Chapter 10: Rating

It wasn’t until they formally entered the base’s interior that Ye Jingqiu realized the personnel here seemed far fewer than she’d anticipated.

Evidently, not only was the space utilization low, but so was the occupancy rate.

The base’s paved roads were made of some unknown material—spacious, neat, and crisscrossing in all directions. Ye Jingqiu bent down for a closer look and vaguely spotted faint golden patterns flowing with a clear glow. They were probably either an Alchemy Array or a Dao Array inscription.

That accident a dozen minutes ago had clearly alarmed quite a few people. Figures darted between the colorful buildings, most of them Action Division agents dressed like Shi Zui.

With the crisis resolved, these folks who’d rushed over for nothing showed no real resentment. They simply looked relaxed, ambling leisurely back to their quarters.

For them, no matter how bone-tired or swamped they were, the absence of casualties was already the best possible outcome.

Everyone inside the base seemed on familiar terms. As the three of them walked along the paths, people kept calling out greetings.

Xie Pingzhi was clearly well-liked; she’d already locked in three drink invites before covering even a hundred meters, filling her free evenings for the next couple of days.

Ye Jingqiu thought: The base entrance connects straight to Shanghai—guess that’s for making it easy to head out for drinks!

It didn’t surprise her much, though. They’d only spent a few hours together, but she’d already picked up on her teammate’s thick aura of carefree nonchalance.

By contrast, Shi Zui came off as even more tight-lipped and standoffish.

Take what happened right after she’d wrapped up the incident: Xie Pingzhi had lavished her with praise fit for the one-and-only best in heaven and on earth, while the captain’s thanks boiled down to two words that sounded downright rusty.

Her tone was sincere enough, but Ye Jingqiu’s gut told her the captain hadn’t uttered “thank you” to another soul in centuries.

Which made Ye Jingqiu’s own “you’re welcome” feel like an honor beyond measure. She even edged a little farther away from Shi Zui afterward.

Something about the captain’s speaking voice always summoned that trapped, squirming sensation of getting reamed out by your homeroom teacher.

They turned into the Administrative Department. The lobby wasn’t crowded. Ye Jingqiu trailed obediently behind Shi Zui as Xie Pingzhi handled the paperwork with the staffer.

She felt like a mascot, just trotting over at key moments to press her thumbprint, scan her iris, and let Aether take her measurements.

Idle as could be, Ye Jingqiu curiously scoped out the surroundings, flashing smiles whenever her eyes met another base member’s.

It gave her this odd vibe of being dragged along by her parents to run errands.

But hey, not bad?

Xie Pingzhi’s voice snapped her out of it. Ye Jingqiu looked up to see a shiny new wrist ring being handed over.

“This thing’s actually called a Will Ring—the Base Leader’s name for it. Aether’s always on call; just ask our Little Cat if you need anything,” Xie Pingzhi said with a grin, propping herself against the service desk. “It has other functions too. You’ll see in a few days.”

Shi Zui stayed all business, as usual: “Your personal information has now been officially registered. We’ll escort you to your quarters shortly. Unfortunately, our other teammate is away at the moment, so you won’t get to meet her yet.”

It was the first time Ye Jingqiu had heard the captain string together that many words. She snapped to attention, beaming back with an equally formal smile—all eight teeth on display—and tossed in some polite phrasing: “Got it, Captain. Thanks for your hard work today.”

The moment Shi Zui turned to double-check the details, Ye Jingqiu darted over to Xie Pingzhi and stage-whispered: “The captain’s so official~”

Xie Pingzhi bit back a laugh—without mentioning the captain’s razor-sharp senses—and whispered right back: “Xiao Qiu, you’re such a cheeky one~”

Shi Zui, who’d heard every syllable crystal clear: “……”

She paused for a split second, baffled as to why Ye Jingqiu hadn’t just said it to her face.

Did that mean she was less trustworthy than Xie Pingzhi?

Oblivious to the captain’s inner monologue, Ye Jingqiu let out a couple of chuckles, snuck a quick glance at Shi Zui, then openly started fiddling with the Will Ring.

