CH 2

The venue for the match-making party is an extremely empty square. The gentle breeze and fluttering flags provided natural white noise for the vent, and every five meters, there were server robots providing food and drinks. The fancy snacks are all prepared for the Guides, and plain water is the only item available for the poor Sentinels who can’t enjoy delicious food because of their overly developed taste. 

Cen Zhen found an unnoticeable corner and quietly took some food while waiting for the game session of the party to start. While he waits, five waves of Sentinels try to approach him and ask him out. One of which even tries to hint about how they have been flirting previously and complained about him blocking him all of a sudden. 

Cen Zhen dismissed the other ones easily by telling them I’m not interested in you, but this particular Sentinel was quite stubborn. Cen Zhen had to use the spiritual feeler to poke the outer shell of his spiritual space to make him stop. 

A spiritual feeler is what Guides use when they alter their mental power in the form of attacks. Guides can use their mental power to comfort Sentinels, so naturally, it can also be used to attack them. 

Before that stubborn Sentinel left, he complained angrily: “ Cen Zhen, you really stopped playing around because of Fan? Don’t you know how badly he scolded you in the tower? He said that you’re bitch who pursues any A-level Sentinel that comes into your sight, and he has the worst luck ever to get an 80% compatibility with you. If you find out who the only two S-level Sentinels are, you will for sure…for sure…”  He couldn’t continue. He gritted his teeth, clenched his fist tightly, and finally left sullenly.

Fan is the name of the Sentinel the original Cen Zhen was pursuing. As for the rest of that insult…what does it have anything to do with the Cen Zhen here now? Cen Zhen has no clue who that Fan person is, so he won’t care even if he shows up right now to scold him and make fun of him as harshly as he wants. 

The host of this match-making party is also the administrative dean of the White Tower, but he is not a real human being. Instead, he is a holographically simulated virtual intelligence who looks exactly the same as a human no matter how close or how far you look at him. Unless you try to touch him, you wouldn’t be able to tell he does not have a physical body. 

The system owned by the administrative dean has all the data of all the teachers and students, so he can accurately call out everyone’s name. His appearance is a young educated male, a look that is popular among both the Sentinels and Guides. 

After a few humorous opening remarks, the dean soon got to the point and introduced the reserved activity for the match-making party with one sentence: the maze game. 

Cen Zhen gave the juice he was holding to the server and straightened his back. Although he still has that careless casual look on his face, his attention was highly focused on the host’s explanation for the game. 

Ten students will be drawn to participate in the maze game, partnered with someone of the opposite sex, which will be a total of twenty people. Opposite sex in this case is different from being classified as Female or Male like how Cen Zhen is familiar with on Earth. Instead, it stands for Guide and Sentinels in this world. Female and Male are just their secondary gender and does not matter as much.

Male lead one’s name is Yao Jin, and as his name suggests, he is enthusiastic and cheerful, has short golden hair tinged red, and is the sixth student who got drawn. 

The light novel endowed him with the appearance and figure that suits the red hair. When Cen Zhen looked at Yao Jin’s photo for the first time, he thought he was going to see a Shamaite who looked punk, but both in the photos and in real person, Yao Jin is for sure to be associated with the adjective handsome. 

Without a doubt, Male lead one chose to auto-match using the system and again, without any surprise, got matched with Male lead two, Guide Pan who has 89% compatibility with him. 

Perhaps adhering to the theory of red and blue makes the perfect couple, the author gave Pan bright indigo-colored hair. This color will look quite awkward on a normal human being, but thanks to Pan’s exquisite facial features, it actually looks nice. 

The novel has a lot of psychological details written during the process of Pan walking on the stage. Not only the Male lead one and two but also included various friend side character’s thoughts, allowing the reader to get familiar with those side characters. Yet soon, the last number has been drawn by the host—

“No. 130.”

Cen Zhen looked around, all ten numbers being drawn are exactly the same as written in the novel, and the only difference is that No. 130 is no longer him. As the administrative dean finishes talking, the number 130 shows up big and bright on top of one student’s head in the crowd and everyone around that person spreads out quickly and makes a path welcoming him on the stage the same way they did for other participants. 

Cen Zhen is also a bit curious about the person who took his place, so he looked over and saw a side profile with very light golden hair covering the eyes. When his gaze touched the bridge of the nose and jaw of that person, Cen Zhen inexplicably felt a trance. However, that trance disappeared so quickly, it was like an illusion in the blink of an eye.

This person’s hair was over their shoulder and has beautiful natural curls at the end. After realizing that he was the “lucky one” chosen, he lifted a strand of hair in front of his forehead, revealing his gray-green eyes, the eyes looking slightly curved as he looked quite amused. However, his skin looked dark around his eyes, which was probably the result of staying up too late, so he seems tired and sick. 

He lifted the corner of his lips and smiled at the administrative dean happily. From his lip movement, Cen Zhen recognized that he was saying: What a coincidence…truly great.

