Take My Nine Punches! Whispering Like That and You Still Want to Rule the School?

Bai Zhou was startled and suspicious. The stirring of the battle intent seed shocked him more than any of the Seven Heroes Under the King. After all, Intent was the pivotal key to advancing to Level 5. That he had managed to touch a sliver of it before even reaching Level 4 was entirely thanks to the guidance of the immensely powerful Wolf Knight while alive. Before this, he had never imagined he would make further progress in the short term. Could pride, envy, wrath, and sloth—these emotion-related concepts—actually be forms of Intent as well? Yet that made no sense. If the Exam King had commanded the power of Intent back then, it could have minced Bai Zhou into paste with a thousand slashes and ascended the throne right there in Yuanmeng Middle School... While he pondered, not far ahead, four third-year seniors halted their steps, squarely barring the path of Bai Zhou and his group. "I heard an old senior had arrived at our school... but I don't recall who you are!" A deep voice sounded slowly. A red-haired boy with a deadpan expression eyed Bai Zhou coldly. "Junior Wu is a good-natured kid. He obeys the rules, honors the law, and respects his seniors. How could you beat him so severely?" "Are you trying to challenge the student order we established? By what right?" "You yourself are nothing more than a beneficiary of rules grounded in seniority. What right do you have to preach about justice?" "If you're relying on your own strength... then let's see whose voice carries more weight under your concept of might makes right!" The coldness and confidence in his words were practically overflowing. Rather than confidence, it was more like an urge to dominate and control everything. The name of this ruler who hungered to bring all things beneath an order of his own design was— Red of Greed! Just catching sight of him, whether it was Bai Zhou or Number 9 and the others, that name flashed naturally in their minds, as though they were looking at a permanent signpost marked with a name inside the school. "And who are you lot?" Bai Zhou sized up the four impassively, every muscle in his body braced on high alert. The red-haired young man nodded and replied, "I am unworthy, but I serve as this school's student council president." "As you can see, virtually all rules and regulations concerning the students are formulated by our student council." At that moment, a man with short brown hair picked up the conversation with a smile: "I'm the student council's head of public relations... To see our underclassmen, youthful and adorable like little white rabbits, beaten black and blue into pig heads by you—isn't that a pity?" "Human interactions should be harmonious and loving. If you have any objections, Senior, just direct them at us." "Though the four of us possess little talent, we still uphold certain uncrossable lines. Acting without the dignity befitting an elder and bullying the weak—I cannot sit idly by and watch such things happen." "Let me see... let me see just what kind of intense desire resides in your heart, Senior!" Though his voice was consistently gentle, his tone carried a resonant, forceful power, as if some form of stubbornness and yearning existed within it. This obsessive pursuit of bonds between people, this unapologetic glorification of one's own desires—his name was— Brown of Lust! "Ah... what a pain." With an utterly ordinary appearance, dark blue hair cut into gloomy bangs covering his eyebrows, and dead-fish eyes turned upward to scrutinize Bai Zhou, the third boy clicked his tongue ambiguously. "Do you know how much effort we spent to build a world like this? No strife, no violence, no competition or comparison—a world where you simply follow seniority." "No one is a permanent bully, and no one is a permanent victim. A world where nobody gets hurt was achieved so easily." "If such a world is overturned so simply, returning to a campus era where the strong prey on the weak, where comparisons run rampant and strife never ends... then I apologize, but you are our enemy." He spoke to Bai Zhou in a low murmur: "Actually, the four of us have never been united. We usually can't stand the sight of one another. But when an enemy like you appears, we have no choice but to stand together." "Don't go bringing the spark of rebellion to the freshmen on your own whim. Unless you can watch over everyone for the rest of their lives, handing out dreams to others without permission is just self-righteous selfishness—" Those dead-fish eyes bored straight into Bai Zhou, as if interrogating his very soul: "Don't you think... you're being far too arrogant?" "We understand reality. The world isn't going to face an apocalypse. Classrooms won't suddenly be attacked by zombies, and we won't turn into players who can respawn with arcade tokens... We know these things." "As students slowly grow into adults and gradually see the reality of the future, they will all slowly become incapable of pursuing dreams. No matter how much they complain