“Aether will give you your file number in a bit,” Xie Pingzhi said, noting her fascination. She slipped off her own wrist ring and dangled it in front of Ye Jingqiu. “The base uses a unified ranking system for Awakeners and Exotic Beasts: S, A, B, C, D.”

Ye Jingqiu peered at the swaying display—

AX-010024

“That’s my ID—or work number, whatever. These digits mean I’m the ten thousand twenty-fourth Awakener since the base opened in 1906,” Xie Pingzhi explained. “Awakeners are pretty rare, honestly. We’ve only got a little over two thousand active ones here right now.”

“What’s AX stand for?” Ye Jingqiu asked, curious.

Xie Pingzhi: “A-rank humans. It also means clearance for all B-rank files in the base database. Y’s the counterpart for Exotic Beasts. That Afanc was CY-003-something, yeah? Ugh, lemme think…”

“CY-003901.”

Ye Jingqiu glanced over. Shi Zui was bent over some required forms, handwriting them without so much as lifting her head at the chatter. Eyes down, brows faintly furrowed, she signed with meticulous care.

She hadn’t even queried Aether; Shi Zui memorized the file numbers for every case she touched.

Xie Pingzhi hummed in approval and slid right into her usual praise for the captain.

Ye Jingqiu thought: Captain lives up to the title. After a beat, she turned her attention back to the Will Ring. “So, my rating’s all set?”

She spoke at normal volume, bubbling with the eager excitement of a total newbie. Heads turned from nearby agents, their looks warm and welcoming.

New faces only trickled in at about a hundred a year, after all, and the base’s vibe was downright chummy—united and friendly to a fault.

“A-Xie, Team One’s got a new recruit?” one agent familiar with Xie Pingzhi asked, astonished. “A-rank, and that young?”

Xie Pingzhi went all mysterious and smug: “Guess.”

The agent joked: “No way it’s—”

Right then, Ye Jingqiu hit the switch on her Will Ring. Aether’s perky voice blared through the lobby:

“ID SX-011291, welcome back, meow~”

The room went dead silent.

The agent choked out the rest: “……S.”

~~~

After wrapping up all the formalities, Ye Jingqiu followed Xie Pingzhi toward Team One’s quarters—while Shi Zui had been summoned by Professor Luo.

Before leaving, Professor Luo even joked with her that she was only borrowing Captain Shi for half an hour and hoped Xiao Qiu, as a team member, wouldn’t mind.

Ye Jingqiu: I mind. I mind a lot—especially why you didn’t borrow the captain for a whole day.

She was genuinely a little afraid of the captain. She always felt that the captain’s way of doing things was the complete opposite of her own.

She slacked off and goofed around, living day to day with endless chatter. The captain, on the other hand, was all efficiency, sparse words, and decisive action.

In short, the captain’s intangible pressure on her was on par with the suffocating dread of tackling a massive math problem.

If not for the exotic beasts, the two of them probably never would have crossed paths—not even if you beat them with eight sticks.

Having successfully escaped the captain’s presence, Ye Jingqiu felt her spirits lift. She even relaxed her posture a bit. Walking alongside the equally laid-back Xie Pingzhi, the pair of them looked like a couple of total slackers.

It was about mealtime, so people were heading out to the base cafeteria. Foot traffic on the internal roads had picked up noticeably, and there might even be a jam up ahead soon.

Word of the base’s newest S-rank specialist had spread like wildfire. Whether it was just in her head or not, Ye Jingqiu could feel faint, fleeting gazes on her as she walked.

She now fully grasped what S-rank meant—and she especially understood the stunned expressions on those specialists’ faces back in the Administrative Department lobby.

In the base’s century-plus history since its founding, there had only been five S-rank action specialists, full stop. That said it all about their rarity.

And crucially, the sole active exemplar—the gold standard—was none other than Shi Zui, Captain Shi herself, who stood in stark contrast to Ye Jingqiu.

Thus, as the sixth S-rank specialist, Ye Jingqiu approached the title with profound trepidation.

“Is this designation really okay?” she couldn’t help asking Xie Pingzhi at her side. She kept wondering if there’d been some mistake.

She sure as hell wasn’t ready to jump into world-saving missions!

“Don’t worry,” Xie Pingzhi replied, brimming with confidence in her. “Believe in yourself! You wiped out Yinghuo with a single sentence—there’s zero fluke in that S-rank.”

“Okay…” Ye Jingqiu, accustomed to scraping the bottom of her class rankings, struggled with the reversal. She shook her head. “Still, does the base have a new employee handbook or onboarding guide or something I could read?”

She harbored twelve degrees of uncertainty about the life stretching out before her.

“No handbook, per se—newbies in the early days get full N-to-1 treatment anyway,” Xie Pingzhi said after a moment’s thought. “Our team’s got three more folks besides us. Ask away about anything you’re fuzzy on.”

“The job itself is what I’m fuzziest on right now.”

Ye Jingqiu sighed wistfully. “Captain said it’s all about handling exotic beasts, but I’m still not clear on the how. Are we just brawling with them using Instinct? Feels like special forces with firearms could manage that fine.”

“Hm. What makes you say that?” Xie Pingzhi seemed especially keen on this point.

“Take that Afanc, for instance. Bullets ought to punch right through it, yeah?”

“Not even close,” Xie Pingzhi said with a smile. “Every newbie tours the Instinct and Exotic Beast Department’s exhibition hall. The captain and I figured you’d clocked their special traits after tangling with them so many times, so we skipped it today.”

Ye Jingqiu countered with evidence. “Captain sliced open its back without breaking a sweat, though.”

“That’s why she’s S-rank,” Xie Pingzhi replied matter-of-factly. “And that knife of hers isn’t your average blade. Word is, processing it for the captain nearly killed Professor Luo. Packs as much punch as certain ancient swords.”

“Bullets no good, but missiles? Come on,” Ye Jingqiu pressed slyly. “Modern tech’s come so far—surely humanity can trust its firepower!”

“Missiles work fine, actually. The base lumps the Technology Department in with the Alchemy and Dao Talisman Department, more or less.” Xie Pingzhi halted abruptly and nodded firmly at Ye Jingqiu.

“But Xiao Qiu—remember Afanc’s sequence rating?”

Ye Jingqiu stopped too. “C-rank.”

“Right. Just C-rank.” Xie Pingzhi veered into what seemed like unrelated territory. “AN602—the Soviet Union’s Cold War-era superbomb. Arguably humanity’s most devastating weapon ever. And its yield? A mere five thousand tons of TNT.”

Ye Jingqiu took strong issue with the phrasing. “‘Mere’? That’s enough to vaporize a billion bases!”

“Compared to this world? Yeah, ‘mere’ fits,” Xie Pingzhi said, patting her shoulder. “The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake? Ninety billion tons of TNT equivalent. AN602’s a rounding error next to that.”

She sighed softly. “Earthquakes. Tsunamis. Hurricanes… If a waterspout-summoning thing like Afanc is just C-rank, what the hell can an S-rank exotic beast pull off?”

It took Ye Jingqiu a good long moment to murmur, “Humans making it this far… that’s a goddamn miracle.”

“A miracle, sure. Back in the primordial days before we even had Instinct—no one knows how they pulled it off.”

“Humans didn’t start out with Instinct?” Ye Jingqiu hadn’t seen that coming.

“Legend says we learned it from the exotic beasts—then turned it around for the big counteroffensive.” Xie Pingzhi winked, her tone growing lighter. “Classic ‘bide your time and endure the gall’ arc. Like how the Hittites invented the chariot and steamrolled Egypt, only for the Egyptians—while toiling as slaves, tending horses—to secretly master their foes’ tactics and flip the script. After that? Endless entanglement between the two peoples.”

“Same deal with humans and exotic beasts, I guess.”

“So we’re holding the edge for now?”

“Yep. Means we can afford a little confidence.” Here, Xie Pingzhi reached out to straighten Ye Jingqiu’s collar. Her gray-blue eyes brimmed with some unnameable emotion. “But don’t get cocky.”

Ye Jingqiu froze, struck by how unhappy Xie Pingzhi suddenly seemed.

She hesitated, words forming on her lips—only for Xie Pingzhi to straighten up, all business as usual.

“Anyway, no need for heavy thoughts right now. Sky’s falling? Captain’s got it.” She flashed a grin. “C’mon, Classmate Xiao Qiu. Time to check out your new digs.”