69novels Chapter 1: Kassel
Chapter 1: Kassel
Ever since he realized he had transmigrated into the world of "Dragon Raja," Zhou Yi had no intention of getting involved in the predetermined plot.
This has nothing to do with ability; it's purely about avoiding trouble.
But now, he absolutely has to find a way to get into Kassel.
The root of the problem lies with "himself" from another world, the world of "Sun and Moon in Mistakes." That's right, the ability he awakened is "Transmigrating Through Ninety-Nine Streams."
The timeline of that "Zhou Yi" is now modern, with Shangguan Xiao having just died again, and the final battle of cause and effect is imminent. However, his cultivation level is stagnant at the middle level of divine power, and he has not even awakened his innate divine power. Judging from the brutality of the final battle in the original work, as the successor of the Three True Ones in Penglai, his death is almost certain and without any suspense.
Even if he were to miraculously achieve the Great Divine Power degree before the final battle, his chances of survival would still be pitifully slim. Even more cruelly, his talent had already been exhausted. His mentor, Hai Shan, the Great Lord of Penglai Island, had stated more than once that he lacked the talent to achieve the Great Divine Power level.
It can be said that without external intervention, the day the war between the Nine Realms Gate and Penglai Island was ignited would have been the day he died.
Fortunately, external forces arrived.
That mysterious "Gray Mist Space" is a mysterious place that can share abilities with different selves in all the worlds. However, according to the first person to awaken this space, who came from the world of "Under One Person", he waited for nearly thirty years before he and "The Book of Changes" of "Sun and Moon in the Same Mistake" came together.
Hoping that a more powerful "self" will flood in in the short term, directly sharing the heaven-defying abilities and instantly resolving the deadlock is obviously unrealistic.
Therefore, there is only one path left: allow the other two versions of yourself in the other world to rapidly increase their strength in a short period of time, and then give back to the version of yourself in the world of "Sun and Moon in the Same Mistake" who is on the verge of despair.
So, which of these two worlds can achieve an explosive increase in strength in the short term?
The answer is undoubtedly the world of Dragon Raja.
Just eat, that's all.
He embarked on the path to godhood, devouring the dragon bone cross of the four great kings, including the White King and the Black King, to become the supreme hybrid monarch. Based on the power displayed by the Black King in the original work, he was by no means weak even among great supernatural beings.
Thus, the heavy responsibility of saving his other self fell squarely on Zhou Yi's shoulders in the world of "Dragon Raja".
There was no ink mark on the Book of Changes. On the second day after he awakened in the gray fog space, he skipped class and booked a direct flight to the Three Gorges.
His initial plan was simple and brutal: find the Bronze City at the bottom of the river, dig up the graves of the Norton brothers, the Kings of Bronze and Fire, and "eat" Constantine first.
However, when he actually stood on the banks of the Three Gorges, he realized how naive he had been. Surrounded by towering mountains and the mighty Yangtze River, knowing the plot but not the exact coordinates was like searching for a needle in a haystack.
But having come this far, Zhou Yi, with sheer stubbornness, persevered and searched the riverbed for over half a month, enduring the pressure of the water dozens of meters deep. As expected, he found nothing—not even a single fragment of bronze, let alone the Bronze City. In the end, he could only return to Shilan Middle School, dejected and humiliated, and receive a severe scolding from his homeroom teacher.
He became famous overnight, a legendary figure at the school—skipping classes for half a month before the college entrance exam, returning just the day before to collect his admission ticket. This feat even impressed Lu Mingfei, the school's infamous "legendary simp." Later, Zhou Yi's decision to refuse offers from Tsinghua and Peking Universities and choose to study abroad left everyone speechless.
Based on this incident, Zhou Yi topped the "Prodigy List" at Shilan High School, ranking alongside the already famous "Prodigy Chu" Chu Zihang.
Speaking of Chu Zihang, he had been secretly gathering clues over the years and finally found some traces of Kassel College, and received an interview invitation.
It was by following him all the way to Chicago that Zhou Yi successfully connected with Kassel College and obtained the opportunity to apply for admission.
God knows what he was thinking when he witnessed Chu Zihang and Schneider, braving the torrential rain, silently gazing at each other across the street at a traffic light, letting the light cycle three times. Two extraordinary people.
But in any case, the outcome was good. In front of Schneider, Zhou Yi flashed his dazzling golden eyes and conjured a section of iron fence into a cold, gleaming longsword out of thin air. He then received the invitation he had hoped for and boarded the train from Chicago to Kassel College.
The train was in disarray. English, French, German, and Spanish mingled; blond, brown, black, and even Chen Motong's hair swayed; blue, green, and even purple eyes curiously surveyed their surroundings. Young men and women from all over the world had gathered here, and a restless yet secretive excitement permeated the air.
Zhou Yi was looking for a quiet corner to fill out the enrollment form when Chu Zihang pulled him along without a word, leading him to a spot opposite a Chinese girl with black hair, black eyes, a ponytail, and glasses.
