Chapter 38

As he crushed it, Qin Su followed his plan, fixing He Wenyuan's head with a cold Gaze and narrowing his eyes at just the right moment.

Everyone was watching his and He Wenyuan's every move through a magnifying glass, so even this eye movement, which should have been subtle, would stand out to them.

The same thought would occur to the onlookers without a word being exchanged: If He Wenyuan entertained any improper thoughts, Qin Su would crush his skull just like the Alpha Shield in his hand.

"..."

Qin Su made his move without a moment's delay. He Wenyuan, who had been completely unprepared, visibly stiffened. Realizing that Qin Su's cold eyes had been fixed on his head as he crushed the shield, his expression shifted, and his skull throbbed with phantom pain.

Hadn't he just coveted Qin Su's gland a little? He hadn't even had time to act. Was there any need to give him such a ruthless, blunt warning in front of everyone?

"!"

The shield's sudden destruction sent a jolt through everyone who had been entertaining certain romantic speculations, instantly clearing their heads.

They no longer dared imagine any messy relationships between Qin Su and anyone else. Their interest in gossip vanished, leaving only the desire to live.

[Invincible! Sure enough, you can't tell what's going to happen until the very last moment.]

[He crushed the Pheromone Isolation Shield He Muzhi had worn just like that. There was nothing but killing intent in his eyes, not a trace of tenderness. And he gave He Wenyuan a straight-up "I'll crush your skull" warning. The cards are on the table: whether it's He Muzhi or He Wenyuan, Boss 1 doesn't care about either of them. Boss 1 is the GOAT! Stop trying to link them from now on, OK!]

[Don't mess with him, seriously don't. If Boss 1 raised an arm, He Wenyuan would probably get smacked flying like a certain gray wolf and shout, "I'm never coming back!" Hahaha.]

[Even the Plague God's eyes have cleared up.]

[If they hadn't, someone's cerebral cortex would've literally unfolded~]

Seeing He Wenyuan's dazed expression and deathly pale face, Qin Su knew he had successfully intimidated him. For a while to come, even if He Wenyuan wanted to do something to him, he would have to think twice.

That hesitation would give Qin Su a safe period.

His goal achieved, Qin Su secretly felt awkward, but his body was honestly immersed in his art. Without giving anyone a chance to react, he withdrew his hand with an icy expression under their watchful eyes and strode toward the rest area.

The protection remaining from the K-110 injection was enough for him to get away from the crowd and reach safety.

There was no pheromone suppression, but the crowd automatically parted wherever Qin Su went. Even Anthony, who was jealous of him, was as quiet as a mouse, his whole demeanor saying, "I'll behave."

Even as Class 6 watched Qin Su's retreating figure, their eyes seemed to say, "You've scared He Wenyuan, so don't scare us too, okay?"

The eerie silence lasted until Qin Su sat back down in the rest area.

Once he was seated, the weight lifted from Qin Su's heart, though his gaze remained icy as he faced the crowd.

Everyone stopped sneaking glances at him and turned their faces away in unison, afraid of meeting his eyes.

It doesn't matter if we can't afford to mess with him. We can still avoid him!

As spectators here for the gossip, they were good at adjusting to the situation.

Once his classmates looked away from him, Qin Su silently breathed a sigh of relief.

As soon as his "three-minute King" time ended, it was time for him to want to call 120 for emergency help.

Qin Su could clearly feel his bodily functions declining rapidly. His heart was still in his chest, yet he couldn't feel it at all. If his Life Points in the upper-right corner hadn't shown a normal reading, letting him know he was physically still alive, he might have suspected his heart had really gone on strike.

Breathing...

The moment he noticed something was wrong with his body, he had already been mentally prepared and started "pretending to breathe" to keep his classmates from noticing anything unusual.

Hiss... so cold. Qin Su fought the urge to shiver.

His blood seemed to have stopped flowing, and he felt even colder all over than when he had gone strong with a Cold Blast Bomb. His fingers curled inward in an apparently natural motion, secretly touching his palm.

As skin met skin, it was no exaggeration to say it felt like plunging into an ice cave. He could even feel the air around him cooling and sinking because his body temperature was like ice.

Qin Su: "..."

Other people scared themselves; he froze himself.

That was nice. Now, when he wanted to create a "chilling" aura, he wouldn't have to waste Cold Blast Bombs anymore.

After finding a little amusement in his misery, Qin Su appeared to watch his classmates train with a bored, indifferent look in his dark eyes, but he was actually looking at the Life Points display in the upper-right corner.

Just as he had thought, with the Life Points bug, no matter how weak his body became after using K-110, or how much he resembled a dead person or a Zombie, he simply couldn't die. His Life Points countdown continued to fluctuate between decreasing and increasing.

Of course, after what he had just done, his Life Points had multiplied explosively, gaining far more minutes than the seconds he was losing.

