Mist Empire’s Rise: Fake Noble to Fog Queen

At three in the afternoon, the school assembly began punctually in the main cathedral hall of the academy.

Luo Wei sat with her fellow students on long wooden benches, staring at the semicircular platform at the front with drowsy eyes.

Having barely woken up when she crawled out of bed, she now sat there with her mind adrift, hardly able to make out what the headmaster and professors were saying on stage.

"Surely no one would notice if I take a quick nap?" she thought to herself.

After glancing around and seeing no teachers patrolling, she quickly lowered her head and closed her eyes.

In her hazy state, a burst of laughter suddenly erupted around her.

Luo Wei jolted awake, thinking she'd been caught sleeping by a teacher, but when she looked up, she found everyone's attention focused on the front of the hall.

She blinked hard to clear her vision, finally making out three people standing on the platform - Hol Felix, Theodore, and their senior Sebastian Noel (nicknamed the Guinea Pig), along with several other upperclassmen.

Hol was reading his self-criticism letter. The students had burst into laughter because he'd written "I will bathe properly in the future, brew potions properly, and won't make my classmates faint from the smell anymore."

It was indeed funny, and Luo Wei couldn't help but laugh too.

Just thinking about how Hol had gone to the manure lake and covered himself in mud to mask his smell, only to end up losing credit points after students complained, made her laugh uncontrollably.

The headmaster had been merciful to her, not making her read her self-criticism in public, showing some consideration for her dignity.

"Compared to such social death, I'd rather lose forty credit points," she thought.

Apart from those few humorous lines, Hol's self-criticism was written in proper terms. He quickly left the stage after finishing.

The others weren't let off so easily - they had all participated in last night's theft and had to read two self-criticism letters each, one of which they'd only finished writing that morning.

Sebastian, as the ringleader, was pushed out first by the disciplinary teacher and had to read both letters publicly.

Even from halfway across the hall, Luo Wei could see the dark circles under his eyes - he looked like a giant panda. Who knew how late he'd stayed up last night? Ha!

But as she laughed, her amusement faded.

When it came to staying up late, she was probably the one who'd been up the longest.

Luo Wei touched the skin under her eyes. She hadn't looked in a mirror before leaving in the afternoon - surely her dark circles weren't worse than Sebastian's?

Up on the platform, Sebastian was speed-reading through the text on the parchment so fast it sounded like he'd scalded his tongue. With the mentality of "if I read fast enough, no one will understand what I'm confessing to," he managed to power through both letters in one breath with his impressive lung capacity.

The disciplinary teacher glared at him and announced with a dark face: "Sebastian's behavior was egregious. Twenty credit points will be deducted."

Luo Wei was shocked - twenty points just for stealing a self-criticism letter? That seemed harsh.

Theodore had already lost twenty points last semester. With another twenty deducted this semester, he would only have sixty points left!

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Her conscience stung - this was all her fault!

After all the students finished reading their letters, the disciplinary teacher added a twenty-point penalty to each of them, warning students once again to follow academy regulations and maintain personal ethics.

Now Luo Wei understood - the yearly points were like the moral conduct scores from her previous life. Those who misbehaved or violated rules would face heavier deductions.

After the criticism session, the academy moved on to commending certain students.

Those who had participated in and brought honor to the academy in last May's magic competition were each awarded twenty credit points.

Theodore, who had just gone down with his self-criticism letters, ran back up when he heard his name called, grinning from ear to ear.

Minus twenty plus twenty equals zero deduction!

The competition rewards had already been given out last year - their team won second place, and everyone on the team received five gold coins from the academy. He'd eaten well for a whole month with those coins!

...

The assembly lasted for an hour and a half. Luo Wei left the cathedral with drooping eyelids and returned to her dorm to sleep soundly.

She slept until after eight in the evening, and when she woke up, the sky outside was completely dark.

After nibbling on some bread and putting on her coat, she hurriedly went out.

Tonight she didn't need to watch the bulletin board, only patrol the warning line. She could even squeeze in a short nap at the student council office.

At nine o'clock sharp, Luo Wei arrived at the academy's main gate and began patrolling the perimeter wall clockwise.

While patrolling, she also examined the base of the wall for any engraved patterns, but like last night, she found nothing.

After circling once without finding any magic runes, she wondered if the academy's magic formation might be carved underground.

Luo Wei pondered, touching her chin - if the runes were underground, how deep would she need to dig to find them?

Well, might as well start digging!

She hadn't brought a shovel tonight, so she could only use the landing net she'd used yesterday to dig at the soil.

Luo Wei chose a spot far from the academy gates, at the base of the east district wall where few people passed by. Even if she dug a hole here, it wouldn't likely be discovered.

If she couldn't finish tonight, she could continue tomorrow.

The winter soil was dry and hard. After digging for a while, Luo Wei was already panting. When she straightened up to look, the hole wasn't even knee-deep.

She wished she could ask Theodore how he'd managed to dig up an entire tree!

After resting briefly, Luo Wei continued.

She dug for most of the night until the hole was half as deep as she was tall, but there was still only soil at the bottom - no sign of any magic runes.

Luo Wei turned the landing net upside down and thrust it into the soil. It sank about twenty centimeters, and she could push it a bit deeper still.

Was this depth still not enough? Had the academy hidden the magic formation's stone slabs dozens of meters underground?

Luo Wei wiped the sweat from her brow as she stood by the hole, leaning on the landing net.

Magic runes needed a medium - whether stone slabs or metal plates, it had to be something whole and resistant to decay.

If it was really buried so deep, how much soil had the academy piled on top of it?

And how did Professor Temple maintain the runes if they were buried so deep?

Suddenly, Luo Wei realized - of course the runes couldn't be underground!

The academy inspected the runes every semester - they couldn't possibly dig along the entire wall each time. The runes must be somewhere easily accessible!

Could they be on the wall itself?

She looked up to examine the wall carefully, but it was built of stone bricks and earth - any patterns would be obvious, and she would have noticed them before now.

Where could they be?

Luo Wei frowned as she pulled out the landing net. After thinking for a moment, she walked along the wall again, stopping only when she reached the hillside by the riding grounds in the east of the academy.

The academy's terrain sloped down from east to west. Standing here, she had a clear view of the entire academy.

In the dim moonlight, the criss-crossing stone paths and towering spired cathedral lost many of their details, making it easier to focus on their overall layout and shape.

Roads large and small led to various parts of the academy, with each building serving as a node along these paths - the plaza, small chapel, library, dining hall, the romantic Rose Castle, the imposing boys' dormitory...

She hadn't noticed before, but all these buildings were roughly equidistant from the main cathedral at the academy's center, and the spaces between them were identical.

If you connected them with lines, they would form a perfect circle.

In Luo Wei's mind, a huge ring appeared, with the power injection point at its center, and the surrounding paths abstracted into lines of varying thickness, winding through the ring.

A crude magic rune pattern gradually emerged, but before Luo Wei could get excited, the mental image exploded with a boom, and she crouched down, clutching her throbbing head.

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