about being corporate beasts of burden, working is the only way to survive. Nobody fails to grasp that truth." "Faced with such a cruel future, I would rather no one ever have to confront it. But if a day comes when they must, let them adapt properly while they're still in school." The young man expounded his motives in this manner: "Compared to your arrogance, Senior... this is true gentleness toward them!" Flowery words, grand posturing. This rule-maker who claimed to see through worldly vanity, possessed his own twisted logic, and resolutely executed it was named— Blue of Pride! "Oh, right, Senior... I am the student council's secretary." Only at the very end did he add his self-introduction as an afterthought. "Mm." The fourth young man was utterly lethargic, forever aloof, forever lingering on the periphery without a shred of presence. When his turn came to speak, he offered only a single, simple sentence: "Seconded." "What the three of them said is right." His name was Black of Sloth. True to his name, he looked as though even speaking was a waste of energy and effort. Yet on the student council badge pinned to his chest, Bai Zhou saw his title: Head of Academic Affairs. Under the gaze of these four student council officers, Bai Zhou slowly furrowed his brows. After all those high-sounding words, he had extracted only one core meaning: "So... you're here to pick a fight, aren't you?" "...It is a natural and justified counterattack!" After a moment of silence, the brown-haired Brown of Lust spoke up. His expression remained gentle, but his eyes were already resolute and icy. The four students faced off against Bai Zhou from a distance. Their colorful hair fluttered, the power of Qi swelled throughout their bodies, and the surrounding spirituality grew unusually active. A battle was evidently unavoidable. "You three..." Bai Zhou glanced behind him, about to ask them to lend a hand, only to see the three scouts shivering so hard they looked ready to burst into tears. The torrential spirituality oscillating through the air was so dense that a stray wave washing over them would be enough to crush them to death. "...Can we win?" "Facing four monsters like this... can he really win?" "Senior, give it your best! Should I... should I do a somersault for you?" The one speaking so blankly was Number 31, the muscular brute who appeared completely devoid of brains. At this moment, the towering six-foot-three giant looked like a cowering chick. Despair was written plainly across the faces of all three of them. Sweat beaded on their foreheads, and their eyes darted about, likely calculating escape routes. No wonder these wild Extraordinaries had managed to survive on their own until now—it seemed they were far more cowardly than Bai Zhou had imagined. "Forget it... Just stay obediently behind me." Bai Zhou shook his head, having given up on them entirely. Still, he couldn't blame them. The four anomalies barring their way were releasing suffocating baleful auras, their spirituality linking with the external world and sublimating beyond ordinary spirituality... This was the hallmark of having successfully stepped into Level 4. Level 4 Extraordinaries connected their internal spirituality to the outside world, forming their own spiritual domain. To ordinary Level 2 Extraordinaries, they were no different from deities. Even Bai Zhou, a Destined, had been unable to confront a Level 4 head-on back when he was Level 2, let alone deal with four at once! Fortunately, on the night before setting foot in this place, Bai Zhou had made a special trip to Zhuluoji. As Bai Zhou's first direct battle since his return... "The student council's biased view doesn't necessarily represent the voice of the student body." "Not that it matters. Those erroneous notions and twisted personalities of yours—" Bai Zhou focused intently, slowly raising his hands and clenching them into fists. He said in a low voice: "—leave them to your senior to correct!" The moment the words fell, Bai Zhou vanished from where he stood. Taking the initiative had always been his style! *Boom!* Spirituality coating his fist, Bai Zhou threw a testing punch. *Thud!* Stepping forward, Black of Sloth made no extra movements, yet an invisible giant hand seemed to manifest before him, catching Bai Zhou's fist. "Left Hand of Sloth!" Black of Sloth met Bai Zhou's gaze. His eyes were calm and placid as he remarked languidly: "Why isn't Senior using his full strength?" "You... seem to be growing a bit slothful." *—Rrrrip!