As the airship hovered over the villa, the hatch opened, and a fat guy in black sportswear emerged.
This fat guy was less than 1.7 meters tall but had a waist circumference of over one meter. He was typically short and squat, with a plump, round face, and a pair of beards. His eyes were narrowed into a line. He looked naïve, like a Maitreya.
“Which one of you is Ling Jiu?”
The fat guy looked down at Ling Jiu’s family standing on the roof of the villa.
“I am.”
Ling Jiu stepped out.
The fat guy glanced at him with a smile. “I am Niu Ben. I’m here to pick you up and send you to the Ultimate Matriculation Camp. Come with me.”
“All right.”
Ling Jiu nodded, then turned to look at his family. “Dad, Mom, Xiaotong, I’m leaving. Take care of yourselves.”
“You, too, Ling Jiu. And keep in touch.”
“Don’t forget to video-call me, my brother.”
“Okay.”
After saying his goodbye, Ling Jiu boarded Niu Ben’s airship, which then flew him to the place where the Ultimate Matriculation Camp was.
The interior design of Niu Ben’s airship was the same as that of Ling Jiu’s. There was also a home-like, spacious living room equipped with sofas, coffee tables, and other furniture.
Niu Ben opened the refrigerator and asked with a smile, “Hey, bro, do you want coffee, beer, or ice tea?”
“You have beer?”
“Yeah.”
Niu Ben took out two cans of beer, throwing one to Ling Jiu and opening one for himself before sitting down on the sofa and sipping on it.
“Hey, bro, I have read your file. You are the strongest player in the training camp?”
“Sort of.” Ling Jiu let out a modest smile.
“The training camp has recruited almost all the geniuses of the younger generation. Being the strongest among them, bro, your talent is beyond doubt. But I still have to warn you.” Niu Ben took another sip of beer before continuing. “The Ultimate Matriculation Camp and the training camp are two different things. Once you get there, bro, you had better keep your head low.”
Ling Jiu raised an eyebrow but remained humble. “Brother Niu, can you tell me about the Ultimate matriculation Camp?”
“What do you want to know?” Niu Ben smiled.
“Where is the Ultimate Matriculation Camp? How many people are there? How do the trainees train? And what do we need to do every day?” Ling Jiu brought out a barrage of questions.
“Where is the Ultimate Matriculation Camp? You will know when you get there.”
Niu Ben created suspense, then squinted with a smile.
“There were 169 Arcanists in the Ultimate Matriculation Camp before this. Now there are 172, including you and the other two rookies this year.”
“Who else is there besides me?” Ling Jiu was surprised.
“One is Bai Ya, and the other is Hao Shuai!” Niu Ben smiled. “They arrived in the Ultimate Matriculation Camp three days ago. You are the last one!”
“Just as I expected.” Ling Jiu nodded. “Brother Niu, is training difficult in the Ultimate Matriculation Camp? What level does one have to attain before one can graduate and leave?”
“There is a saying in our Ultimate Matriculation Camp: It is harder to get out than to get in. Do you know what it means?”
Niu Ben said, “Getting into the Ultimate Matriculation Camp is extremely hard. There are over 10,000 talented Arcanists in all training camps around the world. Only the top ten genius Arcanists can enter the Ultimate Matriculation Camp. So, it is extremely difficult to get a place in the Ultimate Matriculation Camp.”
Ling Jiu nodded.
The normal recruitment exercise of the Ultimate Matriculation Camp was after the training camp trainees graduated, about December every year. Only the trainees with the best performance were eligible to apply.
Early applicants like him, Bai Ya, and Hao Shuai, as well as him, Ai Yuhe, and Ling-er, who got recommended were special cases.
Under normal circumstances, it was extremely difficult to enter the Ultimate Matriculation Camp.
“But it is even more difficult to graduate and leave compared to entering the Ultimate Matriculation Camp.” Niu Ben swirled the cold beer in his hand and sighed. “The Ultimate Matriculation Camp has recruited so many top talents, but fewer than three graduate and leave every year.”
“Less than three?” Ling Jiu was stunned. “That’s an incredibly low number.”
“It is.” Niu Ben nodded. “So those geniuses who cannot graduate can only continue to stay in the Ultimate Matriculation Camp for further training until they meet the conditions for leaving.”
“This is also the reason there are less than 10 people recruited every year yet the number of trainees in the Ultimate Matriculation Camp is as high as 169 people, which is a figure accumulated year after year.”
“Now I know.”
“Did you know, bro, someone has been in the Ultimate Matriculation Camp for over 10 years?” Niu Ben looked a little dumbfounded. “Even then, he still couldn’t leave and could only train with new recruits year after year. It makes me feel depressed by just thinking of it.”
“Ten years?” Ling Jiu took a deep breath. “So long?”
“Yeah.” Niu Ben nodded. “Once you reach the Ultimate Matriculation Camp, you will know how difficult it is to leave.”
“Brother Niu, how can I leave the Ultimate Matriculation Camp?”
