The massive floating transport vehicle slowly descended onto an open field, finally landing with a slight jolt. As the metallic doors formed into stairs when they were gradually lowered, the examinees streamed out, their eyes filled with curiosity as they gazed at the safety zone they had never reached before.
Before Lin Su even stepped off the vehicle, one of the examinees who had already left suddenly bent down and dug twice in the moist soil, then let out an excited shout.
“I found a pass jade!”
While speaking, the examinee straightened up and excitedly waved the pass jade, still smeared with a bit of soil, amidst the envious glances of other examinees. He summoned his pet beast and chose a direction to leave quickly. Judging by his actions, he clearly planned to take the initiative and search for more pass jades.
Picking up a pass jade upon landing, this guy’s luck is insanely good!
Watching the back of the departing examinee, Lin Su smiled.
The ease with which it was found proved that these pass jades were not hidden very deeply.
For him, this was equally good news.
“Qiuqiu, let’s head out too.” Lin Su smiled, petting Qiuqiu on his head who had gone from lying lazily to sitting in a crouch with an increasingly serious expression as the live combat exam began.
After a brief analysis of the rules of the live combat exam on the way there, he had thought of what he should do next.
Firstly, he had to find a pass jade to ensure he wouldn’t be eliminated.
Then, it was about figuring out how to accumulate as many points as possible.
While the rules of the second stage were quite tricky and particularly unfriendly to someone like him who aimed for first place, Lin Su realized he had no other choice.
Unless he managed to keep his points outside of the top hundred during the second stage and then surpass everyone in the last half-hour to become first.
But that idea seemed impossible.
Even discounting the time spent on the move, half an hour simply wasn’t enough to earn that many points.
There were three ways to accumulate points: The first was collecting pass jades, the second was killing magical beasts, and the third was combat against other examinees, where the victor could obtain half of the defeated examinee’s hunting points. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com
The first two types of points were fixed; one could gain as many points as they collected or killed. However, the last type depended on how many points the defeated examinee had—if the loser had few points, the payoff from this method wouldn’t be high, but if they had a lot of points, defeating them would be extremely profitable.
Therefore, there was no need to waste time battling other examinees at the start of the live combat exam. It would be more convenient to wait until each examinee had accumulated a certain amount of hunting points and then use combat to harvest points.
This is commonly referred to as “harvesting leeks.”
Lin Su had a clear strategy in mind, within the six-hour first stage, he only needed to accumulate as many points as possible. After that, the top hundred examinees with the highest points wouldn’t need to be sought out; they would naturally be marked.
They were his targets.
Rejecting the team-up invitations from his fellow transport passengers, Lin Su used the direction of the sunrise to determine his position and headed straight east.
There were boundary markers around this area, so he didn’t have to worry about exiting the exam’s range and attracting unknown risks. Heading in a fixed direction, he was bound to find something.
And if he couldn’t find anything, he still had Qiuqiu.
“Meow! (ᓀωᓂ)” (There’s one over there!)
Before long, Qiuqiu, with frost in his eyes, signaled towards a spot not far off, indicating he had found a pass jade.
In the direction Qiuqiu pointed to was just a tree about four to five meters tall that seemed not too old, yet had a thickly foliaged canopy.
The pass jade hidden in the tree canopy?
A look of interest spread across Lin Su’s face as he approached the tree with Qiuqiu, and it wasn’t until he got closer that he noticed a shimmering piece of white jade tucked in a fork of a branch, rather inconspicuous under the mottled sunlight filtering through the sparse leaves. If not for Qiuqiu’s hint, he certainly wouldn’t have noticed it.
Suddenly, Lin Su’s expression shifted subtly as if he had discovered something, but he didn’t let it show and quickly regained his composure, smilingly saying, “Qiuqiu, it’s up to you now!”
“Meow! (｡òωó｡)” (Piece of cake!)
Qiuqiu deftly leapt into the air, stepping briskly on Frost Snow to reach the tree canopy and nabbed the pass jade.
After obtaining the pass jade, Qiuqiu didn’t leave immediately but uncharacteristically shook its head while remaining in midair, as if showing off to Lin Su.
In the next instant, a snake-like magical beast, with a color indistinguishable from the tree bark and nearly invisible to the naked eye, burst out from the brown-barked tree trunk, biting fiercely towards Qiuqiu.
A mid-rank leading species, the Mimic Forest Snake.
Far from being tense due to the beast’s sudden attack, Lin Su’s expression relaxed.
He took the bait.
Under Qiuqiu’s stage III Frost Eyes, the beast lurking among the branches was glaringly obvious. As Lin Su approached the tree, it quickly noticed him, and with telepathy, alerted Lin Su.
The actions of Lin Su and Qiuqiu just now were merely to lower the creature’s guard; the pair had already covertly settled on a battle plan.
However, upon getting a clear view of the snake-like pet beast, Lin Su’s expression slightly faltered.