Once the commotion ended, the river grew quiet again, and the watching students returned to their cabins in twos and threes.
On the deck, apart from the old boatman poling the ferry, only Zheng Qing and Ilena remained.
Zheng Qing secretly felt delighted.
"Did you duel Professor Trude?"
In the end, Ilena broke the silence between them and asked first.
At the end of last semester, The Wand had placed Zheng Qing on the new list of the Great Arcana, knocking Professor Trude, who had originally held the title of "The World," off the list. The petty professor had been furious and had once declared that he would duel Zheng Qing after the final exams.
But as soon as the final exams ended, Zheng Qing had slipped away and run home, naturally never showing up for the duel.
Nor did he feel that this counted as running away—after all, one was an official professor employed by First University, a veteran Registered Wizard, while the other was a freshman who had only been enrolled for half a year and had not even memorized the basic principles of modern magic.
Refusing the duel did not affect Zheng Qing's sense of honor in the slightest.
"I have always respected my teachers. How could I casually open my spellbook against a professor?" Zheng Qing defended himself with a straight face.
Ilena rolled her eyes and skipped over the subject.
"I remember you went home for the New Year, didn't you? When did you come back to school?" As she spoke, the witch lowered her hand and pointed at the ferry beneath their feet. "What are you taking the boat for today?"
The young scholarship student was unusually delighted to have found an opening for conversation.
"I stayed home for two weeks and only returned