Chapter 10

1

"Why did you kill someone out of nowhere?" Qin Yin couldn't sleep in the middle of the night, and I thought it was because he was troubled by some emotional issue. But it turns out...

Qin Yin turned his body towards me, and his gaze shifted from the sky to me. "I'm telling you the truth!"

"Then why did you kill someone? From what I know about you, I believe you wouldn't easily joke about taking a life, even if it's someone else's life."

"I don't enjoy it. That day, I saw people from the Qin family appear on this balcony, which means the next one is him."

"The plan to choose the Duke candidate from the Qin family?" When Qin Yin mentioned that person, I suddenly remembered. Qin Yin had revealed before that many peripheral relatives of the Qin family used the disappearance of the Duke's son and the pressure on the family elders to launch this plan.

"Since joining it, the other candidates and I have been distributed to different schools for training. But whenever two candidates meet, one of them must die."

"Is this position really that good? And you, do you really value this title so much?" It shouldn't be like this. Qin Yin is a good person and wouldn't fight with others. Why is he doing this?

"I just want to fulfill my father's wish."

"But aren't you a bastard? You shouldn't have that good of a relationship with your father!" Qin Yin was a bastard child of his father. He had never seen his father before his mother passed away, and he didn't have any good feelings towards him.

"I just want to repay my father's kindness in raising me. Even if I don't like him, a favor is still a favor. I just want to repay him and completely sever ties with him."

"But there's no need to kill someone! This... is too extreme!"

"Since the day my father brought me back to the Qin family, his goal was to secure the title for me and bring benefits to himself."

Sometimes I wonder if running away back then was the right decision. If I hadn't run away, there wouldn't be this current plan, and Qin Yin wouldn't be killing people. But if I hadn't run away, after Qin Yin's mother passed away, his father wouldn't have taken him away either. What would his life be like afterwards?

"Sigh~~" Qin Yin let out a heavy sigh and slumped into the chair with a sense of loss.

"Killing someone must come with a lot of psychological pressure!"

"It's a kind of guilt! For so many years, I've ended the lives of an average of one person every three months. I'm exhausted." Qin Yin frowned, unable to bear it anymore.

The two of us sat silently in the chairs on the balcony, each with our own thoughts. Everyone has worries, different worries every day, but not every worry can be resolved, whether you're a god, a human, or a demon.

"Qin Yin, if the Duke's son returns, will this plan end?"

"No, if the Duke's son returns, they will force him to participate, using the reason that 'the leader of the family must have overwhelming power to protect the family.'"

"What if he doesn't want to?"

"It will be considered as abstention. If the Duke's son really comes back, either we kill him, or we all die at his hands."

"So there's really no way out?" How will the days of killing people go? Qin Yin faces the fact that he kills people with so much strength, while I am evading it. But what if I have to kill my loved ones, what should I do? How can I be strong?

"Let's just focus on practicing our motorcycle skills! It's more practical after all, considering that the inter-school competition starts next week."

"I don't want to think about it anymore. I'm getting a headache! I'm going to sleep!"

"What about me?" Qin Yin suddenly grabbed my hand, his eyes deep, making me feel cold inside.

"Um~~~" You can't behave like this as a grown man. What a nuisance!

Not knowing how to respond to his gaze, I continued to sit down and chat with Qin Yin all night...

2

Time perhaps doesn't pass as long as one imagines, it merely comes and goes between the actions of inhaling and exhaling.

A week later, more than a hundred kilometers outside the capital city, in front of another vast ancient forest, a large crowd gathered here, with all kinds of media crystal balls and equipment that could record photographs.

At this moment, it was the opening ceremony of the official inter-school competition.

Chemical flashes, magical flashes, flashing so intensely that it made my head spin. I thought being in the spotlight of flash lamps was glorious, but it turns out it's so hard. I used to envy it, but that was all in vain.

One year ago, scenes that could only be seen on the screen are now unfolding before my eyes. Excitement is just a secondary feeling, as there is more fear.

The intercollegiate competition is divided into three parts. The first part is the team selection, which involves all the colleges in the empire. Each team consists of ten members, more than the total number of students in our college. The individual team matches last at least half a year, so the forest team competition can eliminate 95% of the participants, leaving only five teams to enter the second part of the competition.

In the second part, it is a individual team competition where the members of each team compete against one or two members from other teams. The winning side receives one point for defeating a single opponent, and two points for winning the overall team match. If a team wins three consecutive rounds, they can bypass the rest of the matches and earn ten points. The total team score is calculated in this phase.

At the same time, the third part, the motorcycle race, takes place. Five riders from each team compete on a specially designed track. The competition is not about speed, but about the destructive power. The winner must be the last one standing on the motorcycle. If one rider falls off, their teammate also has to leave the course. The first place receives ten points, the second place receives nine points, and so on. If a team already achieved the "Three Strikes Out" rule, they can make a comeback in this phase.