His Life Points had now surged to minutes and 16 seconds, a little over 365 days.

Congratulations to him. He could live for a year now.

His Life Points had long since been enough to keep him alive for three months, so he could choose freely whether to be captured by the comic's camera.

But according to the Life Points exchange list he had received, each time he actively chose to be captured by the comic's camera, it would cost him 60 minutes of Life Points. One hour was a drop in the bucket compared with the year he had now, but... Qin Su still thought it was too wasteful and had never used it.

With the protagonist's and the villain's perspectives to reap benefits from, he needed to save his Life Points for choosing a specific landing spot and paying the space usage fee when he went "trash picking" during actual combat.

His Life Points continued to increase as the locals' favorability and the barrage comments grew. Qin Su opened his Optical Brain and continued looking through the data he hadn't finished reading.

Fortunately, because of the Life Points bug, it didn't matter that his body was like a dead man's. His brain was 100 percent "alive," so it didn't affect his ability to absorb knowledge.

Wait... does that mean I can study myself to death as long as studying can't kill me?

Qin Su: "..."

He felt rather pitiful.

Qin Su devoted only twenty percent of his attention to watching his classmates and immersed the other eighty percent in studying. It was as though an invisible wall had formed around him, warning strangers to stay away.

After Qin Su's recent performance, no one dared approach him anyway.

There were 499 other people in Class 6, so the weightlifting session would take quite a while. While looking through the data, Qin Su made sure to find suitable opportunities to move his limbs naturally, confirming that although his bodily functions had declined sharply, his limbs were still like a Zombie's: he could "walk even after dying."

After injecting K-110, his strength increased hundreds of times based on his physical condition. If he injected a second dose three minutes later, would the resulting strength increase be based on his original physical condition, or on his weakened state?

Qin Su: "..."

If he kept exploiting the bug indefinitely, he couldn't imagine how weak his body would become once he finally stopped injecting it.

Unless he had absolutely no other choice and there was no one around to help him, he had better not play that game.

Qin Su immediately abandoned the idea and turned his attention back to the data about this world...

The robot had cleaned up the crushed Alpha pheromone shield without leaving a single fragment behind, but Qin Su's actions had left an indelible mark on everyone's hearts.

No. 37, which Qin Su had touched, spontaneously became a "new" check-in spot for Class 6.

Whether they could lift No. 37 didn't matter to them.

What mattered was that Qin Su had lifted it. They didn't dare approach Qin Su himself, but they could settle for touching something he had touched. How could that not count as a chance to "get up close to their idol"?

Before leaving, the students from other classes who had come to watch the gossip also checked in and recorded it with their Optical Brains.

For the rest of the class, Qin Su never touched a second bug, nor did anyone doubt his strength. He had lifted a giant bug weighing over a thousand kilograms with effortless ease, as though playing, without even using Alpha pheromones. There was no need to question his strength.

With such heaven-defying strength, Qin Su had no need for this training at all.

In the end, Qin Su's record for the session stopped at No. 37.

After class ended and the students left, Kaixier conducted her routine inspection of the bugs. She discovered that the places Qin Su had touched when lifting No. 37, once covered by a hard exoskeleton, had been rubbed to a jade-like sheen by the enthusiastic students, as though they had been polished countless times.

"..."

The corner of Kaixier's mouth twitched as she looked up at Mutian Tuo, which radiated a holy glow.

When it died, it probably had never imagined that it, with its exceptionally hard skin and almost no weaknesses, whose physical assaults had struck fear into every planet, would one day have its "skin rubbed off."

When Teacher Kaixier dismissed the class, Qin Su, who had long since taken the spot closest to the entrance, naturally left first and headed for the changing room.

Watching Qin Su disappear from sight, Raymond patted He Muzhi on the shoulder to comfort him. He Muzhi wasn't quite himself.

"Don't listen to the nonsense some people are saying. No. 37 obviously isn't Qin Su's limit, and he didn't deliberately lift No. 37, right after No. 36, to show you up. He's not that bored. On the contrary, I think he could clearly have lifted other, bigger bugs, but chose the number after yours to encourage you, to tell you not to get conceited."

While the classmates had been busy "checking in" at No. 37 and ignoring No. 36, Anthony and some other students, unwilling to see others do well, had made snide remarks as though trying to stir up He Muzhi's dissatisfaction with Qin Su.

After all, with Qin Su far ahead as the class's top one, He Muzhi was firmly in second place in every respect. Those who couldn't measure up themselves could hardly find a better choice than the "eternal runner-up" He Muzhi to send into battle while they hid in the gutter.

"Don't worry." He Muzhi pulled Raymond's hand off his shoulder. "I know what I'm doing."

He had indeed felt disappointed at first, but...

