Chapter 17

After silently and politely nodding to his teacher, Qin Su noticed that his teacher's searching gaze kept falling on him.

Qin Su, who was feeling guilty because he had been forced to "skip class": "..."

Sure enough, nobody liked a student who "skipped class."

He needed to find out as soon as possible how many Life Points it took to "appear in either world at will."

Although... Qin Su's gaze fell on the Life Points countdown: minutes and 08 seconds.

After accumulating favorability points and bullet comments on and off, he now had a little over 35 days' worth of Life Points.

With his current Life Points, he could only redeem two designated landing locations. How many Life Points would it cost to redeem one chance to "freely choose which world to appear in"?

The bullet comments also noticed the strange looks from the teacher:

[Why does the teacher keep looking at our precious 1 like that?]

[He probably thinks Qin Su is like those other Alphas and Omegas who came to gild their résumés. You can't really blame him. The teacher doesn't know the reason, so it's normal for him to misunderstand. Even us esteemed VIPs with a god's-eye view don't know the truth about why Qin Su missed morning class.]

[Come to think of it, if I remember right, Boss 1 hasn't even looked at what they covered in morning class, has he~ Won't he really fall behind? If he can't answer a single question... the newly risen Boss 1 is going to fall off his pedestal already~]

[Being all snide like that, someone should just strangle you. Nothing's settled yet, so why are you so busy delivering a final verdict? A look at your profile tells us exactly what you are. No wonder you're a fan of the Plague God, talking like that (eye roll). Seriously, you Plague God fans must be starving if you'll swallow anything (spit).]

But he could save up...

Wait, gild his résumé?

Qin Su, who had been preparing to seize every opportunity and try every possible way to save up Life Points, stared at the words "gild his résumé" and questioned his life.

What résumé was he gilding? That expression only applied to people who had "vast armies or mountains of gold and silver" waiting for them to inherit.

As for him, in this world, behind him... never mind that there wasn't a single person there; he was also a strong ox and horse working around the clock just for the most basic Life Points.

Qin Su: "..."

He had made himself laugh.

Still, he finally understood what that look his teacher kept giving him meant. To make things easier for himself in the future, he needed to change his teacher's opinion.

And the best way to change his teacher's opinion was to win him over through his academic performance.

Fortunately, he had prepared in advance.

"Everyone." Just then, Zhou Kaiyu's voice came from the front.

Only after he had everyone's attention did Zhou Kaiyu continue, "As you wish."

"But before that, please take a good look at the vomit disposal device assigned to your seat, so you don't grab the wrong one in an emergency."

Even delicious nutrient fluid smelled unpleasant after going into the stomach and coming back up. The vomit disposal devices would break down the vomit and eliminate its odor within a single second, and, together with the room's other air-freshening and ventilation equipment, ensure that not the slightest unpleasant smell appeared in the classroom.

"There goes Teacher Zhou again. He's so long-winded."

"Exactly. Is all this necessary? I'm an Alpha."

"Teacher Zhou, hurry up!"

Zhou Kaiyu sighed inwardly as some of the students complained that he talked too much.

Seeing that most of the students looked more excited than apprehensive, Zhou Kaiyu knew just how well ordinary citizens who had never encountered insects were protected in their daily lives.

Amid the clamor from some of the students, Zhou Kaiyu reminded them, "Don't look too closely in a moment."

That drew another round of disdainful scoffs from some of them.

Qin Su: "..."

From the sound of it, apart from soldiers who fought the Zerg and those who would fight them in the future, citizens on the Federation's planets knew little about the Zerg. It was just like how, in the real world, the vast majority of ordinary people knew little about strategic secrets and the like in countries other than their own.

Rounding things off, didn't that make him and the freshmen here an example of "none of them is any better than the others"?

Thinking that the vast majority of his classmates were clueless little rookies just like him, Qin Su felt a tiny bit reassured.

As the students urged him on, Zhou Kaiyu glanced in Qin Su's direction before opening the images.

He hadn't seen wrong. Even after his warning, Qin Su hadn't so much as glanced at the vomit disposal device beside his seat.

