Chapter 50

Real World.

Bang...

With a tremendous crash, Qin Su, who had spent half a month's Life Points to select his landing site, slammed down outside Jiang Cheng's villa along with Z-X307.

The thunderous noise made Jiang Cheng, who was driving home, slam on the brakes. A piercing screech rang out as he looked at his house through the windshield.

Who had thrown a bomb at his house?

After collecting himself, Jiang Cheng, who should have called the police, remembered that Qin Su had specifically warned him he might land at his house in the next few days. He gave up the idea and drove on.

The villa gates opened, and the first thing Jiang Cheng saw was a giant mech, roughly six or seven meters long by his estimate.

Jiang Cheng involuntarily recalled the things Qin Su had said he had "fished" out of the water.

"..."

Great, that confirmed it. There was a 99 percent chance it was Qin Su again.

Having confirmed it, Jiang Cheng immediately sped up and drove to the mech. Without taking the time to examine what it looked like, he hurriedly searched around it for Qin Su.

Qin Su first heard the car, followed by Jiang Cheng's familiar, hurried footsteps.

He had returned to the Real World right at midnight, completely unharmed.

Qin Su wanted to speak, or raise a hand and knock on the mech lying beside him. Unfortunately, he could only think about doing so. He did not even have the strength to move a finger. Having experienced firsthand what five times the weakness meant, Qin Su could only pray that Assistant Jiang would find him quickly.

With Qin Su's advance warning, Jiang Cheng did not dare overlook a single detail. He carefully circled more than halfway around the mech before finally spotting Qin Su's familiar face beside its shoulder, near the neck.

Qin Su lay on his back on the soft lawn, his nostrils filled with the smell of juice from grass crushed and mashed beneath a heavy weight. Above his eyes was Assistant Jiang's familiar face.

Hi, Assistant Jiang. What a coincidence.

Qin Su silently greeted Jiang Cheng, gradually letting go of his anxiety.

With Assistant Jiang's ability to accept things and his exceptional competence at work, there would be nothing more for him to do.

Seeing Qin Su lying on the ground, his black eyes gazing coldly at him, smelling the strong odor of gunpowder, and noticing the tears and large bloodstain on Qin Su's strange clothes, Jiang Cheng felt his scalp go numb. He quickly checked him over and found no wounds. A little relieved, he sent a message to the doctor, bent down, and helped Qin Su inside.

Even after he was helped onto the bed, Qin Su did not say a word.

It was not that he did not want to speak. He was so exhausted that he lacked even the strength to open his mouth. The moment he lay down, his eyes snapped shut, and no matter how Jiang Cheng called to him, Qin Su did not want to open them again.

The Life Points bug kept him from dying, and even when he lay down utterly exhausted, he could hear every sound around him clearly.

But there was nothing he could do. He truly did not have the slightest strength left to respond.

Jiang Cheng said a few things and waved a hand in front of Qin Su's eyes. When he got no response, he took off Qin Su's strange clothes and helmet, wiped him down, and changed his clothes while waiting for the doctor.

Jiang Cheng put away the clothes he had taken off Qin Su, found a black cloth, and went outside.

"...It's all right." Looking at the mess in the garden, Jiang Cheng said to himself, "It's a good chance to change the decor."

After the Qin Family transferred the house to him, he had always been busy and could not be bothered to redecorate, so he had left it as it was.

Before the doctor arrived, Jiang Cheng completely covered the giant mech in the garden with the black cloth, leaving it to be dealt with when Qin Su woke up.

Comic World.

777 watched Qin Su spend Life Points to forcibly remain in the Comic World for twelve hours, purchase space storage, and select his landing site twice. Yet when everything had settled, Qin Su's Life Points stood at minutes and 19 seconds.

More than two years of life.

Qin Su's grand death, like "attending a banquet alone and unarmed," had earned him more than a year's worth of Life Points in just one hour.

His Life Points were still climbing explosively and without pause. 777 did not dare imagine how many years Qin Su would have at the final tally.

It really was... dangerous but useful!

Excitedly, 777 made a sweeping entry in the strategy manual: disregard life and death, and achieve everything through a grand death!

(Excellent example: lifting 985 Tons of Explosives and charging at the mutated giant without hesitation.)

After an unknown amount of time, the ship He Muzhi had ultimately brought down at the edge of the water was discovered by patrolling locals.

The combat suits the students wore allowed the locals of Viterlta Planet to recognize them as students from the Federation's Fourth Military Academy. They immediately contacted the academy.

Having been unable to contact the Viterra Tower 5285 Jump Point, the people on a ship originally heading to Vitelta from another Jump Point learned from footage the locals had taken at the scene that the ship carrying Class (6)'s students had been found so far from the Jump Point. They turned around and rushed toward the students' location...

