Chapter 48: CH 48

The two-day sports meet was a success.

Even though everyone said, “Oh, it’s the third year of high school. Just try your best. The most important thing is to have fun. Friendship first, competition second!”, as soon as the sports meet was actually underway, the senior class went all out. The fighting was intense.

After all, they were about to graduate, which meant this was probably their last opportunity to win a team award. Every single class worked hard to get the highest overall score.

In the end, because of the formidable combat effectiveness of Class 3 of year three, they narrowly took first place.

“Everyone worked hard.” The head teacher looked at the brand new award certificate posted at the back of the classroom and was the first to applaud. “There’s still some money left from the class fee. Together with the money awarded from the sports meet, we can do an offline activity on the weekend.”

After the teacher left, the class leaders discussed how to spend the prize money. “Does anyone have a suggestion about the location of the activity?”

“Let’s go to KTV or do an escape room.”

Multiple students chirped up with suggestions. “Or we can go to a villa for a day of fun.”

It would be hard to find a location at a suitable price, and some people immediately argued against it.

“Every time we meet offline we do KTV. It’s boring ah.”

“That’s right, when we went to the escape room in our second year it wasn’t fun at all. What’s the point of having an offline party if the whole class can’t interact?”

“A villa won’t be any good either. At the last boys’ party, we went to Ye Ge’s villa to have a BBQ. There’s no way a rental villa would be as good as Ye Ge’s. We went swimming in his swimming pool last time.”

“Yeah, exactly!”

In senior one, Ye JingMing began to regularly organize parties among the boys in class.

The parties, as everyone knew, were an opportunity for the boys in class to get together and have fun. Zong Yan had pretty much been silent in class since the first year of high school, and Ye JingMing had never liked Zong Yan, so the boys went out of their way to exclude him. Later on, Ye JingMing’s clique grew larger and larger, and he dragged in people from other classes and grades to join his parties. A lot of boys in Qingyang High School were excited to get into his circle. They didn’t concern themselves at all with Zong Yan.

“I have a good idea.” After being puffed up by several of his little brothers, Ye JingMing had a pleased expression on his face. After all, everyone likes flattery. After he spoke up, Xia KeYan looked over at him, which gave him a sudden shot of energy. “We’re in senior three. We’re all adults now, right?”

They were all basically adults. According to the usual age for high school, senior three was for students eighteen years and up. Only a few people had birthdays in the second half of the year and had also started school early. For example, Zong Yan was still a minor at seventeen.

“Adults? Ye Ge, you don’t want to—” Immediately one of his little brothers understood, gave a surreptitious wink, and revealed a bad smile.

“Right, we might as well go to a bar to have some fun. The Lawrence Bar is pretty good.” Ye JingMing leaned against the wall in a deliberately roguish pose.

The Lawrence Bar was one of the best nightspots in Jiangzhou, located on the edge of the Bund. Most of the people who went there were upper class.

“Ah? A bar?”

The rest of the students whispered to each other. “That’s not a good idea. We’re still students.”

“And with so many people, we probably can’t afford the Lawrence Bar with our class money.”

“Yeah, besides, aren’t bars too rowdy?” A lot of the girls were worried about this. Xia KeYan was the first to show her disapproval.

“If it was a private bar we could consider it, but Lawrence is open to the public, so let’s forget it.”

“That’s not a problem.” Ye JingMing patted his chest. “If everyone wants to go, I can contact the manager and get a private room. As long as we hang out in the private room and don’t go outside, it won’t be a problem.”

That did indeed change the situation. As the students thought about it, they began to hesitate again.

The teenage girls who’d just reached adulthood had endured a lot of repression the last few months. Who didn’t have a little rebellion in their bones?

“I go to Lawrence all the time. They’re expensive and they have a membership system. It’s not as rowdy as a normal bar.”

Ye JingMing once again pursued the argument. “If we don’t have enough with the class fee, we can charge it to my account as my treat. This is our senior year of high school. It won’t be easy to get together again in the future. We should make some good memories with each other while we’re still in school.”

Students who were able to go to Qingyang High School all came from good backgrounds, but Ye JingMing was by far the best among them. With so many people going to a high-end bar, a single night’s spending would probably hit six figures. Young Master Ye didn’t blink an eye. After a while, everyone gave in to the power of money.

Since it had gotten to that point, it wouldn’t be good to refuse again.

“Then let’s vote with a show of hands.” Xia KeYan sighed. “All those in favor of going to the bar, raise your hand.”

A forest was erected in unison. Except for Zong Yan, who was sitting in his seat pretending to sleep, everyone else raised their hands.

“Then it’s decided. Let’s schedule it after the midterm exam.”

And so the matter was settled.

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—

The school festival was held immediately after the sports meet.

These two events occupied the school day during Thursday, Friday and Saturday, but the school festival was a completely free day.

Zong Yan didn’t do anything in the morning. He put a bright red lens in his left eye, fixed his hair with some gel, and then casually went out to buy some groceries.

Yes, groceries.

After all, he was the only one in the house who needed to eat. The other three evil gods would come and go at will, but even if they showed up, they didn’t have to eat.

Zong Yan had to buy some bread for breakfast, as well as eggs and cheese slices. For lunch he usually ate in the cafeteria, and he ate dinner on the way back from school. Occasionally when playing video games, Nyarlathotep would remember to order takeout for Zong Yan when he worked on homework late into the night. Of course, it was the kind of takeout the evil god didn’t pay for.

As for why he gave himself a new look—

Seniors were responsible for cosplay, and the character Zong Yan had chosen was Lelouch.

Yes, the Lelouch from Lelouch of the Rebellion.

