When Li Ye was brought back, many students were already waiting at the entrance.
Seeing him return in a military off-road vehicle, everyone showed curious expressions.
Deng Hao and Jia Dong came forward. The latter glanced at Yang Jie's immobilized arm and asked, "Brother Ye, what happened?"
"Ran into a demon. It's nothing serious."
As Li Ye spoke, he looked at the others again. "Why are you all here? Did you get back so quickly?"
"Isn't it all thanks to you?"
Yao Leden had just walked over when she heard that. She said irritably, "When you, Li the Vajra, make a move, what work is left for ordinary people like us? We couldn't find a single demon, so we could only come back and rest. Getting bitten by bugs in the mountains is nowhere near as comfortable as staying in the vehicle."
Did they actually want to come back?
Two hours earlier, they had already been completely unable to find any demons. They could only occasionally spot Li Ye cruising through the air, rings of air rippling beneath his feet.
How the hell were they supposed to fight like that?
They decisively gave up searching for demons and returned to wait obediently.
Afterward, Gu Yang began calling them one by one. With the drones providing directions as well, he had the few remaining people who refused to give up return too.
As Yao Leden spoke, the soldier who had brought them over said a few words to Gu Yang, then drove away.
Gu Yang looked at Li Ye with some helplessness. He clapped his hands and said to the students still outside the bus, "Alright, today's over. It's getting late, so let's head back first."
The group boarded the bus and drove out along the mountain road toward the school. By the time they arrived, it was already dark. Li Ye changed into a spare school uniform in the gymnasium before heading home.
By the time he got home, his parents had returned as well.
"How did it go?"
The moment Li Haihua saw Li Ye, he hurriedly asked, "Today was your Martial Arts Student training, right? How did it feel?"
Liu Qingxia also asked, "Was it dangerous? You didn't get hurt, did you?"
They had heard Li Ye talk about Martial Arts Student training before and had even looked into it themselves. This sort of training had a chance of getting people killed and a high likelihood of injuries, so naturally they were worried.
"It was just fighting some specially prepared demons. It was meant to temper combat skills and experience. It wasn't dangerous."
Li Ye washed his hands briefly, then took out his Five Flavors Chopsticks after sitting down and began eating.
There were still plenty of ingredients he had obtained from the Pest Control Bureau. Every time Li Ye came home, he would cook some of them, and his parents had bought some ingredients of their own as well.
No matter how much he emphasized it, his parents still insisted on buying some. Li Ye found that persuading them was useless, so he simply let them do as they pleased. Their current expenses were manageable, and he himself received a salary, so things were not that pressing.
The two hundred thousand debt no longer seemed difficult to Li Ye. Tomorrow, he could ask how the things he earned at the Training Point would be valued.
After dinner, Li Ye washed up and returned to his room to sleep.
Ever since reaching the Three Dragon Gate, there was no longer any need for him to practice moves. He had basically mastered them, and ordinary training could not compare to real training, because real training truly went for the kill.
The battle on Dragon Mountain today had felt incredibly satisfying.
This was how it should be. Once he possessed authority, battle should look like this. The feeling of annihilating enemies with a mere lift of his hand filled him with satisfaction.
It made Li Ye think of the painting in Pan Zhengyang's office. He wondered when he would be able to become like that too.
The next day, Li Ye arrived at school early. The moment he entered the gymnasium, Gu Yang, who had been waiting for a while, called him into the office.
"Li Ye."
He had Li Ye sit down, his expression somewhat complicated. "First, let's talk about your points. In yesterday's training, you annihilated a total of eighty-four demons. Including one outside the standard classification, the supervisors counted it as well. You came into contact with it, so you know it was from the military."
"The military suggested giving you extra points. After consideration on the school's side, along with your identification of the demon and your rescue of your classmates, we rounded it up and gave you one hundred points."
"As for the points, let me explain the exchange rate. If converted purely into money, one point is worth five thousand. You're a main-force student, so there's a ten percent premium, making it fifty-five hundred. Since they were all corpses, we can't calculate them according to live value. I know you sold a live Green Bamboo Dart Mantis to Yao Leden, and the price was better than selling it to the school. But we don't prohibit private sales, so that's not an issue."
"One point can be exchanged for one Nutrient Solution. If you want other high-quality ingredients, you can also commission the school to acquire them for you."
Li Ye revealed a surprised expression. "That much?"
With one hundred points, hadn't he earned five hundred and fifty thousand in a single day yesterday?
Was training really this profitable?!
"Actually, it's not that much. No matter what kind of demon you kill at the Training Point, whether it's an Ironclad Boar or a Green Bamboo Dart Mantis, there is definitely a difference in value between them. But if they're corpses, they are all uniformly counted as one point. To some extent, the school is definitely making money."
Naturally, the demons at Training Points differed. Some were valuable, while others were not. The school's fair pricing lay in the fact that everything was calculated in points.
