125: Chapter 125 Didn't even know the exam hall had been robbed?

Zhou Qi's originally semi-transparent soul body suddenly emitted an eerie red light.

He looked as if he had been injected with ten doses of adrenaline.

"Rest assured, my Lords!"

Zhou Qi grabbed the judges pen, his voice trembling.

"As long as you give me the questions, I can make all the candidates in Daxia doubt their existence!"

The Ten Kings of Yama nodded in unison.

This was exactly what they wanted.

The rules of the Foreign Language Tribunal were very simple.

Exams.

Order.

Scores.

It did not care if you were human or ghost, nor did it care if you were a student or a King of Yama.

It only recognized grades.

As long as Zhou Qi could continuously provide high-quality answers, he would be identified by the exam room rules as a high-priority source of answers.

As long as he created enough difficult questions to ignite the negative emotions of candidates across Daxia, he could further intercept the Invigilator authority from Chu Youwei.

By then, that human girl from Daxia who had just stepped onto the Kings Path would be forcibly pushed off.

And Old Fengdu would take over these rules.

Zhou Qi did not know about these high-level games.

He only knew that he was just one exam paper away from a permanent position.

So, he wrote like a madman.

The judges pen landed on the black exam paper, almost leaving afterimages.

The more Zhou Qi wrote, the more excited he became.

All the resentment he had accumulated from being tormented by his parents while he was alive transformed into endless inspiration for creating questions at this moment.

The black exam paper flickered incessantly.

[Perfect answer identified]

[Beginning to record template]

[Transferring part of exam room authority]

[Candidate Zhou Qi's foreign language proficiency detected as extremely high]

[Temporary question-setting authority unlocked]

The moment this line of red text appeared, King Songdi slapped his thigh hard.

"It's done!"

He pointed at the exam paper, his voice suppressing uncontrollable ecstasy.

"Little Zhou, set the questions!"

"The harder, the better. The more sadistic, the better. Don't consider the students' survival, only consider the rules' capacity!"

Upon hearing this, Zhou Qi's fingers trembled with excitement.

Don't consider the students' survival?

He was an expert at that.

What he was best at when he was alive was adding another set of papers to high school seniors who were on the verge of collapse.

He took a deep breath and solemnly wrote down the first new major question.

[Reading Comprehension: If you encounter an acquaintance on the Yellow Springs, please use an inverted sentence of no less than fifty words to analyze their cause of death and argue whether they should enter Hell.]

The moment the question took shape, the black exam paper erupted with blinding red light.

The red light followed the rules of the Foreign Language Tribunal and instantly spread across the entirety of Daxia.

Linhai No. 2 High School.

Senior Year Class 2.

Li Hao was originally slumped over his desk, struggling frantically with a multiple-choice question.

A looked like the answer.

C looked like it too.

According to his years of exam metaphysics—if three are long and one is short, pick the short one; if three are short and one is long, pick the long one; if all else fails, pick C.

So he firmly wrote down C.

The next second, the paper flashed.

A new major question appeared.

Li Hao looked down and finished reading the first line, and he froze on the spot.

He looked at the second line.

His face turned green.

When he saw the words "Yellow Springs" and "inverted sentence," he finally couldn't help it and slapped his hand on the desk.

"What the Hell is this?!"

The black exam paper vibrated slightly.

[Candidate Li Hao, making noise in the exam room, deducted 5 points.]

Li Hao's anger was instantly deducted by half.

He covered his mouth, tears almost falling, and could only suppress his voice and say indignantly, "What kind of decent person chats on the Yellow Springs using inverted sentences?"

"Is this question meant for living people?"

The students nearby didn't look good either.

Someone took a look at the question and immediately started pinching their philtrum.

Someone tried to flip the paper over, only to find that there were translation questions on the back.

Someone else silently wrote down three words: "I don't know how."

Then the paper lit up with a prompt.

[Attitude is sincere, 1 point awarded at discretion.]

That student almost cried on the spot.

This crappy rule actually had emotional points!

Gu Lang stared at the newly appeared major question, his expression changing completely.

He was different from ordinary students.

Others only felt the questions were difficult.

He, however, could see the Death Qi entwined behind the questions.

Those were not ordinary foreign language questions.

