Zhang Ying was gone.
An Jing blinked, staring into the small room—at the bed of his roommate, friend, and follower on the far left.
The young hunter was not in his bed.
His bed was impeccably neat, so neat it looked almost unnatural. Both the pillow and the blanket were folded into sharp, flawless squares, looking precisely like blocks of tofu.
An Jing knew for a fact that Zhang Ying could never have folded this himself. The clumsy blockhead had never learned how to fold a quilt; An Jing had tried teaching him several times, but every attempt had ended up looking like a dog's breakfast.
"How is Zhang Ying gone?!"
An hour later, when Cang Linzu woke up and noticed the empty bed, he couldn't help crying out in shock.
He and Zhang Ying were the closest of friends. One was a hunter, the other came from a martial family; both had practiced martial arts since childhood and shared a passion for hunting, fighting, and the use of sabers, spears, staves, and swords. Although Zhang Ying was not quite as strong as Cang Linzu, the gap wasn't huge—especially when it came to archery, an area where Zhang Ying was easily the best among all the kids, giving them plenty of room to learn from each other.
Normally, the two of them stuck close to An Jing, practically inseparable.
"Could he have been running around everywhere and gotten thrown in solitary confinement?"
Zhan Feng muttered. Although most of the children in Xuanming Village were far more mature than their peers due to their backgrounds as refugees, once placed in a safe environment, a few naturally mischievous streaks would resurface. Some kids loved running amok and ended up getting locked away as punishment, missing dinner entirely.
Zhan Feng cared most about eating; though large, he never took unnecessary risks. Zhang Ying was the exact opposite, and if An Jing hadn't reined him in on several occasions, that kid would definitely have been wandering all over the place.
"Let's go ask the instructors," Ye Xiuyuan said softly. He was one of the brightest among all the children. Glancing sideways at An Jing, he noticed that the leader of Dormitory A wore a completely expressionless face, lost in thought. A sudden realization dawned on him. "Perhaps... he simply left."
Left? Could it be... that he was eliminated?
Has the second wave of elimination started?
The same terrifying thought surfaced in everyone's mind, yet no one dared to voice it. But after searching the entire dormitory and the Martial Arts Arena without finding a single trace of Zhang Ying, everyone was forced to accept the truth.
Zhang Ying, just like the apprentices who had left before, had been eliminated.
He wasn't the only one.
Twenty-seven people were eliminated this time. It wasn't a huge number; some had performed well, while others had been merely average, making it impossible to guess the exact criteria.
Before dinner, just as before, one of the instructors announced the news to everyone.
"I expected as much."
Ye Xiuyuan let out a sigh, remarking that he had known this outcome was coming all along. He had simply assumed he would be leaving before Zhang Ying; he never expected the young hunter to be the first of them to head down the mountain.
"Personally, I think I'd still make a decent accountant."
After dinner, during the evening training session at the Martial Arts Arena, he spoke frankly to An Jing and the others, admitting the truth without pretense: "I'm not cut out for martial arts. The recent training has already started to make me feel completely out of my depth. Perhaps one day, I'll be heading down the mountain too."
"I might end up going down as well," Gu Yeqi sighed. Their girls' dormitory was missing a few people too. Among them was a young girl she had traveled with all the way from the refugee camps of Mingshan City. With one less person to talk to, she felt quite lonely.
What's more, although Gu Yeqi could still manage the current training volume, she increasingly felt the strain, making her anxious that she might not be able to keep up with An Jing.
"Zhang Ying just wouldn't train properly! I told him over and over, martial arts require practice, not just reckless brawling!"
Cang Linzu muttered gloomily, kicking at the dirt beneath his feet. "Everyone's just looking for a way out. Frankly, I'd prefer to stay as long as possible—they always teach us real skills here, and the more you learn, the more you have to rely on once you go down the mountain."
"Not to mention, getting meat to eat after leaving the mountain is definitely going to be much harder. Zhang Ying is going to regret this!"
Having lost a playmate, he could only resort to putting on a tough front.
"Truth be told," Zhan Feng smacked his lips, savoring the lingering taste of dinner as he lazily chimed in, "he's right."
Ye Xiuyuan and An Jing both shook their heads. Turning his gaze toward An Jing, the frail young scholar remarked with a tinge of emotion, "Perhaps only Brother An will be able to climb to the very peak... I just hope you won't forget us when that day comes."
"How could I?" An Jing said in a deep voice. "We broke free from the Frost Calamity together, trained together for this long, and shared the same dormitory. We are all brothers. How could I ever forget?"
In truth, his mind was filled with doubts. For instance, Master Yao had been absent the entire day, and many of the instructors were nowhere to be found either. Could they all have gone to escort the children down the mountain?
Even if he himself had woken up an hour late, had Zhang Ying been woken up halfway through the night and forced to leave? Would he really have been so quiet and slipped away without a word? All of this remained unknown.
Moreover, today he hadn't heard the sound of carts traveling up and down the mountain, nor had he seen any tracks left by departing or arriving vehicles.
Could the eliminated children still be inside the estate?
For now, however, those doubts had to be pushed aside.
"I've been planning to check anyway. Today, Master Yao and most of the instructors are away... Tonight, instead of sleeping, I'll look around the estate. Maybe I can find those who were eliminated."
Having made up his mind, An Jing turned to reassure the others. "Everyone get to sleep early tonight. The better you sleep, the sharper your focus, and the better your training results will be—that way, none of you will end up being eliminated."
"Brother An is always so calm... though perhaps a bit too calm at times."
Ye Xiuyuan smiled, a lingering melancholy always clouding his features.
After all, a scholar from a wealthy family whose lifelong ambition had been to pass the imperial examinations and enter the capital had been reduced to his current plight by natural disaster. With the imperial exams practically closed to him forever, the best he could hope for in the future was to become a managing accountant. Even if he had accepted his fate, he could never truly let it go.
"If I weren't calm, how could I be your head senior brother?"
Lacking any patience for this passive acceptance of inevitable elimination, An Jing unceremoniously smacked him on the back of the head. "You're only a few years old and already drowning in sentimental sorrow. It's not like you'll never see us again! What do you mean you're not suited for martial arts? You just haven't practiced enough! Tomorrow, add two more sets of leg workouts for yourself!"
"Eh?!" Hearing this, even someone of Ye Xiuyuan's temperament panicked. "Leg workouts? Two more sets?! That'll kill me, Big Brother! I don't want my legs still shaking when I wake up the next morning!"
"For talking so much, make it three!"
Under An Jing's iron-fisted suppression, night fell swiftly.
Once everyone else had fallen fast asleep, An Jing suddenly opened his eyes.
With no instructors patrolling outside tonight, this was the absolute best time for a nocturnal excursion.
Moving without a sound, An Jing slipped out of the dormitory. With a few agile leaps, he vaulted onto the roof, then scaled the perimeter wall to survey the overall layout of the estate.
While living day-to-day inside Xuanming Village, the layout had been hard to discern, but viewed from a high vantage point now, he could see that the village was nestled between two mountains in a peculiar and wondrous configuration. To his memories from another life, it resembled a strange geomantic formation known as the "Two Dragons Playing with a Pearl." The estate itself was the pearl played with by the two dragons of the surrounding mountains, gathering the essence of the terrain.
Centered around the children's living quarters, layers of watchtowers provided defense, locking Xuanming Village down tight. The entire estate was less of an ordinary manorial home and more akin to a small fortress.