He Muzhi placed both hands on Raymond's shoulders with a perfectly serious expression and looked him in the eye as he spouted nonsense. "On second thought, given how calculating Qin Su is and how ruthlessly he treated He Wenyuan, I suspect he looked at No. 36 first because he knew my strength inside out."

"How can that not count as Qin Su 'placing high hopes in me'?"

"Otherwise, why didn't Qin Su look at No. 23, the one you can lift, and only look at No. 36, which I could lift with all my strength, and then lift only No. 37, the one after mine?"

Raymond said nothing, so He Muzhi added, "Raymond, do you think what I said is so well reasoned that you can't refute it?"

The corner of Raymond's mouth twitched. "...Heh heh!"

He was the clown here. Like hell He Muzhi was upset!

"So much for worrying about you!" With that, Raymond turned and left.

He Muzhi smiled at Raymond's retreating back and followed him. "Hey, Raymond, you're not angry, are you?"

He naturally knew he was "telling barefaced lies" because he didn't want his friend to worry about him, but there was also a hidden hope behind them.

Although... Qin Su had crushed the Pheromone Isolation Shield he had worn, most likely meaning to draw a line between them. In Qin Su's mind, he might only be a tiny bit better than He Wenyuan, who smiled while harboring a bellyful of dark thoughts.

So many people had checked in at No. 37, including students from other classes. After taking their photos, they either shared them on their Optical Brain friends' feeds or uploaded them to the forum to gossip.

The name "Qin Su" was a hot topic in itself.

Before class had even ended, word that Qin Su had broken the weightlifting record, and done so effortlessly, had spread throughout almost the entire Fourth Military Academy.

When Qin Su emerged from the training ground, he discovered that wherever he went, although he couldn't clear everyone out for a hundred miles, there was no one within at least three meters of him.

His Life Points continued to rise explosively, too. Clearly, more and more people were paying attention.

Stepping onto the Interstellar Train and seeing the students around him immediately "scatter like birds and beasts," Qin Su said, "..."

It was as though he were some kind of man-eating monster.

Who would have guessed that, far from being a monster, he was so fragile he was like a pile of loose sand? He had to work to keep himself steady and press his feet firmly against the ground.

Every seemingly steady step he took was cautious, for fear that he would "scatter at a gust of wind."

"Qin Su! Aah, it's Qin Su!" Voices like that filled every place Qin Su passed.

With word spreading this far...

On the train, Qin Su silently opened the Fourth Military School student forum.

[Click to see Qin Su, the heaven-defying Alpha freshman of the Class of 26, break a record live! Pictures or it didn't happen! Pay attention: no pheromone isolation shield, and there's a pher-o-mone iso-la-tion patch on the back of his neck! (Picture) (Picture)... (Picture)] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]... [36] [37] [38]... hot

[1F: Lifting it one-handed? Without even twisting his face? And his eyes are still that cold and calm? Is this real? It's edited, right?]

[2F: Edited my ass. It's been analyzed, and there's not a trace of editing (smile).]

[3F: Before clicking: Let me see which bastard's fucking bragging again! After clicking: Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, little old me has suffered a huge shock! My eyes nearly popped out. Is this the strength of an Alpha?]

[4F: I'm an Alpha too, but as a freshman, I could only lift No. 13 (weary smile).]

[5F: Pay attention: this is "Qin Su." I'm sure every freshman in the Class of 26 knows what that name is worth. I seriously suggest the Fourth Military Academy give him his own Alpha Track. Otherwise, putting him on the same track as us Alphas leaves us no way to live.]

[6F: I bet every teacher in the Class of 26 has said something like "Look at Qin Su" (sobbing). As if hearing "Look at other people's kids" from my parents at home wasn't enough, I'm old enough to attend military school and protect citizens, and I still have to hear it (boo-hoo).]

[7F: To be honest, the Class of 25 gets it too. My parents told me to do everything I can to be Qin Su's bootlicker. Oh, and I'm an Alpha (smile).]

[8F: The Class of 24 gets it too. We're all in the same boat, but they don't stop to think. Is that even possible? (shrug)]

[266F: I can't hold it in anymore. Seeing this picture gives me the urge to kneel. I seriously suspect Qin Su used a pheromone scam on me! I demand a thorough investigation!]

[277F: Tsk, tsk, society's going downhill. To have such a shameful thought, honestly... Huh? It's Qin Su? Then never mind. It's only human.]

[278F: Understandable.]

[279F: Not unreasonable.]

[280F: Perfectly reasonable.]

[281F: Only to be expected.]

[282F: As it should be.]

[283F: That's how it ought to be.]

[284F: A natural step for the legs.]

[285F: Same here.]

Qin Su: "..."

No matter the world, netizens were all talented indeed. He hadn't expected them to turn even that into a chain.

