Ye Ge smiled. "I know a little more than you do. I can just barely get news from that circle. Willow has teamed up with Paris, the strongest student in our academy, and Bailie. They should be investigating what caused this planet to evolve. Maybe they've already gone to the Capital City. That's no place we can set foot in. I'll be satisfied if I can claim a patch of land and find a mineral deposit. There's no need to fight those monsters."
"Bailie? Bailie from Third Gravity Planet?" Granny cried out, her face turning deathly pale.
Ye Ge's expression grew grave. "That's right, Bailie—the one famous among the younger generation of the Great Yu Empire, who almost joined the Great Yu Youth Council. He has a combat strength of three thousand and is at the peak of the Probe Realm."
Lu Yin was surprised. It seemed the students weren't unprepared; they'd quietly divided up the tasks long ago. Only the strongest would go to complete them. Asta and Aoton were among the lowest tier. Granny barely ranked alongside Teres and Ye Ge. The top-tier experts weren't in Jiangsu Province but near the Capital City. That was the true proving ground, and the most brutal one.
"As far as I know, there are three top teams in China on this planet. One is Bailie's group. I don't know who the other two are, but they're definitely made up of the strongest students from their respective academies. They're monsters who can stand against the second batch of trial students when they arrive. Their goal isn't the planetary trial at all, but the legendary Territory trial. For now, this is just a warm-up," Ye Ge said solemnly.
Granny fell silent. She knew too little. She wasn't on their level.
"Enough. I've told you everything you need to know, and the time has come," Ye Ge said suddenly.
Granny looked confused. "What time?"
Ye Ge grinned lewdly. "The time to make you happy."
Granny saw his smile and felt her heart sink. She looked at the teacup. "You poisoned the tea?"
"Of course not. Poisoning someone isn't that easy. Personal terminals can detect the composition of substances to a certain extent. What I used was something good—Power Strengthening Powder." Ye Ge took a crystal vial from his Void Ring. Three emerald-green leaves were marked on it.
Granny cried out, "A drug from Three Leaf Clover Company! What is Power Strengthening Powder?"
Ye Ge smirked. "Try channeling the energy in your body."
Lu Yin pressed a hand to Granny's shoulder. "Don't move." Then he looked at Ye Ge. "Power Strengthening Powder is a drug for Integrating Realm experts. It lets them control all the Star Energy in their bodies and unleash tremendous power in an instant. Probe Realm users don't have enough Star Energy, so taking it will leave them depleted and cause a backlash that severely injures them. Am I right?"
Ye Ge looked surprised. "You actually know that? Oh, right—you said your grandfather was the principal. Looks like you've got some connections."
Lu Yin's gaze turned icy. "Anyone below the Integrating Realm who takes Power Strengthening Powder won't be able to channel Star Energy. What are you trying to do, wasting something so valuable on it?"
Ye Ge put away the vial and said haughtily, "Jinling is a fine place, with a unique position in this country. Taking control of it would make my accomplishments shine all the brighter. Besides..." His greedy gaze roamed over Granny. "I've wanted to find out what a beauty from the Great Yu Empire First Military Academy tastes like for a long time."
Granny stepped back, her face pale with fury. "You're despicable!"
Ye Ge smiled. "Despicable? That's not fair. I gave you a tonic. You can blame yourself for being too weak to handle it."
In the corner, the two Blue Mountain Academy students kept writhing, making noise.
Ye Ge glanced over and frowned. "Useless. Now I have to save you, too." He flicked his hand, and a gust of force tore through the chains binding the two students.
The two of them hurriedly shouted, "Senior, watch out!"
Ye Ge turned. His eyes narrowed. A powerful impact crushed into his abdomen, sending him flying out of the military camp and crashing into the fallow field behind it. Lu Yin leaped after him and raised a hand. The air rippled. As he pressed his palm down, a terrifying wave of force slammed into the ground. Ye Ge was struck again where he lay. He barely managed to raise his arms to block it, but was driven into the earth all the same. His arms snapped, and he spat blood into the air before passing out.
Lu Yin landed and looked down at Ye Ge coldly. Wave Palm and Void Splitting Palm only required physical strength; they didn't need Star Energy.
Countless evolvers surrounded the camp. They stared in shock at Ye Ge, who was barely alive, and didn't dare move.
Lu Yin gave them a cold glance, then looked at the two Blue Mountain Academy students. Both had gone pale and stayed exactly where they were.
