Chapter 95: Opening Ceremony

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“Ye Bai, even the counselor and everyone else are gone. Why are you still sitting here?”

Yao Ling grabbed Cao Xiaoseng by the hand and came up to Ye Bai, staring at him while he still sat in a daze.

“Ling’er, how much do you really know about battle sigils?”

Ye Bai didn’t turn to look at her. He was still thinking about what Counselor Zhang Jian had said.

Zhang Jian had just mentioned that someone had awakened a weapon from the Armory Hall. If Ye Bai was right, the person had to be him. He probably noticed Ye Bai carrying one of those weapons, so he spoke openly about the Armory and battle sigils in front of everyone.

For a freshman who had just entered Purple Star Academy, to awaken a weapon marked with battle sigils in the first monthly exam was almost impossible.

“Battle sigils?” Yao Ling thought for a moment, then her eyes brightened. “That can’t be you, can it?”

She covered her red lips with her hand in disbelief. The awakening of Ye Bai’s Jinghong Blade was known only to him. Cao Xiaoseng knew the characters “Jinghong” were inscribed on the blade, but no one had known then that it was an awakening, and with Cao’s personality, he would only say something if asked.

In the Radiation Zone, Ye Bai had been in a constant state of either fighting for his life or running for it. He had no time to tell anyone else that the Jinghong Blade had awakened.

Yao Ling thought for a moment, then said, “I only heard about battle sigils from my older brother through the counselor. I don’t know the details. In our Yao family, no one has a weapon naturally born with battle sigils. But the kind with one or two battle sigils that the academy professors have copied over, there are plenty of those. I can ask around.”

Only then did Ye Bai stand up, and he walked out of the classroom with Yao Ling and Cao Xiaoseng.

“How many people in your family have the most of those weapons?”

Ye Bai was curious. A clan as old as the Yao lineage, whose roots stretch back farther than the Three Kings, ought to have plenty, surely.

“No. We have no weapon with battle sigils from birth. The Yao family has existed for thousands of years, but our lineage has always focused on medicine. Our ancient family code says, ‘Hang the healing flask and save the world; a healer should have a parent’s heart.’ So we are very weak when it comes to weapons and combat. Battle sigils appeared only after the Dark Age. In those times, our clan worked as medical staff in the rear. We were never in front-line battles, let alone around battle-sigil weapons.”

Yao Ling plucked a nameless little flower from the floor, sniffed it, then held it near Cao Xiaoseng’s ear and made a little motion. She smiled.

“From what I know, the weapon with the most battle sigils in our family is probably Uncle Feng’s heavy laser ***, which has four sigils. I don’t know what they are.”

“I should go now,” she said. “I need to make a video call to Mom. The last time I saw her was Mother’s Day last year—by the count, it’s been almost a year.”

At the mention of her mother, Yao Ling lit up with joy, face full of smile, and she bounced away from Ye Bai and Cao Xiaoseng.

The two boys watched her and laughed. “A girl can be so changeable.”

“I’m off to sleep, too, Ye Bai. Since there’s no monthly exam this month, I need to make up for all the sleep I missed in the Radiation Zone.”

After giving Ye Bai an encouraging glance, Cao Xiaoseng left.

Ye Bai looked around the now-empty classroom, then up at the clear blue sky, shook his head, and headed back to his dorm.

For those too lazy to move forward, the opening ceremony is simply the annual sign that vacation has arrived. During those two months after enrollment, freshmen and sophomores are spared the monthly exams and the endless thoughts of survival. But for top students, the ceremony is nothing but stolen time.

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For them, every minute is precious; they value time above everything except life itself. The opening ceremony removes a month of assessment tasks, but it also requires them to be present at the ceremony itself, and that could mean missing the chance to awaken battle sigils on their weapons.

Among the students, there has always been talk of both holding and not holding the ceremony. Yet Purple Star Academy holds it every year, every class year.

Time passes most quickly when one is bored. Three days went by and Ye Bai had the strange feeling that nothing happened. With no one pressing him, he had to rely on self-discipline alone to push himself forward. No school. No classes. Not even the counselor to answer to.

What surprised Ye Bai was that Yao Ling sent him information about battle sigils the next day. He had assumed her family knew little about such weapons since they had no naturally sigiled ones, so he had not thought much of it.

In the meantime, Ye Bai also visited the library to look up battle sigils. Perhaps because he was still a freshman, his permissions were too low to access anything useful.

From Yao Ling’s message, though, he learned that activating each sigil represented a realm: insight into elemental power, exploration of one’s own body, perception of heaven and earth, and so on.

He summarized that there were roughly ten levels: Lin, Bing, Dou, Zhe, Jie, Zhen, Lie, Qian, Xing, and then the final one that no one had clearly spoken of. Records said no one had ever activated more than eight sigils. The attributes of the last two were known only from what the Three Kings had passed down. As for the tenth realm, no one knows whether it truly exists.

