Chapter 53: Acquaintance
After more than three months of grueling construction, Lu Yunxi and her team finally completed the campus. In the end, only the final touches, like the landscaping and decorative stonework, were left to be finished.
“Wonderful, absolutely wonderful!” when the university chancellor arrived for the final inspection, he was thoroughly impressed. He grabbed her hand and shook it with intense excitement. “You truly live up to your reputation as the premier builder on the server! We must absolutely collaborate again if the opportunity arises!”
The result was vastly superior to anything the board had anticipated. Their institution had officially become the very first campus in the entire galaxy to complete its structural matrix inside the simulation!
After perfecting the remaining details, the leadership team happily paid out a massive completion bonus to Lu Yunxi before formally initiating their academic semesters.
Yunxi chose to linger in the region, establishing a temporary base camp deep within the surrounding ridges. Her new daily routine was set: during the daylight hours, she would sneak onto the campus grounds to audit the interstellar lectures, and by night, she would blitz the local dungeons to farm resources.
However, after enduring a few days of advanced academic instruction, she faced a harsh reality: she didn’t understand a single thing the professors were talking about.
Her baseline knowledge was strictly limited to her previous life’s modern curriculum, and after so many years, most of those concepts had faded into obscurity. Trying to keep pace with the hyper-advanced theories of an Interstellar University was a lost cause. It was the structural equivalent of thrusting a modern primary school student directly into a university-level advanced calculus seminar; the learning curve was intensely hostile.
Sitting through hours of lectures, she found herself entirely incapable of parsing the complex formulas rendered on the display screens.
Defeated, Yunxi quietly crept out of the lecture hall along the rafters, resolving to locate a virtual primary school to properly lay her academic foundation from scratch.
But as fate would have it, the moment she broke cover and dropped from the roof, a figure crossed her path.
The man wore a flawlessly tailored, high-grade combat uniform, his posture radiating a powerful aura of absolute authority.
Wait… isn’t this the exact same commander who was organizing the military units outside the instance gates weeks ago?!
The two met head-on in the courtyard, freezing as they locked eyes for two long seconds. Then, both moved simultaneously—one lunging forward, the other executing a rapid backstep.
“I recognize your frame. What business do you have infiltrating these restricted grounds?!” The commander’s features darkened into a mask of absolute severity as his hands shot forward to grapple her shoulders.
Fortunately, Yunxi had anticipated the risks of infiltration. She was securely wrapped within a massive, heavy cloak that completely obscured her silhouette, her features were thoroughly masked, and she had even doused herself in an intensely sweet local perfume to mask her scent matrix. She wasn’t about to let a simple confrontation unravel her disguise.
Letting out a cold snort, she fluidly tilted her torso to evade his grip. Reaching down, she scooped up a heavy clay flowerpot from the adjacent terrace and hurled it straight at his chest.
Though the projectile only succeeded in delaying his advance for a microsecond, the brief window was all she needed. Yunxi executed a powerful leap, scaling the outer perimeter wall and sprinting out of the academy grounds.
However, the commander’s reflexes were terrifyingly optimized. He recovered instantly, giving chase and tracking her right into the brush.
Thankfully, Yunxi possessed a flawless, geometric comprehension of these specific mountain ranges. After leading him through a massive, labyrinthine circle across the rugged ridges, she successfully broke his line of sight and slipped away.
Ducking into a secluded cave, she collapsed onto the dirt like a limp, salted fish, her chest heaving violently.
That was entirely too close! Not a single player she had encountered across the regional maps possessed a fraction of that man’s physical speed or combat awareness. It appeared she had gravely underestimated the top-tier elite of the interstellar forces. She needed to push her training attributes even harder!
What she didn’t know, however, was that the commander was currently locked in an identical train of thought. As one of the most physically dominant martial figures in the real world, his baseline biological metrics had translated into a top-tier avatar profile upon entering the simulation. He had fully expected to dominate the physical parameters of the server, yet he had just been effortlessly outmaneuvered by an agile specter in a cloak. He truly was getting complacent!
Worse, the internal security web of the military academy was completely unacceptable. Granted, the academic professors didn’t discuss highly classified defense strategies during public lectures, but they couldn’t simply permit an unauthorized phantom to stroll through their research facilities as if they owned the place! If he hadn’t been explicitly contracted to supervise the cadets’ physical drills, the intruder would have breached the perimeter completely undetected.
Ultimately, Lu Yunxi didn’t retreat very far from the zone.
Barely a kilometer away from the First Interstellar Military Academy, right along the base of the massif, she discovered another institutional outpost—a fully operational primary school!
It was a literal miracle; a perfect pillow had dropped into her lap right as she was getting sleepy.
Determined to thoroughly master the foundational constants of interstellar science, she bypassed the selective auditing model she had attempted at the military complex, choosing instead to enroll in every single baseline course and study the material with absolute seriousness.
But regardless of how meticulously she structured her schedule, her physical body wasn’t forged from iron. Attending classes by day and executing high-speed dungeon runs by night meant living an existence completely devoid of sleep, and the exhaustion rapidly caught up to her system.
