Tonight, Zhang Yanzong was both mentally and physically exhausted.
If Li Ziqi’s theory was correct and the map Saint Gate had given them was wrong, the remaining question was whether the location of the endpoint was correct or not.
Li Ziqi depended on her memory to draw Honglu Island out. It was in the same location as the Honglu Island marked in the map given by Saint Gate. Their shapes were the same.
The terrain was the same as well.
There didn’t seem to be a problem at first glance, but Zhang Yanzong was an intelligent person, hence, he could verify right and wrong through his thinking process.
If the location of Honglu Island wasn’t wrong, it meant that the Saint Gate gave them the wrong map out of boredom? This couldn’t be the case, hence, there was only one possibility left.
The possibility was that the location of Honglu Island couldn’t be found on the map. This was why the students needed to verify the landmark and search for it themselves.
After thinking about this, Zhang Yanzong felt a headache.
Because he completely had no idea what to do.
On the next morning, dawn came and painted the sky yellow, as the rising sun cascaded its light onto the ground.
Xuanyuan Po and Zhang Yanzong returned, and both were covered in dust.
“Group leader is back!”
Wu Jitong called out and immediately went to support the two of them. “Come and drink some soup!”
Lu Zhiruo brought two bowls of hot soup with meat in them over.
“How is it?”
As Chu Jian asked, the expressions of everyone turned nervous.
“Ziqi is correct. The map is wrong!”
Zhang Yanzong sighed. He looked at the little sunny egg and really wanted to ask her what they should do next. However, because of the little pride he felt as the group leader, he was embarrassed to ask.
“They finally verified that the map has a problem!”
Fan Yao, who was hiding in the darkness, excitedly danced about. Although they were delayed for two days, it wasn’t too late. In any case, the ranking of this round would only be a component of their overall ranking.
“Don’t be happy too early. The terrain and surroundings of Honglu Island on the false map are the same as the real one. It’s absolutely impossible to depend on the map to find Honglu Island.”
The observer reminded him.
Upon hearing this, Fan Yao’s expression stiffened.
“Zhang Yanzong seemed to be on the verge of a breakdown.”
Song Ren discovered a small detail. Zhang Yanzong’s expression was too heavy, resembling the sky covered in black clouds. “What stupid topic the Saint Gate has come up with? Isn’t this too difficult?”
Fan Yao was unhappy.
“I think it would already be not bad if half the schools could reach the endpoint.”
Song Ren guessed. He had also considered the situation carefully and wasn’t able to find a way to resolve it.
“The Saint Gate felt that the topics of previous years were too simple. Hence, they want to tell you guys about the distance between you all and top-tier schools!”
The observer spoke with joy.
This could also motivate the ‘D’ grade schools. They shouldn’t be overly conservative and stuck in their old ways.
“Also, don’t look down on the genius students. Under true pressure, their potentials would be squeezed out, allowing them to break through their limits.”
The observer explained. The test of the Saint Gate was primarily for the sake of digging out the talent and potential of students. It wasn’t administered for a training excursion.
Sun Mo could understand the Saint Gate’s way of handling things. It was like a test administered by a school. Two people scored 100 points, for one, he had to work extremely hard to achieve this, but for the other one, he scored 100 points merely because there were only 100 points to be obtained in the test.
Although their scores were the same, their strength was different in reality.
The Saint Gate’s way of handling things was this: they wanted to raise the difficulty to see how many points the genius students could obtain!
The sun rose and the warm sunlight shone on everyone. However, the atmosphere in the camp was extremely icy.
At this moment, everyone felt that they were hugging a piece of driftwood and floating on the vast sea. They basically had no way to know which direction was the way to return! “I feel that there’s no mistake with the endpoint. If not, how would we be able to find it?”
Chu Jian spoke, “There might be some mistakes on the map and this might be done by the Saint Gate on purpose to confuse us, bringing additional trouble to us.”
“In any case, since we don’t know the path, why don’t we just depend on our original plan and continue walking to the place indicated on the map?”
Shi Jiao suggested, he clutched his hair and felt extremely vexed. In any case, he wasn’t able to come out with a solution.
“Eldest martial sister, do you have any solutions? Just say it directly.”
Lu Zhiruo asked in a small voice.
“Tong Yiming said before that Honglu Island was named as is because there are a large quantity of honglu birds dwelling in that place!”
Li Ziqi spoke.
“So?”
Li Fen stared vacantly.
“Honglu birds usually live in wetlands or swampy areas. They love to eat freshwater fishes and would lay eggs in the damp soil.”
Li Ziqi opened the map out. “In these two maps, there are three terrains that fit the criteria. The question now is which one is the true Honglu Island?” After listening to Li Ziqi’s reasoning, Zhang Yanzong’s spirit stirred.
(Why didn’t I think to determine the location of Honglu Island through the living habits of the honglu birds?) However, the test-setters were truly sinister. They actually put the ‘crucial point’ in a single sentence spoken by the main judge. No, the main judge did remind them and even tapped the blackboard forcefully with his pointer!
“Wouldn’t this be solved if we searched through all three places?” Wu Jitong felt that rather than wasting time here, they should quickly make their way over to check the places.
“We don’t have enough time to check all three!”
Chu Jian rolled his eyes.
“What do you think?”
Tantai Yutang looked at Li Ziqi. He actually already had an idea in mind.
“Zhiruo, what about you?”
Li Ziqi asked.
“Wait a minute!” The papaya went to pick up a tree branch. After that, she placed it vertically on the map and directly let go of her grip on it.
