16: Chapter 16 Returning to School

Jiangnan City No. 3 High School.

According to the results of yesterday's Awakening ceremony, Su Chen had been kicked out of the elite class and directly relegated to this logistics class, commonly known as the "Cannon Fodder Class."

The classroom was in the most secluded corner of the first floor of the teaching building. The desks and chairs were somewhat worn, even showing signs of rust. The students sitting in the class mostly possessed F-rank and E-rank talents. None of them were discussing martial arts cultivation; most kept their heads down, either sleeping or whispering about where to go to move bricks later to earn a few hundred more yuan.

Su Chen walked in through the front door, carrying a faded canvas shoulder bag.

The classroom went quiet for a moment.

Several complex gazes landed on him. Some were sympathetic, some gleeful, and others indifferent.

"The top student in the school has come to join us on the bench," someone in the back row muttered quietly.

Su Chen turned a deaf ear to these voices. He walked to an empty seat by the window, sat down, took out a copy of "Fundamentals of Exotic Beast Anatomy" from his bag, opened it, and began to read quietly.

"Bang!"

Just then, the front door of the classroom was kicked open with force, and the previously noisy classroom instantly became so quiet that one could hear a pin drop.

Zhao Kuang walked in swaggeringly, his hands tucked into the pockets of his custom-made white martial arts uniform. Walking side-by-side with him was Liu Ruyan, dressed appropriately and elegantly in a pleated skirt. Behind them followed a few students from the elite class—all of them lackeys.

"Yo, why does this classroom have such a poor, sewer-like stench?"

A boy beside Zhao Kuang fanned his nose with his hand, looking disgusted. This person was Li Hao, who had just awakened his D-rank talent, Elementary Wind Blade, yesterday.

The students of the Cannon Fodder Class flushed red, but no one dared to speak up in rebuttal. An S-rank Genius—let alone them, even their homeroom teacher had to bow and scrape before one.

Zhao Kuang's gaze swept across the classroom and landed directly on Su Chen, who was sitting by the window.

He walked straight to the chair in front of Su Chen and pulled out the empty seat next to it to sit down.

Liu Ruyan stood beside Zhao Kuang, looking down at Su Chen, who was reading, and sighed softly.

"Su Chen, the dormitory manager said you didn't return to the dorm last night?"

Liu Ruyan's tone carried a feigned pity: "I know Jiang Feng is in the intensive care unit and needs a lot of money. But no matter how anxious you are, you shouldn't go to the Underground Black Market to take out a usurious loan."

As soon as these words were spoken, a suppressed gasp erupted in the classroom.

Usurious loans from the Underground Black Market? That was a place that devoured people without even spitting out the bones.

Li Hao immediately chimed in loudly from the side, intentionally letting everyone hear: "Sister Ruyan, he had no choice. The fatty's heart meridian was injured by Young Master Zhao's strike; the doctor said he doesn't have many days left. This trash probably panicked and sought medical advice from a witch doctor, risking his life to borrow money. It's a pity; even if he borrows it, it's just money down the drain."

"Su Chen, this is the class gap I told you about yesterday." Liu Ruyan shook her head. "You have no spiritual energy; if you borrow money from the black market and can't pay it back, you'll only be sold off to the mines in the wilderness as a slave for the rest of your life. You are digging your own grave."

The few of them went back and forth, their voices echoing throughout the classroom.

However.

One minute passed.

Two minutes passed.

Facing such mockery and rumors, Su Chen didn't even raise his head.

His left hand pressed against the book, and the index finger of his right hand slowly slid along the text on the page.

"Swish." Su Chen turned to the next page.

The crisp sound of paper friction seemed exceptionally abrupt amidst the noisy provocations.

He was extremely focused, as if those standing before him were not an S-rank Genius and a scion of a prominent family, but a group of buzzing, chattering flies flying around a trash heap.

This extreme disregard, treating them like air, made the mockery on Zhao Kuang's face vanish bit by bit.

Humiliation. The humiliation of being scared into retreating by a single glance from Su Chen on the playground yesterday began to gnaw at Zhao Kuang's nerves again.

"I'm talking to you, are you deaf?"

Zhao Kuang slammed the table violently, producing a "bang" sound. The solid wood desk cracked from his single strike.

Su Chen still didn't look up. "Swish." He turned to the next page again.

The veins on Zhao Kuang's forehead bulged, and dark golden sparks faintly emerged from his palms.

Just as Zhao Kuang was about to flip the table, Li Hao, who was standing behind him, read the situation and immediately jumped out.

Li Hao knew this was a good opportunity to impress his master.

"A trash F-rank, and you dare to act aloof in front of Young Master Zhao?"

Li Hao shouted angrily and reached Su Chen's side in a few steps.

