That night, every 1st year student received a letter in their mailboxes.

Just when we were about to head back into our joined rooms after a long afternoon of wandering around the Recreation Campus, an automated message of some sort suddenly played from the mailboxes beside our doors.

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[You have: 1 new message in your mailbox. Marked as urgent. Check: mandatory.]

Mandatory…? So the doors won't open until we check the message, or what?

Confused and hesitant, I reached for the mailbox and felt inside. Indeed, there was an envelope of some sort. Well, more specifically, there were ten. I took one of them out and read it over.

"… Class Rep Vote…?" Feng Mian murmured, peeking over my shoulder like a bunny.

"I guess this is the class leader thing Ming Hao was talking about earlier, huh…" I murmured.

"The what?" The girls looked at me in confusion.

"Uh… I'll explain more inside."

Saying this, I took out the other nine envelopes who contained the exact same thing, then headed into our room.

*****

I handed each of the girls an envelope — each one had a different name on it, one for each of us. After they all scanned over the documents, they understood.

"So, this has to do with the special exam on Monday," Yu An Yan concluded.

I nodded. "Correct. I still don't have any idea how the school will determine who faces off against who, but the class reps will most likely play some sort of a role in it."

"In other words, we should make Long Lu the class rep, since he listens to you," Feng Mian grinned.

"Yep. It doesn't mention that being class rep grants any additional rewards other than authority, so I don't mind giving it away."

"But… this is a vote-style election," Lan Xiao Su pursed her lips. "Even if all 10 of us here voted for him, there's no guarantee someone else won't end up with more votes."

"No, we're safe," I replied confidently. "For one, I noticed various friend groups had already been formed in our class over the past week. They aren't collective enough to vote for one person, and the ten of us hold the majority of the votes so far. And besides… I doubt anyone else will want to be class rep anyway. I mean, like I said, the form here doesn't mention any additional benefits. Being class rep will give you nothing but responsibility, and given how much those classmates of ours like playing around…"

"How unfortunate to land in this class…" Lin Luo muttered in disdain.

"You should be grateful you are here at all, half-spawn," Mei Gui glared condescendingly at her. "If it wasn't for Master, you would never have made it into Fragment. Actually, if it wasn't for him showing mercy, you would've been dead already."

"Hmph. I didn't ask for him to help me."

"… Master. Permission to slap this ungrateful insect?"

I sighed. "Calm down… Lin Luo's just like that. I'm sure in your heart… you're grateful to me, right?"

Smirking suggestively, I glanced at her, to which she grit her teeth and glared daggers at me, almost on the same level as that of Mei Gui. Teasing her was quite fun.

"Anyway…" I turned back to the others. "It goes without saying, but I'd just like to state this one more time — all of us here, vote for Long Lu."

The girls nodded and picked out writing utensils from the pen holder on the table, before hurriedly writing in their chosen candidate names into the forms. After they were done, they showed me their forms for approval, even though I said there was no need.

"Now… how do we send this back…" I murmured, scanning the form for any hints.

"Look here, Big Brother Xuan Kai," Qing Yue said, pointing at the back of the envelope that once contained the form. On it was a little string of text that read 'Place back into mailbox after completion'.

"I guess… it just automatically sends itself if we place it back into the mailbox?" Lan Xiao Su suggested hesitantly.

"Probably. It's not like we have any better options other than to just do what the envelope says," Yu An Yan said with a shrug.

We placed our filled forms back into our own respective envelopes and put them all back in the mailbox. Thankfully, we didn't throw the envelopes away, or else that would've been problematic.

With that settled, we decided to just head to sleep. Cultivating in the Void Realm was not improving our strength anymore, as we had hit a bottleneck. In order to progress further, we needed to experience real combat.

*****

- The Next Day -

[Meet me in half an hour, same place. Need to discuss something with you.]

I sent that message to Ming Hao at approximately 8 in the morning, then headed for the men's bathroom in the Main Campus. The other girls weren't even awake yet, as it was the weekend. It took some trouble to get out of bed gently, as both Qing Yue and Mei Gui were latched onto me like parasites, but I managed to pull it off. Mei Gui still ended up waking up since she could detect me (somehow even when she was asleep) but I told her to just go back to sleep.

Obedient as she was, she listened to my orders without an utter of complaint.

Ming Hao responded to my message nearly instantly, being an early riser as well.

[Got it. I wanted to talk to you too… and I have a feeling I know what the topic is going to be.]

And indeed, he did.

"I'm assuming this is about the class rep thing, right?"

I nodded. "Naturally. Did you get chosen?"

He smirked. "What do you think?"

Then, after seeing me shrug, he opened his phone and pulled up his messages, before turning it to me so I could see the screen clearly. On it displayed a text from 'School Admins':

[Congratulations, you have been chosen as the class representative of Class 1-A, Series 1.]

"Huh, so they send it to you via text?"

Ming Hao nodded. "It kinda surprised me as well… I mean, I expected something formal like this to be announced in-class, but I guess not."

"It's probably to give you time to prepare for tomorrow's exam, as class rep," I replied. "Planning and such. But not that much time, since this is part of the test."

"That makes sense, yeah. What about you? Did you end up as your class rep?"

"No, but…" I opened my phone and showed Ming Hao a message someone else sent me — Long Lu.

The message was a screenshot of his own texts, which read the same thing Ming Hao's had.

"This is… your puppet, I presume?"

"Sounds about right, yeah," I replied, then stuffed my phone back in my pocket. "In any case, with this, our plan is pretty much already a success. The only problem is…"

"… How the teams will be matched, huh?" Ming Hao chuckled. "It would be great if we could just be matched against one another, but if Class B and C challenge US instead of each other…"

"I wouldn't be surprised if they did, if I'm being honest," I sighed. "The method we're using is passive confrontation — they may very well go for direct confrontation."

"Well, we don't know how the teams will be matched yet anyway. Maybe the school just chooses them, or maybe there's some sort of preliminary competition to decide who gets to pick. Personally, I hope the latter. That way, we have the best chance of setting our plan in motion."

I nodded. "Agreed."

"Man…" Ming Hao leaned on the wall and stared up at the ceiling. "If the first special exam of the year is already this complicated… how will we fare in the future?"

"The exam seems simple on the surface, but is actually quite complex," I replied. "By the way… how are you even in this school?"

"Kinda surprised you didn't ask earlier, but family recommended me in here," Ming Hao replied. "I'm technically not the right age yet, but I mean, neither are you. But here we both are. This university doesn't care about age — only strength."

"… Right."

Yeah… he doesn't know that I actually am the right age, since I spent all those years in the Void Realm, but… whatever.

After this short exchange, we parted ways, waiting for some more information to be revealed to us tomorrow about the exam. I just realized that us meeting up in person was so pointless — most of these conversations could just be had over text, but I guess for privacy reasons… and, of course, Ming Hao just wanted to see me. He said he wanted a harem, but give his weird, creepy obsession with me, I couldn't help but wonder if he swung that way.

Shaking my head, I headed back to my room to see if the girls had woke up yet. If they had, I wanted to check out a certain place…

… The school library.