Tianshu University's opening ceremony was held at Beidou Plaza.
When Lin Qingyue and her group of four arrived, the place was already a sea of people.
The freshmen stood in neat square formations, organized by their respective departments.
Their young faces were filled with longing and curiosity about the future.
Their backs were ramrod straight, like a forest of white poplars waiting to be inspected.
This scene was so serious that it felt somewhat unreal.
Forming a sharp contrast to them were the senior students scattered around the plaza, who were responsible for "maintaining order."
The vibe of these senior brothers and sisters could only be described as a wild dance of demons, with absolutely no holds barred.
On the east side of the plaza, at the top of a towering flagpole, a guy was sitting cross-legged in meditation, breathing in the morning glow facing the sunrise.
If it weren't for the fact that he was tightly clutching a takeout thermal box in his arms, occasionally lowering his head to take a deep breath and revealing an intoxicated, ecstatic expression, Lin Qingyue would have almost believed he was practicing cultivation.
"Sis, look over there."
Lin Xiyue quietly nudged Lin Qingyue with her elbow.
Lin Qingyue looked in the direction she pointed, the corner of her eye twitching slightly.
Under the shade of a tree not far away, a senior sister wearing a training suit was holding a whetstone, huffing and puffing as she sharpened the weapon in her hand.
It was a giant kitchen knife with an extremely wild design.
The blade was thicker than her thigh, gleaming with a cold light. Its edge was covered in tiny nicks—who knew if it had chopped off the heads of countless demonic beasts, or cleaved through countless cafeteria pork ribs.
The senior Sis's sharpening motions were meticulous. Her eyes were nailed to that cold gleam, and every push and pull carried an almost obsessive sense of rhythm.
After sharpening it a few times, she would bring the kitchen knife up to her eyes, breathe a "ha" onto the blade, and narrow her eyes to scrutinize its deadly edge.
Beside them, a group of seniors gathered around a hand-drawn map, conducting intense tactical deductions.
"Wrong! Auntie Zhang at window number three is a Tai Chi successor. She channels power through her wrists; shaking the spoon is a sign of insufficient internal energy, a mistake she never makes! We must break through her for the sweet and sour pork!"
"You don't know shit! The Red braised pork in cafeteria two uses the hind leg meat of the demonic beast, the 'Three-Maned Wild Boar'. It's a great tonic for vital energy and blood. Eating it will let you endure the devastation of the 'Body Tempering Class'. That's the real meta!"
"Shut up, all of you! Listen to me, the cafeteria manager Old Wang just scored a 'Labyrinthine Array Disk' from the 'Formation Club' last week to protect the back kitchen. Going straight in with 'Phantom Steps' is a suicide mission! We have to break the array first, then capture the king, and snatch that pot of Red braised pork cooked with 'Fire Kirin Grass'!"
Lin Qingyue raised a brow as she listened.
"The idea is fine, but the details are too rough. What do you mean 'capture the king'? It should be a diversion—send someone to feign an attack on the service window to draw fire, while the main squad charges straight for the back kitchen!"
Lin Xiyue stared blankly as she listened.
"Are they... discussing tactics for getting food at the cafeteria?"
"Yes, to be exact, tactics for a cafeteria assault," Lin Qingyue added calmly.
Looking at the bizarre scene before her, she rubbed her chin thoughtfully, instantly forming a rough guess about the laws of survival at this university.
Practicing martial arts required consuming massive amounts of meat.
Therefore, here, eating wasn't just a physiological need.
It was a war!
A violent art that required staking all one's dignity to master!
If your culinary skills weren't exquisite enough, then the cafeteria was your battlefield! And the best dishes were your spoils of war!
Su Wan stood to the side, trying her best to maintain the aloof demeanor of a Young Mistress, but irrepressible flames of curiosity were already burning within her ice-blue eyes.
Xia Lian was completely dumbfounded, her little head darting left and right, feeling like she didn't have enough eyes to take it all in.
Right at this moment, a familiar voice rang out from behind them.
"How is it? Feel like you've walked onto the wrong movie set?"
The four of them turned around, only to see that Li Mo had slipped over at some point.
It was the very same sophomore senior who had introduced himself as a member of the "Footwork Club" when they met in the bamboo forest before the Special Training Camp began.
He was dressed quite presentably today, wearing a crisply ironed school uniform and black-framed glasses. However, the gleam behind his lenses—the unmistakable look of someone eager to watch the world burn—completely betrayed his true nature.
"Hello, Senior," Lin Qingyue greeted politely.
"Seeing you all looking like you've just seen a ghost reminds me of myself last year."
Li Mo smiled and pushed up his glasses, his gaze sweeping over the eccentric upperclassmen. His tone was filled with the weary wisdom of someone who had been through it all.
"Don't be fooled by how proper these freshmen look right now, as if they're heading to some awards ceremony. Give them one semester and I guarantee you, they'll be even wilder than us."
He pointed to the guy perched on the flagpole, hugging a takeout box.
