High School of Demon Hunting

As for the accident in the Silent Forest, the Beta Town Post doesn’t know any more than Zheng Qing does.

Most of the article is just the same old tune—attacking First University’s teaching methods, questioning First University’s ownership of the Silent Forest, and at the same time sniping that First University has focused almost all its attention on Fringe Wizards while abandoning protection for the vast majority of the remaining students, and so on.

Nothing new at all.

Zheng Qing skimmed through ten lines at a glance, then focused on another report.

He had to admit, the other article was really sharp; it stripped the Yuzui Hunting Team bare in a very thorough way.

Starting from the identity pedigrees of the team members—for example, Zhang Ji Xin comes from the Tianmen Zhang Family; Jiang Yu comes from the Zhongshan Jiang Family; Dylan bears both O’Brien and Tabbot bloodlines; Xin Fat Man also has the rare Blue Giant bloodline, and so on.

Then moving on to certain not-so-secret secrets—for instance, Doctor Xiao is dating a history lecturer at the university named Sima; the captain surnamed Zheng is the fiancé of an Upper House Member of the Moon Council; the student surnamed Lin is Doctor Du Zemu’s laboratory assistant and also holds an important position in a secret project at the Edge Academy; the witch surnamed Li is a Spirit Witch of an unknown spirit master, and so forth.

And then on to the tangled relationships inside and outside the team—for example, Li Meng is Jiang Yu’s cousin; Zheng and Jiang are very close, and even went together to this year’s Shanglin Garden Spring Hunting; Zhang Ji Xin’s elder brother is the current Lei Zhe; the team also pooled money to open a grocery store in Beta Town called "D&K," whose books are described as chaotic, and so on.

Frowning, Zheng Qing finally couldn’t help complaining when he read this part:

"I can still make sense of the rest, but how the hell are D&K’s accounts chaotic? I think Hank’s doing a pretty good job, isn’t he? The Beta Town Management Committee doesn’t have any objections, so what the hell is the Post muttering about! Besides, where did they even see our books?"

Xin Fat Man slammed a fist on the table.

"I was just puzzling over that too!"

He stuck out a thick, stubby index finger and waggled it: "The only possibility I can think of is that the Post hung a Gargoyle on the eaves opposite D&K to monitor the number of customers going in and out every day and their spending, then compared it to the taxes the Management Committee receives and found a huge discrepancy... If it’s not a Gargoyle, maybe they hired that frog at the door of the Wandering Bar opposite to moonlight. You know, that frog’s eyeballs are enormous!"

Xiao Xiao shot him a sidelong look.

"You’ve been reading too many storytelling novels." He grumbled, poking the word "chaos" in the paper with his feather pen as a reminder: "Still remember where our shop’s biggest income in the first year came from?"

Zheng Qing needed only a second to answer: "—The betting at the campus hunting competition."

"Bingo!"

The doctor snapped his fingers: "Back then, we ran that whole sum through D&K’s accounts and split it among everyone. That kind of thing you can do, but you can’t talk about it... it can go into the books, but it can’t be reconciled. The Post people don’t need to plant spies in the shop; as long as they’re chummy with the folks at school who organize the betting, it’s easy to get some trivial bits of information... then make certain ’reasonable inferences’—journalists can make reasonable inferences in their reports, right?"

He glanced at Xin.

The Fat Wizard scratched his chin and muttered, "—Even so."

"And there’s the private hunting competition." Xiao Xiao raised two fingers and pointed at Zheng Qing: "Starting this term, Absolution has been taking part in the private hunting competitions spearheaded by the Starry Sky Hunting Team; you were the one who hooked us up with them... Strictly speaking, the game from private hunting competitions counts as ’illegal game.’ We can sell it through D&K, but it’s never going to be completely aboveboard."

Zheng Qing rubbed his temples, feeling a headache coming on.

"There are thousands of shops in Beta Town, and at least half of them take part in the annual ’Prize Guessing.’ They single us out? Something’s wrong in their heads!" He sounded rather indignant: "And private hunting competitions—"

"Which is why the Post only glossed over it with the phrase ’chaotic books’ instead of tossing a formal report at Danghag." Xiao Xiao pushed up his glasses and summed up: "—Obviously, they know where the line is too."

Zheng Qing opened his mouth, but in the end had nothing to say; he could only turn to attack other parts of the article: "Knowing where the line is, my ass... Look, Lin Guo holding an important position in some secret project at the Edge Academy—tsk, they really dare to use any word they like! ’Important position’! Since when did a laboratory assistant become an important position?"

"Every position in a secret project is important." Doctor Xiao reminded him in a very gentle way.

Zheng Qing finally couldn’t help it; he stared wide-eyed at the short Warlock: "Why do you keep defending them? Take a good look—this report says you dating Sima violates campus ethics, and that Sima is suspected of leaking internal school information to you... you’re not mad at all?"

"Because all of that is true." Xiao Xiao replied faintly: "If I had to get angry over that, I’d have to get mad every single time I read the Post. Compared to my gossip, I actually think the article’s accusations about the Fatty are worth us studying carefully..."

"Study what? Draw blood?"

Xin Fat Man waved his hands over and over, rejecting his companions’ good intentions: "I’m not like you lot. I don’t see anything new in what they wrote either—doesn’t it just say that the origin of my Blue Giant bloodline is unknown, suspected to be the result of an illegal magic experiment? I’ve already got my admission letter from First University, you think I’m still going to worry about that? Honestly, whose Green Giant or Blue Giant bloodline is born natural? Aren’t they all from labs... they can’t even find the right angle to pick a fight."

Zheng Qing had to admit it: everyone in the Yuzui Hunting Team had nerves of steel.

Just as he was sighing over this.

Beside him, Zhang Ji Xin finished reading the paper too, and raised a very sharp question: "Mr. Zha, do you think there’s anything wrong with the parts of the Beta Town Post report that are about you?"

Is there?

Zheng Qing took another look—nothing more than that bit about him and Su Shijun, and Jiang Yu—and then reluctantly shook his head: "They obviously wrote it with bad intentions, but if you ask whether it’s wrong..."

He didn’t finish the sentence.

But his meaning was perfectly clear.

"So," the Red Face Warlock shook off his usual gloom and showed an uncommon shrewdness, pointing at his three companions one by one: "When the people involved are all holding their noses and admitting it’s factual... on what grounds are we going to march over and demand that the Post’s editors retract it? Just because we’ve just received that special contribution award? Believe it or not, the moment you step into the editorial office of the Beta Town Post, they’ll happily take down this report, then immediately publish a few pieces like ’Inside Story: First University Special Contribution Award Winners Coerce the Post,’ ’Facts That Were Covered Up,’ ’Power vs. Truth: Moral Decay in University Education,’ ’Magical Realism on Buji Island,’ and so on."

That did have a certain smell to it.

Zheng Qing couldn’t help tugging at the corner of his mouth.