Four thousand meters. This was the current altitude of the transport plane.
Gazing out from the open tail hatch, a thick, impenetrable blanket obscured all visibility.
Only the faint, reddish glow piercing through the dark clouds hinted that they were not alone.
“Fortunately, it’s not a thunderstorm today,” a new student remarked, his face etched with relief, from the edge of the cabin.
The fierce winds at high altitude rendered his speech somewhat garbled, yet everyone present understood his words and their underlying meaning.
A ripple of laughter spread through the group.
A slender male student, whose harness was connected to the new student’s, was responsible for guiding him in the jump.
He appeared less robust and shorter than the new student, yet his expression remained remarkably calm and self-assured.
“Let’s go! Put your phone away.”
The slender student patted the new student’s shoulder and, without waiting for a reply, simply stepped forward.
They were already near the hatch.
As the senior student moved, the new student was forced to follow, and on their second step, they plunged into the void.
He plummeted downwards in a freefall.
Only a bloodcurdling scream, too piercing for even the howling winds to drown out, echoed behind.
“Aaaahhhhh!”
This cry served as the overture to a grand performance.
The senior students, wearing benevolent smiles, strode forward one after another, their actions reflected in the terrified eyes of the new students.
Some timid new students, utterly terrified, clutched desperately at the cabin’s netting, refusing to move an inch.
Yet, what power did they possess to resist their senior students, the weakest of whom were at Mercury Rank?
“Time to drop the dumplings!”
Someone shouted, and then screams surged and receded like a mountain torrent.
Soon, the initial group had all jumped, leaving Huang Xiu, Yun Ning, and Wen Erya at the front.
****
Huang Xiu swallowed hard.
She glanced at the thick, dark clouds outside the cabin, her heart lurching like the plane itself.
“Junior Female Student, try to protect your voice,” Wen Erya said, a mischievous grin playing on her lips.
“I won’t scream!” Huang Xiu gritted her teeth.
“Then let go of the netting!” Wen Erya chuckled, placing her right hand over Huang Xiu’s tightly gripping the netting.
Then, one by one, with an irresistible force that Huang Xiu couldn’t possibly fight, Wen Erya pried open her right hand.
“Go!”
Yun Ning jogged forward, and just as he reached the end of the tail hatch, he leaped out, detaching from the transport plane and vanishing into the thick clouds.
Wen Erya followed closely, and it was unclear if it was her ability or simply a higher cultivation level than Huang Xiu’s that allowed her to do so.
Huang Xiu had no power to resist whatsoever.
At 1.7 meters tall, she was literally hoisted and pushed forward by Wen Erya, who was 1.75 meters tall even barefoot.
The closer they got to the tail hatch, the fiercer the wind became.
The baby fat on Huang Xiu’s face rippled under the onslaught of the wind.
“Junior Female Student, off you go!”
A demonic voice whispered in her ear, and a forceful push from behind—
She stepped into empty air, plummeting downwards, a sensation of weightlessness engulfing her entire body. Instantly, all sound vanished, save for the frantic pounding of her own heart in her ears.
She could see nothing.
Black clouds and mist enveloped everything before her.
Huang Xiu felt as if she were observing the world through a thick pane of frosted glass; everything was indistinct and distorted.
But one second later.
It was like a fish returning to water after being parched, or someone with severe myopia putting on their glasses again.
The frosted glass was removed, sounds swiftly returned to her ears, and the entire world sprang to life in an instant.
“Hoo, hoo, hoo!”
Huang Xiu gasped for breath, her eyes squinting as she surveyed her surroundings, seeing only Wen Erya and the other schoolmates who had jumped with them.
“Isn’t this exhilarating?”
Wen Erya’s voice was faint, almost swallowed by the roaring wind.
Yet Huang Xiu heard her, nodding vigorously and spreading her arms wide as if to embrace the world.
“This is so damn exhilarating!”
She screamed, her voice left far behind by their plummeting speed.
Huang Xiu had never felt so free, so utterly joyful.
Her past decade of arduous study had been monotonous, like a stagnant pool of water.
But now, her future was unpredictable; every possibility in life beckoned to her.
As long as she wished.
She could skydive, fly planes, perhaps even scuba dive, and tanks would be no challenge.
Mission Impossible was merely a movie, and The Avengers just a comic; her life absolutely had to be more thrilling than those.
****
As her imagination soared, Wen Erya had already guided Huang Xiu through the dense cumulonimbus clouds, reaching the skies below.
Rain poured down, forming and falling in sheets.
Wen Erya’s gown was soaked, as if it could be wrung out, and Huang Xiu’s short-sleeved top was no different.
White and pink undergarments became faintly visible beneath the outlines of their clothes.
Huang Xiu noticed this when she looked down, her small face instantly flushing crimson.
However, the battlefield was directly below, and no one paid any attention to such details.
Whoosh!
Upon reaching the designated altitude, Wen Erya abruptly pulled the rip cord.
A white drogue parachute rapidly deployed from the pack, unfurling and inflating into a mushroom shape with the rushing air.
Their descent began to slow, and the fierce winds no longer assaulted Huang Xiu’s eyes so aggressively.
She looked down, surveying the scene below.
Xidu City was not highly developed, lacking towering skyscrapers; the tallest buildings were merely residential blocks within communities.
Beneath them lay an urban village.
Dense clusters of houses, like the holes in honeycomb cardboard, housed an untold number of people.
The rainy weather provided the perfect cover for their operation; few people would look up at the sky during a downpour.
Their descent was swift, the ground rapidly expanding beneath them, and the distant, curved horizon slowly straightened.
At this moment, Huang Xiu suddenly perceived that the concentration of Void Energy in the surrounding air was rapidly increasing with their decreasing altitude.