He chose a very tricky angle, positioning himself exactly in Su Chen's blind spot to the rear.

"Kneel down and kowtow to me!"

Li Hao raised his right hand violently, and the spiritual energy in his body gathered in his palm.

A sharp whistling sound erupted in the air.

A pale cyan, crescent-shaped Wind Blade formed instantly in his hand.

Li Hao struck down mercilessly at Su Chen's spine!

Although he avoided the vital points with this strike and didn't intend to kill directly, the cutting power of a D-rank Wind Blade was enough to easily slice through an ordinary person's flesh and sever bones.

In Li Hao's view, as long as Su Chen, who had no spiritual energy defense, took this hit, he would definitely be severely injured, vomiting blood, and lying on the ground howling like a dead dog.

"Ah! Watch out!" A few timid girls in the classroom closed their eyes in fear.

Liu Ruyan did not speak to stop it, only watching coldly. She felt it was time to give Su Chen a dose of reality's brutal beating.

The Wind Blade descended at lightning speed, but in Su Chen's perception, it was as slow as a snail crawling through a swamp.

The massive amount of Yin Release Mental Energy brought by the Sharingan had already allowed his perception to form a blind-spot-free Domain around his body. The frequency of Li Hao's muscle contractions and his spiritual energy gathering points appeared one by one in Su Chen's mind.

"Dodge? No need."

Su Chen's gaze remained on the book. He didn't even change his sitting posture.

Only the muscle groups on his back, within a thousandth of a second, made an extremely subtle reaction. A formless, violent will was mobilized, precisely covering the spot on his back about to be struck.

[Armament Haki: Partial Hardening]!

A mysterious black metallic luster flashed across the skin beneath his school uniform. Absolute physical defense!

"Go to hell!" A ferocious smile already appeared on Li Hao's face.

"Clang—!"

The Wind Blade slashed fiercely onto Su Chen's back. There was no gushing blood, nor the sound of tearing flesh.

Instead, there was a huge metallic clanging sound, as if a heavy hammer had struck a solid titanium alloy plate, making the ears of the students nearby ring.

The smile on Li Hao's face vanished instantly. He felt that the person he had struck was not a human at all, but an indestructible iron wall!

The pale cyan spiritual energy Wind Blade, the moment it touched Su Chen's back, couldn't even cut a single hair and shattered on the spot under the terrifying hardness!

"Crack!"

The Wind Blade exploded into many tiny spiritual energy fragments. Under the powerful recoil generated by [Armament Haki], one very sharp fragment of the Wind Blade returned along its original path at a speed several times faster than when it came, landing right on Li Hao's right cheek, slicing off a large chunk of flesh and exposing his stark white cheekbone!

"Argh—!!!" After a brief silence, Li Hao let out a heart-wrenching scream.

He clutched his face and retreated repeatedly, blood gushing out like a fountain between his fingers, instantly staining the front of his school uniform red.

Li Hao rolled on the ground in pain, his shrill screams echoing throughout the classroom.

The whole class was deathly silent. Everyone's eyes widened, staring at Su Chen, who was sitting in his seat, as if he were a monster.

Liu Ruyan subconsciously took two steps back, covering her mouth, her eyes filled with disbelief.

The smug smile on Zhao Kuang's face instantly froze, and he stared fixedly at Su Chen's back. The ordinary summer school uniform had been torn open by the Wind Blade.

But beneath the tear, the exposed skin didn't even have a single red mark left on it!

"How is this possible…" Zhao Kuang's pupils constricted.

Even he, if he didn't raise a spiritual energy shield, would have been injured if he had to withstand a D-rank Wind Blade with his bare body alone. How could a trash F-rank with no spiritual energy block it? And how could he shatter and reflect the Wind Blade?

Only then did Su Chen slowly finish reading the last line of the page.

"Thud." He placed the "Fundamentals of Exotic Beast Anatomy" in his hand onto the corner of the desk and slowly stood up.

He turned around, looking down from above at Li Hao, who was rolling and howling on the ground, and glanced at the livid Zhao Kuang.

In his calm eyes, there was no pleasure in defeating an opponent. Only pure indifference.

"Too weak."

Su Chen's voice rang out in the empty classroom, not loud, but clearly reaching everyone's ears.

"This kind of soft, feeble strength isn't even qualified to scratch an itch for me."

Su Chen reached out and casually brushed off non-existent dust from his shoulder.

"Zhao Kuang." He called out the other person's name.

Zhao Kuang's whole body shuddered, and he subconsciously mobilized the Qi and blood in his body.

"Keep your dog on a leash." Su Chen looked at him. "Next time someone recklessly reaches out their claws from behind, what gets reflected back won't just be a broken Wind Blade."