Chapter 161 – Ace Academy (Part 1)

Blood Bulls Don’t Graze didn’t go home during this winter break. Apart from the few days around New Year’s, she stayed to help her doctoral advisor with a research project—naturally, with pay. Now the research was nearing its conclusion, and all that remained was compiling the findings into a report. This work could be done from home. Even her advisor had stopped showing up at the university, opting instead for the warmth of home with his wife and children. Yet, Blood Bulls still didn’t go home. When her family called, she simply said she was still busy.

The reason for not wanting to go home was straightforward—she hated being nagged about marriage.

Blood Bulls was twenty-seven this year. For a woman without a partner, this was an awkward age—not as carefree as twenty-three or twenty-four, when time still seemed abundant, nor as pragmatic as thirty-two or thirty-three, when one finally understood reality. She didn’t know what kind of person she wanted, but she knew what kind she didn’t want. Thus, one after another, men who attempted to get close to her—or had already succeeded—eventually left her life. Of course, those who were scared off from afar and never dared approach didn’t count.

Yet, Blood Bulls didn’t find her age awkward, just as she didn’t find her doctoral research topics dull, didn’t find her ghost-like roommate (whose face she’d almost forgotten) mysterious, and didn’t think the competition for a post-graduation position at the university was worth fighting tooth and nail for. Her demands were simple: a comfortable life and a happy mood. She consciously avoided people or things that hindered these eight words and consciously gravitated toward those that aligned with them.

Playing games fell into the latter category—but only half of the eight-word principle. It wasn’t until she joined the Ghost Server Legion that the latter half was fulfilled.

For example, right now—

“Fifth Brother, you owe me a head.”

The wail of the Headshot resounded through YY, and Blood Bulls curled her lips into a smile. The forums were flooded with news about how the game company had invested an enormous amount into this event. If players still had to queue after all that, it would be a slap in the face. Unfortunately, Fifth Brother didn’t believe it. But winning a head wasn’t particularly exciting—she didn’t like soccer anyway. ╮(╯_╰)╭

There was no need to deliberate over which section to choose—Ace Academy. If she didn’t pick this one, the Commander wouldn’t even agree.

Did she consider herself a top student?

Others might think so, but Blood Bulls genuinely didn’t feel that way. She just liked reading—all kinds of books—and happened to have a good memory. By sheer luck, she’d also chosen a major she loved, so step by step, she’d arrived at where she was today.

Though it was called Ace Academy, the spawn point’s main city was no different from any other main city in the game. It was still a safe zone, filled with general stores, potion shops, weapon shops, crafting workshops, and the like. The only difference was the scarcity of players—so few you could count them on two hands. Though players sporadically spawned in, the breeze blew through the city, and the banner bearing the word “Ace” hung limp and lifeless, much like the desolate atmosphere of the entire city.

Gamers loved boasting about their skills and PVP prowess, but no one went around shouting, “Brother, I love studying!” If you couldn’t make it to a dungeon raid on time, you could blame it on the internet café catching fire, but never say your dorm supervisor was checking rooms or that you had to attend evening self-study. Otherwise, the chances of playing together again would plummet.

This was a virtual world distinct from the mainstream, and its values were different too. Your prowess could be reflected in your gear, skills, pets, or guild—but definitely not in your ability to recite pi to 123 decimal places.

Blood Bulls stood at the spawn point for five minutes. Only two female characters spawned behind her—one named Σ Princess, the other Young π. The first to spawn, Σ, even waited a while until π appeared, after which the two set off hand in hand into the distance.

Blood Bulls clicked on the server status in the bottom-right corner, which showed 82 players online in Ace Academy. It reminded her of when she’d logged back into Mirage Server after a long hiatus—just as desolate, making it impossible to form a party for a dungeon.

But not every player had Sister Blood Bulls’ composure—

[Ace Academy] Today I Bomb the School: HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!! WHAT KIND OF GHOSTLY PLACE IS THIS!!!!!!!!!! I JUST WENT TO TAKE A PISS, WHICH ASSHOLE IN THE INTERNET CAFÉ CLICKED THIS FOR ME AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Once a section was chosen, there was no turning back. Blood Bulls silently mourned for him in her heart, then left the city.

Just outside the city gates, three uniquely styled buildings came into view.

The first was a strikingly modern structure, reminiscent of CCTV’s “Big Pants¹CCTV Headquarters. Two of its buildings are joined at the top to form one building, which makes it look like a giant pair of trousers from certain angles.” building in aesthetic. Moving the mouse cursor over it, the building’s name and description slowly appeared—

[Fun Library]

Description: Do you want to understand 5,000 years of Huaxia’s history? Do you want to be eloquent and well-versed in both ancient and modern knowledge? Hard work pays off, and the early bird catches the worm—come recharge in this ocean of knowledge!

Entry Requirement: None

Scoring System: Completing one book earns 30 points. Unfinished or inattentive reading earns nothing.

Blood Bulls smiled. Unfinished was one thing, but how would they measure inattentiveness?