They were judgment structures polluted by Old Fengdu.

As long as candidates read the question stem, they would instinctively associate it with death, judgment, Hell, and punishment.

Fear would be amplified.

Anxiety would be amplified.

Reluctance would be amplified.

And then these emotions would all become fuel for the exam room rules.

"Something is wrong with the exam room," Gu Lang said in a low voice, his fingers gripping the pen turning slightly white.

The Su Yun Clone beside him looked up at him, his expression unnervingly calm.

"Don't panic. This just shows that our Daxia education system is integrating with the underworld system."

Gu Lang almost couldn't catch his breath.

When was this, and you still have the heart to make sarcastic remarks?

But just as he wanted to speak, a line of text immediately lit up on the paper on his desk.

[Candidate Gu Lang, please remain quiet.]

Gu Lang: "..."

He forcibly swallowed his words.

This crappy exam room had already started watching him.

Above the Investigation Bureau's control room, Chu Youwei hovered in mid-air.

Black letters intertwined behind her, forming a massive Invigilator seat.

The phantom of the throne, which had been gradually stabilizing, suddenly began to peel at the edges.

A strange, cold, and massive force forcibly squeezed in along the exam rules.

That force did not attack her directly.

It only snatched authority.

It snatched the question bank.

It snatched the grading rights.

It snatched the flow of candidates' emotions.

Chu Youwei's face instantly turned pale, and her body uncontrollably sank half a meter.

"Youwei!"

Su Yao's expression changed, and she immediately rushed forward.

But before she could get close, she was blocked by the invisible exam room boundary.

Bang!

Su Yao's shoulder shuddered, and anger welled up in her eyes.

"What's going on?"

Chu Youwei bit her lip, her forehead covered in cold sweat.

She looked down at the black letters swimming frantically on her wrist.

Those letters seemed to have been provoked and were screaming.

"Someone is stealing my position," she said, her voice tight.

This was the first time she truly felt how cruel the so-called Kings Path was.

Yesterday, she was just a student.

Today, she had suddenly become the Invigilator for the national exam.

The emotions of hundreds of millions of people pressing down on her had already made her almost unable to breathe.

But now, someone had actually reached through the rules, stuck their hand into her Invigilator seat, and wanted to forcibly drag her down from this position.

And it wasn't just one person.

It was ten.

Chu Youwei raised her hand and forcibly called up the candidate roster.

The moment the roster unfurled, a string of scarlet names made her eyes ache.

[King Qin Guang]

[King Chujiang]

[King Songdi]

...

Chu Youwei's breath hitched.

"The Ten Kings of Yama?"

Her voice changed.

"Why are they in the exam room too?"

Inside the control room, Director Chen Jianguo's legs nearly gave out when he heard these names.

"The... the Ten Kings of Yama are also participating in the national exam?"

Ye Zhiwei closed her eyes, her Omni-dimensional Vision sweeping through the rule network, her face growing paler.

"They are not participating. They are seizing power."

Executive Jiang Xu gripped his dark gold spear, his eyes terrifyingly dark.

"Old Fengdu. They didn't attack directly; they are exploiting loopholes in the exam room rules."

Chen Jianguo's voice was dry.

"They can exploit this too?"

Executive Jiang Xu stared at the negative emotion curve skyrocketing on the screen, speaking extremely fast.

"The underlying logic of the Foreign Language Tribunal is exams, order, and scores. It doesn't recognize status, only grades. Old Fengdu must have found a soul extremely proficient in foreign languages, who is frantically answering questions, setting questions, and farming authority for them."

The coldness in Executive Jiang Xu's eyes deepened.

"If they violently destroyed the exam room, the rules would fight back. But they are using grades now. They want to rely on high scores to gain the favor of the rules and forcibly cultivate a second Invigilator. This is more troublesome than a direct attack."

Chu Youwei understood.

And precisely because she understood, obvious anger welled up in her eyes for the first time.

Isn't this cheating?

Finding a substitute player.

Farming authority.

Stealing her position.

They even wanted to use the fear of candidates across the country to squeeze her out of the Invigilator seat.

If she lost, it wouldn't be as simple as failing one exam.

She would be swallowed by the rules.

She would become a Strange Tales tool wrapped in human skin.

