S-rank’s Dominance

A scorching line of fire streaked through the air, landing directly on the slowly advancing, unflinching mutant oleander.

With a sizzling sound, the mutant oleander burst into flames, turning into a fireball half a man’s height.

Its peach-blossom petals curled and twisted, blackening and shriveling.

“Ahhh!” A piercing, shrill scream erupted from the mutant oleander, sending a chill down Li Xiushi and the others’ spines.

“Scary as it sounds, it’s just a plant!”

Ke Xiangshan tried to embolden herself with words.

She turned her head, shifting her gaze to the other mutant venomous flowers.

The line of fire followed her line of sight like a whip, suddenly lashing out at a mutant datura nearby.

Like the mutant oleander, the mutant datura just kept moving forward without any intention of dodging.

It let the fire line engulf it in flames.

“Hehehehe!” It laughed grimly.

Why aren’t they dodging?

Mu Youzi keenly sensed something off. The fact that these vibrant plants weren’t avoiding the fire proved that the flames were losing effectiveness.

Perhaps…

Before her thoughts could fully form, a strange, sweet fragrance wafted into her nose.

Mu Youzi instantly reacted, shouting at the same time as Bai Baibai: “Hold your breath! This plant is toxic!”

Immediately, she clamped her hands over her mouth and nose, holding her breath, but it was already too late.

Ke Xiangshan, who had stepped forward and shown off, was closest to the venomous flowers. By the time the two shouted in unison, she had already inhaled a lungful of the sweet scent.

Dark bluish-black, earthworm-like bulges crawled from her fair neck onto her face.

An intense dizziness, accompanied by sharp pain, surged into Ke Xiangshan’s brain.

“Ah!”

She screamed, her body going limp as she collapsed to the ground.

Then she saw—

The mutant oleander, which she had already burned to ashes, suddenly crawled out from the embers.

It only had an upper body; its lower half was completely burned away. It crawled toward her on its hands, moving incredibly fast, reaching her in an instant.

As the mutant oleander extended a hand and slowly reached for her, Ke Xiangshan’s face contorted in terror. Fighting her weakness, she yelled: “What do you want, S-rank?”

Her gaze leaped over the mutant oleander and the hobbling mutant venomous flowers behind it, fixing directly on the gun-wielding girl atop the boulder.

Under the scorching sun, the girl’s figure distorted like the hot air, her face completely shrouded in shadow, only her crimson glowing eyes visible.

That red light made Ke Xiangshan tremble all over. She couldn’t help but avert her gaze, but then anger surged within her.

She turned her head and shouted: “The enemy is right in front of us, why haven’t you come to help…”

Before she could finish, she suddenly froze.

The eleven people behind her were all like D-rank, their bodies ethereal, their eyes glowing with a terrifying red light.

Snap!

The mutant oleander’s hand landed on Ke Xiangshan’s leg. She instinctively turned back.

Its charred, unrecognizable peach petals suddenly split open, revealing a girl’s face.

It was a face she would never forget.

Gentle, sweet… once her best friend for life.

But later…

Ke Xiangshan’s pupils dilated to their maximum, slightly unfocused, as dense sweat oozed from her forehead.

“You… you, why are you here?” she murmured.

The girl didn’t answer but said on her own: “Why did you bully me?”

“I didn’t!” Ke Xiangshan quickly replied. “I just…”

“Liar!” the girl roared, her mouth opening wide, revealing rows of sharp teeth.

Then, another girl’s head emerged from her mouth, its face covered in mirror-like cracks of flesh, grinning maliciously.

Seeing this face, Ke Xiangshan felt the world spin.

The ground beneath her suddenly turned soft.

Dazed, she collapsed to one side, her vacant eyes seeing the entire ground become the girl’s shattered face.

Her eyes slowly closed, and Ke Xiangshan fell unconscious.

…

“This is bad… That plant has poison!”

Mu Youzi, who had retreated all the way to the foot of the mountain, had a terrified expression.

She looked ahead.

On the slope, six or seven people lay scattered on the ground.

The foremost Ke Xiangshan and Li Xiushi, who was just behind her, were among them.

But Li Xiushi hadn’t completely fallen yet. Strengthened by [Electric Surge], he was still struggling in the toxic smoke.

