Yue Shi spent the entire day in the library. From dawn until dusk, his countless clones continued to flip through books and read.
The others in the library were not idle either. Some were using clones to memorize texts, while others had grown a multitude of eyeballs that crawled deep into the pages, scanning the words at high speed.
There were also those who used mental energy to scan the contents of entire books directly into their brains before closing their eyes to digest the information.
One particularly bizarre individual had a pet that constantly pulled bread from its pocket. It used the bread to take impressions of the text on the pages, and then the person would eat the bread.
“Does that really work for absorbing knowledge?” someone nearby asked.
“Mhm,” the man grunted, swallowing a mouthful of bread.
Yue Shi's consciousness was occupied by hundreds of books simultaneously; he had no spare attention to care about what others were doing.
When evening arrived, Yue Shi retracted all his clones.
He rubbed the space between his eyebrows, feeling a bone-deep exhaustion seeping out from within.
The library contained a vast amount of occult knowledge—material that would drive an ordinary person insane just by looking at it.
All that knowledge was now inside his head.
As he walked out of the library, the sky was already growing dark.
Yue Shi felt his strength slowly draining from his body. He hadn't visited the cafeteria for breakfast or lunch today.
It seemed he needed to visit the cafeteria to eat at least once a day.
...
He walked into the cafeteria and swiped his card as usual.
Yue Shi had intended to order the cheapest steamed bun.
Although the black lotus mark on his student card supposedly gave him an infinite spending limit, he never fully trusted Tang Zhuhe. What if he had to pay back everything he spent once the mark vanished?
Thus, he had been consciously controlling his spending, always choosing the bare minimum.
He walked to the window selling steamed buns and looked closely.
The price of steamed buns had actually gone up!
Yesterday they were 0.5 points each; today they were 1 point.
And it wasn't just the buns—the prices for every dish in the cafeteria had increased.
“What the hell is going on? Do you just set the prices whenever you feel like it?!” a loud, questioning voice rang out from behind him.
A transmigrator stood before a serving window, his face livid. The price of rice had risen from yesterday's 1 point per bowl to 2 points.
The cafeteria auntie explained with a smile, “Food prices are determined by the time each transmigrator reported to the school. The initial price is the lowest and increases daily. This is also part of the school rules.”
Everyone who heard this gasped in unison.
The fact that food prices increased daily meant that the longer one stayed in this school, the higher the cost of survival became.
Failing an exam resulted in injuries, and treating those injuries, eating, and housing cost many points every day. To stay alive, one had to take out loans, which then had to be repaid through more re-exams and extra exams.
The more exams one took, the easier it was to fail, leading to more injuries and further loans for treatment.
It was an accelerating death spiral. Once a person fell below the threshold, getting back on solid ground would be incredibly difficult.
Yue Shi carried his single steamed bun to a seat in a corner of the cafeteria.
He took a bite, chewing slowly.
The bun tasted ordinary, no different from any normal bun he had ever seen.
He suspected the ingredients might not be entirely legitimate, but he had to finish it all.
Although there was no explicit rule in the cafeteria stating that one must finish their food, he worried that wasting food might incur a penalty.
In this school, anything one assumed wouldn't carry a penalty could eventually turn into one. He didn't want to gamble.
A weirdo suddenly sat down across from Yue Shi with a meal tray. The man's face was covered in stitches, running from his forehead down to his chin.
The weirdo placed the tray on the table. On the tray lay a single █.
Yue Shi looked away, unable to bear the sight.
The weirdo chuckled. His face, carved up by stitches, looked exceptionally eerie when he smiled. “This is the War God's sword. It was just taken off him. Eating it is very nourishing.”
As he spoke, he picked up the █ with his chopsticks, took a slurp, and savored the taste.
“The War God was also a freshman who arrived yesterday. Unfortunately, he had all muscle and no brains. He stepped into every trap possible in the school rules and can no longer get a loan. He tried to use brute force to tear down the school, but he was suppressed. Now he’s working in the cafeteria kitchen.”
“He truly lived up to his name; his strength was concentrated in his physical body. This █ in particular is a rare delicacy. Eating it is highly fortifying.”
“It’s just a pity that the Demon Orbs were already bought by someone else,” the weirdo said, shaking his head and sighing as if he had missed out on a lottery jackpot.
“Get to the point,” Yue Shi said bluntly.
The weirdo put down his chopsticks and laced his fingers on the table, leaning forward slightly. The stitches on his face tightened with his movement. “I’ve noticed that your student card is different from ours.”
“You violated exam rules, so your card has 0 points, and you don’t seem to have applied for a loan. Yet I saw you entering the library freely, and you weren't charged just now when you bought that bun. Would you mind telling me how you did it?”
Yue Shi took another bite of his bun, chewed twice, and swallowed. His expression didn't change, but his mind was racing.
This weirdo likely wasn't the first to notice the anomaly with his student card, and he wouldn't be the last. Sooner or later, someone would come asking.
At the surrounding tables, many eyes were fixed on Yue Shi with varying degrees of subtlety.
They had indeed noticed this long ago. However, given Yue Shi's overwhelming power and how he had made an example of the Wave Messenger, no one had dared to ask.
Now that a stitched-face weirdo had boldly inquired, it immediately drew the attention of many.
They all wanted to know how Yue Shi managed it, hoping to reduce their own survival pressure in this school.
Yue Shi swallowed the last bite of his bun, picked up a tissue to wipe his mouth, and asked in return, “Are students who break too many rules sent to the cafeteria?”
The weirdo blinked, then shook his head. “Breaking too many rules just leads to being repeatedly slashed until you're in pieces. As long as you're in pieces but not dead, you're still a student.”
“Since I've been so generous in sharing information with you, do you think you could...”
Yue Shi raised an eyebrow. “You should know that everyone has their secrets. Why my student card is special is my business. You're asking me, but I don't want to tell you—and you can't beat me.”
The weirdo's expression stiffened, but he said softly, “Don't be so cold. I'm just asking.”
“But I must warn you: many people know about this. Yesterday on the playground, you didn't hide the fact that you pulled a piece of paper from your robe. That paper turned into black smoke and drifted into your student card.”
“While others might not do anything for now, when the day comes that they are driven to a dead end, they will gradually realize something is wrong with you. You will become a target for everyone.”
Yue Shi's eyes shifted. “Thanks for the warning. To show my appreciation for your kindness, I can tell you the secret.”
The weirdo looked pleasantly surprised, only to hear Yue Shi add, “This is inside information. I'll only tell you. Lean in...”
The weirdo hurriedly leaned his head closer.
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