31: Chapter 31 Some things you can never learn from textbooks
"Wait~ Wait, Scar Brother, do you remember? I even treated you to a meal yesterday!"
The person who had been slashed lay beneath the building opposite Yun Zhuo and the others. Blood on his head forced him to squint, his trembling hand trying to stop the opponent's long blade from falling.
But the middle-aged man with a scar on his head walked over and slashed him right on the head. The blade got stuck in the skull, and he couldn't pull it out with one hand.
He stepped on the victim's shoulder with one foot and yanked the handle of the blade back and forth with both hands to pull it out.
Accompanied by a piercing screech of friction, the blade came out, and he stumbled, almost falling to the ground.
Outside the crowd, three Patrol Officers arrived belatedly.
"What happened? Disperse, all of you! What are you looking at? Disperse! If you gather here again, I'll haul every single one of you into the station."
The crowd quickly cleared a path for the three of them.
When the Patrol Officers saw Scar Brother with his back to them, shaking the blood off his blade, their expressions tightened, and they quickly drew their corrosion energy guns from their waists.
"Drop the blade! Put your hands on your head!"
Scar Brother carelessly tossed the blade into his storage bracelet, turned back, and looked at the three Patrol Officers with a cold smile: "Captain Wang, I just treated you to a meal yesterday, and today you don't recognize me?"
"Oh, so it's Scar Brother."
The Patrol Officer breathed a sigh of relief and carelessly tucked his gun back into his waist holster.
"I'll leave this place to you, Captain Wang."
"I'm telling you, Scar Brother, can you let us handle these things in the future? You've killed too many people, and it's hard for us to answer to our superiors."
"Alright, I'll be careful next time."
Scar Brother handed Captain Wang a cigarette. After they both lit up and took a puff, he waved his fingers at his subordinates behind him.
Surrounded by his entourage, he walked out of the crowd. Then, as if suddenly remembering something, he turned back and glanced at the building opposite.
When Yun Zhuo was swept by his gaze, his body suddenly tensed up. Subconsciously, he wanted to pull Teacher Su to transform, but he was grabbed by Teacher Wu beside him.
"How do you feel?" Teacher Wu laughed. "A good show like this is rare in the city, but it happens every single day outside the city."
Yun Zhuo looked at Teacher Wu: "It's all like this?"
"Yeah, it's the same everywhere."
"I used to think this kind of thing would be a mech duel. I didn't expect it to be like a street thug fight; it's truly disappointing."
Teacher Wu was stunned for a moment. Is this kid really just a high school student?
He remembered that when he first saw something like this, he was a junior in university, and the school had organized a field combat exercise.
Although he hadn't been scared enough to wet his pants, he had been scared enough to shake uncontrollably, feeling like his entire world had collapsed and nowhere was safe.
Yet this kid, Yun Zhuo, was complaining that the scene wasn't shocking enough.
Teacher Wu stared at him and said: "You don't seem afraid at all?"
"Maybe I was mentally prepared. Whether it's Principal Zhou or Principal Ren, they both told me that no one cares about killing outside the city."
Teacher Wu gestured for him to turn around and look at Teacher Su.
Yun Zhuo looked back and saw that Teacher Su's face was pale, her hands gripping the edge of the table tightly, her eyes staring blankly at the scene below the opposite building.
Her pupils reflected the Patrol Officers tossing the guy with the cracked skull onto a garbage truck like a dead dog.
Yun Zhuo gently took her hand. Teacher Su's body shuddered violently, and only then did she snap out of it and look at Yun Zhuo.
She forced a stiff smile on her face: "I'm fine."
"Teacher Su, if you're scared, we can sleep together tonight."
"Asking for a beating~" Teacher Su quickly pulled her hand out of Yun Zhuo's grip, pretending to be nonchalant, and picked up a disposable empty cup to continue drinking.
Yun Zhuo wanted to remind her that she was only drinking air, but decided against it.
He turned back to Teacher Wu: "Why don't the Patrol Officers stop it? This is too blatant, isn't it? And why don't they use mechs? Do they not have any?"