Indeed, the vast majority of the people present will want to fight for the opportunity to join this game for the prize. The first place will get academic credits, and the top three will also be rewarded, so even if they can’t win, it is also a great opportunity to get along with the opposite sex with high compatibility.

Cen Zhen slightly let go of his guard. Judging from his intuitive impression, there seems to be nothing special about this person, except for his good looks… or overly good looks.

The novel often uses gorgeous rhetoric to describe how handsome the two male protagonists are, and Cen Zhen has to admit that they are truthful, but nothing more. However, in the one gaze Cen Zhen had on that man with long hair, he was amazed by his appearance and even had the thought that this passer-by was more in line with his aesthetics in comparison to Yao Jin and Pan. 

This idea came up out of the blue. In the past twenty years, Cen Zhen rarely paid attention to a person’s face, even if they are publicly recognized for being a beauty. He will only leave a simple and rough impression of “Oh, a truthful statement as it is”, but at the same time, this sense of astonishment appears to be so reasonable and natural that Cen Zhen didn’t find anything wrong with it…

Suddenly, just as the long-haired man stepped forward, a huge male lion jumped out of nowhere and slapped its thick claw heavily on the ground where the man was originally standing. The tail of a mature male lion is stronger than a whip, so as it violently flicks, it is like tearing apart the peacefulness in the air. 

After standing firmly, the lion stretched its neck and opened its huge mouth to roar hostilely at everyone around it. The lion bared its sharp fangs in a demonstrative manner, its eyes were full of undisguised bloody murderous intent, and its deafening roar almost pierced Cen Zhen’s eardrums.

This unexpected scene made Cen Zhen frown. The only animal that can appear suddenly like this is the spiritual body. This lion…is it the spiritual body of number 130? Generally speaking, the spiritual body of a Guide is a docile herbivore, and only a Sentinel will have a fierce beast like a lion.  Since this is a match-making party with large crowds of people gathering, everyone politely wears pheromone suppressors, so Cen Zhen couldn’t identify the gender using pheromones and is only able to predict Number 130 is probably a sentinel based on his spiritual body. 

So, what is number 130 doing? ? The spiritual body reflects the truest thought of its owner. The lion is howling angrily behind the Sentinel, wanting to tear everything apart, while the long-haired Sentinel himself is walking briskly towards the stage with a gentle smile on his face. No matter how one looks at him, he seems cheerful and has no discord.

The strangest thing is that none of the people around seemed to notice something was wrong. No one was surprised when the lion suddenly appeared and no one wondered why the Sentinel and his spiritual body’s reactions were obviously different. Not a single one of them felt weird about the situation and questioned it.

Cen Zhen inexplicably senses strangeness from this ‘incident’. Due to the honest nature of one’s spiritual body, no Sentinel or Guide would release their spiritual body from their mental space when they are faking. It’s just unnecessary and hypocritically ridiculous. However, this long-haired Sentinel did it, and no one bother to give a glance at the lion; Cen Zhen could only think of one possibility——

No one present could see the lion.

“Welcome, Sentinel Lian Yu.” The administrative dean called out the name of the sentinel in a calm tone as always, and the Sentinel bowed politely and smiled, “Thank you.”

Contrary to this sincere thanks, the lion swooped forward fiercely, passing through the body of the dean as if it was trying to bite off the throat of the dean.

Cen Zhen immediately searched for the name ‘Lian Yu’ in his memory. This person is way too strange. There are thousands of Sentinels and Guides at this match-making party, but none of these Guides has more than 60% compatibility with him, and no Sentinel has a higher level of mental power than him? According to Cen Zhen’s research about this world during the past three months, this is basically impossible.

Most importantly, a sentinel with an extremely narrow mental domain but extremely high mental power? It is impossible for a unique Sentinel who has the words ‘I’m one of a kind’ engraved on his forehead not written in the novel. However, Cen Zhen can’t recall anything about Lian Yu even though he has read the novel at least ten times and can recite the whole plot by heart.

The administrative dean had no clue that a lion was staring at him with anger nearby, so he asked softly, “Student Lian Yu, do you have any Guides in mind that you would like to partner with?”

Lian Yu played with the hair on his shoulders using his index finger, and spoke very slowly, with an indescribable intrigue, “No, of course, there won’t be any…” Lian Yu raised his head and said in distress, ” So, what should I do?”

“Then, we shall let the administrative system help you out.” Then, the dean snapped his fingers, and a faint blue projection screen immediately appeared behind him with a row of numbers scrolling on it, rapidly changing from four digits to less. Narrowing down guides with high compatibility for Lian Yu through the previously collected student information.

Lian Yu frowned inexplicably. If Cen Zhen wasn’t using reverse psychology to predict his true thoughts through the lion’s behavior, then he would definitely not be able to notice the impatience Lian Yu was showing at this time. Lian Yu:  “Can the administrative system provide a solution? “

“Of course, compared to the precise measurement of compatibility through direct contact of the terminals, the calculation of the system data will only have discrepancies around the decimal point.” The administrative dean explained solemnly.