Granny breathed a sigh of relief, even as she felt more shocked than ever. She knew how powerful Void Splitting Palm was, but hadn't expected it to overwhelm Ye Ge so completely. Lu Yin could fight the top three experts from any academy using physical strength alone. He'd improved far too quickly.
"Tell me, is the Gale Crystal real or not?" Lu Yin asked the two students. He'd asked them before coming here, and they'd given the same answer as Ye Ge. But now he didn't trust them.
The two glanced at each other before one of them answered quietly, "The Gale Crystal is real. But the Mutant Bird flock is dangerous. There's a huge mutant bird there that might have reached the Integrating Realm. One of our classmates died under its claws."
Granny glared at Ye Ge in anger. She had no desire to provoke an Integrating Realm expert.
"The drug's effects will wear off in half an hour. Then take these people back to Jinling," Lu Yin told Granny. With that, he walked out of the camp.
Feng Hong and the other Commanders of Ten Thousand were already waiting outside. A group of evolvers had been taken into custody. They were from Anhui and had been under Ye Ge's control. They weren't grieving over his death; they seemed relieved. Ye Ge had ruled them through strength alone.
"Let them go. Those willing to join the Punitive Camp can stay. Let the rest leave," Lu Yin said.
Feng Hong nodded and immediately began giving orders.
Before long, Feng Hong returned and said quietly, "I'm sorry, Hidden Saint. We still had to rely on you to save us."
Lu Yin smiled. "He was a Heavenly Rank Expert. There was no helping it. Tell me how the areas around us are looking."
"Yes. We've nearly cleared out all the zombies between Jinling and Yuxiang, and we've also dealt with a number of Mutant Beasts. But we can't clear them all. They're too powerful, so we've marked some of their territories on the map as warnings. Anhui is farther west. That Heavenly Rank Expert came from that direction..." Feng Hong reported.
Lu Yin listened for a while, then sent Feng Hong away.
He realized he'd been looking in the wrong direction. When the city had been bombed with conventional weapons, he'd seen the intense ambition in Liu Tiange's eyes. Before the students arrived, Liu Tiange hadn't known anything about the universe. His ambition could only have been aimed at this land. But now that students were appearing more and more often and he'd learned about the universe, would he still limit his sights to Earth?
Lu Yin was certain that someone like Liu Tiange wouldn't easily submit to anyone. Wu City had most likely been marked blue for the same reason as Jinling: he'd subdued the students and learned everything there was to know about the universe. He surely had little ambition left for China—or Earth, for that matter. His ambition would shift to the stars, while Lu Yin had still been thinking about using the Punitive Camp to attack his Wu City. That was far too narrow-minded.
It would take the Punitive Camp too long to cross Anhui and reach Wu City in Hubei, and the losses would be huge. By then, everything would have changed. The second batch of Trial Takers would arrive, bringing enormous uncertainty. There was no guarantee things would go the way Lu Yin wanted. Liu Tiange might not even withstand the second batch's assault.
Lu Yin let out a breath and looked west. He decided to set aside his hatred for Liu Tiange for now and focus on that corpse. He would complete the mission. A student's mission could also be an Earthling's mission. Once he completed it, and with the plans he'd already set in motion, entering Starry Sky Tenth Academy might not be impossible.
Half an hour later, Granny dragged Ye Ge and the two students out. The two students had been tied up again, and Ye Ge was in worse shape. Lu Yin had damaged his internal organs, and even moving was difficult.
Lu Yin took Ye Ge's Void Ring without hesitation. He used Ye Ge's bloodline password to unlock it and poured everything out.
Ye Ge was just a student and didn't have many good things: only a few Gale Crystals, some unidentified drugs, and dozens of Star Energy Crystals. Lu Yin put away everything useful. "Let's go back to Jinling."
Granny nodded and followed obediently behind Lu Yin.
Most of the students who had arrived near Jinling were from Great Yu Empire First Military Academy and Blue Mountain War Academy. They were either dead or captured, and Lu Yin had even brought one over to his side. Jinling should be safe until the second batch of Trial Takers arrived.
The only person Lu Yin was worried about was the Silver-haired man. He'd made Lu Yin feel a bone-chilling sense of danger for the first time, and he was also the first person to completely block Heavenly Star Palm. His strength far surpassed Ye Ge's and Teres's.
Lu Yin had tried to find out if Granny recognized him, but she'd only looked bewildered.
In Jinling, Lu Yin formally told Zhou Shan that he wanted to go to the Capital City.
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