His expression was mild, revealing nothing of what he was thinking, yet he gave Zhou Kaiyu an impression of unconcerned composure.

Inevitably, other students noticed Zhou Kaiyu's gaze.

"Why does the teacher keep looking at Qin Su?"

"Maybe the teacher knows something about Qin Su that we don't."

He Muzhi remained silent, taking no part in the whispered gossip around him.

Honestly, he really couldn't picture Qin Su throwing up.

Zhou Kaiyu withdrew his gaze from Qin Su and opened the image.

In an instant, a Meat Mountain appeared on the Optical Brain pages displayed before each student. It had no skin and was piled in layers, with rough grains of fat clearly visible. Each grain was covered in tiny raised black dots the size of sesame seeds.

In the high-definition moving image, the whole Meat Mountain lay on the ground, wriggling forward. Its trembling fat made a distinct, squelching sound as it moved, a sight that could give even someone without trypophobia a case of it.

Most notably, as the Meat Mountain, with its distinct grains of fat interspersed with black dots, moved, a head remarkably similar to a marmoset's emerged at the front.

The words "Giant Earwig Moth" were written in the upper right corner of the moving image.

Qin Su merely glanced at the familiar moving image his homeroom teacher had shared with every student's Optical Brain, then looked away and didn't look again.

Compared with this insect, which was already firmly etched in his mind, the insects he hadn't seen were more deserving of his attention. After all, he simply hadn't had enough time to look through all of them earlier.

[...Ahhh, why isn't it censored!!! Sending it straight to Zhaohai City.]

[Ugh, ugh, ugh, is Zhaohai some kind of garbage dump? Bouncing it back to Jinbei. Sorry, everyone, I couldn't hold it in and threw up in the comments.]

[It's basically a super-sized, extra-horrifying version of an elephant beetle grub.]

[I looked it up, and now elephant beetles look positively handsome. At least they only have two measly rows of black dots and skin covering their bodies instead of their fat being exposed.]

The first image wasn't frightening, just disgusting, and many students instinctively pulled their heads back in unison, expressions of revulsion on their faces.

But that was only an appetizer.

Zhou Kaiyu glanced subconsciously in Qin Su's direction.

Qin Su's expression hadn't changed. He was staring intently at... an empty space in front of him?

Zhou Kaiyu: "..."

Teacher Zhang had said that Qin Su's Optical Brain was extremely high-grade: Qin Su could see it, but they couldn't.

So right now, he had no idea whether Qin Su had even turned on his Optical Brain.

Forget it, Zhou Kaiyu thought. Qin Su didn't look like the sort to try to bluff his way through. This level of exposure probably wasn't enough to make him feel disgust, apprehension, or fear.

But that was fine. Insects came in all shapes and forms, each horrifying and disgusting in its own way.

With that thought, Zhou Kaiyu gave the students no chance to recover. He began switching from one image to the next, and instead of removing the images he had already shown, he enlarged them before each student, making them impossible to avoid.

Catching a glimpse from the corner of his eye that Teacher Zhou had stopped looking at him, Qin Su quietly relaxed.

Judging by the teacher's reaction, he probably hadn't noticed Qin Su "slacking off."

The second moving image showed a Scale-Coat Insect floating in the air like a blanket in the wind. Its thin, transparent skin appeared to be covered in layers of blisters of varying sizes, filled with rich, vivid colors.

The patches of color on the Scale-Coat Insect clearly didn't move, remaining firmly fixed in their original positions. But as it floated, light refracted through the protruding blister membranes, making every richly colored blister on its body seem to swell and sink in turn. The bizarre scene was dazzling and dizzying.

The third image was a moving image filmed from below.

The Geometer Moth circled overhead with its wings spread, blotting out the sky and sun. Where its wings should have been covered in feathers, there were instead countless eye-shaped objects of varying sizes, resembling narrow vertical pupils.

As its wings flapped, the "eyes" blinked, revealing steel-tooth-like objects around their sockets.

