Hometown Hero, Hang in There!

That night, none of them slept well.

The shouts and screams of the fighting continued over there, and seemed to be getting closer. Everyone was on edge, including Ji Ruo.

The campsite had excellent conditions in every respect, but its open terrain was both an advantage and a disadvantage.

When there was no danger, they could use the hill's elevation to survey the area around them.

But if danger came, there was nowhere on the summit to hide. If they were spotted, they'd have nowhere to run and would be sitting ducks.

Fortunately, though the chaotic sounds kept drawing nearer, the fighting never reached the few of them on the hilltop.

They spent the night on tenterhooks, and the chaos continued until dawn.

"Sounds like it stopped."

Ji Ruo spoke in a low voice. "Should we sneak over and take a look?"

It was a risky idea, but even if they didn't go, the strong smell of blood left behind by the fighting had already drifted up the hill on the wind.

If they stayed here, other Monster Beasts or Demonic Beasts coming to look for food might find them.

They might be fine if there were only a few of them, but if the enemy came in numbers, staying here would be no different from waiting to die.

Liang Shixian knew that, but he still hesitated.

"Why don't we go down the other side of the hill? Let's forget about picking up points. What if something goes wrong?"

Before the Martial Exam began, every examinee had been warned over and over by their teachers or parents: safety first!

Ji Ruo thought it over. "We'll just sneak over and have a look. Those Monster Beasts and Demonic Beasts have practically reached our doorstep. We'll take a peek, and if things look bad, we can just run."

It wasn't that Ji Ruo was being careless. He'd spent the whole night using Absolute Sense of Direction to search for a safe route.

While the chaos was ongoing, the direction of "safety" had been incredibly vague. The five-percent directional correction from Absolute Sense of Direction had barely helped at all.

But now, Ji Ruo had a faint feeling that Absolute Sense of Direction was pointing toward where the fighting had taken place.

In other words, going that way should theoretically be safe.

Of course, they still had to be careful. The directional correction was only five percent for now.

"But—"

"Class monitor, those are wild Martial Exam points!"

Liang Shixian's mouth twitched.

What the hell did he mean, wild Martial Exam points?!

After hesitating for a moment, Liang Shixian finally gritted his teeth. "All right. We'll take a look."

Ji Ruo figured this was probably the effect of the Diplomatic Spokesperson title kicking in.

They tied up the remaining Blood Rice with their school uniforms, slung it over their backs, and cautiously made their way down the hill.

The hill was only about a hundred meters high, and its slopes weren't very steep. Under normal circumstances, with their strength as level-six Martial Apprentices, they could have run down in a few seconds. But they couldn't do that now; they had to watch their step.

So it took them nearly an hour to cover that short hundred-meter distance.

When they reached the foot of the hill and saw the hellish scene before them, Zhang Quan and Liu Neng threw up on the spot.

Martial Apprentice examinees raised under the standard education system weren't exactly sheltered flowers. They'd all seen blood.

But before the Martial Exam began, the most they'd done was personally kill some chickens, ducks, fish, or pigs. Since they'd all been the ones wielding the knives, the cuts were neat, and the sight wasn't particularly revolting.

But now...

The fighting between the Demonic Beasts and Monster Beasts had no order to it in any conventional sense.

Their weapons were all kinds of strange things: crude stone tools, or just hard rocks.

More often than not, they preferred to attack with their own bodies.

Sharp teeth, claws, pointed beaks, and hard horns.

In all, a quick glance showed nearly two hundred dead Monster Beasts and Demonic Beasts. The largest group among them was the green-skinned Goblins.

Most of the dead creatures were missing limbs, or had their entrails scattered all over the ground.

The stench of blood was mixed with all sorts of strange smells. It stung the eyes and hit like a punch, and combined with the gruesome sight, it sent Zhang Quan and Liu Neng puking on the spot.

Liang Shixian and Ji Ruo didn't throw up, but they weren't much better. Their faces had gone pale.

Ji Ruo didn't know why Liang Shixian hadn't thrown up. He himself had nearly lost it, but he'd thought of how precious his first meal of Blood Rice was. It would've been a shame to throw it up, so he forced down the urge to vomit.

"Looks like they're all dead."

