Chapter 166 – He’s Not New Blood

The others also raised their wrists to check the messages, faces full of emotion.

However, the next moment…

The smile on the blond youth’s face froze, and the expressions of the others also became stiff.

They all stood motionless as if they had been collectively injected with muscle-hardening serum.

“Thud.”

A soccer ball flew over from a distance and rolled to their feet.

“Uncle, could you kick the ball back to us?”

A child’s timid voice.

But no one responded.

An older child, summoning his courage, approached to retrieve the ball.

But as soon as he got close, the previously immobile blond youth suddenly sprang up like he was on drugs.

“Holy crap! Holy crap crap crap…”

“What is this? My message can’t be wrong, right?!”

The blond youth looked at the others in disbelief, his eyes filled with shock and astonishment.

“Someone completed a Level A+ task?!”

“And did it solo?!”

“And it’s that Lu Yuan again?!”

“?!?!?!”

The others’ mouths slightly agape, faces filled with confusion and bewilderment, as if they’d collectively been hit hard on the head and hadn’t fully reacted yet.

“A Level A+ boss’s strength should at least be close to Level A. Plus, with a bunch of B+ and even A- guards, how could one person complete it? This doesn’t make sense!”

The blond youth muttered frantically while quickly opening the task map, seemingly trying to confirm something.

As soon as he opened the map, he froze.

The task map originally had eight red task areas, but now there were only seven.

Clearly, someone had completed one of them, causing the corresponding task point to disappear.

“Uh…”

The blond youth’s eyes were dazed as he murmured, “How can someone be this powerful? How could they let someone with A-Level strength into a mere new blood assessment? How are the rest of us supposed to live?

I thought Young Lord Teng was already exaggerated… Wait!”

The blond youth suddenly jolted, snapping out of his daze.

“Young Lord Teng!”

Instinctively, he looked up, his gaze fixed on a certain floor of the abandoned apartment building behind him.

The next second, a loud “boom” echoed.

A section of the apartment wall was violently shattered from within, and a broken figure fell from the high altitude.

Blue electrical currents gushed from the breach in the wall.

The blond youth’s pupils contracted slightly, vaguely seeing a person standing amidst the electrical currents.

Suddenly, the figure raised both arms and let out a roar filled with shock, astonishment, anger, and frustration—a cathartic scream.

“Ahhhh!!”

The roar echoed and reverberated through the empty apartment building.

The children playing soccer were so frightened that they burst into tears.

“Whoosh—”

Lu Yuan exhaled a visible breath of white vapor.

At this moment, his skin was red and scorching, as if molten lava was coursing beneath his flesh, causing the surrounding air to warp slightly.

“Plop—”

Lu Yuan casually dropped a handful of torn electronic circuit components to the ground, then slowly reverted from his Second Rank Transformation state.

The volcano within his chest extinguished, and the lava cooled.

Once he entered his Second Rank Transformation state, the battle was already a foregone conclusion.

The previously prominent electronic Enthusiast had now vanished.

Oh no, not vanished.

To be precise, parts of him were scattered all over the place.

Pieces of his body, torn apart by Lu Yuan, were strewn everywhere.

“Now, in my Second Rank Transformation, I can easily crush Level A opponents. My strength is probably close to Level A+.

In my Third Rank Transformation, with all my cards on the table, I could probably kill a Level A+ opponent.”

Karofis of the Crow Deity Sect and Teacher Liu Daoyuan.

They were the two strongest individuals Lu Yuan had encountered so far.

He personally thought both could be considered above Level A+.

But are they Level S?

Lu Yuan wasn’t sure, mainly because he didn’t know how Yellow Bear classified individual strength.

“The combat strength of different A+ levels can vary significantly in actual battles.”

Returning to his normal state, Lu Yuan once again looked like that clean, fair-skinned senior high school boy.

Unfortunately, his school uniform and pants were torn to shreds.

His hair, which had grown longer during his Second Rank Transformation, now hung loosely over his shoulders, giving him a somewhat disheveled appearance.

“No wonder ancient martial arts declined while new martial arts and modification systems rose. The higher the strength level, the more apparent the disadvantages of ancient martial arts compared to other systems.”