The fourth image showed a Hopping Looper, only as tall as an ordinary human's calf, but with sixteen arched, spiderlike legs underneath, covered in slender, wart-like hairs. Its center resembled a hollowed-out sea urchin shell.

Hopping Loopers moved in swarms. In the moving image, tens of thousands of them raced madly across the ground. Soldiers let out piercing screams in their path, and only bare bones remained. The black Hopping Loopers turned blood-red all over, and the withered wart-like filaments on their legs grew longer.

The fifth image showed the Dobote Insect Swarm: insects with no heads, tails, or distinct torsos, each more than ten meters long and two meters tall. Pitch-black all over, they burst from the ground and twisted toward the sky, forming a forest of living insects.

The sixth image showed a beta soldier whose body had been completely invaded by Lasbit Insects as thin as iron wire. The beta soldier's eyes were empty; he was clearly already dead.

Yet his dead limbs walked freely under the Lasbit Insects' control.

As he walked, densely intertwined black threads writhed beneath his exposed, pale skin. His lifeless flesh tore apart as they surged, and tangled clumps of Lasbit Insects dropped to the ground with wet plops. Some quickly wriggled back up the walking soldier's corpse, while thin, curled, dancing black strands occasionally fell from the bones exposed where his flesh had been scraped away...

And these were only the beginning.

As he went on, Zhou Kaiyu became a merciless image-switching machine. One image after another, each a powerful assault on the mind and highly effective at inducing nausea, made the students feel physically sick.

Indeed, as the images played, the sounds of students vomiting in varying degrees came one after another from the seats below.

Growing up, they had seen either beautiful birds of every kind in greenhouses, reptiles kept in breeding chambers, or carefully tended animals at zoos.

These abnormal, deformed, twisted, unrecognizable, and hideous insects before them were nothing like the Zerg they had imagined.

What made their scalps tingle and their bodies tremble with fear was that many images showed their own kind dying horribly at the hands of those disgusting insects. Beyond the nausea, it sent chills down their spines.

In the end, most students physically could not bring themselves to raise their heads and look directly at their Optical Brain screens.

They finally understood why these insects were not shown on the star network, and why even reports of victories censored the insects that had been exterminated.

Releasing these images would cause panic among citizens on every planet in the Federation.

But sometimes vomiting was contagious. Even if they didn't look, people around them were throwing up, making them unable to avoid recalling everything they had just seen. At once, they vomited even louder.

Even He Muzhi, an S-class Alpha whose unusual experiences had led him to witness the cruel side of the war against the Zerg firsthand as a child, was pale now. His tightly pressed lips showed that, amid the sounds of his classmates retching and vomiting, he was doing his utmost to suppress the urge to throw up.

Although both his body and mind had taken a blow, He Muzhi still didn't forget to look in Qin Su's direction.

He Muzhi sat behind Qin Su and could only see his cold-looking back, not his expression from the front.

But...

Judging by Qin Su's unhurried posture, as relaxed as before, He Muzhi was certain that Qin Su had no reaction at all to everything displayed before him on his Optical Brain.

He Muzhi: "..."

Had Qin Su seen these things before?

As Zhou Kaiyu switched images, he kept secretly watching Qin Su's every move, determined not to miss the slightest change in his expression.

Unfortunately...

While image after image of insects shattered the mental defenses of more than ninety percent of the students in the classroom, Qin Su's eyebrows, never mind that, even his lowered eyelashes hadn't moved once!

Zhou Kaiyu: "..."

As the subject teacher, he had seen these images countless times over his long years of teaching. It was only natural that he had developed "antibodies" to them; otherwise, he would have switched subjects long ago.

But...

Why was Qin Su able to watch all this so calmly?

Could it be... that Qin Su's family had already given him special training in knowledge about the Zerg? What kind of family would do that? Thinking of the question mark next to Qin Su's background, Zhou Kaiyu felt even more bewildered.

However...

Whether Qin Su had received specialized training in knowledge about the Zerg or not, he would get an answer once he found an opportunity to test him.

Or... could Qin Su be taking advantage of the fact that they couldn't see his Optical Brain to cheat, and wasn't actually viewing the images of the insects he was showing in real time?