Pak!
The branch fell down. After that, the faces of everyone turned black because the tree branch was pointing to a hill.
“Over there!”
Lu Zhiruo spoke confidently.
Pak!
Ying Baiwu rapped Lu Zhiruo’s head lightly. “Have you been listening to what Ziqi is saying? Honglu Island should be in a wetland or an area with swampy terrain.”
“Oh, let me try it again!”
Lu Zhiruo picked up her branch.
“Enough!”
Li Ziqi pointed to the wetland in the center of the map. “I think it’s this place.” “Why?”
Zhang Yanzong needed a reason
“I know. Because the area is the greatest, the honglu birds can build bigger nests and live more comfortably there!” Lu Zhiruo raised her hand. After that, she nodded to herself, feeling mesmerized by her own intelligence.
(Mn, as expected I’m a smart person. This answer grows more perfect the more I think about it.)
“At that time, Tong Yiming held a pointer in his hands and rapped the blackboard heavily three times at the same location. That location, when projected onto the map, will be here!”
Li Ziqi explained.
“Ah?”
Everyone started. (Is this the answer? Speaking of which, did Tong Yiming rap the blackboard thrice at the same location?)
(You could actually remember such a casual thing?)
Tantai Yutang applauded.
“Move out!”
Zhang Yanzong didn’t want to think anymore. He simply decided to try everything in a desperate situation.
The group moved out again. Because they had the human-faced spiders as their mounts, their traveling speed was very quick.
—–
At the side of a huge river, 13 student groups were stuck here because they had no boats and there wasn’t a bridge to cross it. Hence, everyone had no choice but to remain here to think of a solution.
“Damn, we have reached here the earliest but got delayed because of this stupid river!”
Seeing that the number of student groups increased, the students of the Fengshang Academy cursed.
Some student groups were making wooden rafts, and some were trying to wade across the river. However, because the water currents were too fierce, none of them had succeeded.
“What should we do? Should we request aid from our teachers?”
There was also someone who suggested this. They felt that even if their rankings were pushed back by three places, it was better than being stuck here at this location.
When Li Ziqi’s group came over, many people turned over to look at them.
“Damn, which school are they from? Why do they have spiders as mounts?”
“Impressive!”
“These spiders seem to be those spiders from the human-faced canyon.” The students were stunned, and also felt a little afraid. “They are from the Central Province Academy!”
“Ah, I heard that their past year’s result was atrocious!”
“Oh no, even the Central Province Academy’s people have arrived. Doesn’t that mean that we are really considered the last batch?”
Many students revealed looks of despair.
It was just like when the test result was announced and they discovered that they were together with someone that scored near the bottom. One would naturally feel that they didn’t do well either.
The Central Province Academy’s student group was currently being used as such a reference.
However, these people started to be suspicious very soon after. (How is it possible for these people to have spider mounts? They should have asked their teachers to capture the mounts for them, right? But isn’t this illegal?)
“Don’t tell me we have to cross the river?”
Li Fen started to pray.
“Yes!”
Li Ziqi glanced at those people at the river side and answered in the affirmative. “Ah?”
Li Fen despaired.
“Don’t worry, we have my eldest martial sister. There will be a solution!”
Lu Zhiruo flashed a thumbs-up. Right now, she felt unconditional worship for Li Ziqi.
Everyone went to the river side and felt a headache when they saw the strong river currents.
“It’s impossible, we won’t be able to swim
over.”
Zhang Yanzong frowned. “I can!”
Xuanyuan Po interrupted him.
“What’s the point of you swimming over alone?”
A student from Fengshang mocked.
“Do you want to fight?”
Xuanyuan Po licked his lips.
“Do you think I’m afraid of you?”
The provoked student directly took out his curved blade.
“Stop quarreling. Go into the forest to cut wood. We have to build a wooden raft.”
Li Ziqi berated.
Seeing the new student group from the Central Province Academy walk into the forest not far away, the group leader from Fengshang felt puzzled and followed over.
He wanted to negotiate and purchase a few spider mounts from them.
However, he soon discovered that the Central Province Academy didn’t have any plans to stop and cut the wood. They actually left directly through the forest.
“What the hell?”
The group leader had a stupefied look on his face. Could it be that there was a secret when it came to making the wooden raft, hence, they didn’t want anyone to see it?
“No, I have to go and take a look!” The group leader chased over but how could he run faster than the spiders? He soon lost track of them.
“F***!”
The group leader was so angry that he almost coughed up blood. However, very soon later, he started frowning
“Wait, there’s something wrong. I must have neglected something. Could it be that we don’t have to cross the river to reach the endpoint?”
Fengshan’s group leader took out the map and started to survey it. A few minutes later, he took out a bamboo tube from his clothes and opened it, letting a bug out.
The bug spread its wings and flew in the direction where Li Ziqi’s group headed to, chasing after them.
“Eh, are we not making a wooden raft?”
Seeing Li Ziqi lead everyone speeding rapidly through the forest and heading in a direction away from the river, Li Fen was dumbfounded.
“We were seen by others earlier. If we left directly, our actions might have warned them. Hence, I had to put up an act.”
Li Ziqi explained.
“So this is the case!”
Everyone was enlightened. After that, they felt a myriad of emotions. When Li Ziqi pondered over a problem, she would truly consider all aspects. If she was the group leader, her performance might be even better than Zhang Yanzong.
For the next half a day, their journey was unobstructed and they sped ahead swiftly until they came to the foot of a gigantic mountain with its peak in the clouds.
A new problem had emerged!
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