Chapter 272: Progress
Xu Zhi saw the news while having dinner with Qi Yanxin.
In the real world, every city had its own official media outlet. And every city’s official media had one particular hobby: broadcasting bad news from other cities.
So during the evening news, Xu Zhi saw the very “timely” report about what had happened earlier that day.
Ordinary citizens probably assumed their city’s evening news was simply well-informed—able to air events that had just occurred. But the moment Xu Zhi saw it, she felt something was off.
Her thoughts immediately went to her knife, whose whereabouts were now unknown.
It was an instinctive sharp intuition. What a coincidence—an incident like that happening in full public view, even broadcast live to the entire world?
Now was not the time for [Cup] to appear so high-profile.
After half a month of study, Xu Zhi had already realized that the current curriculum contained no mention of [Cup]. Only the history textbooks briefly stated that there had once been another evil attribute, but it had already dissipated.
The authorities seemed unwilling to let the public realize that [Cup] existed. What was the purpose of that?
If it was being concealed, then if [Cup] suddenly returned one day, wouldn’t extraordinary individuals who knew nothing about it be caught completely off guard?
Unless… concealment was disadvantageous to [Cup].
“Is it about public awareness?”
For now, that was the only explanation Xu Zhi could think of. Perhaps something like: if everyone knew about [Cup], it would become dangerous; if no one knew, it would weaken.
Of course, that was just her own speculative leap of imagination. It was simply the only possibility she could currently conceive.
In the past, concealment might have worked. But now that [Cup] had already appeared, continuing to hide it was clearly not a good idea. Xu Zhi didn’t believe that the [Cup] in Minjiang had grown arrogant enough to announce its existence to the entire world. She was more inclined to think this was a conspiracy that even Minjiang’s upper echelon hadn’t noticed.
Among those capable of orchestrating such a scheme, Lian City would certainly be one of them. After all, the city she was in possessed the key tools necessary to create such an incident.
Watching the Lian City news anchor on television—who seemed utterly unaware of who those fanatical believers really were—Xu Zhi faintly sensed the smell of rising gunpowder in the air.
But what did that have to do with her, a mere first-year student?
Aside from earning a small batch of credits on the first day of class, she had only accumulated less than a hundred credits in total over the following days—and that was only because her talent was outstanding.
It seemed the person during the entrance assessment hadn’t lied. Credits were truly difficult to obtain.
The good news, however, was that rumors on the forum said the Lost Lands selection date had been finalized. The specific time might be announced in a couple of days.
She was only a step away from leveling up again. Her body had recovered to about the same state as an ordinary person’s. In her circuit classes, she had also learned quite a few useful support and offensive circuits.
Yes—just from the projected demonstrations shown in class, and from the circuits she had first encountered on day one, Xu Zhi could already construct them fluently in her mind.
Most circuits required materials to function, but a few special ones could be activated purely with an extraordinary individual’s own energy.
Even her circuit instructor didn’t know this yet. Xu Zhi planned to give everyone a little “surprise” during the Lost Lands selection.
The cores she had been exchanging intermittently and the extraordinary energy she absorbed from the air had already brought her to the threshold of Level 7 — Comprehension. Curse Speech had also benefited, reaching Level 20. Although Level 20 didn’t grant new abilities, the power of Curse Speech itself was already formidable; at Level 20, the commands she could utter had increased significantly.
What pleased Xu Zhi most, however, was that she had occasionally been secretly feeding the little aberrant seed her blood. Combined with her steadily rising extraordinary level, the life aura she sensed from it was now far stronger than when she had first arrived here.
She felt that the withered seed was about to sprout.
She had searched extensively online and ultimately spent one hundred thousand to purchase a flowerpot and a special batch of soil.
The flowerpot was engraved with extraordinary circuits, and the soil was specially formulated to slowly absorb extraordinary energy from the air and channel it to whatever extraordinary plant was buried within.
Although Xu Zhi wasn’t sure whether the little aberrant seed counted as an extraordinary plant, she figured it was worth a try.
How could a seed sprout without soil and water?
Of course, the water had been replaced with her blood.
In short, a small brown flowerpot now sat by her bedside. It looked completely ordinary, but aside from Xu Zhi herself, no one knew that within it was planted a [Cup] Archbishop.
“You’d better sprout soon. Otherwise, wouldn’t it look strange if I carried a flowerpot everywhere?”
She didn’t have a storage space anymore.
There were items engraved with auxiliary circuits that provided storage functions—but even the smallest ones cost millions. How could she possibly afford that?
At the thought, Xu Zhi couldn’t help sighing. “Poverty. Why am I so poor?”
Could she just message the principal and ask for five million directly?
Probably impossible.
Still, the Inner Court’s monthly three-day break was approaching. Xu Zhi planned to take that opportunity to visit the doctor from Gods’ Heavy Industries.
Before that, borrowing a bit of money from the principal shouldn’t be a problem, right?
She could just say she didn’t want to end up owing treatment fees and being forced to agree to whatever conditions the doctor proposed. Under that premise, the principal should be willing to lend her a little, shouldn’t he?
Xu Zhi’s calculator was clicking loudly in her mind.
After reaching Level 7 — Comprehension in the [Lamp] attribute, she planned to begin constructing [Moth] circuits. At present, she had only saved ten [Moth] attribute cores—definitely not enough. She would need to find a way to earn more credits.
Just as she was worrying about this, during a break the next afternoon, one of the girls who had grown quite close to her called out.
“Xu Zhi, are you free during the break?”
The girl’s name was Meng Chuanling. Behind her stood the unlucky redhead, Tan Ning. Tan Ning was somewhat careless and lacking in social awareness—completely opposite to the name of her attribute, [Heart]. Yet her personality matched it perfectly: extremely optimistic. Though she seemed clumsy at times, when she danced, she was unexpectedly beautiful.
Meng Chuanling, on first glance, seemed far more ordinary. But Xu Zhi felt she had plenty of tricks up her sleeve.
When Meng Chuanling suddenly asked that question, Xu Zhi instinctively sensed there was something more.
Sure enough, when Xu Zhi replied that she was free, Meng Chuanling glanced around before leaning in and whispering, “Then… would you like to secretly earn some credits with us?”
The tone alone made Xu Zhi feel something was off.
Why did she make earning credits sound like committing a crime?
