The moment the lineup was finalized, An Changqing patted Shan Heng on the shoulder in Huaxing Academy’s waiting area.
“Don’t be nervous. Just perform as you normally do.”
An Changqing offered him some encouragement. Ross was still very strong—last year, he had even eliminated Chen Guan.
A victory would be a pleasant surprise, but there was no need to feel too discouraged if he lost.
Shan Heng took a deep breath and nodded firmly at An Changqing.
“I’ll win.”
He walked toward the arena with steady steps. Only the deep crescents his fingernails had dug into his tightly clenched palms silently betrayed the tension in his heart.
Over at No. 0 Academy, Ross stood up. He was much more confident this time. After all, his opponent was only a first-year rookie, not some second-year cheat-level monster. The advantage was clearly his.
“Watch me finish this quickly,” he said confidently to his teammates.
[Go, Shan Heng! Your teammates may all be monsters, but you’re still the pride of Huaxing!]
[Ross was so cowardly in front of Brother Coffin. Why’s he acting so arrogant now?]
[That’s what happens when you bully the weak and fear the strong.]
“Begin!”
The instant the referee’s arm dropped, Ross thrust both hands forward. Countless metal fragments howled out from his sleeves, transforming into two surging tides of metallic serpents that twisted toward Shan Heng.
Yet in the face of this attack, Shan Heng remained exceptionally calm.
His footsteps shifted unpredictably, and his body moved at angles that defied physics. With astonishing precision, he slipped effortlessly through the gaps in the metallic serpent tide, predicting the trajectory of every fragment without the slightest error.
“Oh?”
The flippancy on Ross’s face faded a little. The metallic serpents under his control grew more ferocious, their angles of attack increasingly treacherous, nearly sealing off every possible route of escape.
However, within that torrent of data, Shan Heng’s figure was truly like an uncatchable phantom. He continued to move with ease.
“How is he doing that?”
At No. 0 Academy’s waiting area, Kyle had just emerged from the medical pod when he saw one of his own teammates’ metal storm being casually evaded by an obscure first-year student. His face immediately turned a deep liver-red.
He really was inferior to the veteran above him and the rookie below him.
Don’t tell me he’s going to lose again?
On the other side, Chen Guan watched the match from the sidelines. Every one of Shan Heng’s steps was near-perfect. He wasted not the slightest bit of energy, always managing to let the lethal metal blades skim past the edges of his clothes. They kicked up fierce winds, yet failed to hurt him in the slightest.
This kid really was a genius.
“Kid, you’re pretty good at running.”
Ross’s expression darkened. He had thought this would be an easy match in which he could crush a rookie, but now he had become a laughingstock before the entire audience.
In an instant, the metallic serpent tide he controlled accelerated dramatically. With shrill sonic booms, it transformed into an inescapable net from every direction—above, below, left, and right—and closed in on Shan Heng.
Shan Heng merely adjusted his glasses. Countless streams of golden data flickered across the lenses.
His body leaned backward at an even more incomprehensible angle, while his left foot retreated half a step, causing his center of gravity to shift by the slightest amount.
That simple movement tore open a gap in the seemingly unavoidable metal net—just wide enough for a single person to pass through.
He stepped through it.
Behind him, the metal fragments crashed into one another with a thunderous boom, exploding into a dazzling shower of sparks. The alloy tiles of the arena floor were sliced into pieces.
“Are you only capable of scurrying around like a rat?”
Ross’s voice was now filled with barely restrained fury. He felt humiliated—evaded by a first-year student using the very method he looked down on most.
Shan Heng did not answer. He simply adjusted his position again and looked at Ross calmly.
For a moment, Ross was dazed.
That expression… Why did it look so much like Chen Guan’s?
“Very well.”
Ross snapped back to reality. His fury turned into a strange smile as he abruptly halted all his attacks, leaving the metal fragments suspended in midair.
“You like calculations, don’t you?”
Ross spread his arms.
“Then I’ll give you something you’ll never be able to calculate.”
The instant his words fell, the metal fragments hovering in the air began to blur. They turned transparent, then vanished without a trace before everyone’s eyes.
It was as if an eraser had wiped them from the world.
“What is this?”
An Changqing shot to his feet as he stared at the change taking place in the arena.
Shan Heng’s pupils contracted sharply. The streams of data on his lenses began flashing error messages at an insane rate.
They had lost their target.
