly eight!
It seems that among the freshmen of his batch, there were a total of eight monsters who had stepped into the Fourth-Rank before enrollment.
Just as Wang Pingan was sizing up those seven people, one of those seven, a tall and thin young man with a face so handsome it was somewhat demonic, and long silver hair, seemed to have noticed his gaze.
He slowly turned his head, and a pair of narrow eyes landed precisely on Wang Pingan.
His eyes were full of provocation.