“You have to meet one of the two conditions before you can leave!” Niu Ben said. “First, become an Ultimate Arcanist, which means you must be at least a Level 9 Arcanist.”
“What about the other condition?”
“Second, you have accumulated over one million points in the ranking,” Niu Ben said. “The Ultimate Matriculation Camp has a scoreboard that records the points of each trainee. You can only leave if you become at least a Level 9 Arcanist and have accumulated over one million points in the ranking.”
“Level 9 Arcanist and one million points in the ranking?” Ling Jiu’s eyes flashed. “Brother Niu, what are the criteria to become a Level 9 Arcanist?”
“Combat strength, of course,” Niu Ben said. “As soon as your combat effectiveness reaches Level 9, you will become a Level 9 Arcanist.”
“Now I know.” Ling Jiu breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that his physique was comparable to a Level 9 Arcanist, which meant his combat strength had met the first condition. His only problem was the second condition. “Brother Niu, how do I get points?”
“There are three ways to get points in the Ultimate Matriculation Camp,” Niu Ben said. “One, plant trees.”
“Plant trees?” Ling Jiu was dumbfounded.
“Yeah, plant trees.”
Niu Ben had a meaningful look on his face. “The Ultimate Matriculation Camp is on a barren planet, but it is close to Earth. I can say that it is very close. So, our high-level humans have issued a strict order to terraform this planet into a habitable place. This is also one reason the Ultimate Matriculation Camp is based there.”
Very close?
Very barren?
Terraforming?
Could it be Mars?
Ling Jiu frowned. “Brother Niu, is the Ultimate Matriculation Camp on Mars? But is it not unrealistic to plant trees on Mars? What trees could survive in the extreme environment of Mars?”
“You will know when you get there.” Niu Ben smiled with a mysterious look on his face. “You can earn one point by planting a tree. That is to say, if you want to earn points just by planting trees, you will need to plant at least a million trees to earn a million points!”
“A million trees?”
Niu Ben shook his head. “That will take you almost forever.”
“What about the second way?”
“Two, hunting monsters.” There was a strange look in Niu Ben’s eyes. “You know that we have many dimensional cracks on Earth, don’t you? The stable one is the wormhole that leads to many planets while the unstable ones leak Gene Arcana that Arcanists use for self-cultivation.”
Ling Jiu nodded.
“In fact, the planet, where our Ultimate Matriculation Camp is on, also has wormholes, and there are as many as dozens of them,” Niu Ben said. “So monsters often emerge out of the wormholes and invade the planet. We have to fight the monsters to protect the place. You can get points by hunting monsters, and for each Class 7 monster you kill, you kill one point; Class 8 monster, ten points; and Class 9 monster, one hundred points. If you want to earn points by simply hunting monsters, kill one million Class 7 monsters, one hundred thousand Class 8, or ten thousand Class 9. Can you imagine how hard it is to earn a million points?”
“That sounds hard indeed.” Ling Jiu nodded.
A million Class 7 Direbeasts…
One hundred thousand Class 8 Direbeasts…
Ten thousand Class 9 Direbeasts…
That was difficult.
“But that is not all, though,” Niu Ben said. “The thing is, there are few monsters on that planet. Every time they invade, there won’t be over a hundred of them. The Ultimate Matriculation Camp has over a hundred Arcanists. There simply aren’t enough monsters to go around. You can’t kill as many as you want!”
Ling Jiu frowned. A million Class 7, 100,000 Class 8, and 10,000 Class 9 Direbeasts seemed to be a lot. But as long as there were enough monsters, Ling Jiu was confident enough to achieve that number.
Yet, there were not enough monsters to go around.
This was the hardest part. How can you kill when there are not enough monsters? As much as you want to, you just can’t do that.
“That’s difficult.” Ling Jiu sighed. “Brother Niu, what is the reward system in the Ultimate Matriculation Camp?”
“Reward? What reward?” Niu Ben forced a smile. “Bro, the Ultimate Matriculation Camp differs from the training camp. There are no rewards there. If there is any reward, the Ultimate Suit is one when you graduate. Other than that, you will not get any rewards during your time in the Ultimate Matriculation Camp.”
“No rewards?” Ling Jiu was speechless. “Then how does everyone train?”
“Although there are dimensional cracks on that planet, the Gene Arcana content in the air is extremely low, and so the conditions for self-cultivation are challenging.” Niu Ben forced another smile. “You can only plant trees if you want to practice self-cultivate.”
“Plant trees?” Ling Jiu frowned again.
“The trees we are planting are a magical plant. They can not only produce oxygen but also magical energy.”
Niu Ben said. “This energy is not Gene Arcana, but it has all the characteristics of Gene Arcana and with more amazing effect than that of Gene Arcana.”
Speaking of this, Niu Ben’s eyes lit up. “Did you know that absorbing this energy can increase our power fivefold, bro? Fivefold, man! That’s the reason all the trainees in the Ultimate Matriculation Camp are scrambling to plant trees. They all have their respective forests to get this mysterious energy.”