* The moment his voice fell, like fabric tearing apart, Brown of Lust materialized on Bai Zhou's left. He pulled his right hand through the air, ripping open three massive claw marks in midair that raked fiercely toward Bai Zhou. Merely drawing near these claw marks caused a multitude of ambiguous, sensual fantasies to sprout inexplicably in the mind, while indescribable auditory hallucinations whispered in the ears. "Right Claw of Lust." The brown-haired young man wore a solemn expression, his eyes glowing with a faint pink light. "Senior, please take the appeals of your underclassmen seriously!" Bai Zhou exerted his muscles, twisting his waist and hips, about to backflip away, when he suddenly felt as though his feet had sunk into a quagmire. Every step grew unimaginably heavy. At the same time, an inexplicable sense of self-loathing welled up from the depths of his heart. Whispering voices swirled by his ears, telling Bai Zhou that he was an unpopular outcast whom everyone shunned and looked down upon—a peripheral piece of trash who belonged under a car, wallowing in self-pity. "Right Foot of Pride!" Blue of Pride looked down on Bai Zhou with his dead-fish eyes, stomping his right leg hard against the ground. An invisible ripple rippled outward from his right leg, blanketing Bai Zhou and the trio of Number 9 behind him. The effect was instantaneous. Number 9 and the other two immediately collapsed to their knees, weeping uncontrollably as if they had committed some heinous crime, pathetic as three little mice terrified of the light. Yet Bai Zhou merely frowned. His movements were hindered for only a split second before he dodged the public relations director's Right Claw of Lust... as if self-pity had never existed in his heart to begin with. This left Blue of Pride dumbfounded. He couldn't help but gasp in a low voice: "This is... what immense pride!" Fortunately, at that moment, the student council president who reigned supreme over the thousands of students at Yuanmeng Middle School—Red of Greed—seized the opportunity and leaped forward, timing his strike into an opening where Bai Zhou had virtually no room to shift or dodge: "Left Foot of Greed!" "Dominate! Convert my stamina, my emotions, my spirituality into the kinetic energy of my left foot! Convert Senior Zhou's kinetic energy into gravity!" Amidst his murmur, the red-haired young man seemed to transform into a swift swallow darting through the air, moving so fast that his silhouette trailed afterimages: "Senior, every single one of your actions has long been calculated within my margins. The error rate is under two percent... Give up!" "..." Inside the command vehicle, having calculated the data provided by the cameras, the staff also concluded that these four anomalies were equivalent to Level 4 Extraordinaries. "Mere students possess this level of power? What about the teachers and security guards inside... not to mention the principal!" The scrawny man knitted his brows tightly, his expression exceedingly grave: "Report to high command immediately! For subsequent breach operations, we will need more personnel—critically, high-tier combat strength!" "We must prepare for the presence of large-scale anomalies within the campus comparable to Level 6 Titled Extraordinaries... or even stronger!" "Yes, sir!" The secretary hurried off to handle it and returned shortly after submitting the report: "What about right now, Commander? Can we do anything for Numbers 9, 31, and 42?" "..." The scrawny man stared at the shaking camera feed and listened to the weeping coming from the trio. He fell silent for a moment. "Leave it to fate." "Theoretically, the student council should represent the peak combat strength of Yuanmeng Middle School's student body. Even if an 'anomalous individual' comparable to Level 4 mutated inside the campus, there is no way he could take on four anomalies of the same level simultaneously!" The scrawny man calmly pronounced a death sentence for "Senior Zhou." Which was equivalent to pronouncing a death sentence for the three scouts. "...Still, Numbers 9, 31, and 42 have used their lives to map out vital intelligence for us, clearly revealing the campus's high-tier combat strength through their cameras." Pausing slightly, the scrawny man added in a low voice: "Their sacrifice was worth it!" With that, the scrawny man's expression turned thoroughly solemn, as if a heavy weight rested upon his heart. "...Commander?" Suddenly, the secretary's uncertain voice drifted into his ears. "What?" "Look over there! That Senior Zhou... he, he, he..." Following the direction of the secretary's pointing finger, the man turned his head, only to discover that the situation on the screen had quietly undergone a miraculous shift when nobody was looking. "That's...?" "Sloth? Lust? Pride? Greed? What the hell are you mumbling about! Take my bas—nine punches!" The "anomalous individual's" enthusiastic voice transmitted through the feed, echoing across the silent command vehicle. He called it nine punches, but in truth there were only three. He called it three punches, but in truth there was only one. Yet this single punch was completely unstoppable. It smashed the "Left Hand of Sloth" that Black of Sloth was so proud of into a comminuted fracture of two hundred and forty-three segments—as though it had been pounded by a heavy hammer two hundred and forty-three times! "What is this? What is this?!" Incapable of understanding what had just occurred, Black of Sloth no longer had languid, calm eyes. Collapsed on the ground clutching his left hand, he scrambled backward in terror. "Where did these punches come