White Tiger Is a Good Person

However, no matter what he was after, he shouldn't torture people like this, right?

To Long Ao, who hated reading and writing, a five-thousand-word self-reflection was an extremely harsh punishment.

An Changqing sat to the side, carefully wiping his longsword with a soft cloth.

Hearing Long Ao's complaint, he paused his wiping.

"You don't understand." An Changqing shook his head. "This isn't a punishment."

"If it's not a punishment, what is it? A reward?" Long Ao rolled his eyes in annoyance.

"It's a form of protection." An Changqing sheathed his sword and looked at Long Ao, his gaze like one looking at an unenlightened child.

"Haven't you noticed? From the very beginning, Chen Guan has been too calm. Facing the Demon King, facing life and death, his emotions didn't fluctuate at all. Is that normal?"

Long Ao froze for a moment. "He... hasn't he always been like that?"

Scenes flashed through his mind.

It seemed that Chen Guan was already like this when they first met, so naturally, he didn't think there was anything to make a fuss about.

"That's different." An Changqing shook his head. "Before, it was silence. But at the top of the Myriad Demon Tower, it was dead stillness, a dead stillness where even despair had burned out. His mind was stretched to its absolute limit."

"Long Ao, you can't assume that just because he's always been this way, his current state is normal."

An Changqing stood up and paced a few steps around the room.

"Instructor Jing made him write a self-reflection not to punish him, but to give him a space to be alone, a window to vent. It allows him to pour out all those suppressed feelings through words. This is a form of psychological counseling. At the same time, the format of a self-reflection is also a reminder to him that he is still a student."

Long Ao was completely dumbfounded by what he heard, his mouth hanging open for a long time.

So... that was how it was?

He recalled Chen Guan's constantly expressionless face and those eyes that betrayed no emotion.

It seemed An Changqing made some sense.

Chen Guan was indeed the most unique person he had ever met. He couldn't just ignore the other party's psychological needs just because he was used to it.

"I understand." Long Ao nodded heavily, a touch of admiration in his eyes. "Instructor Jing... really has good intentions."

He had misunderstood entirely. White Tiger was a good person.

An Changqing said no more. He just looked out the window toward the confinement room where Chen Guan was, his gaze complex.

He didn't know the root of Chen Guan's problem, and given the other's personality, he didn't dare ask too much.

However, before coming to the Northern Frontier, his father's assistant had sent him a message saying that they had bought a supreme treasure capable of healing the human soul.

Although he didn't know the exact situation of the person in the coffin, being unconscious most likely meant soul damage. If that person could wake up, Chen Guan might be able to step out of his depression a bit.

When they returned this time, he would think of an excuse to hand it over to Chen Guan logically.

...

At eight o'clock in the morning, right on the dot.

Chen Guan, holding his self-reflection, knocked on the door of Instructor Jing's office.

"Come in."

A lazy response came from inside.

Chen Guan pushed the door open and entered. Instructor Jing was sitting on the sofa with his legs crossed, drinking goji berry tea.

The office was a mess, with documents, weapon parts, and snack bags piled everywhere.

"Finished writing?" Instructor Jing lifted his eyelids and pointed at the desk.

Chen Guan didn't speak. He walked over and neatly placed the manuscript paper on the corner of the desk.

Instructor Jing put down his teacup, somewhat surprised, and picked up the manuscript paper to take a look.

"Whoa, that's quite a lot."

What an honest kid.

He casually flipped to the first page.

At first, the expression on his face was still that cynical laziness.

But as he read on, the smile on his face slowly faded.

His page-turning speed grew faster and faster, and his brows furrowed tighter and tighter.

The office was so quiet that only the rustling sound of pages turning could be heard.

Chen Guan stood in place like a sculpture.

Finally, Instructor Jing turned to the last page.

He closed the manuscript paper, looked up, and sized Chen Guan up and down with an unprecedentedly bizarre look in his eyes.

In his eyes, there was three parts surprise, three parts confusion, and four parts of the absurdity of having seen a ghost. It was enough to turn a living person's eyeballs into a pie chart.

He remained silent for a long time before tapping the stack of self-reflections on the desk, making a dull thud.

"Student Chen Guan."

Instructor Jing leaned forward, resting his chin on his intertwined fingers.

He looked up and stared intently at Chen Guan.

"Do you... have some sort of massive misunderstanding about the word 'self-reflection'?"

Chen Guan looked at Instructor Jing's pie-chart face that was about to crack and answered rigidly, "Reporting to the instructor, five thousand words. I've confirmed it. It's only more, not less."

Instructor Jing slammed the manuscript paper heavily onto the desk. The dull thud failed to shake Chen Guan's expression in the slightest.

He leaned back into the sofa and let out a sigh that sounded somewhere between a toothache and constipation.

He casually flipped open another page and read it out in a cadenced tone filled with one hundred and twenty percent disgust.

"When the blood of my comrades dyed my eyes red, I finally understood that the darkness in this world is not the darkness of the night, but the despair of being unable to light up the dawn. My scythe is trembling. It yearns to sever the chains of destiny, but can only wave in vain in the mire of reality."

Instructor Jing looked up, his eyelids twitching. "Long Ao was just blasted away. Right now, he's alive and kicking, asking the nurse for a chicken leg. Whose blood dyed your eyes red?"

Chen Guan's face remained unchanged. "Art comes from life, but it is higher than life."

[Higher than life hahahahaha! Chen Guan, my internet mouthpiece!]

[Instructor Jing: I asked you to write a self-reflection, and you gave me a poetry recitation?]

[With this writing style, it's a pity he's not an author. The whole piece is nonsense, yet it seems to say something. What a master of padding.]

[Dying of laughter. I feel like I'm looking at myself submitting my graduation thesis. My advisor's expression was exactly the same as Instructor Jing's.]

Bullet comments rolled rapidly across his retina, and the backend popularity points were jumping upward at a gratifying speed.

In this place without An Changqing, the bullet comments were actually still monitoring him.

He had found the traffic code again.

Instructor Jing obviously didn't want to discuss literary creation with him anymore.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and pushed aside the stack of self-reflections that could serve as a murder weapon, as if he were dealing with some biochemical weapon.

The air in the office quieted down.

That lazy and uninhibited aura faded from Instructor Jing. He sat up straight, and those eyes that were always half-squinted fully opened.

"Chen Guan." His voice sank, devoid of its previous playfulness. "You are very smart. Your progress is even faster than I imagined."

Chen Guan remained silent. He knew that the real conversation was only just beginning.

"That set of data analysis from Southern Dipper, in my eyes, is just a load of bullshit."

White Tiger intertwined his fingers and rested them on his lap. Not caring whether Chen Guan actually knew Southern Dipper or not, he continued on his own, "He can analyze your combat model and your mental resilience, but he can't analyze what a person hides in their bones."

"Aren't you curious? Why did we ultimately choose you?"

"You should be more curious about why I chose to join you."

Chen Guan threw the question right back at him. White Tiger choked on his words for a moment. Damn it, he actually was curious about that.

To say it was just a desperate measure out of a fear of death wouldn't be right either. Who knew what kind of demonic arts this kid possessed, but he simply couldn't be killed.

Curse it all, he actually let the kid show off and get away with it.