21: Chapter 21 The Classic of Mountains and Seas Returns!

Chapter 21: Classic of Mountains and Seas Returns!

"How many haven't come out yet?"

On the other side, Fang Zhenyuan put down the roster and rubbed the space between his eyebrows.

Academic Director Sun Zhiguo turned to the last page, his finger sliding from top to bottom along the list: "Out of the eleven worlds, excluding the deceased, basically everyone is accounted for. There is one person for the Classic of Mountains and Seas Plane, but because he was the only one who chose the Classic of Mountains and Seas Plane and there are no others to provide news of his death, it is basically confirmed that there is no possibility of return."

"His name is Lin Ye. There was quite a commotion when he chose the Classic of Mountains and Seas, and even the vice president tried to stop him, but couldn't."

Fang Zhenyuan fell silent for a few seconds. "According to the regulations, if the plane gate remains open beyond the agreed time limit and the trial taker has not returned, the trial is considered a failure and marked as death."

Academic Director Sun Zhiguo turned his head to glance at the grayish-white door in the corner of the playground.

"Yes."

Several teachers nearby had already begun packing up the documents in their hands.

The students on the playground were also whispering to each other, occasionally pointing towards the grayish-white door.

Qu Xianghong hesitated for a moment and took a few steps toward the front of the platform.

"Principal, the gate of the Classic of Mountains and Seas Plane... seemed to tremble just now."

Academic Director Sun Zhiguo sighed nearby and persuaded him in a low voice: "Old Qu, a slight tremor of the door is nothing; it's probably spatial fluctuation. According to the rules, once time runs out..."

"I know the rules."

Qu Xianghong interrupted him, "Wait another five minutes."

Fang Zhenyuan paused and slowly nodded.

In the center of the playground, the light screen of energy meters was still scrolling with the scores of the latest batch of trial takers.

But that grayish-white plane gate suddenly began to flicker unstably, the halo at the edge of the door frame growing fainter and thinner.

This was a signal that the plane gate was about to close.

"The energy fluctuations are weakening; the door will close automatically soon."

said the person in charge of detecting energy fluctuations.

"Wait... What is going on?!"

Suddenly, that person took a sharp step back.

The monitoring tablet in his hand screamed like crazy, and the energy readings on the screen instantly turned an entire row of data red.

The halos on the door frame, which had grown so thin they were about to extinguish, were suddenly reignited by a surge of power gushing from inside the door...

First dark red, then dark gold, and finally a layer of crackling, exploding cyan-gold electric arcs.

The three colors intertwined, growing brighter and brighter, dazzlingly bright!

Everyone on the playground instinctively turned their heads, and then, the grayish-white light gate that had been dormant for a full seven days blasted wide open.

The vortex inside the door spun wildly, whipping up a fierce wind carrying a scorching metallic scent, causing the clothes of those nearby to snap in the wind.

A figure stepped out from the depths of the vortex.

The first thing that caught everyone's eye was a dark red long staff.

Carved along the body of the staff was a coiling dragon pattern, with the dragon's head at the tip and its tail at the grip, its lines primitive and vigorous.

Then came the hand holding the staff...

The finger bones were distinct, and a very faint dark golden luster faintly flowed across the surface of the skin.

Lin Ye was barefoot, wrapped in a few rags scorched pitch-black by lightning, his body covered in large and small marks that looked like they were left after recovering from severe injuries.

The whole person looked like they had just crawled out of the ruins of a fire.

He raised his head and swept his gaze across the playground.

The entire playground was dead silent.

Fang Zhenyuan slowly stood up from his seat.

Staring at the young man who stepped out from the grayish-white light gate for a full three seconds, his voice trembling: "...A trial taker has returned from the Classic of Mountains and Seas Plane!"

This sentence was like a pebble thrown into a pot of boiling oil.

The entire audience instantly exploded.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait... He came out? He came out from that door?!"

"Zero survival rate! The zero survival rate of the Classic of Mountains and Seas has been broken by him!"

"Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, holy shit?!"

"How is this possible?! Not a single person has come out in three years!! Not a single person in history has ever come out!!"

"Look at his state... covered in injuries, his clothes torn to shreds like that, he looks just like a beggar."

"He survived, but he must have had a pretty miserable time, right? Look at that stick of his—it's made of wood, he doesn't even have a decent weapon!"

"He probably hid in the Classic of Mountains and Seas for seven days and didn't get anything out of it; being able to return alive is pure luck."

"You can't put it that way. Coming out alive from a zero survival rate is already not easy. Returning is victory in itself."

"You didn't understand my meaning. He ended up like this in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, so he definitely didn't get anything. Look at Shen Qinghan, who came out of the Ghost-Slicing Team Plane with a single slash scoring eighty-three points. Now look at him, with a broken wooden stick and not even a complete piece of clothing on his body. The gap is plain for everyone to see."

None of the school leaders on the rostrum showed any expression of contempt.

Vice President Zhou Bingwen pushed his chair back and stood up, supporting himself on the tabletop with both hands, leaning forward slightly and staring intently at that figure, his lips moving before closing again.

Fang Zhenyuan lowered his voice to a whisper: "Director Zhou, did you feel it?"

"I felt it."

Vice President Zhou Bingwen said in a hoarse voice: "There are at least three high-tier energies of different attributes on his body, and their tiers are all so high that I can't even tell what they are!"

"What else?" Fang Zhenyuan stared at him.