However, judging by his faltering steps and the wild punches he was throwing into the air, Mu Youzi figured he wouldn’t last much longer.

She rubbed the ancient armor fragment in her palm and couldn’t help marveling: “No wonder she’s S-rank!”

From start to finish, their twelve-person squad had been toyed with by her alone.

Breaking out from the foot of the mountain didn’t lead to the dawn of victory but to an even bleaker end.

In just an instant, of the two squads, only she, Bai Baibai, and a few members at the back still had combat capability.

Rustling sounds—the mutant plants from the foot of the mountain were closing in.

“What should we do?” Mu Youzi turned to Bai Baibai, the last A-rank combatant in the two squads.

“What else can we do?”

Bai Baibai gripped the handle of his shield-sword, assuming a combat stance, glaring coldly at the approaching mutant plants. “Hold on until the end. Live up to the prestige of Special High Academy!”

…

“Is this poison?”

In the simulation competition command center, within several green military field tents pitched together, the leading teacher from the Control Bureau, Hu Jing, asked in uncertainty.

“It’s poison, and a mixed one at that,” Guang Hongfang said solemnly. He turned to look at Yuan Fei. “Your Sky Capital University’s S-rank is full of surprises! Hahahaha!”

Yuan Fei smiled without a word, sipped his coffee, and continued to rub the Huang Xiaoxian in his arms with his right hand.

The green cactus pouted discontentedly, its emerald eyes fixed on its master on the screen.

“Come on!” it cheered silently in its heart.

It wasn’t the only one paying attention to this match.

The S-rank’s outstanding performance had caught everyone’s eyes.

From the start, some leading teachers had been murmuring, discussing the S-rank’s performance in this battle.

“The S-rank is definitely going to win!”

“Ten people together couldn’t stop her. I reckon she already has strength at the weak Gold rank.”

“But she only awakened three months ago!”

“An S-rank’s three months can’t be compared to a waste’s three months. You know, the gap between people is bigger than the gap between a person and a three-month-old pig!”

Of course, these whisperers didn’t include the leading teachers from Special High Academy.

They only felt ashamed.

Three A-ranks, five B-ranks, and among them, the Li Xiushi they had high hopes for—all had fallen so helplessly before this S-rank.

Especially the female leading teacher. She had leaked the exam content to Li Xiushi, hoping he would perform well in this match and be selected for the upcoming “Shushan” list.

But she never expected it would end like this.

“Li Xiushi is also a genius among the new students at Special High Academy. He just met an even stronger S-rank,” the female teacher comforted herself inwardly, barely stabilizing her mindset.

She looked up again at the monitor screens.

Her gaze didn’t fall on Huang Xiao’s battlefield but on a screen to the right.

A handsome boy with a hint of femininity—or perhaps scholarly aura—was striding through the forest.

Five teammates followed behind him with some reverence.

“Gu Yushu… It’s all on you,” the female teacher murmured in her heart.

Each institution had its own leading figure among the new students.

Sky Capital University had Huang Xiao, the Control Bureau had Jiao Le, the Expedition Bureau had Xiang Xiangbei…

And Special High Academy’s leading figure wasn’t actually Li Xiushi.

It was him, Gu Yushu!

Born into a special ability family within Special High Academy, a naturally awakened talent in esoteric arts.

If he hadn’t been directly admitted without taking the re-examination, the title of S-rank’s strongest new student in the decade might have been contested!

“Interesting… The talented student in esoteric arts and the S-rank. Who is the true favored child of heaven?” Guang Hongfang thought with a grin.

He had long noticed the Special High Academy personnel’s plan but didn’t stop it.

After all, being able to analyze ahead and use the rules is also an ability.

…

“Hiss… Did I go too far?”

When Huang Xiao came to her senses, she felt she might have overdone it.

Looking at the eight people lying on the ground with black lines on their faces, she couldn’t help but mutter inwardly, “This won’t kill them with poison, will it?”

To be honest, she had weakened the toxicity during her mutation.

But she couldn’t help that red-eyed hotshot who directly burned two mutant venomous flowers.

And they happened to be the two most toxic ones.

Now, with their bodies burned, the poison gas fully released, and amplified by the high temperature, it had become even more intense.

