Chapter Sixty: Turning Hostile

"Chu Cheng, your talent is truly extraordinary, perfect for dealing with large numbers of minor monsters. Our team is made up entirely of elites, highly experienced in taking down bosses. If we join forces and divide the work, wouldn’t victory come swiftly?"

Chu Cheng…

Wait a minute, didn’t I refuse them outright before? Why are they still inviting me? And not just once, but repeatedly, with such blatant intentions—this…

"Do they take me for a fool?" Chu Cheng was at a loss for words, and at the same time, he wondered if they were being a little too arrogant with their obvious scheming.

Ever since he’d learned from Teacher Mo Han about the biggest secret of this joint exam, he was certain these people meant no good and were trying to eliminate their competition by any means.

Class One might be the strongest, but that didn’t guarantee them first place. There is no such thing as certainty in this world—unexpected events and sudden rises to power happen all the time.

Chu Cheng had managed to earn the admiration of many in just a month, a tremendous advantage that already posed a serious threat to them. There was no way they’d let him keep growing stronger.

"Hmm…" Chu Cheng rubbed his chin. "I need to find a way to shake them off."

He stayed silent for a long while. Sun Yu’s expression visibly darkened, shifting through various emotions.

Just as Chu Cheng was about to refuse, he caught sight of Sun Yu’s sullen face and heard him say coldly, "So, you’ve figured something out. Fine, then—I’ll be direct. Twenty gold. If you give up on taking first place in this joint exam, I’ll give you twenty gold."

"Only twenty gold?" Chu Cheng raised an eyebrow and scoffed. "Are you kidding me?"

"How much do you want, name your price."

"One hundred gold!" Chu Cheng named a figure he was sure they’d never accept.

Sun Yu shot to his feet. "Are you joking?"

Chu Cheng replied indifferently, "You started it."

"So, there’s no deal then!"

"Heh," Chu Cheng chuckled softly. "You asked me to name a price, and now you’re angry because you don’t like it? Who’s really being unreasonable here?"

At that moment, Pan Yue, who had been silent until now, finally spoke up. "One hundred gold is impossible. How about forty? That’s an extremely sincere offer."

"One hundred gold. Not a single coin less."

Pan Yue narrowed her eyes and stared hard at Chu Cheng before standing and saying coolly, "If we can’t reach an agreement, then forget it." With that, she stepped out of the carriage and left. Sun Yu’s anger faded as well, and without another word, he followed.

"Safe travels; I won’t see you off," Chu Cheng called after them, his smile gone, replaced by a grave expression.

He could already foresee that after this fallout, they would definitely try to interfere with him, to deal with him one way or another.

It was entirely possible. Though the school forbade students from fighting directly, rules were rigid, but people are resourceful. If they couldn’t attack him outright, there were plenty of indirect methods.

For example, when they’d previously teamed up with other class elites to attack Blackstone Fortress, all it took was a slight change in formation or delayed support, letting the boss slip through, or a "mistake" during the rear guard’s spellcasting, and just like that, a bunch of competitors were eliminated.

Anyone with eyes could see something was off, but there was nothing to be done.

Most crucially, the school didn’t prohibit such behavior. The school’s rule against fighting referred only to direct combat and murder. Schemes and intrigue weren’t encouraged, but neither were they forbidden.

You could plot as you liked, just don’t get caught.

The school wanted to train more than just a bunch of hotheaded warriors; they wanted students who acted with dignity, but also understood cunning and strategy.

So Chu Cheng was sure that Sun Yu and his group would come after him next.

"If I put myself in Sun Yu’s shoes, I’d keep a close eye on me at the Northern Outpost, tailing me wherever I go just to stop me from doing anything."

"So, I have to shake them off."

Chu Cheng smiled faintly, gazing out at the wilds beyond the window, then glanced at the eyes watching him from the carriage ahead, and lay back down.

The convoy moved forward in silence, only the sound of wagon wheels and the occasional roar of a beast echoing from the wilderness on either side.

No one knew how much time had passed when, as the convoy passed through a stretch of especially dense trees and undergrowth, Chu Cheng told the ox-cart driver he needed to relieve himself, hopped down, and wandered into the roadside brush, lifting his trousers as if to urinate.

From the ox-cart ahead, Hu Chen, assigned to keep an eye on Chu Cheng, glanced over and instinctively looked away. After saying a few words to his companion, he looked back—only to find Chu Cheng had vanished, the weeds beside the road swaying in his wake.

"Damn, he’s escaped!"

He immediately leapt onto the cart’s cargo, gaining a higher vantage point to spot a figure rapidly fleeing through the grass.

The others quickly realized what was happening. Seeing Chu Cheng’s swift escape, Pan Yue sneered and said to someone behind her, "Zhi Yuan, you’re the fastest. Quietly follow him, and don’t reveal yourself."

A man in finely crafted leather armor nodded and slipped silently into the undergrowth.

"The rest of us, let’s move out and follow," Pan Yue ordered.

She and Sun Yu jumped off the cart, and the group plunged into the forest.

"Xu Zhiyuan’s class is Shadow Stalker—his tracking skills are formidable. He won’t get away," Pan Yue said coldly. "Since he won’t cooperate, he can’t blame us for being ruthless. One death will make him behave."

Across the wasteland, Chu Cheng activated Swift Level Five, his speed surging to 230%, and sprinted madly with no particular destination, smashing through all obstacles like a whale parting the sea, leaving a long trail in the thick grass.

After running over a kilometer, he began to leap—his specialization doubled his jump range, so each bound carried him more than twenty meters.

This would reduce his tracks and make it harder for pursuers to follow.

"If only I had levitation or flight—I could leave no traces at all."

Bounding madly and constantly changing direction, he covered more than ten kilometers before he caught sight of the wide Blackwater River.

Blackwater River was the largest in the Cross Wasteland instance, running north to south and splitting the entire map into east and west.

Both Cross Fortress and the Northern Outpost were on the western side, as were most human towns and villages, while the east belonged to the orcs.

The Blackwater River flowed southeast into the sea, where the neutral goblin city, Gear City, stood—a third-party power within the instance. Its chief engineer was also a transcendent figure, and destroying Gear City would yield rewards rivaling those from the two major storylines.

But no one would do that—humans were already at odds with the orcs, and provoking the goblins as well would be suicidal.

Chu Cheng quickly crossed the thousand-meter-wide river and headed south, planning to visit Gear City first.

Now that he’d fallen out with Sun Yu and Pan Yue’s team, going straight to the Northern Outpost was out of the question; it was better to keep a low profile for now.

Gear City was neutral, and everyone started with neutral reputation. Reputation there was hard to build, so everyone was on equal footing. Even if Sun Yu and his group followed him there, they couldn’t do a thing.

He didn’t believe Sun Yu and the others would keep chasing him forever—unless they wanted to hand an advantage to someone else.