Chapter 45: Chapter 36: Dark Figure in the Moonlight

Dongqi University was divided into an east and west campus. Zhao Rui’s main campus was in a relatively remote location, situated in a suburban development zone.

However, the suburbs of the provincial capital weren’t much worse than downtown Lincheng City. At most, there were just fewer large shopping centers and the skyscrapers were a little more spread out.

Zhao Rui strolled casually along the wide road outside campus, observing his surroundings.

Many of the residential communities here were old walk-up buildings, no more than five or six stories high, and had been around for quite a while.

This was especially true for the ones near the school, most of which were former faculty or staff family housing.

There were also some newly built, modern residential complexes, but they were located farther from the university.

Zhao Rui took a long walk around the campus and settled on a residential complex that wasn’t far from the school gate, making it convenient to come and go.

The buildings were just a little old.

He went straight to a real estate agency on the street near the complex entrance, and after viewing a unit in person, he rented it on the spot.

Zhao Rui wasn’t short on money at all. Between what he’d earned from his summer job and the “tribute” from Brother Hu, he had a good sixty thousand yuan in his bank account.

The apartment’s rent was 1,500 a month, which dropped to 1,450 with an annual lease. For Zhao Rui, this was no great pressure.

The apartment he rented was a three-bedroom unit on the fourth floor. It had an old-fashioned layout where the balcony was attached to the bedroom, making the bedroom quite spacious. For one person, there was more than enough room to practice martial arts.

Best of all, the apartment came fully furnished with appliances. He wouldn’t need to buy anything new; he could move in just by getting a new set of bedding.

However, Zhao Rui didn’t plan to move in right away. After all, the semester had just started, and he wasn’t sure how things at the university would be run. He decided to wait a couple of days.

After renting the apartment, Zhao Rui opened an app on his phone to look up the locations of nearby Martial Arts Halls, then hailed a cab and headed straight for one.

The setup of the Martial Arts Halls here wasn’t much different from those in Lin City. Since this wasn’t a bustling part of the provincial capital, they had the feel of the taekwondo dojos from his past life.

They primarily served the local Martial Arts Students, providing training venues and extracurricular instruction.

They weren’t involved in the study of high-level Martial Arts or the passing down of a school’s lineage.

Zhao Rui inquired at two or three of them. They needed sparring partners, but they had no shortage of part-timers. They were, however, open to interviewing for a full-time position.

’That makes sense,’ Zhao Rui thought. This was a provincial capital, after all, and right next to a university. The one thing it didn’t lack was college students looking for part-time work.

After gathering some basic information, Zhao Rui took a cab back to his dorm.

The semester was just starting for the new students, and everything was novel. Groups of two and three freshmen could be seen wandering all over campus.

Anyone on campus could tell the freshmen from the upperclassmen at a glance. Their curiosity and greenness were impossible to hide.

Zhao Rui’s dorm room was no exception. The oldest and third-oldest roommates were the most enthusiastic, suggesting a tour of the campus after a short rest.

Since they had all just arrived, he didn’t want to be difficult, so Zhao Rui went along with the group.

Along the way, they took in the campus scenery, admired the pretty girls who passed by, and chatted happily amongst themselves.

Only the fourth-oldest, Chu Yunlei, was quiet. He was like a little follower, trailing a few steps behind Zhao Rui and the other two, almost as if he wasn’t there at all.

They hadn’t been walking for long before Zhao Rui’s phone started ringing nonstop.

He got calls from Yang Fan and from Sun Tiantian, whose own semester had already begun. They were all calling to ask his first impressions of university life.

There was also a group video call on WeChat from his seniors at the Martial Arts Hall. They were all gathered at a barbecue restaurant.

They told him to work on his alcohol tolerance now that he was in university. Since he was an adult, they could all drink together the next time they met.

Zhao Rui laughed and bantered with them for a bit, then used the call as an excuse to leave the “campus tour” group and head back to the dorm.