Next to the library stood a Gothic building, its dark, gloomy architecture and color palette a stark contrast to the bright library beside it. Moving the cursor over this structure, six blood-red characters appeared first—”No Exams, No Life!”

The ferocity of the font made it seem as if the screams of top students could be heard. =_=

The brutal words slowly faded into transparency, and the building’s description finally appeared—

[Hell Exam Hall]

Description: No exams, no life.

Entry Requirement: Players with 200+ points

Scoring System: Form a five-player team. Choose to compete against the system or a player team (randomly selected by the system). Victory is determined by team performance, with a best-of-five format. Winning team members each earn 40 points; losing team members each lose 40 points. A draw leaves all members’ scores unchanged. Logging out is considered submitting the exam.

The last building was an ancient-style wooden structure resembling a garden. Behind its moon gate, patches of green swayed—perhaps bamboo, perhaps willow, indistinct in the distance.

[Yu-Liang Garden]

Description: “Since there is Yu, why must there be Liang?”²A famous quote from the Chinese classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It was the dying lament of the brilliant strategist Zhou Yu in despair and frustration at being constantly overshadowed and outmaneuvered by his rival, the genius strategist Zhuge Liang.

Entry Requirement: Players with 0–200 points

Scoring System: Solo PVP. Each player selects questions from the question bank for the other to answer. Correct answers earn the answerer 5 points while deducting 5 from the questioner. Incorrect answers deduct 5 from the answerer and award 5 to the questioner. If one player quits, the PVP ends. The quitter loses 20 points; logging out counts as quitting.

Three venues, three flavors—Blood Bulls liked them all. With three days, she had plenty of time to explore each. As for where to start, the game designers had already planned it out: first, study alone in the library; then, quiz each other in the garden with friends; finally, charge into hell… ahem, the exam hall.

A complete structure, logically sound, perfectly following the objective laws of a top student’s struggle.

Behind the three buildings were towering mountains, but when Blood Bulls tried to venture beyond them, her little Berserker seemed trapped by some mysterious force—her legs kept running, but she was stuck in place. Blood Bulls understood—this was the edge of the map. The distant mountains were just an artistic effect. All of Ace Academy’s attractions were confined to these three buildings.

As a researcher who always followed objective laws, Blood Bulls prepared to head to the library first. But just as she maneuvered her Berserker away from the world’s edge, a whisper popped up from a stranger—

[Whisper] Weiming Lake: Sincere recruitment for Yu-Liang Garden mercenary work. 200 points for 50 yuan. Payments via bank card, Alipay, or Huaxia Coins accepted. Serious inquiries only. Low-scorers prioritized.

No system could completely eliminate point farmers, which was why Hell Exam Hall randomly assigned opposing teams and restricted entry to players with 200+ points. This way, if one side was farming, the other side—colluding with them—would inevitably lose points. Still, transactions like this one were hard to prevent. The reason the advertiser specified “low-scorers prioritized” was because players with low points wouldn’t mind losing them, ensuring the employer’s interests.

Blood Bulls wasn’t into point farming, but she didn’t oppose others exploiting the system’s loopholes. This guy was upfront about pricing, acting with an air of fairness, even thoughtfully offering multiple payment methods and advising applicants on their ideal point range—truly earnest.

Closing the obvious mass message, Blood Bulls entered the library.

The so-called library was just a digital bookshelf—fifty pages, twenty books per page. Literature, history, academics, technology, cooking, fashion… a veritable sea of knowledge. The first page displayed a copyright notice, confirming all e-books were from legitimate sources, along with a “Top Picks” list, with “Huaxia’s Five Millennia” ranked first.

Naturally, Blood Bulls clicked on this book and set sail on history’s boat to explore Huaxia’s civilization—

“Huaxia, the longest-running and most player-populated online game in Chinese history, developed by Mr. Yang XX and his team…”

So it was “Five Millennia of Huaxia Online.” =_=

Despite this, Blood Bulls kept reading. The book wasn’t overly long, mainly covering the game’s founding and its landmark events or figures—the first max-level player, the first teams to clear dungeons, the first major update, the first cosmetic gear, and so on. After about forty minutes, she finished the book. As she turned the last page, the system automatically closed it, and her points increased to 30.

Only then did she recall the rule about “unfinished or inattentive reading earns nothing.” Playfully, she opened a random book, “Cats Conquer Earth,” and flipped through it at high speed. Sure enough, her points remained unchanged. She experimented with a few more books and finally figured out the pattern: the system required players to spend a minimum amount of time on each page for it to count as “read.” Of course, you could also open a page, alt-tab to do something else, but the system wouldn’t turn pages for you. You had to manually flip them at intervals, and the time spent on one page didn’t carry over to the next—even if you spent an hour on one page, the timer would reset to zero when you turned to the next.

Reading late at night wasn’t a good habit. Even someone as diligent as Blood Bulls felt her eyelids grow heavy after finishing “Huaxia’s Five Millennia.” Now that her curiosity was satisfied, she left the library, ready to log off. But as soon as she stepped out, she spotted a drab-looking figure squatting at the entrance of Yu-Liang Garden—a familiar ID: Weiming Lake.

