2: Chapter 2 Coldly Annulling the Engagement, You're Blocking My System Progress Bar

The Awakening ceremony was still ongoing, but a vacuum zone had spontaneously formed in the corner at the edge of the playground.

As Su Chen walked down the steps, the crowd scattered to both sides wherever he passed, as if avoiding a plague.

"Stay away from him. Who knows if that so-called Red Eye is contagious."

"How pathetic. He was so glorious just a moment ago, and now he looks like a dog. Being directly sent to the Cannon Fodder Class, his fate is to just move bricks for the front lines from now on."

"That's fate. What's the use of getting a perfect score on theoretical knowledge? In this world, without spiritual energy affinity, you are just the dregs of the bottom layer."

Su Chen turned a deaf ear to the whispers around him. He stood still at the edge of the playground, hands in his pockets, his gaze fixed straight ahead.

No one knew that he wasn't actually looking at the playground, but was staring at a line of translucent characters on his retina.

[Current loading progress: 99.85%...]

A crisp sound of high-heeled combat boots interrupted his train of thought.

Liu Ruyan walked over.

Behind her followed several boys and girls who were also from noble families and had awakened high-level talents. A group of people surrounded her like stars around the moon, looking down at Su Chen with condescending gazes.

"Su Chen." Liu Ruyan stopped two meters away, her voice as cold as ice.

Su Chen's gaze did not move; he was staring at that progress bar that only he could see.

[99.88%...]

Seeing that Su Chen ignored her, Liu Ruyan frowned, her tone growing heavier: "I am talking to you. Even if you pretend not to hear, you cannot change reality. Escaping is useless."

Su Chen finally shifted his gaze to her face.

There was no anger, no pain, and none of the gentleness from the past. He was as calm as if he were looking at a stone on the side of the road.

"Something you need?" Su Chen spoke up.

Liu Ruyan felt very uncomfortable under this gaze. She took a deep breath and lifted her chin: "The relationship between us ends here."

The students around who were pricking up their ears to listen to the gossip suddenly let out a low gasp.

Liu Ruyan ignored the surrounding gazes and continued: "Su Chen, this world is very realistic. You heard the machine's assessment just now. I have already awakened A-rank spiritual energy and am destined to be admitted to the three major universities in Kyoto. In the future, I will enter the Star Gate front lines and become a commander who rules over a territory."

"And you, with your F-rank double waste talent, won't even have the qualifications to step outside the high walls of the base city in the future. We are already people from two different worlds."

Su Chen didn't speak.

[99.9%...]

Liu Ruyan thought Su Chen was too devastated to speak, so she softened her tone a little, carrying a sense of lofty charity: "Don't blame me for being cruel. Long pain is worse than short pain. If we continue to maintain the engagement, it will only harm you. You can stay in Jiangnan City to be a regular logistics worker and live a peaceful life. If we are forcibly tied together, the circles we come into contact with in the future will be completely different. The huge class gap will only crush your self-esteem over and over again."

She turned her head and glanced at her best friend behind her. The friend immediately handed over a document.

"This is the engagement annulment agreement. I have already signed it; you should sign it too." Liu Ruyan handed the document to Su Chen, "Let go. It will be decent for everyone."

Everyone held their breath.

Everyone thought Su Chen would explode.

According to common sense, faced with such public annulment and humiliation, a hot-blooded young man would definitely shout "Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river," or angrily accuse the other party of being snobbish, or at the very least, tearfully try to hold on.

However, Su Chen remained motionless.

He didn't even raise his hand.

[99.92%...]

"Su Chen, you speak up! Are you mute?" Liu Ruyan's friend urged impatiently, "Sister Ruyan is discussing this with you nicely; don't be ungrateful. You are now a piece of trash in the Cannon Fodder Class; do you still want to shamelessly cling to Sister Ruyan?"

Su Chen's gaze slowly withdrew from the void and refocused on Liu Ruyan's face. His brows furrowed slightly.

"Are you done?" He finally spoke. His voice was flat, without any fluctuation.

Liu Ruyan was stunned: "What do you mean?"

"If you have finished saying all this nonsense." Su Chen pointed to the document in her hand, "Hand over the annulment letter, and I will sign it."

Crisp and decisive.

Liu Ruyan was completely stunned on the spot, her hand holding the annulment letter frozen in mid-air.

She had prepared a belly full of soothing, warning, and even threatening words, and had imagined dozens of Su Chen's collapsing reactions, but she hadn't counted on this one.

This feeling was like a punch with full force hitting a piece of fluffy cotton, stifling enough to make one vomit blood.

Su Chen looked at her frozen state, the impatience in his eyes growing heavier: "Hurry up. After I sign, move aside quickly; don't stand in front of me."

"You... you find me annoying?" Liu Ruyan widened her eyes in disbelief.