from?! Who threw more than two hundred punches?!" He seriously suspected that Bai Zhou possessed the same invisible hand ability—that an unseen guardian spirit might be standing behind Bai Zhou, hammering him with two hundred and forty-three blows in that single instant! "Is it time stop?! Could it be a time stop?!" Black of Sloth offered a bold hypothesis. Yet Bai Zhou had no time to pay him any heed. He was already like a tiger among a flock of sheep, carving a bloody path through the remaining three. Without even drawing a weapon, Bai Zhou simply threw punches. His fist technique opened and closed with sweeping grandeur, yet faintly contained countless subtle transformations—unstoppable and dazzling to the eye: "I can't hear you—I said I can't hear you! Whispering like that, and you still want to be school bullies?!" "Your senior is definitely going to correct your personalities today!" One punch to the face: personality corrected! Two punches over the head: life brought to clarity! "Scum! Trash! Good-for-nothings!" "Did your parents send you to Yuanmeng Middle School..." "...just so you could enjoy your youth every day, organize a student council, and rack your brains trying to dominate the campus?!" As he barked his lecture, Bai Zhou experienced a subtle sensation. This meat-and-bone fist-to-flesh thrill seemed even more exhilarating than wielding a weapon! *Bang! Bang, bang, bang!* Screams mingled with stern scoldings. The four incredible campus tyrants who usually swaggered like crabs had run into the sternest senior of their lives: "Instead of studying honestly in school, all you think about every day is bullying your classmates! Tell me—what kind of creature are you?!" "Get lost and go study! Take your exams properly!" *Hum...!!* The air vibrated. In the transparent space invisible to the cameras... A ferocious monster holding a pair of compasses in its left hand and a set square in its right, wrapped from head to toe in a shroud of exam papers, faintly manifested before the eyes of the four anomalies. Yet the phantom of this monster was somewhat hazy, as though undergoing some sort of transformation. Its stature was more than three times larger than that of the Exam King back then, and its aura was incomparably greater. *Roar—!!!* Roaring toward the sky, the monster's silhouette radiated a chilling, baleful aura. In terms of essence, it was already not a whit inferior to the "teachers" the Four Tyrants typically encountered... Bai Zhou let out a cold snort. A threefold surge of power erupted beneath his feet, shattering the domain bound by the "Right Foot of Pride" with a single stomp. Then, he thrust a palm toward the red-haired student council president. The most greedy, power-hungry, and overbearing student council president bristled with fury, but looking up at that descending palm was like watching the heavens collapse. No matter how his left foot kicked and twisted, he could not shift away, helpless as the Monkey King pinned beneath the Five Finger Mountain. *I've faced opponents far more troublesome than you lot more times than I can count...* Bai Zhou murmured in his heart. In truth, even he was secretly amazed by his current self. The abilities of these four anomalies were far more bizarre than those of Van Gogh, whom Bai Zhou had faced before, and even vaguely touched upon elements of Intent. Yet considering their spiritual sublimation had only barely crossed into Level 4, they were roughly equivalent to five Van Goghs combined. Even if Anguissola in her absolute prime had shown up, she would likely have suffered wounds after slaying two or three of them. Yet Bai Zhou, empowered by the suppression of his school uniform and reborn after mastering the Nine Basic Slashes, was different. He could kill them all! Without even needing an Extraordinary weapon! Both fists opened and closed like blades, coiling like dragons. As the Four Anomalies suffered a crushing defeat, the uniform on Bai Zhou's body began to quiver! It began to glow! It proved greedier than Greed, thirstier than Lust, prouder than Pride, and more slothful than Sloth! Bai Zhou even developed a premonition... If he could completely devour all four anomalies, the school uniform on him would undergo an evolution! When that time came, a monster far more vicious than the Exam King—and Bai Zhou's most capable, docile "pet"— would be born! And that wasn't all— As the battle progressed in full swing, Bai Zhou remained surrounded by the four anomalies, hemmed in and engulfed by their Level 4 sublimated spiritual domains. Venting his spirituality to his heart's content within it, Bai Zhou vaguely sensed a certain shift. His Adventurer Pathway, previously stuck at the bottleneck of the Level 3 peak, had seemed to lack only a slight opportunity, yet was fundamentally unbreakable. Now, however, the pathway's bottleneck seemed faintly stirred. His White Sun Fate Principle quivered gently, sunlight sweeping across the dark Sea of Ignorance and casting ripples over its calm surface. This seemed like... an opportunity to advance to Level 4!