Still, Gu Yang could not help feeling emotional. He had guided Martial Arts Students for over ten years. There had been others who followed the breakthrough route, but someone as ruthless as Li Ye was far too rare.
Xiang Feipeng also followed the breakthrough route. He was usually so arrogant, yet after making one trip to a Training Point, he could earn at most a dozen or so points. He did not affect the others much.
After all, finding demons took time too.
Ordinary Martial Arts Students at No. 14 Middle School were mostly at the First Dragon Gate to the Three Dragon Gate. Even Three Dragon Gate students were considered rare. When they went training, it was already quite good if they could wear down and kill two demons in a day.
Moreover, training did not happen every day. As their guiding teacher, he had to pay attention to the intervals between the students' rest periods, allowing them to digest their martial arts and improve their vitality in between.
The effects of a single training session lasted for a long time.
Thinking this, he sighed. "You cleared out the Training Point, causing the training to end early. That's also why I called you here. Let's discuss this. During future training sessions, could you hold back a little? The school's Training Point isn't a cash machine. Its original purpose was to give your classmates a place to train."
Training Points came about because natural demons would proliferate at natural resource sites such as mountains, forests, ponds, and lakes. But taking ecology into consideration, they could not all be wiped out. Regular extermination was time-consuming and labor-intensive, so students were allowed to handle the task instead.
At the students' pace, it created a good cycle with the rate at which demons appeared at the Training Points, while also training the students' abilities. It killed several birds with one stone.
As time passed, it gradually developed into a rule.
However, in the early days, the death rate among Martial Arts Students had been quite high. It was only because technology had grown stronger in recent years, and there was now the power to control demon populations, that it had gradually become a matter of deliberately releasing demons for students to train against.
Training Points provided all-around training. From knowledge to tracking, from reactions to martial arts, including teamwork in groups and an individual's courage, all of it grew through training.
But now, Li Ye had ruined it.
The others had not gained any training from it at all.
In terms of martial arts, Li Ye defeating Xiang Feipeng was one thing. It could only be said that his martial arts were formidable, perhaps that he was especially skilled at explosive bursts. But being able to annihilate an entire Training Point alone was terrifying.
Only Fu Chuxue, who had been specially invited to No. 14 Middle School, could accomplish that, which was why she did not participate in training either.
Now there was one more: Li Ye.
Hearing this, Li Ye said, "I completed the training through my own ability. If you ask me to stop, who will make up for the part I lose? I need cultivation resources too. Teacher Gu, you probably don't understand this very well. My family is just an ordinary family. I reached my current realm entirely through my own efforts."
It was not that he could not yield the Training Point, but the premise was that it could not harm his interests.
He needed to cultivate too, so he would not give up even a single point.
"Alright, I knew you wouldn't agree. Then we'll present a second plan."
Gu Yang rubbed his brow. "For students like you, who have progressed rather far along the breakthrough route and are by default no longer considered to need training, the school has another solution."
"After discussions last night, the school has specially approved that you need not participate in training. During each training session, we'll compensate you with four hundred points at the current rate. How about it?"
"That works?" Li Ye asked.
"There have been precedents for students like you. Other than martial arts competitions, you don't need to participate in anything. If you achieve results in the competitions, the rewards will be calculated separately and guaranteed to be generous."
With this level of strength, he would definitely have no problem competing in martial arts competitions.
Li Ye narrowed his eyes slightly and calculated inwardly. Then he raised his head. "That's not right, is it? I remember that this Dragon Mountain Training Point started before summer vacation, and it generally ends before the martial arts competitions."
"Next week is the District Martial Arts Competition in September, the City Martial Arts Competition in December, and the Provincial Martial Arts Competition in April. Training ends just in time for summer vacation. Dragon Mountain's training was also selected in April. Even excluding the two months of summer vacation, there was still a long period of training."
"The training ended early, yet there were still more than eighty points' worth left. If we searched carefully, there should still have been some more. Counting it as one hundred points is reasonable. But what about May and June? They couldn't possibly be less than a week's worth, could they? If I calculate two hundred points per month, that's reasonable, right? Altogether, you can't just give me four hundred points."
Li Ye held up two fingers. "I don't want anything else. Give me six hundred Nutrient Solutions and three hundred thousand per training session, and I won't participate."
Having settled the accounts, Li Ye was utterly fearless.
As for being expelled?
What a joke.
Li Ye was not truly a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old student who could be intimidated. He had backing.
And one hundred points in a day was not his limit. It was the limit of the number of training demons available. If they started over from the beginning, he could still earn that much in a single day.
As long as this record spread, even if No. 14 Middle School did not want him, plenty of other schools would.
Besides, according to the rules, this was what he deserved in the first place. Why should he give anything up?
And he only wanted Nutrient Solutions. That should not be too difficult for the school. As for the three hundred thousand, six hundred points amounted to three million. He was a main-force student, with a ten percent premium, so the three hundred thousand was his rightful due as well.
There was not a single cent he did not deserve.
Reasonable and fair.
Before you continue