"Hey, Cseper…"
As Cseper returned to the lineup, Caroline gently nudged him with her shoulder.
Her emerald-green eyes blinked as she lowered her voice, curiosity lacing her words. "What you said to Kong earlier—was that true?"
Cseper pushed up his sunglasses, the corner of his mouth curling into a sly smirk.
"Guess."
Caroline frowned, mulling it over for a moment before offering her own analysis.
"While the failure rate of Star Core surgery is high, anyone who survives the procedure and persists this long must have adapted to the Star Core implanted in their body."
"Chen Kong hasn't shown any Star Core abilities in the past two years, but he also hasn't exhibited any signs of rejecting the Star Core, seeming perfectly normal, like someone who never underwent the surgery."
"But if you look at it from another angle, Chen Kong being too normal actually makes him seem a bit too abnormal."
With this thought, Caroline's gaze shifted curiously to Chen Kong, standing not far away.
She couldn't imagine that someone who looked so utterly weak, no matter how you sliced it, might have deceived everyone.
Could Chen Kong really, as Cseper claimed, possess a unique Star Core that simply lacked the right conditions to awaken?
Sensing Caroline's stare, Chen Kong nervously lowered his head, too timid to meet her eyes.
After all, while Caroline had never bullied him,
she was, like Chen Xing, inherently proud to her core.
The difference was that Caroline's pride was reserved, subtle.
Chen Xing's pride was bold, flamboyant.
Thus, both Caroline and Chen Xing looked down on the weak Chen Kong from the bottom of their hearts.
It was only out of respect for Cseper that Caroline had never spoken harshly to Chen Kong.
More specifically, she hadn't spoken to him at all in the past two years.
It was as if, in Caroline's eyes, only Cseper was a person, while Chen Kong was mere air.
Cold indifference was a form of violence in its own right.
As for Cseper…
In a way, Cseper was even more arrogant than Caroline or Chen Xing.
But his case was slightly different from the other two.
Cseper's arrogance was an equal-opportunity arrogance.
He looked down on everyone impartially.
In his own words, whether it was Chen Kong or Chen Xing,
they weren't all that different to him.
Because humans don't bother distinguishing which ant is bigger or smaller in a colony.
It was precisely because of this that Chen Kong could distinctly feel "respect" from Cseper.
Though it was a bit embarrassing to admit,
Cseper, who saw everyone else as ants, was the only one among the thirty-six Starfall trainees who didn't ostracize him or treat him like an outsider.
Noticing Caroline curiously sizing up Chen Kong, Cseper grinned and pulled a mint candy from his pocket, popping it into his mouth.
His sky-blue eyes behind the sunglasses glinted with unmistakable amusement.
Of course, he hadn't lied. As a transmigrator, he knew better than anyone just how special Chen Kong, the protagonist, truly was.
At its core, the reason Chen Kong hadn't awakened his "Star Core" ability
wasn't because his Star Core surgery had failed.
Quite the opposite—his surgery was a resounding success.
In fact, it was so successful that he was the only one among them, alongside Cseper and Chen Xing, to have a 100% compatible "Perfect Half-Star."
But unlike Cseper and Chen Xing, whose Star Core compatibility was overt,
Chen Kong's compatibility was latent.
The cause of this stemmed from Chen Kong and Chen Xing's uniquely extraordinary mother.
Their mother wasn't an ordinary human.
She was a rare "humanoid Star Beast" that had lived among human society for a long time.
Thus, if Cseper and the others were acquired Half-Stars, formed through Star Core surgery,
Chen Kong and Chen Xing were innate Half-Stars.
However, due to certain special circumstances, Kong's bloodline leaned more toward his human father, while Xing's leaned more toward their beastly mother.
This resulted in one sibling being plain-looking and weak,
while the other was striking and exceptionally powerful.
In fact, if not for Cseper's early "scene-stealing,"
In the original plot, the true strongest among the thirty-six Starfall trainees wouldn't have been Cseper but Chen Xing, Chen Kong's sister.
The strongest sister and the weakest brother—a classic dimensional drama setup.
Thus, Cseper, who knew the entire plot of Starfall's first season, was well aware:
Though Chen Kong currently seemed no different from an ordinary person, that was only on the surface.
In reality, his so-called "human-like" nature was his innate ability.
An overpowered ability so rule-breaking it could nullify all Stellar Energy.
But precisely because this ability was so extreme, it even affected Chen Kong himself,
completely suppressing the Star Core implanted in his body, rendering it entirely nullified.
However, as long as Chen Kong could realize this,
he could temporarily suppress his Star Beast bloodline and unleash his Star Core's power.
From this perspective, Chen Kong and Chen Xing were undeniably outliers among the thirty-six Starfall trainees.
Because everyone else, including Cseper, had only one Star Core.
But these two siblings effectively had two:
One from their innate bloodline and one from the Star Core implanted through surgery.
Talk about blatant cheating.
If Cseper hadn't activated his own cheat early on, there was no way he could've suppressed the innately maxed-out Chen Xing.
As for Chen Kong, Cseper wasn't too concerned about him.
While his potential was equally staggering, until he went through the final assessment's plot,
he wouldn't be able to grasp the "key" to unlocking his abilities.
This was the original storyline of the first six episodes of Starfall Prelude: Embers.
A mainstream plot built around the conflict between the siblings.
But that plot assumed Cseper didn't exist.
Now that Cseper was here, he had no intention of letting the siblings steal all the spotlight.
After all, even if they were the protagonists of Starfall,
who said protagonists were guaranteed to be the most popular in the drama?
The number one spot in popularity? Cseper William was determined to claim it!
While Cseper and the others awaited Yun Meng's announcement of the final assessment's details,
a hundred meters underground, in a VIP room at the Embers Organization's Base 13,
several unfamiliar figures, not members of the Embers Organization, began to gather.
These individuals, men and women, young and old,
shared one common trait: each exuded the commanding aura of someone accustomed to high authority.
Regardless of their status in the outside world, they were here for a single purpose:
to see just what this "epoch-making" Starfall Project, touted by the Embers Organization, was all about.
If the project was as miraculous as claimed,
they wouldn't hesitate to invest a portion of their resources to join this grand endeavor early on.