The Touchpoint was directly beneath them, within arm’s reach.
“Chutes away!”
Wen Erya cried out softly, pulling the rip cord, and their main parachute deployed.
A powerful jerk briefly pulled them upwards, further decelerating their descent.
Huang Xiu shifted from a supine, arched position to a sitting one, curling herself completely into Wen Erya’s embrace.
Her gaze, too, changed with her posture, shifting from an aerial view to a level one.
Parachutes bloomed in every direction, a dense canopy of mushroom-shaped silks obscuring the sky and earth.
Yun Ning, who had jumped ahead, was now directly beneath them.
He looked up, saw them, and immediately pointed towards a corner of the urban village.
That was D2, their squad’s designated area.
Yun Ning and Wen Erya both pulled their brake toggles, maneuvering in the air, and drifted towards that spot.
While they had just deployed their parachutes, the senior students who had jumped first had already descended significantly, likely less than five hundred meters from the ground.
As they continued their descent, upon reaching a certain altitude, a wave-like ripple suddenly appeared in the air.
Then, under Huang Xiu’s direct gaze, their figures instantly distorted, becoming blurred as if submerged in water.
“Have they entered the Touchpoint?” she murmured.
This was her first time witnessing the entire process of someone entering a Touchpoint so clearly and directly.
“Five seconds until we enter the Void Realm, four seconds, three seconds…”
Yun Ning called out loudly, his voice cutting through the wind.
When they descended to approximately three hundred meters, as the countdown reached zero.
Like diving headfirst into water, Huang Xiu distinctly felt her surroundings become unnervingly quiet.
Only the sounds of wind, rain, and the rustling parachute remained.
“Prepare for landing!” Wen Erya warned Huang Xiu, “Lift your legs so you don’t hit anything.”
Huang Xiu obediently complied, lifting her legs and watching as the ground rapidly approached and grew larger.
Crowded alleyways, broken ground tiles, and sewage forming small streams on the paths came into view.
A translucent figure, revealed by the falling rain, appeared directly in their gliding path.
“There’s a Dragon Abomination!” Huang Xiu cried out a warning, but Wen Erya had already noticed and reacted.
With a firm grip, she yanked down on the parachute cord with her right hand; the parachute jolted, instantly losing its slow-descent function.
Gravity pulled them downwards with full force.
Her sharp nails sliced directly through her own harness.
Wen Erya moved with lightning speed, rolling once on the ground while holding Huang Xiu, executing a forceful emergency landing.
The scale-armored, invisible Dragon Abomination’s eyes swiveled, instantly locking onto the two women, and it charged forward with heavy strides.
Thump, thump, thump!
Sewage on the ground splattered with each step.
Fine fur sprouted on Wen Erya’s face, her nails sharpened and elongated, and her pupils contracted and warped into a chrysalis shape.
She then fixed her gaze on the approaching transparent monster.
The continuous rain lines in her pupils broke down into intermittent raindrops, falling and trembling.
They moved slowly, trembling in the air.
Like strobe lights flashing in mid-air.
The instant a particular raindrop was about to fall onto the monster’s head, Wen Erya vanished from her spot.
The next second, a wet thud echoed!
She reappeared before the Dragon Abomination, her sharp claws piercing its scale-covered chest.
Her hand clasped its green heart.
Slightly corrosive blood flowed from the wound, down her fair arm, and dripped onto the ground.
The Dragon Abomination’s chameleon-like camouflage began to recede from its heart, rapidly disappearing outwards until its entire form was revealed.
Suddenly, Wen Erya lifted her right hand, and the Dragon Abomination, impaled on her arm, was hoisted along with it.
Its legs flailed wildly, and its hands swiped forward; the not-so-intelligent Dragon Abomination chose to resist in its death throes.
A slight upward curve appeared at the corner of her lips, and a bloodthirsty glint flashed in Wen Erya’s eyes, even as she wore her gown.
Squish!
She crushed the Dragon Abomination’s heart, then flicked her right hand.
The roughly two-meter-tall Dragon Abomination was flung aside like a sandbag, crashing heavily onto the nearby street.
Reflected in a puddle of sewage on the ground, the light in its eyes rapidly dimmed, then died.
“Junior Female Student.”
Wen Erya suddenly turned her head; behind her, Huang Xiu had just managed to stand up.
She licked her lipstick-stained lips. “Let our hunt begin!”
****
As the first, second, and third-year students from the Exploration Department all entered the Touchpoint via parachute.
The Research Department students who chose to follow only arrived outside the Touchpoint aboard a manned helicopter.
The helicopter landed on a pre-determined open space, its continuously spinning main rotor slowly coming to a halt.
Fang Miaoging shook her slightly dizzy head, then, pressing down on her black and white skirt, followed the Senior Male Student out of the helicopter.
“Hurry up! This Touchpoint is vast, so we need to install the mundane-repelling devices in all positions to prevent passersby from accidentally entering!”
Outside the Touchpoint, logistics personnel from Tiandu University stationed in Xidu City were busy installing Void Energy devices designed to deter ordinary people.
“This is my latest research and development: a new detector,” Mo Xuan, the unlucky Senior Male Student from the Research Department who had forgotten the time and caught a cold last time, turned to Fang Miaoging.
At his feet lay a cube covered by a cloth.
“It draws inspiration from radar principles, capable of emitting Void Energy sound waves to detect creatures within the Touchpoint. While it’s not yet perfect, one day, with this Void Energy device, we’ll be able to pinpoint the locations of enemies and ordinary people from outside the Touchpoint.”
“The Awakened individuals’ battlefield is inside the Touchpoint,” he first pointed towards the urban village, then gestured to the cubic object beside his feet.
“But our battlefield, Junior Female Student, is out here!”