Chapter Nineteen

(Correlated with the manhua’s chapter 19)

Sitting in a circle a few meters from the cliff’s edge, the six group members took some time to relax before worrying about the gorge. Unfortunately for the other five members, Zhou Kun San decided to open his mouth to complain.

“I told you guys from the start that we should just cruise along and let Mu Bai handle all the work! We’ll end up passing either way! You guys just wouldn’t listen! How in the world are we going to cross this?!”

It was clear to everyone that Zhou Kun San was terrified by the prospect of crossing the gorge, but no one cared enough to point that out and cause him to blubber more.

“Shut up, Zhou Kun San!” Mo Fan ordered. “Xiao Hou is a wind mage and can carry himself over the gap to bridge it with a few ropes. There’s no reason to be discouraged.”

Beside Xiao Hou sat He Yu, who opened her bag and pulled out several lengths of rope to prove Mo Fan’s point.

Grabbing the rope, Xiao Hou excitedly said, “Alrighty! Leave it to me!” before jumping up and tightly tying one end of the ropes to a sturdy tree nearby.

Picking a fight for whatever reason, Zhou Kun San told Xiao Hou, “Come on, you can’t be happy to have to cross the gap! Stop with the act. Like, it’s whatever if you end up dying…but say you fell and became a cripple. That’d be pretty bad, wouldn’t it?”

Tempted to tie up the fatty with the ropes, Xiao Hou yelled at him to get lost before confidently moving to the edge of the cliff and gathering his magical energy. He raised his arms at his sides before slowly lowering them, causing green light to flutter and sparkle around him, encasing his body.

“Path of wind!” He yelled.

With a powerful leap, Xiao Hou sent himself through the air toward the other side of the gorge, where he quickly landed and tied the other end of the ropes he brought with him. The act had appeared so effortless that his friends couldn’t help but applaud his efforts. He Yu in particular gushing over him.

“Xiao Hou’s so cool!”

“How was that impressive at all? Any wind magician could do that…” Zhou Kun San scoffed under his breath.

With the ropes in place, the other five took turns crossing the gorge, grabbing onto the rope and, one hand at a time, carrying themselves across.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the students, Zhankong and a few others watched Mo Fan and his group’s progress across the gorge from a distance, recording all relevant information, including who complained about their journey and who stayed alert. Of course, when Zhankong told the students days before that they’d be unsupervised, he lied. There was no way they could purposefully endanger the students and expect to get away with it, even if they claimed it was for the students’ own good. He’d also lied when he said all students would pass on the condition that one group or student completed their own mission. The reality was that every student was receiving a score out of ten, affected by a multitude of factors, but mostly by how much the student involved themselves and worked towards completing the mission.

As for danger, there was none. At least, on the journey. Zhankong and his subordinates had long since cleared the place of dangerous monsters, but to complete their missions, the students had to fight monsters summoned by summoners at the end of their journey. Killing the monsters was likely impossible, because the summons were much stronger than them, but the goal was simply to observe how the students fought, among other things. If a student tried using a group member as a distraction to flee, they’d fail. If a student did their best to defend their group members, they’d pass. Stuff like that.

……

Tired and full of sarcasm, He Yu whispered, “Now that we’re past the mountains, it’s time to face the forests…yay.”

Walking beside He Yu, Zhou Min laughed. “Earlier you were saying that you were sick of the mountain paths. Shouldn’t this be a nice change of pace?”

“Aha, I was just kidding~”

“HUSH!”

Without warning, Mo Fan, who was at the head of the group, stopped in his tracks and quieted his classmates, eyes focused on a dense cluster of trees and bushes outside of the path.

“There’s something up ahead…” He whispered.

The six group members waited quietly as they moved into formation and readied their magic, prepared to blast whatever popped out of the vegetation.

Suddenly, Mo Fan felt the casting of a spell from the greenery and responded with his own attack.

“Fire strike!”

Just in the nick of time, Mo Fan’s fire blast obliterated the incoming ice attack, destroying all plant life in the way and revealing the figures on the other side.

““It’s you!””