Chapter 532 - 231: The Grand Exam Concludes, National Top Scorer

Xia Lianxue bit her lip hard, staring at Zhu Mingyi. Word by word, she asked the question she already knew the answer to.

"Why doesn’t he need to take the supplementary test?"

She couldn’t accept it!

From the day she was born, she had been on a pedestal, the most dazzling genius in all of Yanjing, and even the entire Great Xia!

She could accept being less skilled than someone, but she could not accept having the very right to compete against her rival stripped away!

Zhu Mingyi looked at this prodigy, a flash of disappointment flickering deep in his eyes.

"This is for your own protection."

He repeated himself.

Just then, He Zhenghong, who was standing in the back, suddenly gave Zhou Ke a meaningful look.

Zhou Ke understood immediately.

He took a step forward, and the blood-soaked, murderous aura of a veteran soldier instantly enveloped the entire area.

His sharp eyes swept coldly over Xia Lianxue and the few other candidates who also wore defiant expressions.

"If you have a problem with it," Zhou Ke’s voice was hoarse and cold, "that’s fine."

"Beat me first. Then we can talk about whether you’re qualified to challenge him."

Zhou Ke’s voice was hoarse, but every word was like iron, hammering into the hearts of every candidate.

As his voice fell, the atmosphere in the entire underground plaza suddenly froze.

Xia Lianxue, Xiao Lingchen, and the other resentful geniuses finally shifted their gazes from Lin Ye to Zhou Ke, who had stepped forward on his own accord.

It was only at this moment that they discovered, to their astonishment...

This instructor, with his formidable aura, was covered in wounds, both large and small!

Although the medical team had given him emergency treatment and many of the wounds had stopped bleeding and scabbed over, they were still a shocking sight.

The most horrifying were several places on his side and arm, where chunks of flesh seemed to have been gouged out, revealing the stark white bone beneath. Even top-tier medical techniques couldn’t regenerate the flesh in such a short time.

These were clearly the marks left behind after a brutal battle!

When Zhou Ke said this, everyone was stunned once again.

They weren’t fools.

In a flash, an unbelievable guess surged into their minds.

’This means that before any of us, Lin Ye already fought a battle with this Mid-stage Divine Realm instructor.’

’And...’

’Lin Ye won!’

This conclusion was like a bolt from the blue, exploding in the minds of Xia Lianxue and the others!

In that instant, everyone’s faces turned deathly pale.

They had lost.

When facing these Divine Realm instructors from the military, who all possessed rich battlefield experience, they had, without exception, all been defeated.

They all knew in their hearts that the instructors hadn’t even used their true, life-or-death techniques. It was more like they were sparring and offering guidance.

But Lin Ye...

Not only had he won, but he also appeared completely unscathed, his aura as calm as if he’d just gone for a walk!

Meanwhile, his opponent, an instructor of unfathomable strength, was grievously injured and had even gone so far as to publicly admit his defeat!

The gap between them...

It was so vast that everyone who understood the implications felt a bone-deep chill rise from the bottom of their hearts.

’So that’s...’

’So that’s what Chief Zhu Mingyi meant by "protection"!’

If they had really been made to face such a monster—someone who couldn’t be judged by common sense—in the supplementary test, their Dao Hearts would have probably been shattered, and they would never recover!

Xia Lianxue’s delicate body trembled slightly. A trickle of blood seeped from her tightly bitten lip. She looked at Lin Ye, and for the first time, an emotion called "defeat" appeared in her clear, cold eyes.

She had always thought that the gap between her and Lin Ye was negligible, that she was just one step behind for the moment.

But now she understood.

Separating them was, perhaps, a chasm she might never be able to cross in her entire lifetime.

...

「At the same time.」

In an office in some government agency in Dongjiang City.

Behind a large mahogany desk, Lin Tao leaned back in a comfortable leather executive chair. He held a thermos filled with goji berries and red dates, taking a sip from time to time, but his gaze was distant, staring absently out the window.

’I wonder how that kid is doing on his exam in the Imperial Capital.’

"Mr. Lin, this document needs your signature."

A clear female voice rang out. A young woman in a business suit with her hair in a ponytail walked over quickly, holding a stack of files. Her face showed a hint of reverence.

"Oh, okay."

Lin Tao snapped out of his daze, took the files, and put on his reading glasses. He carefully flipped through a few pages, and after confirming there were no issues, he picked up a pen and signed his name at the end with a flourish.

"There."

"Thank you, Mr. Lin!"

The girl clutched the files, let out a sigh of relief, and turned to leave.

Lin Tao watched her leave and shook his head helplessly.

When he retired from the battlefield this time, the commendations and letters of praise from the military, along with various explicit and implicit instructions, had made the leaders of his original work unit take him extremely seriously.

Adding to that was Lin Ye’s current influence in Dongjiang City, and even the entire Ninghai Province.

His work unit had originally planned to arrange an early retirement for him so he could live out his golden years at home.

In the end, it was Lin Tao who insisted he wasn’t the type to sit idle, especially since his legs were now fully recovered.

He had demanded to continue working.

The unit’s leadership discussed it for a long time before finally setting him up with this director position, which couldn’t possibly be any more of a cushy job.

There were no specific work tasks. Every day, he just had to look at some documents and sign a few things. He didn’t even need to clock in or out, free to come and go as he pleased.

To put it bluntly, it was a sinecure, a position where he was just being put on a pedestal.