Just after the tenth day of the Lunar New Year, Lin Ran and Luo Qingyan had already boarded a small aircraft and were flying east along the navigation route.
Luo Qingyan grumbled indignantly, "It's been so long..."
"Now, can you finally tell me what we're going to do?"
"You promised to tell me on the way!"
Lin Ran laughed heartily, pulling Luo Qingyan to sit in a seat. "Of course..."
"But it's nothing special, just a competition."
Luo Qingyan was stunned. "A competition?"
Lin Ran shrugged. "Did you forget?"
"Yeah... after all, this event isn't really cared about within our Dragon Country anymore."
"It's been like this ever since we announced our withdrawal from the competition over a decade ago."
Hearing Lin Ran say this, Luo Qingyan suddenly had a glimmer of realization. "Global Student Exchange Competition?"
Lin Ran nodded. "Yes!"
"It's precisely the Global Student Exchange Competition!"
"This is the event we're going to participate in!"
It was this?!
Luo Qingyan rubbed her head in surprise.
The Global Student Exchange Competition, as the name suggested, was a massive event that gathered elite students from around the world to compete.
This competition was quite popular in Dragon Country decades ago.
However, later on, Dragon Country directly chose to withdraw from the competition in a certain year, and had never participated in it for the subsequent ten-plus years.
The reason for this was that the Global Student Exchange Competition had gradually lost its original spirit...
Initially, this competition, which was meant for exchange, primarily featured students, with participants mostly being fourth-year undergraduates.
But in a certain year, the Korean country broke this convention first.
They outrageously and surreptitiously had seven students who were supposed to be in their fourth year three years prior to deliberately fail to graduate for three years, all for the sake of this competition.
With an extra three years of growth and development, the seven participants from the Korean country naturally shone brightly.
Subsequently, this tradition was further developed by countries like the Lighthouse Country, the Red Leaf Country, and the Rhine Federation, gradually becoming a new unwritten rule.
Thus, the competition became increasingly intense and exaggerated...
It even developed to a point where there were participants specifically trained for competitions.
These competition-type participants were cultivated by various universities, with their sole purpose being to participate in the competition.
Beyond that, they were practically useless.
They didn't know how to fight fierce beasts, nor did they understand how to deal with alien races...
They even lacked many basic life skills.
Year after year of arduous training and unlimited grade repetition were all for the sake of achieving higher rankings in this competition and obtaining so-called "honor."
The only fortunate thing was that the competition still had an age limit for participants – not older than 30.
Otherwise, who knew what kind of monsters these countries would have created...
It's possible that in a few decades, it would be a bunch of old men competing in a so-called student exchange competition!
This led to Dragon Country, which emphasized practicality, being unwilling to engage in such a "race."
Placing promising young talents in such a meaningless endeavor was simply a criminal waste!
Furthermore, whenever students from Dragon Country went abroad, they would face targeting from many countries, and they would just go there to be humiliated.
This naturally made them even less interested in the competition.
Over time, as no one was willing to participate, the event naturally became defunct...
However, this year was completely different!
With the presence of Lin Ran and Luo Qingyan, two unparalleled prodigies, Dragon Country had regained interest in this event.
Since these two were idle anyway, they might as well go out and snatch the reward.
Moreover, one of the champion rewards was extremely important to him, and he was willing to pay ten times the value to acquire it from Lin Ran.
This is what Matt had said.
Matt was incredibly confident in their abilities, not considering the possibility of failure at all.
Luo Qingyan, however, raised another question: "But I heard that the competition format of this Global Student Exchange Competition is different from our domestic formats."
"They don't have individual matches; they only have KOF-style arena matches and team matches..."
"Both KOF-style arena matches and team matches are seven-person formats..."
"Where are our other five members?"
Lin Ran chuckled. "Are you and I not enough? Why do we need others!"
"Arena matches? Team matches? Level caps? Age caps? What use is that!"
"We'll crush all these superficial things!"
"If you don't want to fight, you can hang behind me and give me buffs, and I'll carry everyone!"
Luo Qingyan rolled her eyes at Lin Ran. "Look at you, so arrogant..."
"But each country has dozens or even hundreds of teams. Won't us two lone wolves become targets?"
"Especially since we'll be targeted by the host country of this session..."
Lin Ran burst into laughter. "Let them come..."
"If they really push me, I'll activate my Black Dragon form and go on a rampage, and then I'll use a Heavenly Impact and level their island. Let's see if they dare to bark again!"
Luo Qingyan was surprised. "Island?"
Lin Ran nodded. "That's right, you don't know yet, but the host country this time is the Sakura Country..."
"So, where we're going is their Eastern Island."
Luo Qingyan was taken aback. "Huh? Then how will we get there? We can't just cross the national border, can we?"
"Then where is the destination of this small aircraft?"
Lin Ran smiled. "The flight path of this small aircraft has been reported to the organizers. As long as we follow the predetermined route, we can fly directly to a small island that's right on their border – Guava Island. From there, we'll follow the arrangements of the competition organizers."
"They're apparently planning to have us all board a super-large cruise ship... I don't know what kind of trickery they're up to."
Luo Qingyan also started to laugh. "Whatever. As long as you have your divine might, let them do whatever they want..."
"There must be some trickery involved, otherwise they wouldn't choose something as slow as a cruise ship."
"Those little devils love to pull off fancy maneuvers."
Lin Ran nodded, and just as he was about to say something more, he suddenly heard a long-lost system notification sound in his mind.
[Ding!]
[The Fishing for All Heavens System reminds you that a prey has taken the bait. Please return to the pond for processing and initiate the next fishing session.]
A new catch from fishing!
Lin Ran immediately forgot what he was about to say to Luo Qingyan, closed his eyes, and then opened them again. "Oh, I'm sleepy. I need to take a nap!"
With that, without waiting for Luo Qingyan's reaction, he fell into her arms like an inverted icicle and slipped into his divine sense space.