"Hello, my name is Zhou Yi." Zhou Yi recognized the other person as Susie from the original work. After a brief greeting, he lowered his head and began filling out the form—his English was really not very good.
"Hello, are you also from China? My name is Susie." The girl's voice was a little timid.
Chu Zihang nodded, and while diligently filling out the form, he took a moment to look up and calmly gaze into Susie's eyes: "You seem very nervous."
"We're sitting on a train full of monsters," Susie said, barely managing to make eye contact with him, forcing a joke.
"Isn't that good? We're monsters too. When monsters meet, we're family." Chu Zihang responded with his characteristic, almost expressionless, calm tone, delivering a very mild joke.
Zhou Yi chuckled softly. Chu Zihang, who is usually as aloof as ice, unexpectedly reveals a unique kind of "secretly flirtatious" side when he's around girls.
"Excuse me, could you please move aside?"
A clear voice rang out beside him. Zhou Yi turned his head and saw the red-haired girl he had glimpsed when he got on the bus. She was dragging a striking red suitcase, and the four-leaf clover earrings on her ears swayed brightly—it was Chen Motong, Nuonuo from the original novel.
To save time, Zhou Yi didn't put his suitcase on the overhead luggage rack, but instead stuffed it directly under his aisle seat. He assumed Chen Motong was just passing by, so he got up and casually lifted his suitcase onto the luggage rack.
Unexpectedly, the red-haired girl made no attempt to be polite, plopping down in the empty seat next to Susie and then casually pushing her red suitcase to where Zhou Yi's suitcase had been. Only after doing this did she look up and smile at Zhou Yi, a bright smile tinged with a self-righteous slyness.
Then, she turned to Susie and said in a familiar tone, as if she were a classmate she had known for years, "Could I borrow this for reference?"
She waved the blank enrollment registration form in her hand.
"Y-yes, sure." Susie nodded quickly, seemingly a little unaccustomed to dealing with such a bright, dazzling, and overly familiar type.
"Let's get to know each other. My name is Chen Motong, and you can call me Nuonuo."
"I'm Susie, just call me Susie."
"Chu Zihang".
The Book of Changes (Zhouyi).
Zhou Yi is certain that this passage is not in the original work. Chen Motong and Su Qian did not interact on the train to school.
Could it be that his intrusion triggered a subtle, butterfly-effect-like change? His gaze inadvertently swept over the red suitcase at his feet.
"Hey, don't stare at my suitcase like that." Chen Motong caught his gaze, thinking he was about to do something, and raised her eyebrows. "Since you gave me your seat, if you get into trouble after enrollment, feel free to come to me, I'll protect you!"
Zhou Yi looked speechless.
I, a master of the Central Divine Realm, with a Word of Power sequence of 96, am someone who can rival the shame of the Dragon King. Do I need someone like you, a "weakling in combat," to protect me? Do you really think I'm that loser Lu Mingfei?
"You should take care of yourself first," he muttered under his breath, thinking about the enormous trouble Chen Motong was in.
The first day of school was unexpectedly calm.
There were no dramatic twists and turns as in the original story, nor was there the sudden awakening of the little red dragon. On the train, the group watched the sealed red dragon cub together. It was as quiet as the most exquisite specimen and did not react in any special way to anyone's visit.
Inside the school, Caesar Gattuso had just taken office as president of the student council, and his "Day of Freedom" took place as scheduled. However, the fighting was strictly controlled between a few squares and buildings, making it more like a large-scale but clearly defined live-action CS game.
Chen Motong pulled a few others to watch from a distance, observing the students navigating through paintball and simulated tactics with admiration and a gleam of eager anticipation in their eyes. Su Qian, on the other hand, instinctively shrank behind Chu Zihang and Zhou Yi, her fingers unconsciously clenching the hem of her clothes.
After enjoying the excitement, they settled in as planned. The dormitories at Kassel College are co-ed, with two people per room, and students are allowed to choose their own roommates. The four of them naturally chose adjacent rooms: 203 for boys and 206 for girls, their doors facing each other.
I had just finished unpacking my luggage when there was a gentle knock on the dormitory door.
Chu Zihang opened the door, and Susie stood in the corridor, her fingers twisting together nervously.
"Want to... take a walk around campus together?" Her voice was soft, clearly still shaken by the recent "practice exercise" and feeling that it would be safer to go with someone.
"I'm fine." After saying that, Chu Zihang turned to look into the room.
Zhou Yi closed his notebook, got up, and walked towards the door.
"Let's go, it won't hurt to get familiar with the surroundings."
"I'll go call Nono." Susie seemed to breathe a sigh of relief and turned back to her room.
The campus is vast, filled with a strange blend of classical and modern elements. They strolled past Gothic spires, walked along paths lined with oak and maple trees, passed the library's pyramid-shaped glass dome, and caught a glimpse of the detached building that was said to occasionally emit muffled thuds.
