To Fight for It

As Lu Zhen passed the enormous glass window at the front of the flying ship,

he stopped.

Beyond the window stretched the boundless Great Wilderness.

The fifth-grade flying ship hurtled through it at an unimaginable speed. Stars as bright as dippers and as large as mountains trailed billions of dazzling streams of light through the deep darkness.

The Great Wilderness's grandeur and desolation struck his eyes in full.

Lu Zhen watched in silence.

A second-tier academy? he murmured to himself.

To Dantai Ming and most of the geniuses aboard this ship, a second-tier academy was already a road to the heavens they could only dream of.

Wealth, security, a place above the rest.

But Lu Zhen knew he had no way back.

As he gazed at the endless depths of the starry sky, a line of poetry Jiang Li had recited years ago while climbing a snow-covered mountain suddenly surfaced in his mind—

Heaven covers me, earth bears me; did heaven and earth mean to bring me into being?

The survival of the Nine Provinces and the fate of billions of lives now rested on him alone.

He had to fight for it!

If he fought, he would fight for a first-tier academy—the one with the deepest foundations and the deadliest arts!

If he fought, he would fight to place first in the grand examination among thirty thousand peerless geniuses!

Only by reaching the very summit could he fight for that sliver of hope!

Lu Zhen turned and headed straight for the training area deep within the ship.

Class A, Room One.

Beep.

The Void Terminal scanned him, and the heavy metal door slid open without a sound.

The door closed, and the formation sealed everything off.

Lu Zhen went to the cushion at the center and sat cross-legged.