She hadn't caught up to Su Yun yet.

She hadn't even had time to truly stand by his side.

How could she die here?

"This is cheating."

Chu Youwei raised her hand, and the black letters converged in her palm into a cold seal.

"I am the primary core bearer. The rule backend indicates that I have final banning authority. I can directly destroy their candidate qualifications."

Her eyes hardened, and she prepared to press that seal.

At this very moment, "Stop."

Two words fell from the depths of the firmament.

The entire control room suddenly went quiet.

All sounds seemed to have been extinguished by an invisible hand.

The scarlet eyeball hanging in the air rotated slowly.

Subsequently, a tentacle reached out from the black crack and stopped in front of Chu Youwei.

Su Yun's voice sounded faintly.

"Do not ban them. Open all of your question-setting authority, grading authority, and emotional bearing authority to them."

Once these words were spoken, the entire room fell into dead silence.

Chu Youwei's hand froze in mid-air.

Su Yao looked up abruptly, her eyes almost spitting fire.

"Are you crazy? That is Dahuang Prefecture! They are stealing her Kings Path, and you still want to hand over the authority?"

Chen Jianguo was also dumbfounded.

What kind of move is this?

The enemy has reached into your home to steal the safe, and you don't catch them, but instead, you actively tell them the password?

Chu Youwei's face turned pale, her voice trembling slightly.

"Why? If they really take away the authority, I won't be able to ascend the throne."

Su Yun did not explain.

The scarlet eyeball just coldly looked down at everyone.

The gaze was like looking at a group of students who hadn't kept up with the train of thought at all.

The sense of oppression spread silently.

Executive Jiang Xu suddenly looked up.

His originally tense pupils constricted violently at this moment.

He stared fixedly at that scarlet eyeball, as if he had suddenly seen some kind of layout that was absurd to the extreme, yet exquisite to the extreme.

It wasn't power.

It was logic.

It was the utilization of the underlying rules.

It was a terrifying calculation that turned every step of the enemy's greed into his own profit.

Executive Jiang Xu slowly took a breath.

"He is not crazy."

Su Yao looked at him abruptly.

"Executive Jiang Xu, what do you mean?"

Executive Jiang Xu pointed to the screen.

On the screen, the negative emotion curve across Daxia was growing explosively.

Those emotions would originally have all pressed down on Chu Youwei.

With her current mental strength, she couldn't withstand it for long at all.

Even with The Rancher's help, it wouldn't work.

Executive Jiang Xu's voice was deep, but it carried a hint of shock that even he couldn't suppress.

"Student Chu, you were almost overwhelmed just by touching a small portion of the national emotions earlier. If you had to bear the entire exam alone, could you hold up?"

Chu Youwei was silent.

She couldn't hold up.

This wasn't a problem that could be solved by firm willpower.

For an A-rank special sequence user to bear the national emotional torrent of a King-level rule was, in itself, like throwing a person into a tsunami.

Executive Jiang Xu continued, "Old Fengdu wants to snatch authority now. In order to snatch it, they must set questions, they must grade papers, and they must bear the resentment and fear generated by candidates because of the difficult questions. They think they are seizing power. But from another angle, they are actually sharing the pollution for you."

Chen Jianguo's eyes slowly widened.

Ye Zhiwei was also stunned.

Executive Jiang Xu's speaking speed became faster and faster.

"First, there is a Ghost Emperor behind Dahuang Prefecture. If we ban them directly now, the Ghost Emperor will likely flip the table immediately. Although Student Chu has final authority, she is not the Ghost Emperor's opponent right now. Revealing our trump card early will only force the other side into an all-out war."

"Second."

Executive Jiang Xu paused, his expression becoming extremely strange.

"The substitute player the other side found has higher foreign language proficiency than Student Chu. They set more ruthless questions than Student Chu. They are also more professional at drawing aggro than Student Chu. So why not let him continue?"

Chu Youwei was stunned.

Su Yao was also stunned.

Chen Jianguo's mouth twitched, vaguely realizing that the things behind this were not very clean.

Executive Jiang Xu looked at Chu Youwei and said word by word, "Let them set the questions. Let them grade the papers. Let them withstand the anger of the national candidates. Let them push the throne progress up for you."