One morning, after grinding through an instance until the pre-dawn hours, she emerged from the cavern mouth yawning heavily, dragging lower limbs that felt as though they had been filled with molten lead. The relentless, day-and-night cycle of academic study and combat conditioning had left her utterly drained.
But a sudden, familiar voice cutting through the misty air caused a violent shiver to run down her spine, shocking her senses completely awake.
“I’m heading back to log off and rest now, what about the rest of you?”
Yunxi froze. That voice… isn’t that my own apprentice, Shen San?!
She immediately scanned the clearing, quickly spotting Shen San’s distinct avatar standing a short distance away. His back was turned to her position as he wrapped up a conversation with a party of players.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. She frantically pulled her face mask tighter, yanking the hood of her cloak down until it completely shadowed her eyes. Veering sharply off the main path, she took a hurried, circuitous route through the brush to flee the clearing.
The average player base had no means of identifying her as an anomaly, but Shen San was a different story; he knew her character model intimately. If he caught a native NPC actively clearing high-level player dungeons incognito, it would shatter his comprehension of the game matrix and trigger immediate suspicion.
She absolutely refused to let her cover blow!
Unfortunately, her swift, covert movements looked incredibly suspicious to the onlookers behind her.
“Haha! Look over there, Brother Shen! That player is acting incredibly bizarre. Why is he dressed in solid black stealth gear? What a total edge-lord!”
Shen San instinctively turned his head to scan the ridge, but he only caught a brief glimpse of a cloaked figure melting around a stone corner.
Strange, he thought, his brow furrowing slightly. That silhouette looks incredibly familiar. Have I crossed paths with that account somewhere on the forums?
Meanwhile, just past the bend.
Lu Yunxi pressed her back against the rock face, clamping a hand over her chest to quiet her erratic breathing. Shen San has officially migrated to this sector!
She had to abandon this regional instance immediately. Fortunately, her core metrics had already scaled into the mid-forties, bordering on Level 50; the experience yield and equipment drops generated by this specific bandit dungeon were becoming negligible anyway. Otherwise, leaving such a lucrative resource node behind would have broken her heart.
The following afternoon, Yunxi returned to her pristine, academic routine. Masquerading as a normal primary student, she quietly absorbed her coursework by day and returned to her secure cave to rest properly at night.
When the final bell chimed, signaling the conclusion of the academic shift, she slowly drifted out of the facility gates alongside the departing crowd. However, she had barely cleared the perimeter wall and turned the corner into the main valley when a familiar figure materialized directly in front of her path.
The master and disciple stared at each other in absolute silence.
“Master?!” Shen San’s face instantly lit up with a mixture of profound shock and immense joy. He lunged forward. “What on earth are you doing here?!”
Lu Yunxi stood entirely speechless. Wasn’t this kid supposed to be farming high-level dungeons? Why has he suddenly manifested outside an interstellar primary school?!
“I… well, I actually ventured into these ranges to forage for rare, exotic ingredients,” she stammered, frantically assembling a baseline narrative to save her skin. “What brings your station to this sector?” Thank goodness he hadn’t physically witnessed her stepping through the school’s entry barrier; otherwise, her cover would have disintegrated on the spot!
“I traveled out here to visit my younger brother at his dormitory,” Shen San explained, his excitement palpable. “I never anticipated crossing paths with you out in the wilderness, Master! This is amazing! My core cooking proficiency has experienced a massive surge lately; it’s entirely due to the flawless foundations you drilled into me!”
Yunxi let out a silent, massive breath of relief, her poised, serene master persona snapping back into place. “Your progress is strictly a reflection of your own discipline, disciple. Had you lacked the necessary focus, the finest instruction in the world would have yielded nothing.”
“Master, the dinner hour is approaching. Allow me to prepare a proper meal for your station right here; please grace me with your critique!” Shen San beamed, pulling up his inventory interface. “What specific flavor profile do you desire tonight?”
“Anything you prepare will suffice.”
The duo strolled along the riverbank, scouting the terrain for fresh components. From wild mushrooms and crisp mountain greens protruding from the loam to fresh river shrimp darting through the shallows—whenever a high-quality ingredient materialized, Shen San expertly harvested it.
Since the wilderness lacked an established kitchen setup, they cleared a small patch of turf on the riverbank and kindled a tidy campfire.
Compared to Yunxi, who had spent the last few weeks surviving on dry travel rations in the mountains, Shen San’s virtual existence was remarkably luxurious. He smoothly manifested an extensive array of premium pots, pans, and high-tier seasonings from his dimensional storage.
While he was occupied with prepping the hearth, Yunxi seized the opportunity to covertly pull up the server’s global culinary ranking directories. As expected, her hidden identifier permanently occupied the undisputed number one spot, though her identity remained masked. The chef holding the number two rank had also chosen to completely seal their credentials. From the third spot onward, the board was populated entirely by basic “Junior Chefs.”
She meticulously scrolled through the directory from rank three down to one hundred… yet her apprentice’s name was nowhere to be found.
Lu Yunxi: …
She stared at the cooking fire, sinking into a deep, calculated silence. I need to think very, very carefully about how to construct my words of encouragement later.