Either way, he had to test him.

Having made up his mind, Zhou Kaiyu withdrew his gaze from Qin Su for the time being.

Qin Su: "..."

So why did Teacher Zhou keep staring at him over and over instead of just switching the images? Could someone tell him...

Oh, right, the bullet comments!

Qin Su temporarily shifted his gaze from the insect before him to the bullet comment section in the upper left corner.

[Ugh, ugh, ugh, let me throw up first as a show of respect...]

[Except for not having two rows of tiny legs and rings of alternating colors on their bodies, the Dobote insects really look like a huge mass of millipedes all gathered together. Bleurgh, and they're so big.]

[Has this comic artist's brain short-circuited? What good does it do to disgust us esteemed VIPs to death? Ugh...]

[This is the first time in my life I've hated a comic for not censoring something this much (vomit)(vomit)(vomit).]

[Which brings us to the question: can someone tell me why Boss 1 can keep such a straight face? He hasn't even gone the slightest bit pale. I'm genuinely impressed.]

[Where are the people who were spreading rumors that our precious 1 came to "gild his résumé"? Get the hell out, ugh...]

[As expected of Qin Su, he never lets me bleurgh...]

Most of the bullet comments were about throwing up. Almost all the viewers had vomited into the comments because of the uncensored images.

Qin Su: "..."

It looked like the viewers were too busy to notice why Teacher Zhou was looking at him.

Watching a screen full of "bleurgh" and hearing everyone around him retch, what did that make his situation? A chorus of vomiting for his ears and eyes?

Qin Su: "..."

Come to think of it, because the strong had been desensitized to insects, the insects hadn't disgusted him. The classroom's ventilation system and vomit disposal devices had also kept hundreds of people throwing up from producing the slightest unpleasant smell in the room.

But...

The nonstop vomiting around him was making him a little nauseous.

Fortunately, he'd had the foresight not to drink any nutrient fluid today...

"Teacher Zhou, enough, enough..."

Qin Su's thoughts were interrupted by a voice. He looked at the speaker, a classmate named Miles.

Pale from vomiting, Miles raised his hand and surrendered to the teacher. "Can we stop here for today, ugh..."

Miles didn't finish. Zhou Kaiyu hadn't turned off his Optical Brain, so the images he had forcibly projected onto their Optical Brains as their teacher were still there. Seeing the bulging eyeballs connected by a thin strand of flesh, presented in three dimensions before him and almost jutting out of the screen to poke his own eyes, Miles lowered his head again, grabbed the vomit disposal device, pressed it to his mouth, and threw up.

One Miles fell, and thousands upon thousands of Mileses "stood" up. The classroom soon filled with students weakly begging for mercy.

"Teacher Zhou, we're begging you. Next time, let's look at them next time. Give us a chance to recover."

"Yeah, Teacher Zhou, my head's about to explode. As soon as I close my eyes... no, I don't even need to close them. My head's full of the scenes we just saw."

"Teacher Zhou, I've discovered I'm especially interested in the history of the Zerg's development now. Really!"

Text and the like... were just so lovely. They hadn't known to appreciate them that morning, and only now did they truly understand, in the physical sense, what it meant to suffer the consequences of not listening to the teacher.

Clearly, they had all paid the price they deserved for their "pride" that morning.

Apart from Qin Su, Zhou Kaiyu was used to this situation.

Every class of students went through the same thing.

"Look at Qin Su. How impressive he is." As he spoke, Zhou Kaiyu closed the insect pages and sighed. "Now look at every one of you!"

Zhou Kaiyu deliberately drew the students' attention to Qin Su, laying the groundwork for an "aboveboard" test of his knowledge of the Zerg later.

Qin Su?

Right, they had been so caught up in their own physical and mental distress that they hadn't had the attention to spare for anything else.

Zhou Kaiyu's voice seemed to remind the bullet-comment viewers of something too, and their eager gazes searched the comic pages for any images of Qin Su.

At Zhou Kaiyu's reminder, the other students belatedly turned their eyes to Qin Su in unison. Only He Muzhi had been watching Qin Su's every move all along.