"When the rules mature to the very last moment, when the Invigilator throne is about to solidify, and Old Fengdu thinks they are about to win..."

Executive Jiang Xu's voice lowered.

"You then use the final banning authority of the primary core. Judge them as cheating. Kick them out of the exam room. The questions they made, the emotions they collected, the progress they pushed—leave it all behind. They get lost. The results belong to you."

The control room fell into an eerie silence.

Chen Jianguo was breaking out in a cold sweat.

"This..."

His lips trembled.

"Isn't this just making Dahuang Prefecture work for us for free?"

Executive Jiang Xu nodded.

"More than that. It's making them bring their own tools, bring their own technology, work overtime voluntarily, and actively bear the risk of pollution. In the end, we don't even have to pay them."

Chen Jianguo gasped.

"Isn't this too dark?"

Executive Jiang Xu did not refute.

Because this was no longer a question of whether it was dark or not.

This was an exploitation logic that was pure to the extreme.

Old Fengdu thought they were stealing the base.

In reality, they had just been thrown into the exam room assembly line by The Rancher.

Doing the most tiring work.

Taking the most vicious abuse.

Bearing the heaviest pollution.

Waiting for the fruit to mature, only to be kicked out with a single kick.

Su Yao looked at the scarlet eyeball in the sky, a chill creeping up from the bottom of her heart.

In her previous life, she only knew that Su Yun was a monster that destroyed the world.

No reason.

No emotion.

Only knowing how to devour, destroy, and pollute.

But in this life, what she saw was becoming more and more outrageous.

This monster not only had reason, but also understood rules, understood games, and was even proficient in exploiting labor.

This was far more terrifying than simple slaughter.

Because slaughter was just destruction.

But he knew how to manage.

He knew how to wait.

He would make the enemy drain themselves dry with a smile, and then still think they had profited.

Chu Youwei stared blankly at that eyeball.

She finally understood why this monster wouldn't let her ban them.

It wasn't abandoning her.

Nor was it pushing her out to die.

He was paving the way for her in the most cold-blooded, most outrageous, and most effective way.

She bit her lip, and the banning seal in her palm slowly faded away.

"I understand."

Her voice was still trembling, but it was much steadier than before.

"I will wait."

Su Yun's voice fell.

"Watch the progress. Don't make a move prematurely."

Chu Youwei took a deep breath.

"Yes."

She raised her hand and opened up more authority along the rule network.

The next second, toward Dahuang Prefecture, the red light on the exam papers became even more blinding.

Old Fengdu.

Ghost Emperor Hall.

The Ten Kings of Yama had no idea that they had turned from "power grabbers" into "free labor."

They only saw the Invigilator throne phantom in mid-air becoming increasingly solid.

Part of the authority that originally belonged to Chu Youwei was tilting toward the exam paper in Zhou Qi's hand.

King Qin Guang opened the book of life and death, watching the progress jumping frantically on it, his hands trembling with excitement.

"Eighty!"

"The throne solidification progress is at eighty!"

King Songdi laughed heartily.

"Continue!"

"Make those Daxia candidates collapse even more!"

"The more painful they are, the closer we are to the throne!"

King Biancheng stood behind Zhou Qi, personally kneading his shoulders.

"Little Zhou, keep it up."

"This heaven-sent fortune will be in our hands soon."

"Your permanent position is secure!"

Zhou Qi's eyes were full of bloodshot veins.

The judges pen almost wrote sparks.

A permanent position.

An office desk.

No longer having to be bombarded by parents in the middle of the night.

Even having the Ten Kings of Yama as leaders.

What was this called?

This was a post-mortem counterattack!

His soul body was clearly becoming fainter, but his spirit was becoming more and more excited.

This was the power of landing ashore!

"Rest assured, my Lords!"

"For the last major question, I guarantee that not a single person among the hundreds of millions in Daxia will be able to solve it!"

"The authority will definitely be ours!"

The Ghost Emperor sat on the throne at the highest point, his black robe draping down the steps.

The Ghost Emperor eye rotated slowly, gazing at the soon-to-be-solidified Invigilator throne.

The corners of his mouth finally curled into a cold smile.

"That Rancher in Linhai is nothing more than this."

"He doesn't even know the exam room has been stolen."