Chapter 137: Respective Preparations

"Humph!" Rolling crossed her arms, acting coquettishly proud.

It was as if she were saying—no, she was definitely saying: Does such a simple question even need to be asked?

"Infrared sensing? Sonic ranging? Who needs anything that high-tech!" Fang Ju's voice was booming and full of heroic spirit. "The movements of your illusions are clearly different from the real body! Anyone can tell at a glance..."

Fang Ju had been extraordinarily spirited these past few days. His voice was like thunder, full of vigor and vitality, completely different from how half-dead he was when the college entrance examination first started.

Why?

Because his score was high, so he was feeling light-headed and pleased with himself.

As for his liberal arts, he ended up getting a high score of 443!

Among them, he even got a perfect score in Chinese, completely overshadowing Ye Chao and Xu Tiange to win first place in that single subject. He also got a perfect score in history, tying with Ye Chao for first place!

Even though he couldn't remember at all what he had written for the Chinese essay and the final synthesis questions in history...

It truly lived up to the slogan: "Everything I guessed on the exam was correct, and everything I bluffed on was mastered!"

In the end, combining the field internship and the liberal arts, his total score actually ranked in the top thirty of Jiangcheng!

Although during the major subjects phase, as a two-star warrior, he was slowly surpassed and his ranking kept dropping... he still managed to secure the 88th position with a total score of 1168.

In the past, this would have been a sympathetic score.

Since mixed martial arts wasn't his forte, he was expected to get around seventy or eighty points at best. Adding all subjects together, his final ranking would most likely fall into the 110 to 120 range.

His score would definitely exceed the historical admission lines of the Four Great Academies, and might even exceed them by fifty points, but his ranking... would happen to fall just outside the admission range of the Four Great Academies.

There was no helping it. A holographic helmet had forcibly raised Jiangcheng's average score by a solid 50 points!

The result of everyone scoring high was just like some major provinces for the college entrance examination before the apocalypse—no matter how formidable you were locally, it was useless...

However, the extra quota specially applied for by the proctoring panel saved him.

He had calculated carefully, and even checked the leaderboard—as long as he could get a passing score of 60 in mixed martial arts, getting into the Four Great Academies would basically be no problem.

That was why he could be here looking all high and mighty, assisting Ye Chao with his cultivation.

"The movements of the illusions are different from the real body? Impossible!" Ye Chao's confusion deepened.

"These illusions were all created by me using an imagi... intelligent program to precisely capture my own movements, after millions or even tens of millions of repeated optimizations."

As the saying goes: Three minutes on stage, ten years of practice off stage.

The operation of an intelligent program was only far more formidable than that!

For Ye Chao to spend half a day with stiff legs, slightly soft legs, and completely soft legs... if he were to practice with a real person, it would take at least a century, a millennium, or even ten thousand years!

This was the power of an intelligent program, even purely based on probability.

***

"Is it really that obvious? Those illusions, their movements are so slick one after another, at a glance anyone can tell it's not you!"

Ye Chao, who was about to dig his ears due to the vibration of Fang Ju's loud voice, suddenly froze...

So, the reason his illusions were seen through wasn't because their movements were too clumsy, but quite the contrary, because they were too agile?

A real body with only one hundred hours of proficiency, yet it churned out illusions with three thousand hours of proficiency... was that the feeling?

"Pfft, hahaha..." Alpha Ji burst into uncontrollable laughter.

That was precisely the case.

She had figured it out long ago, she just couldn't be bothered to say it.

Ye Chao's physical constitution was just so exasperating.

Whether it was physical training or spiritual cultivation, it was like water flowing without leaving a trace, or wind blowing without a sound, unable to leave even a shred of a mark.

Or rather, while other people could level up through training, his upper limit was fixed at Level 1 and refused to budge.

The fact that he could walk, eat, and sleep normally, without falling down on flat ground, without choking to death while eating, without falling out of bed while sleeping, and without being hacked to death by a low-level mob, and still living perfectly fine until now, was already a miracle.

*You knew? You figured it out long ago, and yet you didn't say anything?*

Ye Chao couldn't help but glare at Alpha Ji, feeling a bit heated.

It wasn't a matter of keeping secrets—it would be a miracle if she didn't lie. The crucial point was that it wasted time and affected battle preparations!

"Sigh, it's just a dying struggle! But..." Alpha Ji sighed inexplicably, then suddenly gave Ye Chao a thumbs-up, revealing an ambiguous smile with an unfathomable meaning.

"88, 60, 86!"

"172, 53..."

"0.63, 108.4, 86.2..."

"Ye Zichao, you're so blessed!"

If he were an experienced man, he would definitely be able to tell at a glance that this smile was called lewd and wretched, most frequently appearing on the faces of landladies of certain shady establishments in ancient times.

Blessed? It was all right...

However, Alpha Ji, your thought process is so inexplicable, are you sure you didn't bug out...

Ye Chao wore a bewildered expression, completely baffled.

==========

Time reversed by five minutes.

Imaginary Number Space, Stat Plaza.

Xu Tiange—whose stats were 88, 60, 86; 172, 53; 0.63, 108.4, 86.2...—appeared peeking here and there, looking around this world with curiosity.

This was her very first time entering the Imaginary Number Space.

Given her family's conditions, she naturally owned helmets, and even more than one.

However, she had been forced into closed-door seclusion for a month. When she came out, she didn't even know what the Imaginary Number Space was, let alone any Imaginary Number bigwigs or their beloved disciples...

The college entrance examination was coming up right away, and her schedule was packed...

Therefore, it wasn't until this moment, after all subjects outside of mixed martial arts had been tested and other candidates still had two days of competition left, that she finally had some free time to enter this place that so many people had recommended and take a look around.

She had already seen Alpha Ji in the examination room, so she naturally found her somewhat familiar.

However, upon careful thought, she felt it was entirely reasonable.

Ye Zichao's earth-shaking transformation began with the field internship, so it was very likely that he had known the Imaginary Number bigwig even earlier than that. It was completely normal for a master to leave some methods around a disciple to assist, supervise, and protect them.

It was just that... Ye Zichao, who had been an orphan since childhood, suddenly popped out with a master?

And the Imaginary Number Space was actually someone else's territory?

Just thinking about this made her feel a bit guilty and short of breath, much like a timid prospective son-in-law sneaking into his father-in-law's house, acting stealthily out of fear of being seen.

There were quite a few people in the plaza, but she didn't recognize many of them.

Most of the classmates she knew were taking exams, and most of the teachers she knew were proctoring...

Ye Chao... was definitely fine, though. However, since she could finally have a real match with him, she would leave it for the mixed martial arts arena.

Sneakily observing and scrutinizing her surroundings for a few rounds, she figured out the functions through system prompts, and chose a round of endless tower defense to enter...

"Ohoho, is it this kind of holographic game? It really is just like actual combat, a bit interesting!"

"Is this... my gas tank? Even the functions are this similar? Ye Zichao, you're not playing fair..."

"Sigh, this familiar feel... Teacher Li, is it you again?"

"Dancing Wind and Smoke! Blazing Flame Kill!"

A genius was a genius; in the blink of an eye, she was cutting a swath through the tower defense battlefield with smoke and fire rising everywhere.

Five minutes later, a familiar vibration—one that had happened on and off in recent days—suddenly swept over her...

It was precisely at this moment that Alpha Ji shook her head and said to Ye Chao, "Sigh, it's just a dying struggle!"