After quickly washing up, he got straight into bed.

He sat cross-legged in meditation, his hands forming the seal for his Qi Circulation Technique. He began his Cultivation, guiding his Inner Strength through a full Circulation.

His Cultivation session didn’t last long, however. After only thirty or forty minutes, Le Bin and the others finished their walk and returned to the dorm.

“Zhao Rui, you got a girlfriend?”

Le Bin teased with a smile upon returning to the dorm. His features were rather effeminate and handsome; when he smiled, he was actually quite striking.

“Nope. What about you guys?”

The other two shook their heads, but Le Bin didn’t.

“I have a girlfriend, but she doesn’t go to our school,” Le Bin said with a smile. “I’ll introduce you all when she comes to visit.”

“A guy as handsome as you, of course you have a girlfriend. My goal is to stop being single before I graduate!”

The oldest roommate, Jian Conglin, declared, full of fighting spirit.

Their major was accounting, which had a high proportion of female students—the ratio was roughly three to one.

The one thing they weren’t short on was women.

“I just wonder about the quality of the girls in our class,”

Jian Conglin mused, his gaze distant as if it could pierce through time and space to see inside the girls’ dorms.

“We’ll find out tomorrow!”

Zhao Rui said with a laugh.

“I took a look at the sign-in sheet today, but sadly, there were no photos!”

“Just knowing their names puts you a step ahead of everyone else, Boss!”

Le Bin laughed.

“Haha!”

The night sky over Jeju seemed hazier than Lin City’s. Surrounded on all sides by mountains, the sweltering summer heat felt even more intense.

An oscillating fan in the dorm room let out a constant creak. Accompanied by the lively late-night discussion, it brought a faint, almost unnoticeable coolness to the brand-new dorm room.

…

The next morning, Zhao Rui woke up early as usual. This time, however, he didn’t practice his techniques, instead opting for a slow jog around the campus.

He stretched his limbs while admiring the campus in the morning light.

After his workout, he returned to the dorm to find that everyone else was already awake. Zhao Rui washed up quickly, and then the group headed to the school cafeteria together.

There was a large, three-story cafeteria right next to their dorm, and it was quite spacious.

Compared to high school, the university cafeteria was not only bigger, but it also offered a much wider selection of food. For breakfast alone, there were dozens of options, covering cuisines from all over the country—from south to north and east to west.

After happily trying out the new food, the roommates followed the stream of students heading to class, making their way to the lecture hall they’d been assigned.

Today was the day to meet their guidance counselor. It was mainly a chance for the teacher and students to get acquainted, and to appoint a temporary class monitor to prepare for the upcoming military training.

The process was nothing special.

The counselor’s name was Liu Jie. She was a petite, slender woman with a chin-length bob.

Apparently, she was a new teacher who had been hired by the university right after her own graduation.

The atmosphere of the meeting was very relaxed. Liu Jie didn’t waste time with pleasantries; she was very down-to-earth, explaining important things to be aware of in university and outlining the arrangements for the upcoming military training.

Zhao Rui simply played the part of a typical freshman, listening to the counselor’s speech. He didn’t try to stand out, and nothing out of the ordinary happened.

The class monitor was a tall girl pre-selected by the counselor named Cai Xinyue. On a scale of one to ten, her looks were a six or seven, but she had an exceptional air about her and seemed very outgoing and capable.

You could tell at a glance that she was the type who was often a class officer.

The proportion of girls in the class was about what they’d expected—roughly two-thirds. This ratio made the oldest, Jian Conglin, incredibly excited. All morning, his eyes darted from one female classmate to another, appraising them.

He was laying a solid foundation with his initial screening, all to pinpoint the most suitable girlfriend.

After the orientation, everyone gathered in front of the academic building to collect their military training uniforms and boots.

The military training was set to begin the next day and would last for two weeks. It involved not only training on campus but also a trip to a military barracks for live-fire target practice!

The activities were varied, and the whole affair was taken quite seriously.