The reason he chose this character was very simple. It was because Lelouch wore a school uniform on campus. All Zong Yan needed to do was put on a slim-fitting version of a black jacket and mess a little with his hair and eyes.

Anyone who glanced at him could see the lack of effort.

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But the cosplay was supposed to be fun, and Qingyang High School didn’t require its senior three students to put in too much work. If it weren’t for the bad publicity it might inspire, Zong Yan even thought of going as Makoto Ito. After all, Makoto Ge always wore his school uniform in the anime. The jacket of Qingyang High School was easy to confuse with Makoto Ge’s school uniform, which would save a lot of money on clothes.

In order to replenish his brain, Zong Yan also went to the market and bought a pigeon to make some stew.

The good thing about living alone was that Zong Yan was perfectly able to cook for himself.

After he put the food into the refrigerator and did some homework in his room, he opened the MU app on his phone like usual.

Lately Zong Yan had been spending the money from the card He Yuan gave him.

He’d been told the card contained an allowance for underage Awakened granted by the Dragon Group. The other card was given to him by Si Yan. Zong Yan secretly went to the bank to check it later and discovered the name on the account was Si Yan. It was probably a secondary card. Zong Yan felt pretty embarrassed.

Every month the Dragon Group deposited about five thousand yuan into the account. That was a huge sum of money for Zong Yan, but he didn’t like to spend the Dragon Group’s money all the time.

Zong Yan was a young man with strong self-esteem. This was evident from the fact that he’d earned money for his living expenses by doing translation work instead of from his superpowers.

He wanted to earn his own money if he could.

The Dragon Group had helped him a lot—not only in life, but in many other places—but if it was possible, he still wanted to stand on his own two feet.

Of course, he had the ability to do more, it was just that he had to cover his tracks.

Lately Zong Yan had been quietly observing events in the occult world.

Edward and Wang KeMing knew he had to take the college entrance exam, so they rarely mentioned anything in the chat group. But Zong Yan took out his phone every day after doing homework or on the way to school to look through the MU forum.

The current situation in Jiangzhou wasn’t good. Investigators had found signs of lower-level extra-dimensional beings including rat-things and star vampires.

Also, because of the frequent incursions of alien creatures, some unimaginable things had appeared in Jiangzhou’s social media lately. Of course, the most appalling cases had been suppressed by the top levels for fear of causing panic.

Even Zong Yan, when he went to the supermarket and passed the local square, thought he’d seen some investigators wearing MU badges. It was another sign that the Spire Council had begun to call in global investigators to deal with incidents in the city.

A lot of mercenary tasks had been added to the app, and many temporary investigation missions had been established.

The app used a real name authentication system, and Zong Yan’s registered level was a student at MU, so many of the high-level mercenary tasks on the app weren’t even visible. At most he could only pick up a few low-level tasks.

But that wasn’t a problem for Zong Yan.

He took out the Astrologer card and crushed it. The next moment, a shimmering astrological sphere appeared above his palm.

This card was really a must-have for his commute. It only cost 5 San points and lasted up to three hours.

After his San value was depleted last time, Zong Yan’s maximum San value went from 70 to 75. He got the feeling that if he used Azathoth’s persona card a few more times, he might wake up one day and find it at 100.

But the aftereffects were really unpleasant to think about.

As Zong Yan was walking to school, the crystal ball in his hand suddenly went “buzzt—”.

A celestial map unfolded in front of him. There, in the area of Qingyang High School, a star was wandering around.

An otherworldly creature had appeared at school!

Zong Yan was horrified. He shoved the astrological ball into his bag and ran towards the school gate.

After all, this was the day of the school festival. Not only were all the students of Qingyang High School present, but many graduates and members of the public had come to visit too.

Qingyang High School’s festival was famous in Jiangzhou. It was advertised in the newspapers in advance. A lot of people were willing to buy tickets to attend.

If an alien creature appeared in a place with so many people, the consequences would be unthinkable.

Even the lowest class of rat-thing could cause casualties.

Zong Yan was so anxious that when he bumped into someone, he didn’t pay much attention.

“Hey—” Cosplayer Ye JingMing, who was dressed as adult Inuyasha, staggered back a couple of steps and gave him an angry glare.

“Huh? Where’s that kid rushing off to?”

As a love rival, Ye JingMing immediately recognized Zong Yan from the back. He muttered as he stood in place, then waved his hand and beckoned his friends to come over.

“He must be up to something. Let’s go, brothers. We’re going to check it out.”

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TL Notes:

KTV – karaoke

shot of energy – 打了鸡血 – injected chicken blood, give chicken blood – pumped up, extremely excited (sometimes used mockingly) – Originates from a sham health care treatment in the 1960s in which injections of year-old rooster blood supposedly filled people with energy (Baidu)

cover his tracks – 就是得捂好马甲 – cover his “horse armor/side account” well

Transliterated names, titles, and places—new in this chapter:

Lawrence bar – 劳伦斯酒吧 – Láolúnsī jiǔbā

Young Master Ye – 叶小公子 – Yè xiǎo gōngzǐ

Lelouch – 鲁路修 – Lelouch Lamperouge, the protagonist of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion. A slender bishounen type

Makoto Ito – 伊藤诚 (CN – Yī TéngChéng) – 伊藤誠 (JP – Itō Makoto) – The protagonist of the infamous School Days visual novel and its adaptations. A generic-looking anime protagonist who wears a two-button black school uniform jacket and dark red tie

Makoto Ge – 诚哥 – Chéng gē

Inuyasha – 犬夜叉 (CN – quǎnyèchā) – The male lead of the manga series of the same name, and its adaptations. He typically has white dog ears, long white hair, and a red Sengoku-period priest’s robe (Wikipedia)

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