"One of them seems to be fire attribute. But the grade of that fire... I can't quite say."

Fang Zhenyuan didn't ask anymore.

He had been the principal for fifteen years and had seen too many trial takers walk out from the plane gates.

Some people's strength was written on their fists; you could tell how heavy it was the moment they struck.

Some people's strength was hidden in their bones; when they weren't fighting, they looked utterly ordinary, but the aura of them standing there was just different.

The young man who came out of the Classic of Mountains and Seas looked somewhat disheveled all over.

But those eyes...

Those were the eyes one would only have after experiencing countless brushes with death—calm, restrained, yet carrying an indescribable sense of oppression.

The ordinary students on the playground certainly couldn't see these things. They could only see tattered rags and a wooden stick.

Several trial takers who had just gotten high scores didn't even bother to hide their expressions of disappointment.

They had originally thought that a fierce expert could emerge from a zero survival rate world, but it turned out to be just this?

"Is that the idiot? The one who chose the Classic of Mountains and Seas?" whispered a boy from the Magus Guild Plane.

"It's him. I remember when he went on stage to choose, Teacher Qu almost rushed up to stop him."

"Tsk, couldn't stop him even if you tried, his life is quite tenacious though. But looking at this state, he probably just chewed on grass roots for seven days in the Classic of Mountains and Seas."

Su Tang did not participate in any discussion.

She had stood up the moment Lin Ye stepped out of the door, standing straight with reddened eye rims, yet stubbornly holding her tears back.

Lin Ye stepped out of the light gate, leaving a scorched footprint on the plastic runway beneath his feet.

He turned back to glance at the grayish-white light gate slowly closing behind him. The other eleven plane gates had all closed at some unknown time, leaving only the gate behind him glowing in the center of the playground.

Wait, what a coincidence?

All eight doors reached their time simultaneously, and he happened to be the very last one?

Forget it.

No use thinking about it; this isn't important.

Lin Ye was about to walk toward his class's direction when Qu Xianghong had already pushed through the crowd and hurried up to meet him.

This middle-aged man in his forties had always been calm and steady, but right now he was practically jogging over, beads of fine sweat oozing from his forehead as he looked Lin Ye up and down.

"It's good that you're fine. Are you injured or uncomfortable anywhere? Do you want to eat something to line your stomach? These seven days of yours..."

Halfway through, his gaze swept over Lin Ye's outfit of tattered rags, his voice cutting off abruptly, a trace of complex emotion flashing deep in his eyes.

Obviously, like everyone else, he regarded Lin Ye as a survivor who had survived in the Classic of Mountains and Seas by stripping tree bark for seven days.

Lin Ye lowered his head to look at himself.

The rags wrapped around his body were clothes torn apart by lightning, and the charred scars were scabs that, although healed after refining the lightning core, had not yet completely detached from his flesh.

He didn't even have shoes.

He really looked quite like a beggar.

"Teacher Qu, I'm fine."

Su Tang squeezed through the crowd.

She lowered her head to take a deep breath, then raised her head and glared at him: "Do you know how worried I was?"

"...I know."

"Fine." She didn't say any more, just stepped aside by half a step, "Let's go, to testing. The academy got a new gadget this year."

Su Tang accompanied him as they walked toward the dynamometer in the center of the playground, quickly explaining the situation just now.

A boy from the Foul Curse Plane got eighty-one points, and the whole school thought he was the first place of this batch.

Then Shen Qinghan from the Ghost-Slicing Team Plane stabbed out eighty-three points with a single slash, and everyone said it was impossible for anyone to surpass her.

"Eighty-three?"

Lin Ye's brow furrowed slightly.

In the past, the initial evaluation scores of trial takers were mostly around fifty points, and passing seventy was considered a genius.

And the score of the initial evaluation was not a simple combat power value; it was more like a potential assessment.

The higher the score, the greater the magnitude of growth in these seven days, the longer the path one could walk in the future, and the higher the ceiling one could touch.

Eighty-three points was indeed impressive.

She was someone who truly obtained an inheritance-grade fortune in the Ghost-Slicing Team Plane, and her upper limit of potential would be directly raised by an entire tier.

But just for a fleeting moment, Lin Ye's brow smoothed out.

He thoughtfully flexed his fingers.

Dense gazes fell all over him from the surroundings.

Curious, mocking, pitying, indifferent... the only thing missing was anticipation.

"Is that him? The first one to return alive from the Classic of Mountains and Seas?"

"Look at his broken wooden stick, he probably didn't even find a handy weapon in the Classic of Mountains and Seas."

"Being able to survive is already not bad, what score are you thinking about? I guess twenty or thirty points at most, on the same level as those noobs from the Magus Guild."

"Don't put it that way, he broke the zero survival rate record after all. Even if it's only ten points, that's still a historic moment."

"What's the use? Without enough points, you still can't get trial takers' resources. Is there a bonus for breaking the record? No."

Su Tang suddenly turned her head, her gaze sweeping coldly across those students who were still pointing fingers.

The Silver Moon Wolf cooperatively let out a low whimper.

Those people immediately shut their mouths, involuntarily taking a step back.

Su Tang withdrew her gaze, her voice softening a bit: "Don't mind them. Just do your best, don't put too much pressure on yourself. Come on, no matter how many points, as long as you're back!"

Lin Ye nodded, walked past her, and headed toward the dynamometer.