"That guy is the president of the 'Wind-Riding Club,' the lightfoot champion from the school sports meet in the first half of the year, and also one of this year's 'Orientation Representatives.'"
"He's not cultivating up there. He's just keeping his takeout warm while savoring the 'heaven and earth vitality' of the latest Jiangxiang Latte, just to make sure mundane impurities don't pollute his sacred drink."
He then pointed to the senior girl sharpening a kitchen knife.
"The vice president of the 'Culinary Arts Club.' Her masterful butchery knife skills are out of this world. During a school sparring match last year, she used that very cleaver to shave the head of an expert from the 'Sword Arts Club'—and I mean literally shaved him bald."
"She is also an 'Orientation Representative'."
Xia Lian was so scared she shrank back behind Su Wan and muttered softly, "Using... using a kitchen cleaver to shave a head? Won't it cut the scalp?"
Su Wan's mouth twitched unnaturally. Forcing herself to remain calm, she commented, "...How uncivilized."
Lin Xiyue, however, had her eyes shining. Lowering her voice, she said to her sister, "Sis, this senior is so cool! I want to learn that too!"
Only Lin Qingyue was thinking that this knife skill would surely be absolutely top-notch for scaling fish.
"So, you see," Li Mo spread his hands, "in Tianshu, absolutely do not judge a book by its cover. What is our school motto? 'Unity of Knowledge and Action, Martial Arts Returning to the Heart'. Put plainly, it doesn't matter if it's a black cat or a White Cat, a cat that can make you stronger is a good cat."
"Just look at the Principal. You'll understand later when he goes up on stage to speak."
Li Mo blinked mysteriously. Just as he finished speaking, a furious roar came from behind him:
"Li Mo, you little brat, still chatting with the junior girls? The Red Team's pre-battle meeting is about to start. If you don't roll over here right now, don't even think about having a single bite of braised pork this year!"
A muscular senior hooked his arm around Li Mo's neck and, ignoring his struggles, forcefully dragged him into the crowd of senior students.
Li Mo only had time to turn back and shoot Lin Qingyue and the girls a "good luck" look before completely disappearing.
At 9:00 AM, the opening ceremony officially began.
Amidst the solemn melody of the school anthem, an elder with white hair but a youthful complexion, exuding a transcendent aura, stepped onto the rostrum with a steady pace.
He was the Principal of Tianshu University, Chu Tianxing, a genuine Grandmaster-level Expert.
"Students, teachers, good morning everyone!"
Principal Chu's voice was loud and steady, naturally carrying a reassuring power.
"Welcome, new students, to the warm family of Tianshu University. Here, you will open the most exciting chapter of your lives..."
The opening welcome speech was as formulaic as it could be.
Lin Xiyue's eyelids grew heavy as she listened, while Su Wan and Xia Lian also zoned out a bit.
Only Lin Qingyue noticed that when the Principal slowly uttered the words "exciting chapter," the expressions of the idle older students around them underwent a subtle change.
A bizarre expression mixing pain and schadenfreude surfaced on the faces of some, the corners of their mouths twitching uncontrollably.
The others quietly rolled their wrists and ankles, casting gazes at the freshman formation like wild wolves that had been starved for three days eyeing a defenseless sheep pen.
Lin Qingyue's heart skipped a beat as an ominous, yet inexplicably thrilling, premonition welled up inside her.
'Why do the expressions of these seniors look exactly like the ones I had when I tricked my viewers into entering a PVP map during my old livestreams?'
'Wait a minute, this so-called "exciting chapter"... They aren't planning to use us freshmen as target practice, are they?'
Sure enough, Principal Chu's amiable smile remained, but his next words suddenly rose eight octaves, booming like a massive bell and leaving everyone's eardrums ringing!
"...To help everyone integrate into our school's excellent traditions more quickly, I have decided that this year's very first lesson for incoming freshmen will be—the Red vs. Blue Meal Ticket Tournament!"
"Boom!"
The entire Beidou Plaza instantly erupted into an uproar.
The freshmen's faces were plastered with the three ultimate philosophical questions: "Who am I?", "Where am I?", and "What just happened?"
In the freshman formation, Lin Xiyue clenched her fists, not out of fear, but with eager excitement. "Sis! Did you hear that?! A tournament!"
Su Wan took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the churning astonishment and a tiny sliver of... anticipation in her heart, muttering, "This is too... ridiculous..."
Xia Lian was completely dumbfounded, her little face pale as she looked at Lin Qingyue as if asking for help, "Sister Qingyue, is... is this real? It's not some prank show, right?"
Only Lin Qingyue, after her initial shock, felt the corners of her mouth curl up uncontrollably, her eyes glinting with the look of a hunter spotting their prey.
Good lord, the opening ceremony instantly turned into a PVP battlefield? Sure, this is very Tianshu!
And all around them, the senior students were like beasts that had been instantly awakened, letting out deafening cheers and wolf howls!