novelraw Chapter 6 : Chapter 6
Chapter 6 : Chapter 6
Chapter 6: He Couldn’t Be Scamming Me Out of the Enrollment Gift Pack, Could He?
After comprehending Flowing Cloud Three Tremors,
it was already noon.
Li Mu's phone rang. It was his mother, telling him to hurry back to his aunt's blacksmith shop for lunch.
So Li Mu left Blackwater High School and headed straight home.
He was still short of a weapon, and he really did not have time to waste at school.
The blacksmith shop faced the street, and past the front hall was a small courtyard.
Single-story rooms stood on three sides of it.
There were stone tables and stone stools in the yard, all with an old-fashioned charm. Flowers and plants had been raised there, and even a few vegetables had been planted, filling the courtyard with lively touches.
By the time Li Mu got home, the scent of food was already drifting through the yard.
As soon as they saw him return,
his uncle by marriage first went and shut the shop door.
It was obvious that the family was definitely going to talk things through properly today.
"Cousin!"
"Cousin!"
Chen Jiaqi was only a year younger than Li Mu. She was youthful and lively, with delicate, pretty features, the very image of a gentle young lady.
Chen Jiafeng was two years younger than Li Mu, tall and lanky, with big ears and a pair of bright, crafty eyes.
Normally, these two were a pair of little ray-of-sunshines.
But today, when they saw Li Mu, both of them were drooping with gloomy faces.
Chen Jiaqi especially had red-rimmed eyes, as if she had just been crying.
The two of them walked up to Li Mu and greeted him pitifully, but they had no idea how to comfort him.
Yang Suying and Yang Yourong were deeply devoted sisters, and they had always been very close.
Li Mu had come here often, so he had an excellent relationship with them both.
The day before yesterday, when Li Mu awakened an S-rank talent, the two of them had not stopped bragging about it at school.
And then yesterday, they had seen the bad news in the headlines that Li Mu's S-rank talent had been taken away.
But the Li family held considerable power, so there was nothing they could do to get involved.
Who could have expected that by this morning, they would hear that Li Mu had even been expelled from the family?
Only after coming home did they learn what had happened the previous night, and every one of them had cried their hearts out.
Having an S-rank talent stolen...
How agonizing must that be?
"All right, enough. Stop pouting. I will tell you a secret—my current talent is even stronger!"
Grinning, Li Mu pinched Chen Jiafeng's cheek and comforted the two of them.
"You're lying!" Chen Jiafeng pouted, on the verge of crying again.
"Whether I am lying or not, you will all see for yourselves during the Abyss First Battle in a few days."
The Abyss First Battle was not open to the public.
But schools and students' family members were allowed to attend as spectators.
"What? You're going to participate in the Abyss First Battle?"
His aunt happened to hear that sentence and cried out loudly.
His mother, Yang Suying, still wearing an apron, rushed out of the kitchen and looked at her son in astonishment.
Li Mu repeated himself solemnly.
"Mom, Aunt, Uncle, I really do have to take part in the Abyss First Battle."
The Abyss First Battle was something one was allowed to withdraw from.
Aside from combat, martial artists had many other fields they could go into.
They could become support personnel in society, people who would never enter the Abyss.
What was wrong with living out one's life safely and steadily like that?
For someone with an F-rank talent to risk entering the Abyss, the mortality rate could no longer even be described as merely high.
It was the kind where you could only go at noon, because sooner or later you would die.
But now, no one dared try to persuade Li Mu otherwise.
Even Yang Suying did not know how she could begin.
What was she supposed to say?
Son, you have an F-rank talent now. You're trash.
Accept reality. Stop going around trying to get yourself killed.
If she said that, Li Mu might as well kill himself on the spot.
"I know what you are all thinking, but my F-rank talent really is very strong."
"Something may have mutated during the talent transfer. Some changes happened to me that I cannot fully explain."
Li Mu could feel how oppressive the atmosphere had become. If he did not make something up, there was no way past this.
And in truth, he was going to have to keep relying on that lie sooner or later anyway.
"Jiafeng, go find me a staff."
"I'll get it!"
His uncle by marriage personally ran to the shop and brought back a black iron weapon.
"Big nephew, this is a black iron—"
Holding a black iron staff, his uncle was just about to introduce it.
Li Mu twirled it once, then stuffed it into his ear.
Whoosh.
The iron staff instantly shrank and slipped into Li Mu's ear.
"Good heavens!"
His aunt jumped in fright.
"A storage ring?"
"How could I afford a storage ring? This came with my talent."
"Came with your talent?" Even his mother asked in shock.
Li Mu's talent was Heavy Strike. How could it possibly come with storage space?
Where had such a huge staff even gone?
Li Mu spread his hands.
"That is why I said it mutated. It is no worse than an S-rank talent, so do not worry."
"Uncle, this weapon is mine now, all right? I happened to be short of one."
The second half was addressed to his uncle.
"Ah... all right..."
His uncle was so startled that he did not know what to do with his hands and feet. One weapon did not matter much. The family made a living doing this.
