So Hungry, So Very Hungry
This day had been far too eventful. Lying in bed with his mind blank, Li Chuan drifted off to sleep almost instantly.
He ended up sleeping for more than twenty hours. If not for the hunger gnawing at his belly, he might’ve slept another twenty.
When he opened his eyes, it was already evening, though he thought he had only napped for about an hour.
The ring reminded him:
[Li Chuan has been asleep for 26 hours. During this time, a staff member from the Fuyou Academy’s Administrative Office came to remind you of the orientation meeting. Seeing you lying on the bed like a corpse, they chose not to wake you.]
Li Chuan: “Why didn’t they wake me?!”
[According to student records, Li Chuan suffers from a terminal illness. Fuyou Academy has granted you exemption from collective events.]
Li Chuan: “…”
Fair enough. He didn’t even attend the award ceremony. Showing up a day early in the Ten Thousand Realms already set him apart. Naturally, the school wouldn’t expect much from him.
[User Li Chuan has dangerously low alertness. Someone entered the dorm and even talked, yet you didn’t wake up. This makes you prone to dying. The Myriad Realms Ring is considering adding the label “carefree cannon fodder” to your profile.]
Li Chuan: “It was my first day! I’ve just had too much going on. I’ll be more careful going forward.”
He glanced at the time. 5:53 p.m.
The Ten Thousand Realms used the same calendar as the Human Realm—365 days a year, 24 hours a day. The sun shone by day, the moon by night. The only difference was the bizarre and unpredictable weather.
Yesterday’s schedule had stated that dinner began at 6 p.m. Li Chuan had been woken by hunger and couldn’t wait to eat. After a quick wash, he dashed to the cafeteria and waited at the entrance.
Plenty of students were already queued up. Scanning the crowd, Li Chuan spotted Sheng Xin, Tang Chengyun, and the others approaching.
At Fuyou Academy, their little group had consisted of five people. After arriving in the Ten Thousand Realms, it expanded to eight.
Of the ten students in Li Chuan’s cohort, only one other had not joined Sheng Xin’s clique.
Though he wasn’t close to his classmates, Li Chuan could still recognize each of them on sight, recite their names, home regions, test scores, teachers’ comments, and every word and action they’d performed in his line of vision…
He had tried to stop memorizing this kind of junk data, but he still recorded everything subconsciously.
When Sheng Xin’s group of eight entered his view, Li Chuan immediately thought of the lone wolf.
His name was Mu Ge. From Kongjing District. Always ranked third in every exam.
Kongjing was vast and sparsely populated—its land area was twice the combined total of the other four districts, yet its population barely reached fifty million. To students like Li Chuan, Kongjing was a mysterious land.
Mu Ge always kept to himself and rarely interacted with others.
Tang Chengyun had once tried recruiting Mu Ge for Sheng Xin’s team, approaching him multiple times. But for some unknown reason, he could never seem to catch Mu Ge alone.
Li Chuan remembered that after one exam, Tang Chengyun had said he was going to talk to Mu Ge. The moment he opened his mouth, Mu Ge, who had been sitting in a corner, stood up and vanished without a trace.
It was as if Mu Ge had some kind of precognition, perfectly dodging all of Tang Chengyun’s efforts.
Eventually, it was Sheng Xin who stopped him. Sheng Xin was naturally proud and not one to form cliques, but his family and Tang Chengyun’s were longtime allies. Tang Chengyun had always liked playing little brother to Sheng Xin and couldn’t help dragging people into the group, no matter how Sheng Xin tried to stop him.
Li Chuan clearly remembered what Sheng Xin had said to Tang Chengyun back then:
“Mu Ge is deliberately avoiding you. Stop trying to force it. You’re only making yourself look like a fool.”
That was when Li Chuan became certain: Mu Ge was purposefully avoiding Sheng Xin’s faction—and Sheng Xin had seen through it. Tang Chengyun, however, remained blissfully unaware.
From this minor incident, Li Chuan deduced that both Sheng Xin and Mu Ge had already gained mysterious powers even before arriving in the Ten Thousand Realms. Mu Ge could anticipate Tang Chengyun’s actions, while Sheng Xin could see through Mu Ge’s ability.
The second and third-ranked students had been competing since long before.
These bits of trivia had been shoved into the depths of Li Chuan’s mind like garbage. Normally, he tried not to think about them to save brain capacity.
Now, though, with more mental bandwidth to spare, he found himself reminiscing about those days.
“To think I managed to rank first in a school like that—consistently beating two god-tier classmates—I really am worth something!”
Li Chuan unabashedly praised himself.
Even if I accomplish nothing else in the Ten Thousand Realms, I can brag about this for a lifetime.
The more Mu Ge and Sheng Xin achieved in the future, the more worthy his first-place ranking would seem.
Just then, a voice suddenly sounded on his left: “I’ve sensed your thoughts for years, but I never expected this to be your personality.”
Startled, Li Chuan turned and found Mu Ge standing behind him in line.
“Whoa! You can hear what I’m thinking?” Li Chuan whispered. “That’s incredible. Could you do that back in school too? All those voices around you… didn’t that drive you nuts?”
Mu Ge was 179 cm tall—2 cm shorter than Li Chuan. But with his thick shoe soles, they were eye level.
Mu Ge asked, “You’ve just arrived in the Ten Thousand Realms, haven’t you? Why are you so unfazed by the idea that I had powers beforehand?”
Because I have an overactive imagination, Li Chuan thought—but didn’t say aloud.
He stared at Mu Ge, curious how far his mind-reading ability extended.