"For this question, you first need to figure out who pays the Patrol Officers' salaries. You will find that the people paying the Patrol Officers are the same people paying that scarred guy's commission. In a sense, they are colleagues.
As for mech duels, the destructive power is too great. If too many people die, there will be too much public outcry. When that happens, the people above will grab someone to kill just to appease the public.
And that person will usually be the scarred guy.
If you were the scarred guy, what would you do?"
"Kill his War Princess first?"
Teacher Wu smiled slightly: "I really didn't misjudge you. You're quite sharp, kid."
"By the way, Teacher Wu." Yun Zhuo looked at the large kidney on his plate and said: "They say you are what you eat, so why do so many people tell young people to suffer more?"
Teacher Wu was stunned.
"This... I'm a martial arts teacher, how would I know these big principles? Why don't you ask your Teacher Su? Isn't she a literature teacher?"
When the three of them looked at Teacher Su, she sighed slightly, covered the back of Yun Zhuo's hand with her hand, and said: "You are still young, and your personality hasn't solidified yet. Knowing some things too early is not good for you."
"Teacher Su is still the best to me, unlike some teachers who made me watch street murders on the first day of class."
"Hey, hey, hey, what kind of talk is that? You're eighteen, and you're still young? When I was your age, I almost had a kid..."
Before Teacher Wu could finish, he was stomped on by the teacher's wife.
"You can't expect ivory to come out of a dog's mouth. How can you teach a student like that?"
Teacher Wu retorted: "I think I'm teaching quite well. If you don't gain some experience now, you'll easily suffer when you go out later."
As he spoke, he looked at Teacher Su again.
"I thought you would tell this kid that enduring hardship is a virtue."
Teacher Su said: "Enduring hardship can indeed temper a person's resilience, but you must also understand that if someone tells you to suffer, they definitely want to enjoy the sweetness themselves."
Teacher Wu nodded: "Literature teachers are truly cultured."
After finishing the barbecue, Teacher Wu stretched and said: "I originally planned to take you around properly today, but forget it. It's getting late, so let's go back to the hotel to rest early."
After saying that, he shoved a crystal card to Yun Zhuo: "The methods for synthesizing runes are all in here. Go back and figure it out yourself."
He then draped his arm over Yun Zhuo's shoulder and walked toward the hotel.
Yun Zhuo inserted the crystal card into his bracelet, and a holographic projection expanded, revealing yet another magic circle.
"Teacher Wu, let me ask you something."
"Speak."
"Doesn't the book say the Great Cataclysm originated from a silicon-based virus? The people who survived only gained their current abilities after symbiosis with the virus. So, what's up with this magic circle?"
"This..." Teacher Wu was stumped and subconsciously looked at Teacher Su again.
"Don't look at me, I don't know either."
"Hey~ You have something to use, why ask so much? If you want to know, wait until you get to university and ask your professors. I hear some bored guys are specifically researching this."
Arriving at the hotel, they booked three rooms. As soon as Yun Zhuo entered his room, he began to study the rune synthesis magic circle.
On the way, Teacher Wu had mentioned that rune synthesis takes three runes to create one, with attributes randomly overlaid, and the maximum will not exceed the sum of the three runes.
For example, if you synthesize three 2% crit rate runes, the maximum crit rate after synthesis is 5%, not 6%.
At the same time, every time you fail, the quality of the rune will drop by one level, and when it can't drop any further, it will directly explode.
The synthesis magic circle requires corrosion crystal to power it, and the synthesis cost is calculated based on the number of attempts: one thousand for the first time, ten thousand for the second, increasing exponentially.
At the same time, as the number of synthesis attempts increases, the probability of success decays exponentially.
Moreover, according to the calculations of the magic circle provided by Teacher Wu, the success rate for the first synthesis of crit rate runes is only 50%.
That means there is a 50% chance of success and a 50% chance of it exploding.
But none of this mattered to Yun Zhuo. With System synthesis, the success rate is locked at 100%, and the corrosion crystal consumption is always half-price.
Yun Zhuo took out three crit rate runes and was just about to test it out when a knock-knock sound came from the door.