Moreover, it had mixed together, forming something new.

“Spiky-head, Spiky-head, you didn’t lose unjustly! You did get a lot stronger, but you have a pig teammate!”

Huang Xiao shook her head ruefully.

She could tell that this time, compared to the re-examination, the spiky-haired boy had improved by more than a little.

But in front of his teammates, he still wasn’t strong enough to carry them all.

After all, that red-eyed girl’s behavior was like someone in League of Legends insisting on killing Shaco’s clone to prove themselves right when their whole team is low health—a real clown move!

“Enough, time to turn up the heat!”

Huang Xiao clenched her right hand.

The mutant plants at her feet instantly intensified their attack.

Mu Youzi, Bai Bai, and the others, who were already barely defending, couldn’t hold on much longer.

Only when victory was completely assured did Huang Xiao finally breathe a sigh of relief.

She was about to command the mutant plants to retrieve the tablets from the spiky-haired boy and the red-eyed girl’s bags when a jeep burst out of the nearby woods.

The jeep carried five people, both male and female—they were the students responsible for this area.

The volunteers for this zone.

They had been observing the battlefield and, upon receiving news of unstable vital signs, immediately came to clean up.

Covering their mouths and noses, they walked up the corpse-strewn slope and saw everyone’s black-lined faces.

Even the volunteers wore strange expressions.

This battle was too brutal…

They instinctively looked at the gun-wielding girl on the boulder. She was now smiling at them with narrowed eyes.

Their gazes crossed in the air.

For some reason, a chill ran through the volunteers’ hearts.

They quickly loaded the unconscious, incapacitated Li Xiushi and others into the car and drove off with the engine revving.

Watching the volunteers leave, and the few remaining scattered members of the defeated team like Bai Baibai and Mu Youzi, Huang Xiao casually took the two tablets brought by the mutant plants and opened them with some excitement.

“Let me see… Squad 405 has 9 points, Squad 202 has 12 points. Not bad!”

Huang Xiao felt as if she could already see the 1200 void network points waving at her.

She pulled out her own tablet from her bag and began merging data as usual.

The map on Squad 606’s tablet expanded by a large area.

[Points: 15 → 36]

“Not bad. No overlapping maps,” Huang Xiao nodded in satisfaction.

Although you could merge maps to steal others’ points, overlapping areas would result in missing points.

She tossed the now-useless tablets on the ground. By then, Bai Baibai and the others at the foot of the mountain had also been defeated.

They sat on the ground, their weapons taken away, their hands and feet bound tightly by mutant vines.

“Just leave them here?” Wen Zhan suddenly emerged from the shadows nearby.

She was Huang Xiao’s last trump card.

If things went wrong and someone managed to bypass the mutant flowers to reach her, Huang Xiao would use Wen Zhan’s ability to escape.

That was also why she had arranged Zhong Zimei, Chi Xue, and Jia Qianrou elsewhere.

Carrying one person while running was already Wen Zhan’s limit.

“Leave them here,” Huang Xiao said. “The volunteers will come to pick them up later.”

If not for the fact that these people had conspired to hunt her, she wouldn’t have planned to eliminate them directly.

And although she didn’t know who had come up with the idea, Huang Xiao knew that those planning to ambush her were definitely more than these two squads. Others were also on the move.

Thinking this, a dangerous glint flashed in her eyes.

“For my own safety, I must take the initiative and eliminate them one by one before they can fully gather.”

With that, Huang Xiao slung her rifle onto her back. Her expression suddenly tensed as she sensed through the scout mutant plants she had deployed that another squad had arrived nearby.

“More people? Then stay here too!”

Huang Xiao waved her right hand, directing the mutant plants toward the newcomers.

…

Meanwhile, on the other side of the rocky mountain range, the beacon user from the Control Bureau frowned.

Just moments ago, the beacon he had sensed was ahead, approaching him steadily.

But for some reason, right after those two beacons stopped moving for a short while, they suddenly sped away in the opposite direction.

“Is it their ability?”

The beacon user shook his head in confusion, intending to check the spot where the two had stopped.

But before he could climb the peak, a dense rustling sound came from all directions.

He quickly drew the single-handed axe from his back.

Looking around, he found himself surrounded by a group of monsters!