The only place we didn't approach was a low-key two-story building not far from Valhalla—the Headmaster's office. It stood quietly, forbidden to be near.
As evening fell, the four of them gathered in the cafeteria. The spacious and bright space was filled with the aromas of food from all over the world, but for Zhou Yi, who was used to Chinese food, apart from the wide variety, the taste was really hard to praise. He poked at the spaghetti on his plate and missed the wok-fried noodles with a strong wok hei (wok aroma) at the entrance of Shilan Middle School.
At the dinner table, Susie mentioned the email notification Norma had just sent, her tone full of apprehension: "The email said... there's a 3E exam tomorrow."
"The 3E exam?" Chen Motong, who was fiddling with a clump of pasta with her fork, paused, raised her eyebrows, and said with a look that said, "How come I didn't know there was such a thing?" "What exam? Nobody told me about this when I enrolled!"
"I don't even know what the exam is about," Susie said, rubbing the mashed potatoes in her plate with her fork in frustration. "The email only mentioned the importance of the exam and... the consequences of failing." Her voice lowered, and she added in a muffled tone, "If I fail the exam, I'll be disqualified from admission and sent back to my home country."
After speaking, she looked up at the two boys opposite her. Chu Zihang was slowly cutting his steak, while Zhou Yi was frowning as he ate his spaghetti, as if he were engaged in some kind of battle. Neither of them showed the tension or anxiety she had expected.
"Aren't you...aren't you afraid at all?" Susie couldn't help but ask, wondering if they had some inside information she didn't know about and wanted to share it.
Zhou Yi did indeed have "insider information," knowing that the essence of this exam was to test the resonance of dragon runes, which was practically a "guaranteed admission" for awakened hybrids. As for Chu Zihang, his unmoved and expressionless demeanor, to borrow Yuan Zhisheng's words, was just a pretentious act.
"I have no intention of being deported."
Chu Zihang's voice was as calm as a frozen lake, without a ripple, yet it conveyed a resolute determination, as if cutting off all escape routes. The meaning behind those brief words was almost tangible: any force that tried to exclude him from this door would encounter the most direct and resolute resistance.
Susie was stunned by the overwhelming, almost sharp aura emanating from him. She opened her mouth, but couldn't find the right words for a moment.
On the other side, Zhou Yi finally gave up on continuing his struggle with the overly orthodox and therefore exceptionally stubborn lump of pasta on his plate. He put down his fork, his gaze shifting between the steak and the German roasted pork knuckle on the menu, torn between ordering another steak or the pork knuckle.
Chen Motong, sitting opposite, seemed to have mind-reading abilities and interjected at the right moment: "Hey, why don't you order a braised pork knuckle? I want to eat steak, but I'm also craving the crispy skin of the pork knuckle. It would be too wasteful to order one of each, so we can share it." She rested her chin on her hand, speaking as if it were the most natural thing in the world, her bright eyes shining with the light of "this idea is absolutely perfect."
"Okay." Zhou Yi agreed readily. He had originally had this idea, but the person sitting next to him was Chu Zihang instead of Lu Mingfei—this master and servant were not short of money, and if he had suggested it, the other party would probably have calmly ordered two portions for him.
"You two..." Susie looked at the couple who had only known each other for a short time but had already naturally planned out a shared menu, her expression somewhat astonished, as if she were looking at some novel creature. They were clearly meeting for the first time, wasn't this level of familiarity a bit...? Wait, now's not the time to worry about that!
"Aren't you worried at all about tomorrow's exam?" She steered the conversation back on track, her gaze shifting between Zhou Yi and Chen Motong, utterly unable to comprehend how they could be so calm and collected.
Chen Motong only raised an eyebrow in surprise when she first heard the word "exam," and then really put the matter out of her mind.
She shrugged nonchalantly: "Things will work themselves out. At worst, I'll just pack my bags and go home."
She said this with remarkable ease. Indeed, for someone from the Chen family, whether or not she could enroll in Kassel was no big deal.
In contrast, Zhou Yi seemed the most normal of the three. He took over the conversation and comforted Susie in a relaxed tone:
"Relax, Susie. You have to understand, we're not entering an ordinary university. The exams here can't be measured by cramming and test preparation... I suspect tomorrow's content will be more focused on awakening certain talents or traits, and last-minute preparation might backfire. In short, trust your own intuition and feelings."
This analysis was logically flawless and even revealed part of the truth. However, it was of no use to Susie, who was lacking support at the moment. It was far less effective than Chu Zihang looking her straight in the eyes and saying, "Susie, I believe in you."
Even after dinner ended and everyone returned to their dormitories, the faint worry between Susie's brows had not completely disappeared.
In the stillness of the night, only the faint blue light from the laptop screen remained in dormitory 203. With nothing to do, Zhou Yi leaned against the headboard, his fingers swiping the touchpad, browsing the internal forum of Kassel College and reading the gossip posted by Fingel.