The students sitting beside and to the side of Qin Su finally noticed that not only was there no sign the vomit-cleaning device beside his seat had been used, but his complexion was also perfectly normal, without a trace of pallor.

It was as if Qin Su hadn't seen any of the images that had sent their SAN values plummeting, as if they hadn't stirred the slightest emotion in him.

"..."

Then what did that make them, who had nearly thrown up their stomachs? They felt thoroughly outclassed, especially the students who had thought Qin Su was one of the "gold-platers" because he hadn't shown up in the classroom that morning. They felt ashamed of themselves for it.

Wait...

They couldn't see Qin Su's optical brain, so they really couldn't be sure whether he had seen those bugs like they had!

That was what they thought, but... they didn't dare ask Qin Su to confirm it.

Qin Su, suddenly called out by Teacher Zhou: "...?"

Something unusual was bound to be up. Teacher Zhou had glanced at him so many times while showing the pictures earlier, and it turned out he had been waiting for this.

Whatever Zhou Kaiyu had in mind, Qin Su's expression didn't change under his classmates' collective gaze. As if he hadn't noticed it, he simply said to Zhou Kaiyu in a calm voice, "Teacher Zhou, you flatter me."

His "skin" hadn't been displayed, so it was only natural that not just the teacher but also his classmates would be puzzled by his "composure" and wonder whether he hadn't even turned on his optical brain.

"Student Qin Su, you're being too modest."

Zhou Kaiyu gave him a smile that didn't reach his eyes. He detested the practice of "gold-plating," of treating a military school charged with protecting the Federation and bearing both glory and responsibility as a stepping stone.

Qin Su didn't reply. He merely gave Teacher Zhou a polite little smile, still looking cool and unconcerned on the surface, while actually glancing at the bullet comments.

[Am I the only one who thinks there's something weird about the way this teacher looks at our precious Su?]

[Who cares? That's our Boss 1 for you!!! I'm calling it right now: the reason our Boss 1 wasn't fazed is that he's battled bugs countless times. No matter how hideous they look, they're nothing to fear for Boss 1 anymore!]

[Uh... is it possible Qin Su didn't look scared because he knew his optical brain was high-level and nobody else could see it, so he never turned it on at all?]

[Nonsense, that's impossible, OK? Seriously, people don't even follow the basic rules when making up rumors these days.]

Qin Su: "..."

He had indeed turned on his optical brain; he had just been looking at other bugs.

Still, his classmates' probing gazes and the bullet comments confirmed Qin Su's guess.

Even knowing what everyone suspected, Qin Su wasn't going to offer proof on his own.

After all, Teacher Zhou didn't look like he intended to let the suspicion pass so easily.

Sure enough, Qin Su soon heard Zhou Kaiyu speak.

Seeing that Qin Su didn't look the least bit guilty and wasn't taking the bait, Kaiyu spoke as he had planned: "Student Qin Su, judging by how calm and composed you were when facing all those bugs just now, I assume you already knew something about them?"

"...That's right," Qin Su said calmly.

Why couldn't a few hours ago count as "already"?

"!"

[!!!]

Hearing that, viewers both inside and outside the bullet comments all thought, Just as I thought. No wonder Qin Su isn't afraid.

"...Haha, our Qin Su really is knowledgeable and talented."

Momentarily choked, Zhou Kaiyu paused, then deliberately asked about a bug that hadn't been among those shown earlier. "Then, Student Qin Su, do you know about Lie Xiu?"

There were so many bugs that not all of them were documented on every planet in the Federation.

Lie Xiu was one of them.

"!"

Hearing the familiar bug's name, Qin Su kept his expression unchanged, while a faint pleasure sprang up inside him at unexpectedly finding a question he knew the answer to.

Wasn't this his chance to show his "optical brain" and prove that he really had been looking at pictures of "bugs," and that he really did know something about them?

Darlings, the story is going on a promotion slot tomorrow, so there won't be an update at this time. The update has been moved to 11 p.m. tomorrow, so don't come by for nothing. Muah [cat head]