He Muzhi opened his eyes and instinctively glanced around. The surroundings were crude, and a black knotted-cord totem with a strong local character hung on a wall bearing obvious signs of damage.

They were still on Vitelta.

As he grew more awake, He Muzhi's throbbing head gradually recalled everything that had happened before he lost consciousness. He abruptly sat up.

The movement pulled at his wounds, and He Muzhi grimaced and hissed. His brow instinctively furrowed with pain, but he did not stop what he was doing.

He tugged at himself haphazardly, quickly stripping off the bandages and pulling out the needles before dashing out of the room.

Many Class (6) students were standing outside. Every one of them was injured, though to different degrees.

When the terrifying shock wave had caused the ship to crash, He Muzhi had forcibly taken control of it with his Optical Brain. His mental power had suffered a severe blow at the last moment, and he had woken much later than most of Class (6).

Seeing everyone silently and swiftly repairing the ship in the oppressive atmosphere, He Muzhi swallowed.

Everyone was thinking the same thing he was.

"You're awake." A local soldier patrolling the water's edge saw He Muzhi. When he received no answer, he followed He Muzhi's gaze and explained, "I don't know what's going on with your classmates. They all gathered over there crying as soon as they woke up and started repairing it..."

Before the soldier could finish, He Muzhi interrupted in a hoarse voice. "Thank you."

As soon as he spoke, the soldier saw He Muzhi run toward the ship without looking back and silently join the repair work.

In all the time since Class (6)'s 499 students had enrolled and spent together, they had never been as united as they were now.

The momentous, unforgettable farewell filled everyone in Class (6), Anthony included, with grief. It was as though a hole had been torn in their hearts, letting a cold wind blow through, mingled with anger at the Fourth Military Academy for its decision.

Countless emotions accumulated in their hearts, finally turning into a desperate hope.

They prayed that Qin Su had only played a terrible joke on them, and the moment they woke up, they had the idea to search for him.

Perhaps Qin Su was still waiting for them to return to those waters.

Ship repair was a small branch of the basic mech curriculum. Every freshman had to learn it so they could repair their own mechs and avoid being stranded when no help was available.

Although they were not particularly skilled, there was strength in numbers. After an unknown number of hours, the people of Class (6) worked together to repair the ship and reconnect it to the Optical Brain.

Not a single person in Class (6) was left behind. They all boarded the ship together, preparing to head for the Viterra Tower 5285 Jump Point, which had now vanished from the Optical Brain's map.

Fortunately, they had marked its location, so the Jump Point's disappearance did not affect their flight.

The ship had barely started when a series of whooshes rang out. Countless ships surrounded Class (6)'s vessel, while countless more flew overhead.

Aboard the lead ship, Wen Ru, an upperclassman, used his stronger mental power to take control of Class (6)'s ship.

The hour of nonstop luring and fighting the Kisslip Tree Armadillo's limbs before the explosion had already drained most of Class (6)'s strength. The intense use of mental power during their final escape from the blast wave had left them physically and mentally exhausted. They simply could not forcibly wrest control of the ship from the reinforcements, whose mental power was at full strength.

Wen Ru's voice reached every Class (6) student's ears through the ship's broadcast system.

"Class (6), Class of 26, what's the situation with your class president, Qin Su?"

[Rubbing salt in the wound.]

[...Fuck!]

[Boohoohoohoo, I won't give up until the very last moment. Our precious No. 1 will definitely come back, boohoohoo.]

"..."

That one sentence struck a raw nerve in every survivor of Class (6).

Their already reddened eyes grew even redder. They pressed their lips together, none of them speaking.

They did not dare, and they did not know what they should or could say.

The deathly silence lasted less than three seconds before Wen Ru, thinking they had not heard him, repeated the question.

According to the Vitelta soldiers' report, hundreds of Class (6)'s students had been rescued from the ship.

Qin Su, the strongest among them, had to be one of them.

He Muzhi took a deep breath. Not wanting to waste any more time, he answered hoarsely, "Qin Su... is missing."

"What? How is that possible?" Wen Ru's voice retorted almost immediately.

Other voices rang out in the ship too. "Isn't Qin Su that really strong new student? How could he possibly... be missing?"

"How could the word 'missing' be used for Qin Su?" Especially when hundreds of people were all right.

Class (6): "..."

If they had not seen everything happen with their own eyes, they would not have dared put the word "missing" together with Qin Su's name either.

"Ahem..." Wen Ru cleared his throat twice, glanced at his classmates, and spoke again. "Qin Su is..."

He Muzhi interrupted him. "Follow us. Qin Su is waiting for us to find him."

Even after... an explosion powerful enough to destroy heaven and earth, they did not dare believe the word "dead" could be used for Qin Su.