Ji Ruo spoke quietly. Then, without minding the filth, he picked up a dead Monster Beast at his feet that looked like a mole and began scanning it with his wristwatch to record his exam points.

The others were still staring blankly. Ji Ruo frowned. "What are you standing around for? Get to work! You want to watch me get into a top martial arts school by myself? Hurry up. Once we've recorded them, we need to run. If the smell of blood attracts more Monster Beasts, we won't get away!"

"Huh? Oh, right."

Only then did the others get moving.

Each corpse could only be uploaded once. Their wristwatches had no signal right now and could only store data, so they could scan the same corpse more than once.

But after the Martial Exam ended and all the data was uploaded, the intelligent exam system would compare the records. If it found that multiple people had uploaded the same Monster Beast's corpse, it would rule that they'd cheated.

The Martial Exam didn't forbid teamwork, but it strictly prohibited multiple people from uploading the corpse of the same Monster Beast or Demonic Beast.

That didn't count as legitimate teamwork.

Fortunately, there were plenty of corpses. They roughly divided the area into four sections, with each person recording one section.

Though Zhang Quan and Liu Neng had already activated their wristwatches' distress signals, the Patrol Examiners hadn't arrived yet, so technically, they were still taking the exam.

These points could still count toward their scores. When the Martial Exam ended, if they were still alive, they'd all be able to get into university.

Just like Ji Ruo had said, these "points" were practically wild. They were disgusting to pick up, sure, but it was a lot of fun!

But Ji Ruo gradually furrowed his brows.

Among all that blood, he spotted something familiar.

Blood Rice Stalks!

Who would pick up rice stalks to fight in the middle of a brawl?

Could this be where the Blood Rice paddy had originally been?

But that place was clearly almost eight hundred meters from the hill where they'd been hiding!

Could the ground move?

As Ji Ruo went on picking things up, the thought suddenly startled him.

If that was true, then their situation—

"Who... who's there?"

A faint voice suddenly made Ji Ruo jolt.

He looked in the direction it had come from and saw a burly Goblin lying in a pool of blood. One of its legs was gone, while the other was twisted at an unnatural angle.

A huge wound gaped in its abdomen, and its innards could just barely be seen writhing inside. It was on its last breath.

"Help... help me. I don't want to die..."

The Goblin spoke weakly. It no longer had the strength to lift its head, so it didn't know the voice it had heard belonged to a human.

Ji Ruo raised an eyebrow. With injuries like those, the Goblin was surely about to die.

In theory, humans and Demonic Beasts were sworn enemies. Ji Ruo shouldn't have helped it.

But Ji Ruo was a good kid!

How could a good kid stand by and let someone die?

So Ji Ruo ran over to the burly Goblin and spoke with feigned urgency. "Fellow countryman! Hang in there! I'm Ji Ruo, a Martial Dao Trainee with two and a half years of experience!"

The Goblin's eyes were already unfocused, but its desperate will to live still made it weakly reach out toward Ji Ruo.

"Please... save... save me..."

"Don't worry, fellow countryman! I've learned first aid. I can definitely save you!"

Ji Ruo spoke earnestly, then crouched beside the Goblin and placed both hands on its chest. "Fellow countryman, this first aid technique is called Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation. I've seen it on TV. Whenever someone gets hurt, this is what people do to save them. Don't be scared. I'm here!"

As he spoke, Ji Ruo's palms turned red. He was clearly using Iron Sand Palm.

Then he pressed down hard!

The Goblin's eyes flew open. Its chest was crushed under the tremendous pressure, and a mass of its organs, which had no desire to be squeezed together, burst out through the huge wound in its abdomen.

"You... you... you..."

The Goblin never got around to saying what it meant by "you." Before it could finish, it breathed its last.

Ji Ruo looked regretful. "What a shame. My skills weren't good enough, and I couldn't save you... But don't worry, fellow countryman. You'll become one of my Martial Exam points and return in triumph with me!"

With that, Ji Ruo raised his wristwatch and scanned the Goblin, turning it into one of his Martial Exam points.

"Beep~ Congratulations, examinee. You have slain a Goblin Lord."

Ji Ruo froze for a moment.

A voice announcement? Well, that was lucky!

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