Zhao Rui wasn’t concerned about the military training. With the physical conditioning of a Fifth-level Martial Artist, it would be a walk in the park.

But just because he didn’t care didn’t mean others felt the same. Before the training had even begun, several girls had already asked the counselor to be excused.

None of the requests were approved. According to school regulations, even if a student had a special condition that prevented them from training, they were still required to accompany their class and rest on the sidelines.

After collecting their training uniforms, Zhao Rui and his roommates went back to the dorm.

By now, the freshmen’s socializing was no longer confined to their own rooms but had spread out between different dorms.

People were constantly coming and going, and the halls were extremely lively.

Jian Conglin was tall and powerfully built, and he was also a smoker. Before long, he’d gotten friendly with a few “smoking buddies” from other dorms.

Zhao Rui had also made some new friends: two guys from his hometown of Lin City.

There were already few guys in their major to begin with; even counting the other class in their department, there were only about twenty in total. He hadn’t expected to suddenly find three of them were from Lin City.

It just went to show how hard people from Lin City studied.

These two from Lin City were from schools in the surrounding counties and had always been in regular academic tracks, completely different from a Martial Arts Student like Zhao Rui.

Their high scores were the real deal.

After chatting for a while with his new acquaintances, Zhao Rui made an excuse, grabbed his backpack, and left the dorm.

Although it was muggy outside, the bright moon hung high in the sky. A white cloud drifted past in an instant, leaving a patch of cold, jade-like brilliance in its wake.

The sight stirred something in Zhao Rui. His Inner Breath quickened, and his mood lifted considerably.

Perhaps it was because he had recently experienced a major happy event in his life; the feeling of resonance actually caused the Inner Strength within him to stir faintly.

He hurried to find a secluded grove, leaped to the very top of a tree, and sat down cross-legged.

Aided by the moonlight and the moving clouds, he began his Cultivation of the Misty Divine Skill that Li Da Nao had taught him.

The Misty Divine Skill wasn’t a Peak Martial Arts technique, but Zhao Rui didn’t currently have a better Lifebound Technique. He could only take things one step at a time, focusing first on expanding the capacity of his Dantian and Qi Sea.

Before the semester began, he had used his time working as a sparring partner to accumulate another five Advancement Points. Now, he spent them all at once on improving his Inner Strength.

This raised his Inner Power Cultivation to a level equivalent to that of an ordinary Martial Artist with fifteen years of practice.

He could now be considered to have some decent Power.

Zhao Rui meditated for a full two hours. Only when the moon was bright and the stars had begun to fade, a cool breeze brushing his face, did he finally cease his cultivation and leap down from the tree.

But just as his feet touched the ground, a slightly panicked cry came from nearby.

“Who’s there?”

Not far from the tree, a young man and woman were embracing. They looked over, their faces filled with astonishment.

“Ahem. Uh, just passing through! You two carry on!”

Zhao Rui chuckled, then pushed off the ground and dashed away.

“He’s a Martial Artist! Let’s get out of here!”

Seeing Zhao Rui vanish from sight in just a few leaps, the young couple got a serious fright. Forgetting all about being intimate, they quickly fled the area.

Running into a Martial Artist in the woods in the middle of the night was no joke.

Who knew if a guy like that might suddenly get ideas?

It wasn’t like there weren’t examples in the news. And while the perpetrators were usually caught, those were just the cases that got reported.

How many were never caught, or how many incidents went unreported?

When it came down to it, the Court was fundamentally powerless to control every single Martial Artist.

The couple returned to their respective dorms and, with panicked expressions, told their roommates and friends about their encounter that night.

That grove wasn’t part of the Martial Arts Academy’s grounds; Martial Arts Students generally wouldn’t wander over there.

Martial Arts Students had their own “turf,” and the university provided them with superior living conditions.

“Could he have been a freshman? Or someone from off-campus?”

“It’s possible. You should probably tell your counselor about it tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

…

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep