Xu Lizhi's round little eyes locked onto the two figures by the window with pinpoint accuracy, and delight bloomed across his face at once. His pudgy little body scurried over. "Arthur! Wulin! You two are here too!"
He plopped himself down across from them without ceremony.
The three of them chatted for a bit, then fell into the familiar rhythm of eating together, as if they'd been swept right back to that noodle shop in Heaven Dou City.
Arthur settled the bill and had just stepped out of the restaurant when a familiar flash of blue darted past the mouth of a nearby alley.
Whoever it was moved fast, with a touch of panic, and two men in suits were chasing right behind.
It was Xu Xiaoyan!
The instant she spotted Arthur, her eyes lit up, and she bolted straight toward him. "Arthur!"
Arthur didn't move a step, just raised a hand. The two men chasing her seemed to slam into an invisible wall, a dull thud, and they were sent flying, hitting the ground and whimpering, unable to get back up.
"Arthur." Xu Xiaoyan reached him without so much as a flush in her cheeks or a hitch in her breath.
And yet she pressed a hand to her chest and clung to his arm as though still shaken. "Thank goodness I ran into you.
I just wanted to pick up some odd job to earn a bit of money, and those two said they could get me a high-paying gig. They wouldn't leave me alone. You could tell at a glance they were bad news."
She leaned in as far as she could, breath still catching, and said with a pitiful little air, "I was so scared just now."
"Oh, r-really."
Arthur played along.
Xu Xiaoyan was laying it on so thick right now that he honestly didn't know how to handle it.
"That really was dangerous. Ha ha... ha."
As he spoke, he tried to pull his arm free from her grip.
It didn't budge.
He swore he'd actually put some effort into it.
Sigh. Somewhere along the line, without him even noticing, Xu Xiaoyan's strength had surpassed his own.
What a terrifying gift.
The group had grown to four, and together they carried on toward the Blacksmith Association.
At an intersection, a crisp, bickering voice drifted over from across the way.
The group knew it well: that was the sound of Na'er hissing at Gu Yue.
"Why can't we just grab some random Soul King or Soul Emperor, beat them up, and head to the next city already?"
"But no, you had to go on about wanting to try some dessert, wanting to check if this city had anything good."
Na'er was hissing up a storm, hands on her hips, arched like an angry little cat.
"And fine, whatever, but then I said go east and you insisted on west, and now look, we're lost!"
"You're the one with the terrible sense of direction, and you're blaming me?" Gu Yue's voice stayed level, though a trace of exasperation slipped through. "Besides, the shops here are laid out in a mess to begin with. We'll find it eventually if we just keep looking."
"Na'er! Gu Yue!" Tang Wulin was the first to wave and call out.
And the moment Xu Xiaoyan heard Na'er's voice, she let go of Arthur's arm in an instant.
Her eyes drifted off to the side, suddenly very interested in a nearby streetlamp. What a fine streetlamp that was.
Gu Yue and Na'er both turned at the same moment, and the second they spotted Arthur's group, their argument cut off cold.
Na'er's eyes lit up, and she dashed straight over, not forgetting to toss an apology at Gu Yue on the way. "Sorry, you were right this time."
Good thing she'd listened to Gu Yue about finding a dessert shop, or they never would have run into Arthur.
Gu Yue shook her head helplessly, her gaze sweeping over Arthur. Recalling that faint, indistinct sense she'd had earlier, a flicker of understanding crossed her eyes. "So that's how it is."
The group had grown to six.
They pressed on and came across Wu Siduo crouched in front of a pet shop, playing with a cat.
They ran into Yang Nianxia, who was also headed to the Blacksmith Association.
They ran into Zheng Yiran.
They ran into Luo Guixing.
By the time they reached the Blacksmith Association, Arthur had a sprawling crowd of a hundred students trailing behind him.
Arthur called out, "Everyone, listen up! Count off!"
"One!"
"Two!"
"Three!"
"Four!"
The crisp, unified shouting rang out in front of the Blacksmith Association, carrying with real force, drawing the eyes of passersby.
The hundred-strong group stood in neat formation, the young men and women's faces lit with the joy of reunion and the sharp edge of youth.
Finally, Na'er bellowed with mock solemnity, "Reporting! All first-year students, present and accounted for!"
"Good!"
Arthur nodded.
"Excellent spirit!"
The teachers secretly guarding and proctoring the students were all left staring in blank disbelief.
They exchanged glances, staring at colleagues who'd only just split up not long ago and were somehow already back together.
And that mass of students.
What on earth had happened?
How had they all ended up gathered together without anyone noticing?
"What in the world is going on here?!" one teacher finally couldn't hold back and blurted out.
"This, this doesn't make any sense!" A middle-aged teacher rubbed his eyes, making sure he wasn't seeing things, staring at that massive crowd of a hundred. His voice even trembled a little.
"They were all supposed to set out separately for this assessment. How has it only been half a day and they're all together already?"
Beside him, a white-haired teacher frowned deeply, sweeping his spiritual power across the students once more, his tone grave.
"There's no trace of any outside interference, and none of them have communication spirit tools on them, we collected everything. Could they have arranged this in advance?"
"Arranged in advance?" Shen Yi let out a laugh caught somewhere between amusement and disbelief. "Most of these students' first stop wasn't even Heaven Dou City to begin with. It's just that all sorts of things happened along the way that brought them here."
"And more importantly, you should all have seen it with your own eyes. There's no way any of these meetings were arranged at a set location beforehand."
Wu Changkong nodded. They'd been secretly tailing the group the whole time and had seen every single encounter unfold with their own eyes.
Arthur and Tang Wulin had met on the train, run into Xu Lizhi by chance at the restaurant, crossed paths with Xu Xiaoyan on the road, bumped into Gu Yue and Na'er at the intersection, and then one after another run into Wu Siduo, Yang Nianxia, and the rest.
"And yet, every single one of those encounters reeks of 'coincidence.' But when every single person's coincidence lines up together like this, it's no longer chance at all." Wu Changkong's gaze stayed fixed on Arthur's figure. "Every meeting, all of them, revolve around Arthur at the center."
The white-haired teacher mused aloud, "But he never used any spirit tool. How did he manage to pull everyone toward the same direction? Could it be some kind of spiritual-type spirit skill? But to cover an area this large without anyone noticing, a gift like that would be unheard of."
"Maybe it's the power of his auspicious beast?" one teacher offered, struck by a thought.
"Maybe."
"But the pressing matter right now is that all of them gathering together clearly violates the exam rules. Should we go issue a warning?"
"A warning?" Shen Yi shook her head. She understood Arthur quite well by now. "Won't do any good. Go ahead and try it, if you're not afraid of him hauling out the Holy Spirit Douluo title to crush you under the weight of it."
At that, every teacher present fell silent.
"Let's just leave it be, then. Evil soul masters have been getting bolder and bolder lately, so having them all gathered together actually makes it easier for us to protect them." In the end, it was Wu Changkong who settled the matter.
The teachers reached a consensus and withdrew back into hiding, one by one.
"What do you all think you're doing? Making all this racket."
A staff member came running out of the Blacksmith Association.
"Trying to cause a scene and gather a crowd at the Blacksmith Association, is that it?"
He didn't even finish the sentence before his eyes landed on the one standing at the front: Arthur.
The next instant, he spun around and bolted straight back inside.
Shouting at the top of his lungs the whole way: "Oh no! Oh no!"
"The little devil... no wait, the Little Master Smith is back again!"
"Quick, quick, quick! Hide all your rare metals, now!"