The Dark Abyss had been flourishing at the East Heavenly Gate, while Shi Tiexin's true self, far away in the Saturn System, was likewise making gradual improvement.
Having witnessed the storm-tossed Asteroid Belt, the once seemingly prosperous and high-end Shaluo City suddenly became some backwater little town, steeped everywhere in the laziness and leisure unique to a third-tier city.
Listen—in the ten minutes it took to eat breakfast, only eight ambulances howled past.
Look—when he opened the work group that morning, after an entire night, the Little Bees of Liang Tuan and E Le Gate had only fought twenty-six private skirmishes, while small-scale group battles involving more than a hundred people had only broken out twice.
This pace was far too leisurely.
Shi Tiexin glanced through the various messages and watched television half-heartedly. The TV was full of live broadcasts of competitions. The martial artists in the broadcasts fought to the death, blood spraying three feet high, while Shi Tiexin ate amid those bloody scenes, chewing slowly as he finished breakfast.
When he arrived at Lumen Academy, students all along the way greeted him and asked after him. Shi Tiexin's reputation as a peerless talent of Nine Bells and Nine Drums had long resounded throughout the academy. He was now a major celebrity there.
His unhurried footsteps passed along a path carpeted with fallen leaves. Shi Tiexin arrived before an antique and elegant pavilion in the deepest reaches of Lumen Academy. The pavilion was neither tall nor magnificent, yet every student in the academy took pride in attending lectures here, because this was Master Cheng Ling Su's study.
Lumen Academy had nearly ten thousand Student Scholars in total, yet no more than one hundred and sixty were qualified to attend lectures here. All of them were the cream of the