“The game is over.”
Ross’s voice was like a demon’s whisper.
The next moment, the vanished metal fragments reappeared directly in front of Shan Heng.
This time, they fused into an incomparably sharp metal spear. Its tip was less than an inch from the space between his eyebrows.
At that moment, time and space seemed to lose all meaning.
There was no trajectory and no warning. This was an attack that surpassed both speed and logic.
Shan Heng froze in place. His brain’s super-frequency calculations completely crashed. He could feel the chill of death radiating from the spearhead, as though all the blood in his body had frozen solid.
“I concede.”
Shan Heng closed his eyes and spoke decisively.
He knew he had not lost unfairly.
Unless he used the power he had kept hidden, there was no way he could deal with an invisible attack like this.
He certainly was not going to reveal the full extent of his strength for a trivial academy tournament.
The metal spear stopped a hair’s breadth from his brow. Then, inch by inch, it disintegrated, breaking apart into the most primitive metal dust and fluttering down.
“The winner is Ross of No. 0 Academy.”
The referee’s voice rang out, carrying a hint of astonishment that even he himself failed to notice.
Ross clasped one hand over the other and gave a courteous bow.
“You fought well, kid.”
He turned and walked away with an easy, confident stride, but once he was out of sight, he secretly let out a breath of relief.
Thank goodness. You really weren’t Chen Guan after all.
Elsewhere, in Huaxing Academy’s waiting area, An Changqing slowly sat down. Looking at Shan Heng as he came off the arena, he patted him on the shoulder.
“Don’t take it to heart. You still have a long road ahead of you.”
“I understand.”
Shan Heng nodded. He was not disappointed. He knew that he had come here in the first place merely to make up the numbers.
From a distant spot, Chen Guan watched Ross leave.
Back in the jungle, Ross had desperately dodged the paper warrior’s attacks, refusing even to use his genetic enhancement drug. Chen Guan had already sensed that something was wrong.
That guy had not been nearly this restrained last year.
So he had been hiding this trump card all along—a move capable of instantly turning the tide of battle.
Breaking matter down at the atomic level and reconstructing it at any designated location…
An ability like that truly was the nightmare of every opponent who relied on prediction and defense.
It ignored distance and defense alike. Once the target was locked on, the attack was guaranteed to kill.
Everyone here had a cheat of their own.
A sense of urgency rose within Chen Guan’s heart.
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!
s + Rent Collection Wealth】 At the start, he inherited a rundown house in the urban village from his grandfather. The house had no tenants, but the moment he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, a self-proclaimed empress from the Tianxuan Continent arrived as his first tenant. Ye Chuan soon discovered that with every new tenant moving in, not only did he receive massive daily payments, but he also obtained unique items related to their backgrounds. 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Tiger Strength Pill—dramatically enhances physical power!】 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Deer Blood Pill—significantly boosts vitality!】 …… From that day on, all sorts of bizarre tenants began appearing in the house: the empress from Tianxuan Continent, an apocalyptic sorceress from the Magic Realm, a mysterious scientific girl who fell through a spacetime rift… Every single day, he received strange, powerful items and endless money. Then one day, he suddenly realized—he had become invincible. Enough, enough! Stop giving me more!
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
] This is a dark fantasy-themed dating simulation game. The main gameplay involves containing various monster girls and investigating the truth of a world shrouded in mist alongside your companions. However, due to his love for the dark and bizarre atmosphere, Luo Wei ended up turning a dating game into a detective mystery game. Women? Women only slow down his quickdraw! To Luo Wei, the female leads in the game are more like tools to perfectly clear levels and squeeze out rewards. For Luo Wei, flirting with every girl he meets and then discarding them is standard procedure. Worried about characters losing affection points? No need. With his maxed-out charm stat, Luo Wei is practically a "human incubus." A little psychological manipulation and those points come right back. It's a bit scummy, but the paper cutout heroines in the game won't actually come at him with real cleavers. However... Luo Wei has transmigrated. He's accidentally entered the second playthrough of this game. His past actions have caused all the girls to transform into terrifying yanderes. Due to the game's setting, most of the heroines he once contained are "troubled girls." Obsessive, twisted, mentally unstable, all aggressive yanderes... The type who will kill you if they can't have you... Luo Wei wants to cry but has no tears left. "I really just want to survive..." In short, this is a story of battling wits and engaging in a love-hate relationship with yanderes.
