Ancient Capital

Dawn broke, the rain stopped, and reinforcements arrived.

The Demon Beasts' entry points were destroyed one after another. Every Demon Beast killed in Bo City was one less to worry about, and the operation shifted to a full-scale sweep.

The sweep lasted an entire week. Even the sewers were scoured several times. A few might have slipped through, but they certainly wouldn't dare show themselves on the streets again.

After hunt upon hunt, peace finally returned to Bo City.

At the same time, the authorities conducted a careful census of Bo City's population.

Every one of the original owner's relatives was gone. Like him, the original owner had become an orphan.

Although Zhou Sining had inherited all the original owner's memories, they felt more like an account of his life.

He had absorbed everything the original owner knew, but none of his feelings.

Yet as Zhou Sining looked at the seven red crosses in a row on the list and remembered the broken bodies scattered across the living room, he drew a sharp breath. Only then did he realize that suffering came in degrees.

The registrar couldn't help offering a few words of comfort. "I'm sorry for your loss."

"I'm fine. You never know what life will bring." Zhou Sining rubbed his eyes. Truthfully, he didn't feel much for them.

"Do you want to stay in Bo City or go to a resettlement area? Lots of cities have set them up, and the bigger cities offer better prospects," the registrar asked.

The disaster in Bo City had shocked the entire country, and many cities had set up temporary resettlement areas.

The better-known ones were in Tianjin, Magic City, Ancient Capital, Demon Capital, Jinling, Qiantang, and Jiahe Islet.

They were all fine major cities.

"Ancient Capital. There's less competition there, and my element is better suited to the place."

After some thought, Zhou Sining chose Ancient Capital.

Ancient Capital had Undead, and in the original story, students of Ancient Capital Academy were sent to kill them.

That suited his [Demon-Slaying] system perfectly. With the Gangsha Spirit Seed, his Fire Element would be even deadlier against the Undead.

"All right. Fill out this form."

Zhou Sining went home to pack a few changes of clothes and his documents. Once the authorities transferred the money from his parents' bank accounts to his own, he boarded the bus with nothing left to tie him down.

When he arrived in Ancient Capital, he found it much as he had imagined: a long Outer City Wall enclosed and protected it.

The only difference was that the Outer City Wall was nowhere near as grand as he had pictured. Around it stood quite a few separate districts, each protected by its own walls.

A quick search online told him that the original Outer City Wall had only been built to this size. As Ancient Capital grew, the whole wall couldn't simply be moved outward, so new districts had been built against the existing one.

Ancient Capital had, however, begun building a larger Outer City Wall.

So the wall under construction must be the one from the Ancient Capital Cataclysm in the original story.

He reached the resettlement area. Its location was decent enough: it sat near the edge of the area within the Outer City Wall, and the city center was only an hour away by bus.

The buildings did feel cheaply built, but Zhou Sining didn't mind.

He was a minor and an orphan, so Bo City had transferred his enrollment directly to Ancient Capital No. 3 High School. He didn't have to worry about schooling.

There were still three months before classes began. Zhou Sining spent them cultivating at home.

He had three hundred thousand yuan in his account, and the government would give him a six-hundred-yuan orphan allowance each month. That was more than enough to live on.

Three months passed in the blink of an eye. Perhaps thanks to Gangsha, his Fire Element, which had been at the peak of Primary Level Two, had easily reached Level Three. His progress remained remarkably fast, and he could already faintly sense an invisible ceiling.

On his first day of school, Zhou Sining discovered that all fifty students in his class were from Bo City.

The classroom was lively at once.

After all, they lived in different resettlement areas and had been focused on adjusting to their new surroundings. They had hardly had a chance to meet.

"What a coincidence. We're desk mates again." Zhou Sining turned to Mu Bai.

"It is. We'll be taking the college entrance exam together next year, though we'll have an advantage over the younger students." Mu Bai gave a wry smile.

He looked far more worn down. The pride of a wealthy young master had vanished from him; he seemed worse off than he had during the Bo City disaster.

"It's fine. We can always repeat a year." Zhou Sining smiled, unconcerned.

This world also allowed students to repeat a school year, though each person could do so at most twice.

After that, anyone who wanted to enter a higher academy had to apply for special admission as an adult mage.

And the requirements for special admission were far stricter than those of the standard college entrance exam.

They hadn't talked long before their homeroom teacher entered the classroom.

The square-faced teacher looked over the class. Without wasting words, he went straight into the rules.

"Your enrollment has been transferred to Ancient Capital, so you'll take the college entrance exam here. Ordinarily, you'd have a field assessment at the end of this year. But since you already went through one in your second year, you won't have to do it again. You must still take part in the regular assessments."

The teacher continued, "Ancient Capital is different from other regions. As you should know, the Undead have plagued this city since ancient times. So at every magic school here, including Ancient Capital Academy, our regular assessments aren't battles between mages. They're battles against the Undead!"

The moment he finished speaking, the classroom erupted.

"You've got to be kidding!"

"We have to fight Demon Beasts again?"

"I don't want to! I only just got out of Bo City!"

"If I'd known, I wouldn't have come here..."

The fifty students looked at one another. They had survived a red alert and only just left their ruined hometown behind. Before they could even settle in, they had to face Demon Beasts again...

"Quiet!" The teacher coughed twice. "The school understands what you've been through. But I'm sorry—this is Ancient Capital, a city plagued by the Undead. If you don't want to face them, you can withdraw right now."

After that, their complaints would do them no good. The mood in the classroom grew noticeably darker.

Zhou Sining raised his hand. "Sir, do we just cultivate at school, or are there other ways to earn resources? In Bo City, every student in the top class got to use a Stardust Magic Tool for a while."

Wang Yan raised an eyebrow. He hadn't expected a student to ask that.

"I was going to tell you once you'd adjusted to how things work in Ancient Capital. But since you've asked, I'll explain now."

"Ancient Capital No. 3 High School offers its students plenty of cultivation resources. But they aren't handed out according to your strength. You earn points by fighting the Undead."

"Every night, No. 3 High School sends students to the Outer City Wall for duty. Put simply, you'll stand watch, observe the Undead, and do support work. Students who take part earn points. If you kill an Undead while you're there, you earn more."

"Each month, the school publishes a year-level points ranking and distributes cultivation resources accordingly."

"As for the Stardust Magic Tool you mentioned, only the top thirty students in the year can use one. Students ranked first through tenth get five days each, eleventh through twentieth get four days each, and twenty-first through thirtieth get three days each."

At that, the students who had been complaining fell quiet.

They looked at one another, disbelief written across every face. None had expected the resources here to be so plentiful.

Bo City had only two Stardust Magic Tools in total. Here, a single year level had access to more than two!

"Any other questions?"

"No, sir. Thank you."