The arrival announcement sounded. Qin Su closed the forum and, fighting the constant urge to fall asleep on the spot from sheer weakness, disappeared from everyone's burning gazes.

As soon as Qin Su left, one relieved gasp after another sounded inside the train, which had been quiet enough to hear a pin drop.

"Whew... the oxygen's back!"

"That's Qin Su for you. The moment he came in, the air around us turned cold."

"You had it easy. When Qin Su walked past me, even though he didn't use pheromones, the chill he brought with him made me feel like I was in a freezer."

"Exactly. Bosses all have that cold aura that keeps people a thousand miles away."

The dormitory door closed automatically, shutting out all the prying eyes. Qin Su breathed out, and the worry he had carried all the way back could finally be set aside for the moment.

The next two days were the weekend, giving him a chance to catch his breath. Given his physical condition, Qin Su decided to give himself a short "vacation" for now. Instead of looking at more data, he took his pajamas into the bathroom to shower and rest.

To avoid bumping into something in the room, falling to the floor, and not wanting to get back up, Qin Su moved with care the entire time.

Having gritted his teeth and held on for so long, Qin Su lay down on the bed, folded his hands over his abdomen, and closed his eyes in an instant. He experienced firsthand what it meant to say, "It's great being young—you can fall asleep the moment your head hits the pillow."

Qin Su could lift over a thousand kilograms with one hand, which, rounded up, meant his terrifyingly overwhelming strength could send them flying out of the Fourth Military School grounds with one punch. Combined with his "freezing" and intimidating aura, it made everyone move out of his way whenever they saw him for a long time afterward.

To "stay out of his way," He Wenyuan took some time off and didn't appear at school.

Qin Su was happy to see it and successfully made it through the three days of fragility and weakness.

Having experienced K-110, Qin Su didn't use it a second time. When weightlifting came around, he chose to start with No. 1 and lift them in order.

With three days left before the month's first actual combat session, Qin Su had worked his way up to No. 4 in weightlifting training.

His verifiable record with No. 37 had already established him as the Class of 26's weightlifting MVP.

Everyone believed Qin Su was lifting in numerical order because he "didn't want to put too much pressure on his classmates and wanted to make the weightlifting class more relaxed," or because "Qin Su could lift anything, so it didn't matter what he lifted." No one suspected that Qin Su had only possessed the strength to lift No. 37 during the first weightlifting session, and that afterward, without injecting K-110, he had lost that heaven-defying strength.

With only one day left before the Class of 26 freshmen's first actual combat against the Zerg, their homeroom teacher, Zhang Minglang, appeared in Class 6.

The actual combat against the Zerg had been announced long ago, so when the students saw their homeroom teacher, they already knew what it meant.

Although they were nervous, their anticipation outweighed their apprehension.

After nearly a month of training, they had gained a certain understanding of the Zerg, weapons, and mechas alike. What they lacked was a chance to face the Zerg directly, to test and demonstrate everything they had learned and make themselves clearly realize that none of their efforts had been wasted.

"My dear students, I'm sure you all know what my presence here today means."

"So I won't waste any words." Standing at the front, Zhang Minglang swept a serious gaze over the students of Class 6.

After more than twenty days of basic training, the students had improved to some extent in both their bearing and physical fitness. Obvious gratification showed in Zhang Minglang's eyes as he solemnly announced:

"Our Fourth Military Academy's Class of 26 has 118 freshman classes, with 500 students in each. A total of 59 basic bug types have been included in the Zerg Pool this time, distributed across different regions on different planets. They're numbered from 1 to 59 by difficulty, from hardest to easiest, with each number corresponding to one type of bug."

"The type of bug each class faces in practical combat will be determined by a draw conducted shortly by the homeroom teacher—that is, me."

[Disappointed. Why isn't our precious No. 1 drawing? In the little bonus clip, the class monitors drew for the upper-year classes.]

[...I admit Qin Su is impressive, but the Class of 26 freshmen don't have a class monitor yet.]

[Who cares who draws? With how strong Boss 1 is, it wouldn't matter even if he drew number 1. That's how confident I am (hands on hips, head held high, chest puffed out).]

Qin Su: "..."

Fortunately, he wasn't the one drawing. With his luck, he could scratch a hundred lottery tickets without winning once, so he would very likely have drawn number 1, which represented the hardest bug to deal with among the 59 types this time.

Although he had prepared thoroughly, both in terms of knowledge and physical training, this was still the first time he, an Earthling without pheromones, would face a live bug. He really didn't want to start on hard mode.

Facing the unknown, who could give him, an Earthling in this unfamiliar world, the courage to feel confident? The bullet comments' praise made him feel uneasy.

As the students each had their own thoughts, the two-and-a-half-meter-tall robot strode up to Zhang Minglang, the homeroom teacher of Class 6, with a swagger that acknowledged no one.

Sweet zongzi or savory zongzi? [doge]