Qin Su had to be missing. Everyone had to go back and look for him, including the reinforcements. They had to witness the devastating scene.

Wen Ru: "Huh?"

Sophia's voice followed immediately. "Everything you want to know about Qin Su's disappearance—please grant us access. Once we reach our destination, we'll share every video our Optical Brains recorded with you, holding nothing back and asking for nothing in return."

Every one of their Optical Brains had recorded everything that happened when they faced the giant Kisslip Tree Armadillo, completely and in real time.

The upperclassmen were students too. They had not yet left the military academy and had to obey every order the school issued. Otherwise, they would be considered disobedient and pressured to withdraw.

So they should not direct their anger at the upperclassmen, who had no choice either. They had to make the truth public before the academy learned it and ordered everyone to keep quiet.

They had to bring all the students onto the same side.

Surely the school could not expel every one of them.

Although it had been Qin Su's decision, the fact remained that he alone had gone to his death so they could all survive.

This was... the only thing they could do for Qin Su.

"Until then, don't report anything else about us to the school," Raymond added.

"No problem." Wen Ru, who led the team, agreed. They had already been heading to the Viterra Tower 5285 Jump Point, and before they arrived, the map had shown that the connection to it had been lost. Agreeing to the Class (6) students' request now was only natural.

Besides, no one could fail to be curious about Qin Su and anything connected to him.

The moment Sophia finished speaking, she sent out her weakened mental power to connect to the other ships again, and it was no longer blocked.

Wen Ru also gave orders immediately. Because Class (6)'s ship was so badly damaged, he gave them a new one.

And because the mental power of Class (6)'s students had generally declined so severely, he assigned upperclassmen to control the ship for them.

A moment later, all the ships headed for the marked location at full speed.

At first, the reinforcements were merely curious about the truth behind Qin Su's disappearance.

Once they reached their destination and looked down from above, they saw enormous pieces on the water, one after another, and countless Meat Mountains, as large as hills, hanging from the floating giant trees. Sharp teeth, clearly from a giant creature, were embedded in the Meat Mountains or floating on the water.

They stared in stunned silence.

Meat Mountains were everywhere. Looking down from where they were, the sight stretched as far as they could see.

And below them, countless platinum-colored pythons were still devouring the flesh.

Even after they had been eating for so long, the chunks of flesh still stretched beyond sight. The dense blood had even dyed the once-murky, foul water a deep red.

It was hard to believe how terrifyingly enormous the Kisslip Tree Armadillo had been while it was alive.

Yet Class (6) had managed to escape intact, with only Qin Su missing.

What exactly had Qin Su, who had held command of Class (6), done? How had he done it?

Question after question flooded their minds.

The time was ripe. While the upperclassmen were still in shock, Sophia silently shared the footage from the Optical Brains, which Class (6) had tacitly pooled after repairing the ship, with every ship one by one.

Once she had finished, Sophia said, "Everyone, everything about the truth has now been shared with you."

Sophia's voice brought everyone out of their shock at the bloody sight before them, and they eagerly opened the videos.

They truly wanted to know what had happened here.

The people of Class (6) put on the new combat suits the reinforcements had brought, piloted Small Warships, and began a thorough search.

After an unknown amount of time, almost every upperclassman who had watched the footage from the different Class (6) students' Optical Brains joined the silent search with a heavy heart.

When they first heard the Class (6) students, they had truly thought Qin Su was missing.

After watching... although reason told them that this was no disappearance, and that even they, who had lived through countless wars against the Zerg, had never witnessed an explosion of that magnitude.

Anyone who saw that... terrifying, heart-stopping explosion would know, without needing to draw on their own experience, that someone caught in it... or, to be precise, Qin Su at the center of the explosion, would not have even a 0.01 percent chance of survival.

But so what? Having watched the footage, they were now willing to believe, like everyone in Class (6), that Qin Su was only missing.

Many things had to be done, and there was no avoiding them. No one knew how many lives would be lost in the extermination of that enormous creature, and as for the military academy's order... they could probably guess what was behind it.

Qin Su, caught up in it all, presumably understood all of this too.

Yet he had not backed down. When faced with the choice between his own death and the deaths of a group of people, Qin Su had chosen the former.

Before this, they had heard many, many rumors about Qin Su, but they had never known that the domineering, ruthless Qin Su of those rumors, with his unfathomable background... would show such a sense of responsibility in the face of a crisis.

If Qin Su had spent even a second not caring about the people who might die in the extermination, things would not have come to this for him.

The Federation Army Academy had the Federation behind it. No matter how powerful Qin Su's family background was, it belonged to no more than a single planet. So the one behind this "moral coercion" of Qin Su was the Federation.

During the silent search, contempt and anger toward the Federation filled the hearts of every student who had understood the key to the matter.

