The sky was clear and the day was new. On the vast training ground, a curly-haired boy let out an exaggerated “Owww!” as he collapsed dramatically to the ground.
“I lost again, damn it! I still can’t do it…”
Standing across from him, Shen Ning watched his over-the-top performance with a twitching mouth.
Xiao Snow again. She had been paired with this guy for sparring during P.E. Well, understandable—given her current reputation in class, no one else dared to partner with her.
She turned her head. Not far off, Xu Chuyao was dragging Mi Xiaolu into another one of their staged fake fights, laughing and playing like usual.
“That’s enough,” Shen Ning said to the curly-haired boy. “Get up already.”
If he kept lying there, someone would probably start a rumor by tomorrow: “That Shen girl broke someone’s leg in P.E.”
“Okay!”
Xiao Snow jumped up from the ground. “Shen Ning, I totally believe in you. Those people talking trash are just hating. If you were really like they say, I would’ve been done for during our first spar. Still, you gotta admit, it’s not entirely their fault. You do come off a bit weird sometimes. Even if they’re 99% wrong, you still got 1% to work on.”
Sparring was clearly going nowhere with this guy. With nothing better to do, Shen Ning asked casually, “Weird how?”
“You’re just… weird. Like right now. Everyone uses P.E. class to catch their breath. Sparring is our only break, but you’re the only one who takes it so seriously,” Xiao Snow said. “And that’s not all—you even go to the gravity chamber after class to train more. It’s like someone’s chasing you with a whip. You never relax.”
“So what?”
Shen Ning didn’t see a problem. If you wanted more power, you had to work harder.
Xiao Snow shook his head. “The problem is, this isn’t what you actually like doing. You walk around with that gloomy face all day, like you’re carrying a few corpses on your back. Makes people feel uneasy.”
She was carrying a few dozen corpses metaphorically, but—
“How do you know I don’t like training?”
“Because you don’t look happy when you do it. You know what I mean? Let me ask—before you joined the academy, did you have any hobbies?”
Shen Ning thought about it. Life in the mines hadn’t exactly offered much in the way of leisure. If there was any rare entertainment, she might tag along. Otherwise, it was just nonstop labor.
If she had to pick something, maybe it was those times when she and the other miners would flip through a magazine full of pretty girls during breaks… but that didn’t really count, did it?
“I don’t think I had any.”
“Then let me ask it differently,” Xiao Snow said patiently. “Is there anything you really want to do—something that makes you happy just thinking about it? I mean real, deep joy from the heart.”
That kind of magical thing… could it even exist?
Wait—yes. There was something.
Shen Ning suddenly remembered the dream she had yesterday in the confinement room—the one from nine months in the future. Xu Chuyao, holding her butt, pitifully begging for mercy while she, Shen Ning, approached with a cold smirk. She didn’t know what she did or how she did it, but that feeling of pure, honest satisfaction still lingered in her mind.
She glanced over to where the lightning girl was now. Xu Chuyao and Mi Xiaolu were acting out some kind of isekai-themed play, bouncing their little pink fists off each other joyfully.
Maybe taking the initiative would lead to some answers. After three years of being bullied by Big Boobs Girl, it was time to settle the score.
Sure, they had shared a nice night the other day—but when Shen Ning remembered that Xu Chuyao had come all that way just to mock her over the chopsticks… she still ground her teeth in frustration.
“I think I’ve found my direction. Thanks,” she said to Xiao Snow. “You’re more helpful than the academy’s psych teacher.”
“Psych teacher?”
Xiao Snow blinked in confusion.
Just then, a stir ran through the crowd. They both looked over to see a group of upperclassmen approaching from the far end of the training field. The group gave off an intense aura, and the boy leading them wore a dark scowl as he walked straight toward Shen Ning.
“You’re Shen Ning, right? I’m Xiaoli’s boyfriend,” he said, stopping a meter away.
“Xiaoli? Who?”
“She was with you the day before yesterday!”
The boy almost shouted it. Tier-2 spirit energy flared around him, whipping across the faces of the lower-year students like a gust of wind.
Xiao Snow stepped half a step behind Shen Ning and bit his lip. “Don’t try anything. According to Shengling Academy’s student code and ethics guidelines, upperclassmen attacking juniors can earn a serious demerit!”
The student code and ethics guidelines were the school’s prized weapon for building a “harmonious society,” at least in the eyes of the administration. Xu Chuyao, on the other hand, saw it as the main reason students were becoming weaklings.
To prevent superpowered young people from becoming public dangers after graduation, the academy placed a heavy emphasis on ethics education.
Out of the three types of courses, cultural classes could be failed with no real consequence beyond judgmental stares. Spirit power courses earned you scolding and minor career drawbacks. But if you failed ethics? Best case: you repeated the year. Worst case: you got locked up somewhere “special.”
“I’m not here to fight,” the boy growled. “I just want to ask you something.” His eyes locked on Shen Ning. “Someone said you were the one who killed those students. I don’t believe it—but I want to know why you didn’t save her.”
Ah, now she remembered. One of the girls chatting about shopping had mentioned an upperclassman boyfriend.
Shen Ning curled her lip. “Why would I save her? I’m not a teacher. Their lives aren’t my responsibility.”
She had chosen to carry the karmic weight of the miners. These unlucky classmates? Not her concern.
Her blunt answer made the boy’s breathing grow heavier. “You had the power to kill so many enemies—why couldn’t you save even one person?”
“If your girlfriend had shown an ounce of courage and stepped up to help me, maybe she and the others wouldn’t have died.”
Shen Ning had no interest in arguing with this guy. Internally calling him a Shenjing Bing (brain-fried psycho), she turned to leave.
“Stop!”
The boy struck out at her shoulder, Tier-2 power flaring—so fast that no one around had time to react.
But Shen Ning turned and punched his hand.
Boom—!!
Just like the theory teacher had said, the collision of two Tier-2 spirit forces erupted in a shockwave. Xiao Snow, closest to the blast, was blown back like a leaf, rolling across the ground several times.
Of course, spirit users were tough enough to take a few tumbles. But the real shock wasn’t the blow—it was that Shen Ning was Tier 2.
She lowered her fist calmly. She hadn’t moved an inch. The older boy, by contrast, had been blasted back several steps.
“You—how?! I…”
He had lost… in a pure power clash.
Shen Ning looked around—at the stunned students, at the P.E. teacher’s face, caught somewhere between thrilled and conflicted—and finally at Xu Chuyao in the distance.
The lightning girl stared at her, mouth agape. Then she whispered, almost in disbelief:
“You unlocked it?”
Shen Ning is gonna enjoy that reaction from her lmao