Take the electronic Enthusiast just now, for example. He followed the Mechanical Modification system, and although his modifications weren’t particularly advanced, his boxing power exceeded fifteen tons at full burst. Besides that, he was tough-skinned and used various firearms.

Even with his first rank transformation and full inner strength, Lu Yuan found it difficult to completely suppress him.

Only after entering his Second Rank Transformation was he able to dismantle him bare-handed, effortlessly crushing him with raw power.

Could an expert in ancient martial arts achieve this?

“In the Crane Style, probably only Old Liu could barely manage to kill him.”

-Using the True Intent of martial arts to suppress the electronic Enthusiast’s will and consciousness, and exploiting the “control” gap to blow him apart in one round.

That’s the strategy Lu Yuan thought of.

An ancient martial arts expert fighting a high-level Cyborg like the electronic Enthusiast is like asking an ordinary person to dismantle a several-ton truck with their bare hands.

There’s a chance when the truck is stationary and off, but once it speeds up, the only option left is to flee.

And the only ones who can stop the truck are True Intent level ancient martial arts experts like Teacher Liu Daoyuan.

“Ancient martial arts are really pitiful. If Karofis were here to fight the electronic Enthusiast, one round of death energy and Moon Blade shots would easily blow him up.”

Lu Yuan couldn’t help but sigh, then he found a piece of copper wire on the ground and hastily tied up his long hair.

With the electronic Enthusiast dead, his Level A+ task was now perfectly completed.

Opening the task wristwatch on his hand, Lu Yuan saw that he was still ranked first on the new blood ranking.

His points totaled 122,580.

He had nearly 120,000 more points than the second place, a new blood named Teng Xiangqing.

It was clear that the second place was trying hard to catch up, probably having completed another Level B task, because Lu Yuan remembered that the last time he checked, this second-place guy’s points were still in the three digits.

Ignoring the full-screen of “???!?!!” and “666” in the general channel.

Lu Yuan pulled up his professional panel.

The electronic Enthusiast’s Level A+ task had provided his [martial artist] profession with nearly 1,500 professional experience points.

Not bad at all.

Killing Karofis had only yielded 3,000 professional experience points.

His [martial artist] experience now stood at Level 8 (2717/12800).

“If I complete the remaining seven Level A tasks, it should be enough to level up again. And if it’s not enough, there are still three Level S tasks.”

Curious, Lu Yuan checked the descriptions of the three Level S tasks.

After completing a Level A+ task, the details for these three Level S tasks had all been unlocked.

“You Long, pure martial artist, strength assessment A+.”

Lu Yuan casually opened the description of one of the Level S tasks and was momentarily stunned.

The final boss of this Level S task was a pure martial artist with a strength assessment reaching A+.

“Reaching A+ as a pure martial artist, this You Long is quite interesting.”

Lu Yuan’s eyes gleamed with an inexplicable light.

“Could it be that he, like my teacher, has comprehended the True Intent of martial arts?”

He almost couldn’t wait to try it out immediately.

But rationality held him back from this impulse.

“There’s no rush to challenge the Level S tasks. Besides me, probably no one else has the qualifications or the courage to attempt them.”

“On the other hand, the Level A tasks might still be completed by others in this assessment, especially since they can choose to work in teams.”

“So the priority now is to complete all the Level A tasks quickly. Missing out on one means losing a thousand professional experience points.”

Having made up his mind, Lu Yuan tidied up his clothes a bit, casually picked up the black-framed glasses he had placed on the Game Machine before the battle, carefully put them on, and then calmly walked out of the chaotic underground Arcade.

“Actually, it’s no big deal.”

“Isn’t it just soloing a Level A+ task? What’s the big deal? Hehe, right?”

The long-haired youth, Ye Wuqiang, tried hard to force a nonchalant smile.

But he found it incredibly difficult.

Even though there was no mirror in front of him, he could imagine that his smile probably looked worse than crying right now.

He tried to find something to do to cover up the feeling of a hundred trucks crashing back and forth in his chest.

Ye Wuqiang found a half-empty beer bottle among the shattered pieces of a table, and hurriedly picked it up as if it were a lifeline.

But he found his hands were trembling badly.

