High School of Demon Hunting

Chapter 645: Chapter 314 ’Greeting’_1

The subterranean corridor is winding and deep, with no space for idling.

There’s no visible exit ahead, nor is there any light behind.

As Zheng Qing and Old Yao walk through, the only sounds are their echoing footsteps and Old Yao’s incessant explanations.

Despite being a professor, Old Yao might have a bit of a temper, but his penchant for teaching runs deep. Even when simply explaining the concept of the ’Causality Turning Curse’ to Zheng Qing, he tirelessly provides numerous examples and elaborates on numerous details.

For example, it is from him that Zheng Qing learns that the ’diet’ of the demons in the hunting grounds is very particular.

To lower the ’death’ difficulty, the wizards at the school issue a priority command of ’swallowing’ to the creatures when binding them with magic. This encourages them to swallow their prey whole after killing, reducing the pain felt by students during their death process.

Of course, sometimes there’s more prey than meat, or the demons get carried away in a battle frenzy, the ’priority command’ can be overridden by their more primal instincts. This inevitably leads to unfortunate situations like ’sharing food’, ’crushing and chewing’ and getting ’torn to pieces’.

While those scenarios don’t affect the students’ returns, they can leave psychological scars to some extent.

To handle such instances, the school spares no expense, arranging for the best therapists and ample rest time for these students to ensure that their future studies aren’t affected.

Another troublesome situation is when a student loses a small ’part’ in the hunting field—like a bit of a finger, an ear, half a nose, etc. According to magic rules, the students can’t return intact using the ’Turning Curse’ since they’re not dead.

In such cases, the school prioritizes sending advanced hunters to kill that wretched demon, retrieve the student’s lost piece from its stomach, and reconstruct it. If too much time has passed and the ’part’ has been digested, the school suggests using the ’Regeneration Spell’ to restore their missing limbs with magic or a magical potion.

In any case, for such a high-risk event, First University has done everything possible to reduce the probability of accidents occurring to ensure their young wizards won’t sustain any damage.

During their discussion, the two had arrived at the end of the corridor.

Separated by a curtain of deep red velvet is the award stage’s resting room.

Zheng Qing can faintly hear the commentary, drums, and the young wizards singing in unison from the nearby viewing stand.

Just as Old Yao is about to lift the curtain and leave, the young sponsored student finally breaks his silence, pulling on the professor’s robe.

”Professor!” He looks at Old Yao with grave concern and asks hurriedly, ”What about that tiger? Is it a demon or not?”

Old Yao turns his head and raises his eyebrows, ”Who told you that it’s a demon?”

”But it has demonic Qi!” Zheng Qing is in despair as he rambles, ”You all seem to think it’s not a demon, but it has red eyes and its entire body is suffused with demon Qi...most importantly, it appeared with those demon groups! I thought...”

”You thought?” Old Yao interrupts him, glaring at the young wizard and admonishing, ”Do you think what you think is what you think?”

”I’ve told you time and time again, not every creature with red eyes is a demon. Weren’t you seen walking around the school with a red eye? You didn’t get your head struck by lightning from the Protection Array though, did you?”

”But what about the demonic Qi, how do we explain its demonic Qi...” Zheng Qing mumbles quietly.

”If you face a large group of demons, tearing them apart from east to west, killing hundreds, you’d also be heavily imbued with demonic Qi.”

”If you kill hundreds of fish, you would smell of fish. Not to mention demons!”

”That’s just because you’re inexperienced!”

”Any hunter who has a deep understanding of demons would never confuse ’contaminated monster Qi’ with ’emitted monster Qi’... this is basic knowledge, you still have to learn it.”

”If it’s not a demon, then what is it?!” Zheng Qing continues his pursuit.

”There’s this possibility, and there’s that possibility.” Old Yao puffs on his pipe, blowing out several smoke rings, and shakes his head, ”There are too many possibilities, I didn’t investigate in detail, so I can’t make any hasty conclusions.”

”But I can tell you that this black tiger definitely has a profound connection with you.”

Zheng Qing wants to ask more questions, but a sudden wave of vigorous cheering and shouting interrupts him from behind the curtain.

Upon seeing this, Old Yao quickly pushes the young sponsored student inside, reminding him, ”If you have any questions, ask them slowly later. Go get your award first, that’s the priority...you could also ask your teammates, they’ve all come out earlier than you, they might know more...”

Before his words die away, Old Yao’s figure suddenly fades, and before Zheng Qing can recover, he has vanished down the corridor.

All that is left is the empty corridor, and the billowing curtain in the wind.

...

...

Perhaps because he realized that meeting the other members of the Absolution team would be awkward, Zheng Qing had been subtly resisting the idea of seeing his companions—this was one of the reasons he kept asking Old Yao question after question.

After all, he had cried and tried to act cool in the hunting grounds, completely shattering his male pride.

However, feeling awkward was one thing, being punched upon meeting was another.

Zheng Qing had speculated on many different scenarios for their meeting in his mind.

Like everyone sobbing uncontrollably—this was a bit exaggerated, and something Zheng Qing internally refused to imagine. He also didn’t believe that Blue Bird would sob and embrace everyone else.

Or cheering excitedly, shaking hands and hugging—aside from the carefree Xin Fat Man, Zheng Qing found it hard to imagine others having a reason to celebrate. After all, Xiao Xiao and Blue Bird had just died once, and the mental trauma wouldn’t dissipate that easily.

After much thought, he thought the most likely scenario would be a few men exchanging awkward smiles, nodding at each other in greeting, then changing the topic to something unrelated and silently ignoring what had happened.

After all these considerations, he wasn’t expecting to get punched in the face the moment he met the other members of team Absolution.

The punch was thrown by Zhang Ji Xin.

When Zheng Qing stepped past the curtain and into the resting room beneath the awards platform, the other members of team Absolution were standing in a corner, quietly discussing something.

The young sponsored student barely had time to contort his face into a friendly smile, let alone figure out how to greet them, when he was sent flying by a punch from the burly red-faced male wizard who had rushed up to him.

Truly sent flying.

As he floated in mid-air, Zheng Qing found the presence of mind to appraise—it’s no wonder that the Zhang family is reputed for their fierce punches. Zhang’s punch was nicely executed! Maybe during future training, he could give him more weight to carry.

But...

Why did he punch me?!