The room was on the third floor, and it was not what Lin Yi had expected.
It was full. Four tables had been arranged, one for each academy’s representative, and the representatives had apparently taken the concept of making an impression very seriously. The mont he walked in, all four stood. One of them led with an offer of a private dormitory suite with a personal training ground attached. Another ntioned a monthly equipnt allowance that was genuinely significant. A third offered a ntor arrangent with one of their current senior faculty, a forr top-ten ranked regional hunter.
The fourth representative, a middle-aged woman from what appeared to be the most academically focused of the four, slid a folder across the table that contained a list of research resources, library access credentials, and a schedule of specialized combat theory seminars that she described as things most students didn’t even know existed.
Lin Yi looked at all of it. He listened to all of it. He let everyone finish.
Then a fifth representative, who had been quiet in the corner and whom Lin Yi had not initially noticed, cleared his throat and offered three things in sequence with the air of soone playing cards he had been saving. The first was a training stipend. The second was early access to a restricted dungeon circuit. The third, delivered with a completely straight face, was the option to select any two students from the academy’s current enrollnt as personal attendants.
The room went slightly quiet after that one.
Lin Yi looked at him. "No."
"The attendants, or all three?"
"All of it."
He looked around the room. All five representatives were watching him with the focused attention of people who had done this before and were trying to read which objection would be the useful one to address.
"I want to compete with the best," Lin Yi said. He said it simply, without performance.
"That’s the reason. Not the facilities. Not the resources. Not the allowances." He paused. "Since I started winning, I haven’t wanted to stop. That’s not ambition for its own sake. I spent a long ti not winning anything. I know what that feels like." He looked at them. "A calm life, an untiring life, that was the goal once. It still is, eventually. But to be a champion, you have to stand at the front of the storm and go through it. Not around it." He stood up. "The best are at Heavenly Phoenix. That’s where I’m going."
No one argued. The representatives from the other four academies accepted it with varying degrees of disappointnt and professional grace, and the woman with the folder gave him a card and said, if anything changed, her door was open. He took the card. He would not change his mind, but she had been the least theatrical of all of them and that deserved acknowledgnt.
....
The bus back to Jianghe departed mid-afternoon.
Lin Yi found a seat near the window. Wang Hao dropped into the seat beside him imdiately, with the certainty of soone who had been ntally claiming that seat since the return journey was announced. Su Qinghan took the seat across the aisle without comnt. This arrangent felt settled in the way that certain things beco settled without anyone formally deciding them.
"So," Wang Hao said, once the bus was moving and Celestial City was beginning to scroll past the windows. "Heavenly Phoenix."
"Yes," Lin Yi said.
"I’m applying there too," Wang Hao said. "Also Azure Blade Academy and Pure Alliance." He said it with the particular tone of soone who has done realistic math about their own situation and is at peace with it. "Three hundred and ninety points is strong. Might be enough for one of the lower intake thresholds." He paused. "Might not be enough for Heavenly Phoenix. Their acceptance floor is probably higher."
"Apply anyway," Lin Yi said.
Wang Hao looked at him. "Yeah?"
"Yes."
Wang Hao nodded slowly. "Okay." He leaned back. "Okay, I will."
Su Qinghan, from across the aisle, said, "I’m applying to all five."
Wang Hao turned to look at her. "All five?"
"Three hundred and ninety points places second overall in the regional examination. The assessnt requirents for each academy are different. Applying to all five gives the most complete information about where I actually stand." She paused. "And it costs nothing to apply."
"That is ruthlessly logical," Wang Hao said. "I respect it."
The bus settled into its journey. Around them, other students were talking, so sleeping, so staring out windows at the landscape changing from urban to the long road stretching back toward Jianghe. The atmosphere was different from the outbound trip. Less tense. More like the particular quiet that cos after sothing big has finished.
Then, from sowhere in the middle of the bus, soone said Lin Yi’s na.
Not as part of a conversation. As a chant. Just his na, twice, with a pause between. Soone else picked it up. Then a third. Within thirty seconds it had spread through most of the bus, not everyone, but enough that the sound filled the space clearly.
Lin Yi looked out the window.
Wang Hao grinned so widely it looked like it might cause him a problem.
Then footsteps ca from the back of the bus and stopped beside Lin Yi’s seat. Lin Yi turned. Chen Feng stood there, his posture straight, his expression carrying the particular quality of soone who has thought carefully about sothing and decided to do it regardless of how it felt. He looked at Lin Yi for a mont. Then he bowed his head. Not deeply. But clearly. A genuine acknowledgnt from soone who did not perform things he didn’t an.
"Two hundred and sixty points," Chen Feng said. "Eleventh overall." He said it without embarrassnt. "I don’t know if that’s enough for Heavenly Phoenix." A pause. "But I’ll find out." He straightened. "I’ll be stronger next ti we et."
Lin Yi looked at him. "Good," he said.
Chen Feng nodded once and returned to his seat. The chanting from the rest of the bus had mostly dissolved into noise and conversation again, but the warmth of it was still in the air. Wang Hao watched Chen Feng walk back and then turned to Lin Yi with an expression that was doing several things simultaneously. "He bowed to you," he said. "Chen Feng bowed to you."
"I noticed," Lin Yi said.
"That’s." Wang Hao searched for the word. "That’s sothing."
Lin Yi looked back out the window. The landscape was opening up now, the wide flatlands between Celestial City and the frontier spreading out in every direction. Sowhere ahead was Jianghe. A sester ending. Application letters to write. A month before the Regional Academy intake assessnts began. A written exam, apparently, because a hunter who couldn’t think was just an expensive weapon waiting to break.
He would write the letter. He would sit the assessnt. He would go to Heavenly Phoenix.
And sowhere in Red Lotus City, in a room Lin Yi had never seen and would not think about, a golden aura pulsed with the particular intensity of soone who had learned a na they had not expected to learn and was deciding what to do with that information. Han Yue sat alone with his final score. Three hundred and eighty points. Fourth place. The na above him on the board sat behind his eyes like sothing he couldn’t put down. Lin Yi. An E-Rank Laborer from a frontier city of six million. Four hundred and fifty points. A broken record. A performance that didn’t have a category.
Han Yue released the golden aura slowly, let it dissipate through his fingers, and was quiet for a long ti.
Then he reached for a pen and began writing down everything he knew.
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