Lin is self-cultivation—the strengthening of character and will. The steadier the will, the more extraordinary strength one can draw from the spirits of heaven and earth.
Bing is energy—the control of one’s own power, inflicting the greatest damage with the least effort, moving with the speed of a dart.
Dou is cosmic resonance—understanding nature and the universe to deepen harmony between body, element, and power.
Zhe is restoration—knowing one’s own physical strength and controlling it with reason, so the life force of all things may flow freely into one’s reach.
Jie is danger sensing—a premonition of events before they unfold.
Zhen is true insight: to see through, to read enemy intent, to know self and other and remain unshaken in a hundred battles.
Lie is spatial-temporal control: fusing the battle-sigil weapon with one’s own body. It may even merge into lineage, as in the Xiao family, appearing at a mere movement of thought.
What Zhang Jian did with his Fire God set did not count. He sealed the weapon inside his body with storage-and-transport formation sigils, then, when needed, activated the formation to draw the weapon out.
Qian is elemental control, reaching deeper and deeper into the five elements—metal, wood, water, fire, and earth—to awaken the next sigil.
Xing is the realm of heart: a mind like Buddha’s, benevolent and clear, an empty heart that can hold the world; only then can the sigils awaken.
The last sigil has never fully appeared. The people of the Capital of the Raging Sea were the ones who first told everyone there were ten.

Nine are known. Many of them are said to be awakened by improving one’s harmony with heaven, earth, all things, and bodily attributes.
It sounds simple, but to do it is hard. The body and the world can be seen clearly, right there before you—so how can they be transformed by mere will? As for the final realm of mind, it is even harder. Who knows how to raise one’s state of mind? No wonder even someone as powerful as the Three Kings had never awakened all the sigils.

That morning, Ye Bai rose early, dressed himself with care, and wore something more formal than usual. A strand of hair had shifted slightly over to the left.

He gave a sly smile at his reflection, feeling for once that he looked almost handsome. He chuckled and turned to leave his room.

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“Ling’er?”

As soon as he stepped out, he saw Yao Ling knocking on the door of the room next to his.

“Who are you waiting for?” Ye Bai knew the adjacent room had been empty all along. It was still vacant. He had even told Cao Xiaoseng, if he met with Counselor Zhang Jian this time, to move in next to him so he could wake him each morning.

“Couldn’t be Xiaoseng, then?” If Yao Ling hadn’t shown up the night before, Ye Bai almost would have forgotten.

“When was this?”

Yao Ling stood at the doorway with Ye Bai’s expression still on his face and had to fight a smile at how funny it looked.

“Xiaoseng came back yesterday and moved in right away. I told the counselor. He didn’t have much luggage, so he didn’t mention it to us. He just took a few clothes and came over.”

Yao Ling’s explanation was exactly what Ye Bai had guessed.

“How did you know?”

When it comes to making a girl fall for a boy, nothing beats either high emotional intelligence or a man like Xiaoseng, willing to give his life for Yao Ling. For a straight-talking, iron-hearted man like Ye Bai, only Xiao Mo might find him appealing.

Yao Ling didn’t answer, turned, and waited quietly at the door for Xiaoseng to come out.

Only then did Ye Bai notice that Yao Ling had also dressed herself carefully today. She wore a light aqua-blue skirt, her long hair falling to her shoulders, tied with a strip of watery-blue silk. A blue hairpin held it in place, and a thin chain drooped from the tip like a bead of water. With the slightest motion it shimmered like drifting rain, like the first pale plum blossom just beginning to open—quiet, unostentatious, deeply serene. In the air lingered a faint Yao-family herb scent, cool and slightly sweet, like a hint of sea moisture on a hot afternoon, both refreshing and clear.

At last, the door inside opened and Cao Xiaoseng stepped out. At first he seemed stunned—he had never expected Yao Ling to look so different. He had all the softness of a wave arriving, few sharp lines, yet his face grew more captivating the longer she stared at him.

“Uh.”

Yao Ling, in her dress, left him momentarily speechless.

“Still not letting us in? If it weren’t for me, little Miss Yao would have had to stand at the door since dawn waiting for someone.”

Ye Bai stepped in quickly, opened the dorm door, and helped Yao Ling go inside, freeing Xiaoseng from his discomfort.

Yao Ling, however, seemed unconcerned. She said to Xiaoseng, “You are not allowed to wear pajamas today.”

Then she flashed her little tiger-like teeth in warning.

Cao Xiaoseng made a small exclamation, pulled open his wardrobe, and found only five sets of clothes—three of them identical pajamas. Yao Ling was struck speechless on the spot.

After a little over an hour of shuffling through Xiaoseng’s room, Yao Ling was finally satisfied. The three of them then set off for the opening ceremony.