Chapter 25
In the office, the kindly tower chief smiled at the man on the sofa across from him.
"Tingyu, are you leaving today?" His smile broadened as he asked, his good mood impossible to hide.
Shen Tingyu looked down at his personal communicator, dealing with messages as he nodded and asked, "Yes. You're so concerned, tower chief. Do you want me to stay and help some more?"
The tower chief waved his little chubby hands rapidly. "Oh, no, no. I have plenty of staff here. I won't waste your precious time."
Shen Tingyu chuckled silently. Before getting up, he took the small observation device from his pocket and set it on the tea table between them. "This belongs to you."
"Oh, isn't this your lucky 'student'?" The tower chief raised an eyebrow. "Speaking of that student, he's quite remarkable."
"Today happens to be his initial assessment since entering the tower. His results are interesting. Won't you take a look before you leave?"
Without waiting for Shen Tingyu to answer, he got up, went to his desk, and pulled up some data panels on his computer.
The tower chief turned the screen toward Shen Tingyu, then took the top document from a tall stack of paper files on his desk and handed it to him. "This is his written exam. There are a lot of characters written wrong, but his score... is actually quite good."
As Shen Tingyu took the exam paper, his gaze fell on the screen.
The first thing he noticed was Xu Qingran's Spiritual Pool grade from his retest at the Evil Tower.
He asked, "I remember this young master of the Xu Family was known for having the worst constitution in the Silver Dragon Faction. His Spiritual Pool was the lowest grade, F."
"How is it a B now?"
The tower chief chuckled. "Right? We were puzzled too."
"But if we use you as a reference, it all makes sense."
Before Shen Tingyu's soul had taken shape, tests had already revealed that he possessed an exceptionally high 3S-grade aptitude.
Later, when it began to take shape, he had not even been ten years old. Before his soul was determined to be E-Type, his Spiritual Pool had also undergone another tremendous leap in growth, so the empire had remained extremely cautious and wary of him all these years.
After all, he was a destructive existence who could destroy the entire empire if anything went even slightly wrong.
Shen Tingyu only smiled without speaking and continued reading.
Xu Qingran's data was indeed impressive, including evaluations based on comprehensive data from the Evil Tower's most advanced superintelligent AI system and lie detector, among other things.
Although his scores weren't all perfect, they came very close. Besides, this wasn't even the graduation exam after formally entering the Evil Tower, merely the initial assessment. Given a little more time, he really might earn a perfect score for "moral standards."
Interestingly, on the day Student Xu entered the tower, he had been sent to Tower 4 for an act of violence.
And on the handwritten exam, he had gotten only one sub-question wrong.
Shen Tingyu raised an eyebrow slightly and flipped straight to the final question on the last page.
It was also the only one Xu Qingran had gotten wrong.
The question went:
If the world cannot love you, fate cannot treat you fairly, the pain you endure goes unanswered, your efforts go unrewarded, and everyone spurns, condemns, misunderstands, abandons, and hurts you, what will you do?
Xu Qingran's answer was brief.
—Run the whole world over and kill it.
—And the melodramatic person who wrote this question.
A faint hint of amusement flitted through the blue eyes.
When Shen Tingyu left the Evil Tower back then, the tower chief had considered his outstanding assessment worth commemorating and asked him to add a question for future test takers.
This was the one he had casually written down.
He was the melodramatic person who had written the question.
The tower chief asked him, "Well? He may be your first and last student, anyway. Why don't you decide what assessment result to give him, based on his current state?"
"Let him leave now, or keep him under observation?"
Shen Tingyu closed the exam paper and put it back where it had been.
"No. I'm sending him to the arena in Tower 3."
The tower chief's expression froze, and he hesitated for once. "Are you sure?"
"Hiss, if this goes badly, someone could die."
Shen Tingyu, however, said as he walked out, "If he survives, he'll be grateful to me for this decision."
Of course, it would be fine if he died too.
If an E-Type that similar graduated and was sent back to the Silver Dragon Camp, he was afraid he wouldn't be able to resist making a move.
"The arena?"
Xu Qingran soon received the notice from a staff member.
The moment he heard the word, he felt it couldn't be a good place.
"The arena? The Evil Tower's arena?!"
"Oh my god, wait. I still haven't figured out how you ended up at the Evil Tower with my help, and now you're being sent to the arena too?!"
The system, which knew a little about it, was already starting to break down.
"According to the script, you should have used your natural advantage in looks, been more of a white lotus than your stepmother and more of a green tea than the little green tea, and slowly cleared your name while your strength and reputation rose together. In the end, you should have become the entire empire's male god, leaving the scum gong unable to win you or have you, heartbroken and full of regret!"
"How are you fighting in the Evil Tower now?!"
As the system wailed, Xu Qingran was sitting in a small escort vehicle belonging to the Evil Tower, being driven slowly along a glowing lane toward the entrance to Tower 3.
He asked, "Do you know what kind of place it is?"
The system answered listlessly, "I do!"
"To put it simply, you have to go in and fight people, and a whole bunch of them at that!"
The Evil Tower had another twisted arrangement.
On the lowest level of each tower, starting with Tower 3 and counting inward, was a huge arena. Those thrown in to struggle and slaughter one another were serious criminals who had already been sentenced to death. Only the last person left alive could be spared their punishment.
Of course, besides those death-row inmates, there was another kind of person thrown in: E-Types guilty of serious crimes and potential E-Types.
"This is a brutal fight for an E-Type."
The system said.
Although an E-Type entering without a sentence would have a basic layer of energy protection to keep them alive, they would at the very least end up seriously injured. And if there happened to be an extraordinarily twisted and powerful villain inside, accidents could still happen.