Crash!
The window of the Godkin University president's office instantly shattered into a storm of flying shards.
A bronze sword pierced the air from afar, carrying a piercing sonic boom. Its momentum drove the hilt crashing heavily into the shoulder of a girl who had been closing in on Indira Shetty.
With a thunderous boom, as if struck broadside by a speeding semi-truck, the girl was flung outward like a cannonball before she could even process what had happened, slamming violently into a concrete wall more than twenty meters away.
Dust billowed into the air as chunks of broken concrete rained down with a clatter.
Seeing this, Shetty—who had gone pale, her heart pounding frantically—felt the tension snap in her legs. She staggered back several steps, clutching the edge of her desk behind her with one white-knuckled hand as she gasped for breath.
Thud... Thud... Thud...
The suddenly quiet office was filled by a steady, measured set of footsteps.
Qi Li stepped over the windowsill and walked into the room. After glancing around, his eyes came to rest on the shaken Shetty.
Shetty looked up at him, forcing a faint, trembling smile, and offered a weak joke in a shaky voice: "I thought it'd take you some time to figure out where I was."
Qi Li, who had rushed here the second he received her SOS, twitched his mouth. "If I knew where your house was, I would've gone there first."
Shetty had been away from campus for a while. He had simply dropped by the president's office on a long shot, never expecting he would actually guess right.
"What happened?" Qi Li asked, looking at her.
He couldn't fathom how someone normally so composed could cause such a massive stir the moment she returned.
Just as Shetty was about to explain—
Clatter—
From deep inside the hole blasted into the opposite wall, the sound of shifting rubble echoed, followed by a dull clunk.
Qi Li turned his head.
A short, chubby girl shoved the bronze sword off herself and stumbled out of the ruined wall.
"Lucy?"
Only then did Qi Li get a clear look at her face, surprise flickering in his eyes.
The girl was in his year.
Though they had rarely spoken, the entire university had only around four hundred students. After spending enough time on campus, you came to recognize almost everyone.
Lucy was clearly in a bad state.
When white people got furious, their skin often flushed a vivid red, taking on an intense physiological glow.
Lucy looked exactly like that now.
Covered in dust and clad in tattered clothes, she looked utterly deranged, her face twisted in manic fury. Her murderous gaze locked onto Shetty again almost immediately.
Just as she moved to strike—
Qi Li glanced at Shetty, whose expression changed again. He took two strides forward, stepping directly between Lucy and Shetty to cut off her line of sight.
Looking at Lucy, he pressed both hands down in a calming gesture. "Lucy, you need to calm down right now."
Lucy's gaze finally shifted to Qi Li. Her face twitched, and she shrieked at the top of her lungs, "FUCK OFF!"
Qi Li remained unfazed. Deliberately softening his tone, he tried to reason with his classmate:
"Lucy, chill, chill out. Take a deep breath. Don't let your impulses hijack your brain. Think about what you're doing, and think about the consequences. Calm down, and we can talk this out, okay?"
As it turned out, Qi Li had never been good at talking people down.
His words did nothing to pacify Lucy; they only drove her into a wilder frenzy.
Smash! Crash! Bang!
Enraged, Lucy smashed everything within arm's reach to pieces, repeatedly screaming "Get lost!" at Qi Li.
Seeing that he still stood there like an immovable wall, her patience snapped completely. She let out a ferocious roar:
"Die! Just die, both of you!"
Lucy glared fiercely forward.
Two searing beams of blue heat vision instantly erupted from her pupils.
Qi Li frowned and whipped his left arm up, blocking his front.
Sizzle—
The twin straight beams of blue heat vision struck in a fraction of a second, hammering relentlessly against the back of his left hand.
Off to the side, Shetty gritted her teeth at the sight of the blue lasers. As if reminded of something, a look of bitter resentment flashed through her eyes.
One second, two seconds, three seconds...
Lucy's blue heat vision failed to pierce Qi Li's hand, nor did it force him back even half a step.
Not everyone's heat vision operated on Homelander's level.
On the contrary, Qi Li held up his left hand against the twin beams and began advancing on Lucy, taking one measured step after another.
As the distance between them shrank, the length of the blue beams compressed with it.
Full of indignation, Lucy widened her eyes and prepared to scream again.
Bam!
Qi Li's free right hand lashed out in a clean, decisive punch, knocking her heavily to the floor.
The moment Lucy hit the ground, her head involuntarily tilted, and the twin blue beams whipped across the room uncontrolled.
In the blink of an eye—
Sizzle—
Like a hot knife through butter, wherever Lucy's gaze swept, the walls, ceiling, and floor were carved open into long, blackened, sunken furrows.
Qi Li glanced down at the reddened skin on the back of his hand, then turned his gaze back to Lucy, who was gasping in pain on the floor. "Can you calm down now?"
Out of consideration for being classmates, Qi Li felt he had shown plenty of restraint.
Lucy, however, was completely oblivious.
Driven entirely reckless by the sharp flare of pain, she sprang up and whipped her head around. Under the intense mental agitation, her superpower surged abruptly.
Sizzle—
Two beams of blue heat vision—far hotter and brighter than before—shot straight toward Qi Li's eyes without mercy.
Qi Li tilted his head swiftly aside.
The heat vision grazed his face, striking his left cheek directly.
Unlike before, this time a charred, sunken furrow visibly began to burn into his skin.
A flare of fury ignited in Qi Li's eyes. Reaching out with lightning speed, he clamped his hand onto Lucy's jaw and wrenched her head upward with tremendous force.
The twin blue beams were instantly redirected toward the sky, burning clean through the ceiling above.
"Ahhh!"
Lucy shrieked like a wild animal that had lost all reason, flailing her arms and legs in a frenzy, thrashing against Qi Li and struggling desperately.
Qi Li stared at the terrifyingly destructive blue beams shooting straight toward the sky, took one final look at Lucy's maddened face, shook his head, and gave his hand a sharp twist.
Snap!
Lucy's neck bent limply to the side.
The blue heat vision extinguished immediately.
Qi Li lowered Lucy's corpse to the floor, exhaled a breath, and turned to Shetty with an irritated scowl.
"Now, care to tell me what the fuck is actually going on?"
Chapter 54