These rules may be complicated, but they greatly reduce the number of participants and the overall time of the competition, making it a very effective system.

The name of the forest now is Rioris. In the center of the forest, there is an ancient town made of yellow clay stone, extremely old and abandoned for over a thousand years. Many valuable things have lost their worth and have been heavily damaged over time. Eventually, it became a battlefield for students.

Countless teams must traverse the forest and enter the ancient town within twenty-four hours. There are five sensing rods inside the town, of equal value to the previous competition's badge, and they must be brought out of the forest by dusk the next day. The map does not have clear markings.

All of the above is just a summary. In the opening ceremony of the intercollegiate competition, the hosts and officials from the Ministry of Education talked incessantly for over two hours before taking a ten-minute break and continuing to talk...

I really don't understand why such a large-scale gathering needs to last so long. Is the importance of the people on the stage really that significant? From the students' perspective, the longer someone talks on the stage, the more likely they will be ignored by the students. I'm afraid that after this gathering is over, few people will remember the person from the so-called Imperial Ministry of Education. I have already forgotten, despite the fact that the opening ceremony is not yet over.

The official competition has not even started, and the opening ceremony is monotonous, following the same pattern as always. It has been the same for so many years that I used to change the channel when watching it at home.

Today, I can't switch channels, so I can only turn my head and look at the people and dogs around me.

Occasionally, I notice a team from the Azure Sky Academy that I have been to before, and the leader is... a loli?

No! At first glance, she does look like a loli, because of her baby face. But if you look closely, she is not as petite as Lilith. She is still a teenage girl, although slightly shorter than normal girls.

How can a group of people from Azure Sky Academy, who used to follow the words of a little girl? Or does this girl have some kind of power? She looks pretty but also very terrifying.

"Tesha! As the secretary of the Student Union, you should know a lot of things, right?"

"It depends on what you want to ask." Tesha is not listening to me, as usual, she is practicing calligraphy. But today, it is not with a regular pen, but with a brush.

Speaking of this brush, its shape is very peculiar. It is not straight, the body of the brush has flowing curvatures, and the brush hair is a pale red color. The whole brush feels strange. If it were a Magic tool, I should be able to feel its magical power, but I can't.

"Well then, who is that girl over there, the one leading the Azure Sky team?"

"Oh! That's the former president's sister, Situ Jingyi."

"What?! That neurotic guy actually has a sister? I thought he was an only child, that's why he behaves so arrogantly."

"A person's character is more or less influenced by their life circumstances, but it's not absolute. If you really want to know about this girl, I suggest you think twice. If you made her brother like this, she probably won't pay attention to you. In fact, she might even consider you as her enemy."

"It's his own fault. Besides being addicted to prohibited drugs, he even kidnapped and extorted, and even kidnapped a loli who turned out to be the Demon Lord's daughter. It's a heinous crime! Luckily, the Situ family managed to settle it by stepping into the Demon Realm."

"Anyway, she definitely doesn't want to see you!"

"Just curious, what's wrong with seeing her~"

After waiting for half an hour, finally, I heard these words: ".... The XXth Intercollegiate Competition now begins~~~"

Phew~~ It's finally over, we will rest here and wait for noon to enter the forest officially!

"Master, the person from the balcony last time." Nofis pointed to the person in front, walking towards me with a suspicious smile on his face.

"Here I am again, Qin Yang. I have checked your information. Although you are not from the Qin family, you are quite lucky. We are basically not enemies. But that androgynous Qin Yin over there won't live for long." Qintaiyuan held a drink in his hand and took a few sips.

"Are you going to kill him? Why are you telling me?" I looked into the distance, not wanting to look at him, feeling disgusted.

"I just came to tell you to prepare for the battle. Only one of us can survive when we meet. It won't be as exciting if we fight here! Anyway, I've said what I wanted to say. Let him prepare well. I hate killing people who are unprepared."

I grabbed his collar with my left hand and angrily said, "Don't worry, before you meet him, I will make sure you lie down!"

"Hehe~~ That would be best!" Qin Taiyuan shrugged off my hand, straightened his collar, and smirked.

How dare he threaten to kill my friend in front of me? Maybe I was afraid of him before, but now I have Bai, Nofis, and the "Seal Demon Formation" backing me up, so I am confident.

When I feel a surge of power, I have wild thoughts, such as wanting to twist this guy's head off right now.

When I was just a useless person, encountering such things made me feel that I could only accept my misfortune.

"Qin Yang, it's almost twelve o'clock. We need to go to the designated entrance."

"Oh~~ Here we go!"