NOVEL WEB Chapter 135 - Mystery
Both Mai Dongzi’s mentor and instructors were aware that she had been listed on the dark market assassination bounty and had already survived two assassination attempts.
During both attacks, her bodyguard, Su, was present. After understanding the situation, Major General Su personally contacted the president of Imperial Capital University to inform him.
Such matters should only be known by the school so that they can implement relevant precautions. If something happened to Mai Dongzi and the school realized it too late, the consequences would be dire.
Mai Dongzi only knew that Major General Su had informed the school; she was unaware that Prince Arthur had done the same and had made further arrangements at the university.
When the decision was made to give students a break, the instructors responsible for Mai Dongzi’s safety were left with headaches.
After all, they were not full-time bodyguards and couldn’t provide constant protection for her, so once she left the school, her safety could not be guaranteed.
Therefore, the school leadership sent Instructor Lan to persuade Mai Dongzi not to go out.
As Mai Dongzi’s direct instructor, Lan was genuinely worried. Instead of using flying messages, she directly approached the command department to convince Mai Dongzi to stay at school for these seven days.
If it weren’t for Zhuang Huaiya, Mai Dongzi would have indeed stayed to cultivate. The Special Talent Training Center would only open after the break, and she didn’t want to return to the Xi family.
She wasn’t a typical eighteen-year-old girl who would yearn for the outside world after being confined to studying and training for six months.
However, Mai Dongzi hadn’t planned to visit the Zhuang family after the break, as she didn’t want anyone to discover her relationship with them, to avoid implicating the Zhuang family.
As for how to discreetly leave Imperial Capital University without attracting attention, Mai Dongzi had at least three plans.
Just as she was about to report her plans to Instructor Lan, she found that Lan had already approached her first, urging her not to leave the school.
Understanding that Lan was concerned for her, Mai Dongzi shared her plan.
It turned out that due to the energy potion matter, she had earned a significant amount of merit points from the Blue-Black Empire, and Prince Arthur had used this to elevate her personal information level from a regular encrypted level two to a level three confidential status.
With her current level of confidentiality, unless she joined the military, whenever she used her personal device to verify her identity in regular situations, even if there were discrepancies in the information, mechanical guards or ordinary enforcers would have no right to question her affairs.
Therefore, Mai Dongzi could disguise her appearance to avoid being recognized, and she didn’t fear being unable to pass general security checks.
After seeing her disguise, Instructor Lan still couldn’t fully relax, but her concerns were at least significantly reduced.
As the holiday approached, the members of the Phantom Team weren’t too excited.
Although they had advanced in the team competition, the school held differing opinions due to their insufficient cultivation levels, so they continued to train hard.
Mai Dongzi had privately informed Zhuang Huaiya that she would visit his family, so he didn’t ask where she would go after the holiday.
Wang Yiyi, Chen Xinhe, and even Yu Lan all invited Ma Dongzi to visit their homes. Though they were all adults now, such a formal invitation to a friend required parental and family consent.
Over the past month, their cultivation had visibly improved under Ma Dongzi’s guidance, and their invitations were sincere.
However, Ma Dongzi suspected that the invitations also reflected the desire of the three families to foster a good relationship with her, hence their formal approach in inviting her under the guise of being children.
Mai Dongzi certainly refused; she already had plans for the seven-day break.
Moreover, her serious guidance toward the Phantom Team, aside from Zhuang Huiya, was merely a responsibility of her role as captain.
There was also the impending crisis of the apocalypse, and she wanted to contribute whenever she could.
Once the team competition ended and the Phantom Team disbanded, she really wouldn’t be able to care as much for anyone other than Zhuang Huaiya, as she had her own path to follow.
However, she didn’t outright reject them, so the three girls wouldn’t feel too disappointed or lose hope; she merely said they could discuss it again after a longer break.
Among them, only Zhuang Huaiya seemed to understand his cousin’s intentions somewhat.
Since the school announced the seven-day break, Mai Dongzi sensed that Bai Zhizhi had been unusually quiet but suddenly felt a strong negative energy from her.
Thus, instead of returning to the arts department, Mai Dongzi stayed in the command department to “observe” her using her mental powers.
But after two days without any noticeable actions from Bai Zhizhi, if it weren’t for the occasional malicious intent she sensed, Mai Dongzi surely wouldn’t have felt the need to keep “monitoring” her continuously.
From the information Tony shared, he believed that Bai Zhizhi’s hostility toward Mai Dongzi stemmed from her infatuation with Prince Arthur. Bai Zhizhi resented Mai Dongzi for receiving the prince’s attention.
If Mai Dongzi’s mental abilities weren’t so high, and she didn’t have such keen perception, she might have easily been influenced by what Tony said.
After this period of observation, Mai Dongzi’s keen perception led her to believe that Bai Zhizhi was not the type to be crazily infatuated with a man.
After all, when alone, Bai Zhizhi’s cold and ruthless gaze did not resemble that of an ordinary nineteen-year-old girl.
What troubled Mai Dongzi even more was that she had twice “seen” Bai Zhizhi sending messages to a mysterious account that had no identifiable information.
Each time Bai Zhizhi sent a message to that account, she would pull out a mental power-shielding device.
This device should be capable of blocking the mental probing of mentalists below level eight.
Although Mai Dongzi’s mental power was extraordinarily strong compared to other mentalists, she was still affected by the shielding device and could only barely “see” that the mysterious account didn’t even have a phone number, without being able to clearly discern what information Bai Zhizhi sent.
The fact that she needed a shielding device to send messages to this mysterious account made Mai Dongzi suspect that something was definitely wrong.
However, without being able to see clearly what the issue was, she couldn’t make any judgments.
That night, for some reason—whether Bai Zhizhi forgot or felt it unnecessary—she did not use the shielding device while messaging the mysterious account.
As a result, Mai Dongzi clearly saw Bai Zhizhi’s message: “The Imperial Capital University will have a seven-day break starting tomorrow.”
If the other party’s account had shown normal information, Ma Dongzi wouldn’t have thought much of it, as it was a common announcement known to all students at the university.
But when Bai Zhizhi sent this message, her malevolent intent soared like a rocket, making it impossible for Mai Dongzi to treat it as a mere announcement.
Mai Dongzi hadn’t forgotten that assassin organizations were lurking outside the school, looking for opportunities to kill her.