He seemed to have noticed her too, because another whisper soon popped up—

[Whisper] Weiming Lake: Sincere recruitment for Yu-Liang Garden mercenary work. 200 points for 50 yuan. Payments via bank card, Alipay, or Huaxia Coins accepted. Serious inquiries only. Low-scorers prioritized.

Blood Bulls laughed. Though the message was identical, she was sure this wasn’t a mass send.

Clicking on the scoreboard in the top-left corner, she saw the online count had risen to 174. Players were ranked by points, with her 30 points placing her at 101st. She found Weiming Lake at 170th.

Though she sympathized, Blood Bulls lacked the Demon Refiner’s enthusiasm for helping others. Yawning, she logged off to sleep.

She woke again at nine in the morning. The school cafeteria’s chefs were also on winter break, leaving the place deserted—now a study hall or dating spot for the few students who hadn’t gone home. Blood Bulls passed through the cafeteria to the convenience store, bought a bag of frozen dumplings, and returned to her dorm to cook.

By ten, she’d finished eating. Sunlight streamed through the window onto her desk, and in the warmth of the winter sun, she leisurely booted up her computer and logged into the game.

Her Berserker’s figure gradually materialized on-screen, along with the three buildings… and last night’s acquaintance.

But the acquaintance had no time for her now, busy in a fierce battle with someone else.

The Ace Academy section didn’t have PVP zones like Vanilla Forest where players could truly attack each other. The so-called “battle” was just a friendly, localized PK—one player issued an invite, the other accepted.

Yet this PK, though friendly in form, radiated a life-or-death intensity.

These two were fighting for real. Don’t ask how Blood Bulls could tell—it was just a feeling.

But even someone as sharp as Blood Bulls couldn’t fathom what would drive two players to fight so fiercely in a server like Ace Academy. Did standing at Yu-Liang Garden’s entrance awaken some Zhou Yu–Zhuge Liang rivalry complex? If so, why not take it inside for a proper PK? Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang didn’t settle their feud with machetes.

As her thoughts wandered, one side’s HP bar emptied, and the PK automatically ended.

[Local] Today I Bomb the School: THE HELL YOU LOOKIN’ AT?!

The loser sat on the ground, recovering HP, but still found time to spray hatred like a machine gun.

Blood Bulls ignored him and was about to click into Yu-Liang Garden when—

[Whisper] Weiming Lake: Sincere recruitment for Yu-Liang Garden mercenary work. 200 points for 60 yuan. Payments via bank card, Alipay, or Huaxia Coins accepted. Serious inquiries only. Low-scorers prioritized.

You think raising it from 50 to 60 means I won’t recognize you? =_=

But persistence deserved respect, so Blood Bulls decided to reply—

[Whisper] Blood Bulls Don’t Graze: I’m not doing merc work. Find someone else.

The response was instant—

[Whisper] Weiming Lake: THERE IS NO ONE ELSE! YOU’RE THE FIRST TO REPLY! BIG BRO!! PLEASE HAVE A HEART AND GIVE ME A CHANCE TO ENTER HELL EXAM HALL! [SOB]

Blood Bulls was speechless, suddenly feeling like someone was clinging to her leg. =_=

[Whisper] Blood Bulls Don’t Graze: I suggest you raise the pay a bit more.

[Whisper] Weiming Lake: No can do. A man must have principles. I’ve done the math—if we’re efficient, we can do one question every twenty seconds. That’s 180 questions an hour. 200 points only require forty questions—twenty where he asks and I answer correctly, twenty where I ask and he answers wrong. That’s 13.3 minutes. Think about it—60 yuan for 13.3 minutes. Eight hours a day would be 2,165.41 yuan. Thirty days a month would be 64,962.40 yuan! What I’m offering is already sky-high wages!

[Whisper] Weiming Lake: Hey, you think these underachievers just can’t do the math?

[Whisper] Blood Bulls Don’t Graze: …The time you spent calculating this could’ve been used to PK countless underachievers and rack up multiple 200-point cycles.

[Whisper] Weiming Lake: [Gazing into the distance]

[Whisper] Blood Bulls Don’t Graze: Don’t tell me you’ve already tried…

[Whisper] Weiming Lake: [Still gazing into the distance]

[Whisper] Blood Bulls Don’t Graze: If you don’t have this emote, just give up. No need to type it out.

[Whisper] Blood Bulls Don’t Graze: Wait, was that fight because of this? Did you lose to him in a garden PK?

[Whisper] Weiming Lake: No! We tied!

[Whisper] Blood Bulls Don’t Graze: Neither of you could answer the other’s questions, huh.

[Whisper] Weiming Lake: …

• 1
  CCTV Headquarters. Two of its buildings are joined at the top to form one building, which makes it look like a giant pair of trousers from certain angles.
• 2
  A famous quote from the Chinese classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It was the dying lament of the brilliant strategist Zhou Yu in despair and frustration at being constantly overshadowed and outmaneuvered by his rival, the genius strategist Zhuge Liang.