"No." Su Chen looked at the virtual panel still slowly jumping in mid-air and stated a fact seriously, "You are blocking my view of the System loading."

Once these words were said, the surroundings fell silent.

System loading? What System receiving view?

"Is he mentally deranged from too much stimulation?" Someone whispered.

"Probably. F-rank mental mutation, he was already suffering from Red Eye and had problems in his head; now he's probably completely crazy."

Liu Ruyan's face turned from white to red, and then from red to green in an instant.

Extreme indifference brought extreme humiliation!

She thought Su Chen would be devastated because of losing her, but in the other party's eyes, there was only impatience at being disturbed! He even made up an absurd excuse like "blocking the view" to drive her away!

"Su Chen! Why are you pretending to be aloof!"

Liu Ruyan completely broke down, and the demeanor of the noble family daughter who was originally high above disappeared without a trace. She suddenly retracted the annulment letter, used force with both hands, and tore the few pages of the document into pieces.

"You don't even deserve the qualification to sign! From today on, you and I are complete strangers!"

She smashed the shredded paper in her hand towards Su Chen's face.

The paper scraps drifted down like snowflakes.

Just at the moment when the paper scraps were about to touch the tip of Su Chen's nose

"Roar—!"

A roar that seemed to come from a savage behemoth suddenly exploded on the periphery of the crowd, the sound waves making the eardrums of several students nearby ache faintly.

"Get the hell out of my way!"

Accompanied by a roar, the crowd on the periphery was rudely shoved aside by brute force. A fat man nearly two meters tall, with a build as imposing as a mountain, rushed in with bloodshot eyes.

Every step he took, the plastic track on the ground trembled. On his exposed arms, a faint phantom of hard, earthy-yellow bear fur emerged.

It was none other than Jiang Feng, who had just awakened the A-rank [Titan Giant Bear] talent!

Jiang Feng stood in front of Su Chen like a wall of flesh. His fan-sized palm swung fiercely, and the violent gale it brought directly blew the shredded paper in mid-air back, plastering it all over the faces of Liu Ruyan and her friend.

"Liu Ruyan! Do you have any shame left!" Jiang Feng pointed at Liu Ruyan's nose, spittle flying, not caring at all that the other party was a noble family daughter.

Liu Ruyan was forced to take two steps back by the A-rank spiritual energy pressure emanating from Jiang Feng, her face looking extremely ugly: "Jiang Feng! This is a matter between Su Chen and me; it is not your place to interrupt. You are already an A-rank Genius; why offend our Liu family for a piece of trash?"

"Bullshit!"

Jiang Feng cursed loudly, his voice like thunder: "Back when Brother Chen was the top in theory for three consecutive years, staying up late to help you tutor your Qi circulation routes, why didn't you think he was a piece of trash? Back then, you clung to Brother Chen every day, calling him 'Brother Chen' so sweetly! Now that you see he awakened F-rank, you turn around and bring people to kick him while he's down? What kind of thing are you!"

The surrounding students were in an uproar. Everyone looked at each other, obviously not expecting that Liu Ruyan had such a history of begging Su Chen for tutoring.

"You... what are you talking nonsense about!" Liu Ruyan was poked in the sore spot, her face turning the color of a pig's liver.

"Whether I am talking nonsense or not, you know clearly in your heart!"

Jiang Feng didn't give her a chance to refute at all, turned around, and slapped his broad chest heavily, making a "thud" sound.

He looked around and roared in a volume that the entire playground could hear: "I don't care about what talent or no talent! So what if it's F-rank? Did he eat your family's rice?!"

"From today on, Su Chen is under my protection, Jiang Feng!"

Jiang Feng clenched his fists, his joints popping, the earthy-yellow giant bear phantom looming behind him, and the fierce aura made the several students who were still laughing just now retreat again and again.

"In the future, in school, whoever dares to touch a hair of my brother, first ask if my bear claws agree!"

The edge of the playground fell into silence again.

No one was willing to provoke a fat man who had just awakened A-rank combat talent and was in a state of rage at this time. Several noble family children also exchanged glances and temporarily remained still.

Su Chen stood in the shadow of Jiang Feng's broad back.

Looking at his best friend's shoulders trembling slightly due to rage, a trace of imperceptible ripple finally emerged in the depths of Su Chen's abyss-like cold eyes.

In this high-martial world where people eat people and interests are paramount, everyone is rushing to draw a line with him. Only this fat man, foolishly using his own bright future he just obtained, to protect a so-called "F-rank waste" to the death.

In his mind, the mechanical voice happened to jump at this moment.

[99.96%...]

[99.97%...]

Su Chen raised his hand and patted Jiang Feng's shoulder gently.

"Fatty, that's enough." Su Chen's voice was still calm, but it lacked the bone-chilling coldness from before, "No need to waste words with them. If a dog bites a person, there's no need to bark back at the dog. Let's go."