The Strongest Brain in the Interstellar

Inside the arena, the new students showcased their skills, while the audience outside watched with great enthusiasm.

The orientation cross-country race had been underway for nearly eight hours, but the progress was only a quarter of the way through. The participating students would have to endure a full day and night to finish the competition.

However, the current elimination rate was quite high, with nearly half of the participants already disqualified and sent to the rest area outside.

Interestingly, the number of eliminated students from ordinary majors was even higher, while only about a third of those in military majors had been eliminated, indicating a discrepancy in progress between the two groups.

For now, both the students inside and outside the arena were in good spirits, with no serious injuries reported—any wounds sustained were minor and easily manageable.

One of the school principals was very satisfied, feeling that this situation justified his report to the board about the monitoring issues. Frankly, dealing with them had been quite frustrating; asking those old-timers to allocate more funds felt like pulling teeth. Fortunately, it was finally resolved.

But he really couldn’t understand their mindset. Didn’t the previous two incidents make them realize the importance of student safety?

In fact, they might not be as sensible as the younger students who had never even entered society.

Fortunately, they reluctantly approved the proposal in the end and sought professional personnel and vendors to install the equipment, upgrading the entire monitoring system. The ongoing orientation race became its first testing ground, and so far, the results looked quite promising. After all, in previous years, timely rescue during the race had not been possible, so the money spent was not wasted.

He hoped the competition would conclude smoothly without any further mishaps. Otherwise, if there were three incidents during a month of military training, he might as well resign as principal.

At this point, The Principal seemed to remember something, and his gaze fell on a name at the top of the leaderboard—a certain unlucky individual who had fallen into trouble twice. He paused for a moment and chuckled. This score… that kid really was impressive.

Meanwhile, someone on the faculty side was also looking at the leaderboard.

Jiang Hui’s initial score was very high, reaching 245 points, which was over a hundred points more than the second place. At this rate, she could probably coast the entire time and still remain on the leaderboard.

Moreover, Jiang Hui would never just coast.

From solo combat to her temporary partnership with Zhou Xiuwen, she had been continuously racking up points, and her speed was not any slower than that of the top seed students known throughout the grade.

Now, her total score had exceeded 300, reaching a staggering 314 points.

This meant that since entering the arena, she had “killed” 69 opponents, earning 69 points, which was terrifyingly high for solo combat.

Only two people in her grade could compete with her. One was Huo Qi from Class 1, whose team was currently the strongest in the entire military competition area. He had earned a total of 72 points, making him the highest-scoring student in solo performance across the entire grade.

The other was Clarens, a classmate and acquaintance of Jiang Hui, who, like her, had also been fighting solo without forming any teams, even temporary ones. Since entering the arena, he had scored a total of 65 points—no, it should be 67 points now. The scores had just been updated, placing him seventh in the overall ranking for the grade.

Of course, because of her high base score, Jiang Hui still firmly held the first place. However, it might also be because her initial score was so prominent that any additional points seemed less noticeable, making it easy for others to take her position for granted. In comparison, Huo Qi, Clarens, and a few other popular competitors stood out more.

Only those who were closely observing the situation understood the significance of her performance; they had their own standards of judgment. For example, Stark did not show any particular satisfaction with Jiang Hui’s solid score.

Yet his actions ultimately revealed his emotions. Aside from the students who had already advanced, he frequently checked on Jiang Hui’s performance, even pulling up footage from various time periods corresponding to changes in the leaderboard to assess her progress.

He witnessed the frantic point-gathering session between Jiang Hui and Zhou Xiuwen. Something about it struck a chord with him, and Stark couldn’t help but soften his typically stern expression, revealing a look that was part exasperation and part amusement, which happened to catch the attention of Instructor Tan beside him.

Since becoming a teacher for this year’s first-year students at Beska Intermediate Academy, Instructor Tan had expended considerable effort in coordinating and managing, gaining insights into the personalities of these first-year class leaders.

To be honest, like this batch of high-quality freshmen, the school had also welcomed a group of capable yet diverse teachers. Particularly in the military specialization, there were seven distinguished instructors, twelve lieutenants, and several excellent second lieutenants. These were all educators brought to Beska Intermediate Academy through significant investment of manpower and resources from the Eighth Legion, aimed at training these future battlefield stars.

Among the captains, the easiest to understand was actually Captain Zou, who had a bit of a bad temper. He came from a well-off family and had some real combat achievements. However, his personal demeanor and temperament left much to be desired; he would explode over the smallest things, making him difficult to get along with. Still, he wasn’t a bad person, and he was relatively straightforward.

Instructor Tan found himself somewhat troubled by Zou’s penchant for causing trouble.

On the other hand, Captain Lin Qi from the Combat Operations Class 3 was the least worrisome. He was an experienced instructor who had handled similar tasks before, just not at Beska Intermediate Academy, so there was nothing for Tan to worry about.

Captain Stark from Combat Operations Class 2, however, was the one he found most difficult to read. Stark wasn’t hard to get along with, but he was incredibly opinionated and had a naturally cold demeanor, almost lacking in human warmth.

Moreover, his impressive combat record and experience added an air of mystery around him. It was hard to believe that such a promising officer, clearly in a prime phase of his career, would choose to take on a teaching role here.

Instructor Tan couldn’t help but feel some pressure when dealing with Stark.

Even with his own qualifications, he didn’t need to fear any officer below the rank of lieutenant general. However, he struggled to connect with people like Stark, especially since his former superior had been similar in nature.

So, Tan had always been concerned about how to communicate with Captain Stark.

It wasn’t until recently that he learned from a familiar second-year colleague about Stark’s confrontation with the Carl father-and-son duo in the principal’s office. Today, it seemed to confirm that Stark held a particular regard for one of the students in his class.