Chapter 519

As the top student in her class for three consecutive years, Su Yunni had always believed she could maintain her ranking.

As for Zhang Yu, who had transferred from the Civil Engineering Department, she originally hadn't taken him seriously at all.

However, watching him gradually rise to fame in the Artifact Refining Department over the past few months, Su Yunni couldn't help but secretly compete with him, determined to hold on to her position as the class's number one.

Reviewing, practicing problems, conducting experiments... every time she thought of Zhang Yu chasing closely behind her, she dared not slack off in the slightest.

On the day of the exam, she went all out, using every trick in the book.

On this evening in early September, Su Yunni kept refreshing the grade report on her eye prosthetics, eager to know her results as soon as possible.

"First!"

Seeing the ranking, Su Yunni breathed a sigh of relief: "I'm still first in the class."

Just as she was feeling a bit proud and about to scroll through the group messages to see if anyone was praising her,

she saw Ziyun Zhen in the group say: "Did you know? Zhang Yu handed in his paper half an hour early."

Another person said: "I was in the same exam hall as him; he left the lab an hour early."

Ziyun Zhen: "That early? No wonder when I went to the lab that day, he had already arrived."

Seeing these words, Su Yunni frowned and quickly checked the rankings and comprehensive scores again.

Zhang Yu was still second in the class, but because his comprehensive score had increased and due to the graduation of senior students, his department ranking jumped from 48th to 39th.

After calculating the change in his comprehensive score, Su Yunni realized that he had increased by the same amount as her in this final exam.

"I got full marks... Did he also get full marks?"

But then Su Yunni thought that she had achieved full marks only through such hard work, whereas he had left early for every exam, clearly without giving his full effort.

The initial excitement of maintaining her class ranking cooled down at that moment. Su Yunni felt as if she had punched cotton—something she had taken extremely seriously, the final exam, while Zhang Yu treated it so casually.

"Is this guy putting all his energy into his own projects?"

The light on Su Yunni's eye prosthetics flickered as she opened the textbooks for upperclassmen one by one.

"I need to prepare well for the design competition too."

Although Zhang Yu said he would go head-to-head with Jin Jun, Su Yunni naturally didn't believe he could succeed.

Su Yunni made up her mind to prepare thoroughly for the design competition: "I want to win a place in the design competition and obtain a military-grade technique before Zhang Yu completes his military-grade project."

When buying the refining materials needed for the experiment, Su Yunni frowned slightly: "Have the raw material prices gone up?"

"Is it because of the Top Ten League?"

Although the price of raw materials had risen, it was nothing to Su Yunni, and she didn't take it to heart.

The release of the final exam results also marked the start of a new academic year.

Zhang Yu had also become a senior.

In the Songyang hometown group, students were constantly refreshing messages.

Most of the messages were from freshmen who had just finished the college entrance exam and arrived on the second floor. They had been the most active in the group since arriving, and now they often discussed the different schools' environments, academics, coursework, dorms...

Watching their conversations, Zhang Yu felt like he was seeing himself in his freshman year.

Yu Xinghan: "90% new second-hand Tianyan Eye Prosthetics, anyone want them?"

Yu Xinghan: "Once you enter university, without good eye prosthetics, you can't even keep up in class."

Seeing Yu Xinghan promote eye prosthetics to the freshmen again, Zhang Yu thought nothing of it—many people in the group did similar things, it was a kind of tradition of the older generation from Songyang helping the new.

However, some topics the freshmen brought up did catch Zhang Yu's attention.

"Songyang High School has become one of the four major high schools in Songyang City?"

Zhang Yu noticed that many of the fresh graduates from Songyang High School in the group were asking about him, seemingly very interested.

"I didn't expect that even though I've left Songyang High School for years, my legend still lives on?"

While the freshmen in the group exuded vitality, from time to time, graduates who had already left school would let out all kinds of sighs.

"Have you found a job?"

"This month's employment rate data has dropped again, and it seems related to the Top Ten Tournament."

"Graduation equals unemployment, so I can only take on odd jobs for now..."

The feeling of graduates is still hard for most students to understand.

The subtle changes in employment data, to most people, seem no different from the yearly fluctuations in employment rates.

However, the start of the Top Ten Tournament attracted many people's attention and also interrupted Zhang Yu's state of being buried in bitter cultivation in the Taiqing Realm.

This Top Ten Tournament is held on a floating island amidst a sea of clouds.

Aside from various professional competitions, the most attention-grabbing in the Top Ten Tournament is naturally the various military competitions.