They did not know what they would become after leaving the Fourth Military School in the future, but for now their hearts were still burning hot, and they quietly shared the videos...

Their social circles extended beyond the school. Who did not have family and friends outside the academy?

They refused to believe the Fourth Military Academy could suppress it all.

One life or a multitude of lives—if it had been them... they would have made the same choice as Qin Su. They firmly believed that his failure to report the plan he showed in the videos before taking action was a sign of his disappointment in and coldness toward the Fourth Military Academy.

The search went on for a long time. The warships even entered the water, turning over every piece of flesh and every tree in search of Qin Su.

The search continued for seven full days.

Everything that had happened at the Vitelta Jump Point spread not only throughout the Fourth Military Academy but to other military academies as well. It even stirred up a wave of fierce anger and condemnation toward the academy among ordinary people, along with admiration and sympathy for Qin Su.

The school kept sending orders, from an urgent recall at first to later demands for a report on the situation.

Every student taking part in the search tacitly pretended their Optical Brain was malfunctioning. They read the messages but did not reply.

During that time, Qin Su returned to the Comic World once to check on the situation there.

When the white light flashed, he spent half a month's Life Points to select his landing site and landed back in the Comic World, in the dormitory that belonged entirely to him.

The fivefold weakness buff had not disappeared. Back in his dormitory, Qin Su lay on the bed unable even to open his eyes. He communicated with the system through his Optical Brain and, finding amusement in his hardship, took a moment to be glad that the Comic World's technology was advanced enough for an Optical Brain to carry out essentially everything its bound user thought of.

Seeing that his Life Points had already skyrocketed to four years, Qin Su was startled. His "death" was actually worth more than his life.

His Life Points were still rising.

The fact that they were continuing to rise over such a short period clearly meant it was not happening solely within the Fourth Military Academy. Qin Su had the system search for information.

The "grand death" video spreading like wildfire across StarNet explained everything.

From the locals' comments and the repeated removal of the video, Qin Su realized that the Federation was evidently trying to stop the matter from spreading.

Qin Su had already been displeased that the school had "put him over the fire" and forced him to make a choice.

After learning the truth, Qin Su did not hesitate. He used Life Points to purchase ineradicable "traces" from the system.

No matter how hard the Federation tried to censor them on StarNet, or what methods it used, it could not "defeat" any of the "traces" left by System 777, which had always stood above the Comic World.

Even if he could not appear in the Comic World for the time being, he would use that highly publicized "death" to get compensation from the Federation. If he had not exploited the bug so well, he really would have died.

He deserved it all.

Qin Su did not know what the compensation would be, either.

Naturally, there were plenty of things he wanted. Nearly everything in the interstellar world made his mouth water, but... he could not ask for them. On the day they saw him, he had to make them warily guess what he was thinking while trembling as they brought things to him.

Only then could he ensure nothing like this would happen again.

As the public's favorability toward him, their "hero," kept rising, the bullet comments mentioned him every day, even though they did not appear. Almost every second Qin Su looked at the comments, he saw messages like "I'm a Qin Su fan. Type 1 if you agree Qin Su should be resurrected," filling the screen with the number "1" and the phrase "beautiful, strong, and tragic."

Qin Su: "..."

He could guarantee that if he appeared before everyone looking weak and lifeless like this, his popularity points would definitely drop.

So, sorry, but he still needed to rest for a while. He could only "come back to life" once K-110's weakness buff wore off.

His Heat Period ran from the first to the seventh. Barring any surprises, he should "come back to life" on the eighth.

Before "taking back everything that belonged to him," Qin Su quietly resolved not to appear in the Comic World again. Based on his physical recovery each day, he spent Life Points to exchange with the system for a long stay in the Real World.

The people who had originally given Qin Su his orders had been driven nearly mad by public opinion on StarNet lately.

The public accused them of murder every day, and they could not censor the accusations fast enough. Their superiors were also pressuring them to clean up their own mess, leaving them overwhelmed.

They refused to believe that the Qin Family had not intervened when this was spreading on such a massive scale across countless planets.

They even suspected Qin Su had people in the public opinion department. Otherwise, why could they not censor it no matter what they did!!!

On June 2, Star Era 9205, the people who had volunteered to search for traces of Qin Su had no choice but to return empty-handed before their spacecraft ran out of energy.

He Muzhi, who had been forced to inject suppressants to postpone his Heat Period so he could search for traces of Qin Su, entered his Heat Period the very day he returned to school. He took leave and isolated himself temporarily.

Before a sudden surge in pheromone concentration made him lose consciousness, He Muzhi could not help thinking that if Qin Su had not... gone missing, he would also be in his Heat Period now.

When the Heat Period is over... should I transfer to another school?