It was just that he still had not recovered from the shock of Li Mu's mutated talent.
Chen Jiaqi and Chen Jiafeng, on the other hand, were quickly bluffed by Li Mu.
They surrounded him and started asking one question after another.
The atmosphere also improved quite a bit compared to before.
At the dinner table, Li Mu's mother worried that staying here would disturb the rest of the family.
She planned to move out with Li Mu and find another place to live.
Not only did his aunt and uncle strongly object, even his younger cousins refused to allow it.
His aunt said in one sentence, "Good. Back when you were in the Li family, I was worried sick all day long."
"I only have one elder sister. For the rest of our lives, you have to stay by my side!"
Yang Suying could no longer refuse.
That very day, the whole family cleaned out two rooms on the west side.
Li Mu and his mother settled down there.
...
The next morning.
Today was the first day of military training.
The fortress at the Abyss entrance was already bustling with activity.
More than a hundred years ago, countless gigantic sinkholes had suddenly appeared all over the world.
Monsters had poured out of them, and humanity had named these sinkholes the "Abyss."
Only after humanity shifted from the age of modern firearms into the rise of martial artists did they manage to drive the monsters back into the Abyss and stabilize the situation.
After that, humanity built fortresses around the Abyss and began actively entering it to explore.
Only then did they discover that the Abyss was not merely a demonic pit. It was also a treasure trove!
The Abyss contained endless supernatural phenomena, monsters, energy sources, and resources beyond counting.
One crystal discovered in the Abyss could supply a city's electricity for a thousand years.
One plant, eaten raw, could actually regenerate severed limbs.
A single mineral vein might contain seven chemical elements outside the scope of human knowledge.
Of course, the terror and strength of the monsters within it repeatedly shattered humanity's imagination as well.
Humanity was devoured by the Abyss, even as it greedily plundered from it.
And over the past hundred years, humanity's exploration of the Abyss was estimated to have reached...
possibly less than 1%!
That was a horrifying calculation, because it meant the Abyss might be larger than Blue Star itself!
Much larger!
Humanity had built fortresses above the Abyss entrances.
All industries related to the Abyss and martial artists were extraordinarily developed within the fortress zones.
Exchanges, potion industries, weapon industries, energy industries, and even military garrisons were all concentrated there.
All kinds of levitating elevators and passenger airships moved up and down through the Abyss,
transporting martial artists entering it.
Above the Abyss entrance, overpasses and aerial rail lines interwove like roots and vines,
radiating outward in a web toward the huge ring-shaped city surrounding the fortress, Ironhand City.
Li Mu had never seen any other Abyss.
But according to the original owner's memories, the Abyss entrance guarded by Ironhand City
was supposedly only a low-level Abyss entrance.
At eight o'clock in the morning, Blackwater High School's dedicated aerial rail train cut through the wind and came steadily to a stop above the fortress.
The enormous plaza atop the fortress was already packed with people. They were all third-year students from East District schools who were participating in this Abyss First Battle.
There were roughly twenty different high schools in total.
The Abyss First Battle was held four times a year, divided into the east, west, south, and north districts, all completed within a month.
It was jointly organized by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Resources, and the Ministry of War.
It could truly be called a grand event for the educational world.
The East District, where Li Mu was located, was the first batch this year.
As soon as Blackwater High School's students got off the train, the logistics staff who had been waiting there began maintaining order.
They directed the students from each school to register in an orderly fashion and prepare to enter the Abyss.
"Old Zhao, Old Zhao!"
The Academic Records director greeted Zhao Qingshan with a broad smile.
"Ah, Old Ma! Working hard, I see!"
Zhao Qingshan was tall and broad, with rugged features and a face full of stubble. He even yawned while greeting the director.
"So? Wasn't I good to you, brother?"
Old Ma leaned close to Zhao Qingshan and asked with a grin.
"Huh? Good to me how?" Zhao Qingshan froze.
"Tsk? Playing dumb? You thought I was using this chance to extort those two bottles of good liquor from you, didn't you? Let me tell you, you have underestimated me!"
"I assigned Li Mu to your class entirely out of respect for the pure friendship between us brothers!"
Old Ma said this while slapping Zhao Qingshan's chest with the back of his hand.
Zhao Qingshan blinked.
"No, wait... now you've got me confused. What do you mean, assigned Li Mu to my class?"
"Hm?" Old Ma looked puzzled.
"Hm?" Zhao Qingshan looked even more puzzled.
"Yesterday! A transfer student at the late stage of Yellow Rank First Grade came to our school. I personally processed his enrollment, then assigned him to your class! I told him to go report to you!"
Old Ma was getting so anxious that he could barely speak clearly.
"May lightning strike me dead if I am lying! No one came looking for me!" Zhao Qingshan raised a fist and swore on the spot.
"Holy hell..."
Old Ma's body swayed, his eyes going blank. "That little bastard... he could not have enrolled just to scam me out of the admission gift pack, could he?"