The exoskeleton device clinging to his arm seemed like it was fake, providing no stability at all.

“Although it’s hard to admit,”

Among the three silent people sitting opposite Ye Wuqiang, the calmest one, Xiang Shenghao, finally spoke, but his tone was as strained as if squeezed from a stone.

“It seems we’ve really missed a golden opportunity to be carried by a top-tier Big Shot.”

Xiang Shenghao looked at the three of them with a complex expression.

“Enough.”

The Blue-haired boy, who had been staring down at his task wristwatch, interrupted Xiang Shenghao, speaking quickly, “Now the entire global chat channel is asking who Lu Yuan is and who came over on the same shuttle with him. Damn!”

The Blue-haired boy suddenly turned irritable, punching the air hard.

Blue electric sparks shot from his fingers, almost reaching the eyebrows of the others.

“Alright, alright, who could have known he was so powerful? He just looked like one of those boys in class who are really good-looking and also top students.”

The punk girl, Xu Chengying, was surprisingly the most stable and accepting of the reality among the group.

She mumbled, her smoky, pretty face flickering with some inexplicable light.

The Blue-haired boy stared at her for a long time, his expression gradually becoming strange. He couldn’t help but say, “Back in school, did you have a crush on the top students but got rejected because of your poor grades? Now that you’re in Yellow Bear, you still can’t escape the fate of a slacker falling for a top student and getting rejected?”

“You want to die? Just say so!”

“Click!”

A black handgun was pressed against the Blue-haired boy’s forehead, the safety off, and a slender finger on the trigger belonged to Xu Chengying, whose face was full of murderous intent.

This time, the Blue-haired boy unexpectedly didn’t get angry. Instead, he shrugged with a victorious smile.

“Looks like I struck a nerve.”

“You…”

“Enough, stop fooling around.”

The long-haired youth, Ye Wuqiang, waved his hand weakly and said, “Let’s set a task objective and get moving. No more of this pointless stuff.”

“Indeed.”

Xiang Shenghao nodded, slowly averting his gaze from his wristwatch screen.

He looked up, the expression on his dark, mature face growing even more complicated.

“We really need to hurry. If we’re late, we might not even get a task. Now, all the assessor teams are being forced to step up. Some teams have already decided to skip Level C and ‘blindly’ challenge Level B.”

“Why?”

Ye Wuqiang blinked, “Is it because of Lu Yuan?”

“Yes.”

Xiang Shenghao nodded, “Many people speculate that Lu Yuan isn’t just an ordinary new blood assessor.

They think he might be someone arranged internally by Yellow Bear, part of the assessment itself, representing a special ‘pressure mechanism’ designed to push us to complete tasks quickly.

If we don’t act urgently, Lu Yuan might clear all the tasks.

Then, some who originally had the ability to pass the assessment might get eliminated simply because they couldn’t secure a task.”

“Isn’t that a bit too far-fetched?”

Ye Wuqiang looked bewildered, unsure how to respond.

He admitted that Lu Yuan was incredibly strong, almost like someone from another world compared to them.

But to say he was part of the assessment, a ‘pressure mechanism,’ seemed a bit exaggerated.

“Although it sounds far-fetched, there’s still a possibility.”

Xiang Shenghao glanced at his wristwatch and said, “Just while we were chatting, Lu Yuan’s points on the ranking changed. He gained another hundred thousand points.

He’s now 250,000 points ahead of Teng Xiangqing, who’s in Second Place.

Clearly…”

At this point, Xiang Shenghao paused and then said quietly, “Lu Yuan completed another Level A+ task in the past twenty minutes.

If you don’t believe me, check the task map yourselves. There are only six red areas left, representing Level A tasks.”

“Uh…”

Ye Wuqiang’s mouth fell open, and he stood there in a daze.

The Blue-haired boy and Xu Chengying were also frozen in place.

Soloing another Level A+ task in just twenty minutes.

After a brief, deathly silence.

With a crisp “bang,” four figures in the bar simultaneously darted towards the door.

Not being able to cling to the Big Shot’s leg is one thing.

?

But to be dragged into the mess by the Big Shot is another.

?

What kind of internal competition king and pressure freak is this?!