Lin Mo's arrival was like a stone tossed into a still pond, instantly drawing the attention of all the supervising teachers waiting nearby.
Xu Haoming felt his throat go dry, his feet rooted to the spot as if nailed there, too hesitant to step forward.
There was no helping it—Lin Mo had done the same thing during the last city-wide competition: finishing first and emerging with an air of arrogance that was impossible to ignore, especially with so many rival schoolteachers watching.
Of course, Xu Haoming knew full well that this kid had every right to be arrogant.
Lin Mo ignored the mixed gazes around him and strode straight toward Xu Haoming, his steps so relaxed it seemed like he’d just wrapped up a casual pop quiz.
He casually handed over a few densely scribbled sheets of draft paper, letting them flutter lightly into Xu Haoming’s hands.
"Teacher, there’s another round tomorrow, right?"
Director Huang, standing nearby, reacted swiftly, smoothly offering a pre-prepared bottle of water with a beaming smile.
"How was the difficulty? I heard from Teacher Xu that you finished in half an hour last time—how about this round?"
"Thanks, teacher." Lin Mo twisted off the cap and took a long swig, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
He wasn’t particularly thirsty, but refusing the gesture would’ve felt like a slight to Director Huang.
Setting the bottle down, he continued unhurriedly,
"Honestly, I could’ve finished in half an hour this time too, but Teacher Xu said that’d be pushing it, so I took some extra time to simplify the steps and write them out on the draft paper."
The words nearly made Xu Haoming choke on his own spit, forcing him to cough awkwardly to cover it up.
Lin Mo’s reply also earned an enthusiastic thumbs-up from Director Huang, who raised his voice just enough for the surrounding crowd to hear. "That’s our school’s top student for you! Such composure, such skill!"
Xu Haoming sighed, his eyes instinctively scanning the area.
Sure enough, he could practically feel the disdainful glares stabbing into them like daggers. The expressions on those faces said it all:
Show-off.
Just then, a middle-aged man with gold-rimmed glasses approached, a badge from a top-tier Pengcheng high school hanging from his chest. His smile was thin and insincere as he spoke,
"Finished already? Mind if I take a look at those notes? I’m genuinely curious what kind of genius treats a provincial competition like a classroom quiz."
The barb in his tone was unmistakable.
"Nothing special, just a talented student. No need for such concern, Teacher Chen."
Xu Haoming shrugged, feigning nonchalance. He’d expected this kind of reaction.
Most of the supervising teachers knew each other.
And they were all math teachers.
Where there were people, there was competition—and these teachers were no exception, except their battles were fought through their students.
Seeing Xu Haoming refuse to engage, the nearly sixty-year-old Teacher Chen sidled closer, eyeing Lin Mo up and down.
"Kid, did you actually finish all the problems? Rushing out like this—what if you missed a step? Provincial competitions don’t come around often, you know."
The words were gentle, but the mockery beneath was sharp.
Against such a veiled jab, the best counter was a blunt force strike.
But Lin Mo merely smiled faintly.
"Steps aren’t an issue. The last problem was about non-Euclidean geometry in composite functions.
The conventional method requires constructing six auxiliary functions, then performing four integrations—it’d fill a whole page by the end.
But if you reframe it as a topological problem on a closed surface and find the critical point of the genus, the answer practically writes itself.
See? Just three lines.
Of course, I can write it like this, but others might not get it.
Anyway..."
Lin Mo stepped right up to the teacher.
"What’s it to you, old man? Maybe you should spend your time praying your students can even finish their papers before time’s up."
The words were a direct slap to the face, forcing Teacher Chen to stumble back a step.
"You—this student has no manners! No respect at all!"
In his past life, Lin Mo had been a troublemaker—and troublemakers honed their verbal sparring first.
"Don’t call me ‘student.’ You never taught me, so you’re not my teacher. You came begging for insults, and now you’re crying about manners? If you had any decency, you wouldn’t have approached in the first place.
This is just Sima Zhao’s ambition with Sima Zhao’s character."
Everyone present was a math teacher, but they were all educated—they knew exactly who Sima Zhao was.
And it was clear what Teacher Chen’s intentions had been. Sima Zhao’s ambition—everyone saw through it.
As for character...
Picking a fight with a student wasn’t exactly noble behavior.
Many knew there was old bad blood between Teacher Chen and Xu Haoming.
But with one based in Pengcheng and the other in Yangcheng, their paths rarely crossed.
No one intervened—they just watched.
Drama was entertaining.
Teacher Chen, now thoroughly humiliated, retreated another step. A seasoned educator, he wasn’t about to keel over from a verbal lashing.
But his face was flushed with rage.
"How dare you speak like that? Did your parents never teach you to respect your elders?"
"Shut the hell up, you fossil. Did your mom never teach you to cherish the young? And are you even retired? Got a senior citizen bus pass yet? Just because I called you ‘old man,’ you think you’re ancient?"
Lin Mo advanced again, practically jabbing a finger in Teacher Chen’s face.
Since Teacher Chen was alone—no teammates to pull him back—he had no choice but to endure the verbal onslaught.
But Xu Haoming, not wanting things to escalate further, finally tugged Lin Mo away.
"Enough. What if you accidentally give him a stroke?"
"Won’t happen. I’m monitoring it."
Lin Mo’s spiritual senses had been tracking the old man’s blood pressure and heart rate the whole time.
If necessary, he could’ve stabilized him better than a coronary stent.
But Teacher Chen didn’t need intervention—just yet.
He stood there wheezing, backing away further, finger raised as if to retort.
Luckily, Director Huang stepped between them, cutting off any chance of another round.
The onlookers, though enjoying the show, now saw how highly Xu Haoming valued Lin Mo.
Xu Haoming had already carefully tucked away the draft paper. Once the problems were released, they’d see whether Lin Mo’s solutions held up.
More importantly, Xu Haoming had absolute faith in Lin Mo’s abilities.
After all, the kid always finished early, no matter the test.
Director Huang even thumped his chest. "Come on, Lin Mo, I’ll treat you to a soda outside."
Seeing no reason to stay, Lin Mo followed him out.
Xu Haoming called after them, "Get me one too!"
"Buy your own." Director Huang waved him off, taking only Lin Mo with him.
Teacher Chen glared darkly at Lin Mo’s retreating figure, but with no outlet for his anger, he could only slump into a seat and wait for the competition to end—then grill his own students about that final problem.
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
saw a female celebrity tied up and stuffed in the trunk! Little did he know, countless cameras were aimed at him at this moment - this was a new type of reality show. The first randomly selected passerby was caught in less than an hour. But when Xu Moru was selected, things started to take an unexpected turn. "Damn, this isn't how the script goes. This Xu Moru is too bold, he's not following the rules at all." "Crap, is this guy taking it seriously?" "The female celebrity has been scared to tears!"
