When Lin Xiao calmly spoke the words, "We are a team," Shi Lei and Su Yue felt a surge of hot blood shoot from the soles of their feet straight to the crowns of their heads, their hearts filled with unprecedented fervor and heroic spirit.
They knew that from this moment on, their fates had been tightly bound to this seemingly ordinary youth before them, a youth who in truth harbored an entire world within his heart.
The road ahead might be a bottomless abyss, but with companions like these at their side, what was there to fear?!
"Lin Xiao, just tell us how to train! I, Shi Lei, am handing my life over to you today! Even if we have to cross mountains of blades and seas of fire, if I so much as furrow my brow, I'm no man!" Shi Lei slapped his booming chest, his voice ringing like a great bell.
Su Yue said nothing, but the resolve and trust shining from her star-bright eyes spoke louder than a thousand words.
Seeing his companions' unreserved trust, Lin Xiao's heart warmed as well. He knew he had placed the most important stake correctly in this gamble.
"Good." A solemn expression appeared on Lin Xiao's face. "I already have a preliminary idea for the training plan. But before that, there is something even more important we need to do."
He turned, his gaze falling upon the crowd beyond the dormitory area. Though they had gradually dispersed after the vice dean's departure, they still pointed and whispered from afar.
"In three months, we will face competition from thousands of geniuses across the entire Outer Academy. No matter how strong the three of us are, we will ultimately be outnumbered. We need more strength. We need to turn all of Yellow Class Nine into our strength!"
The excitement on Shi Lei's face immediately collapsed. Scratching his head, he said with some difficulty, "Lin Xiao, this... might be hard, right? You saw those guys in Class Nine. Every last one of them is like an eggplant beaten by frost. The academy has crushed every shred of fighting spirit out of them. Asking them to challenge the Heaven Class with us? I'm afraid they don't have the guts."
"Guts are trained. Fighting spirit is forged through battle." Lin Xiao's lips curved into a confident smile. "What they lack is neither talent nor courage, but a reason to let them see hope. And we will become that reason."
That very afternoon, another piece of news swept through the entire Outer Academy like a hurricane.
—Lin Xiao, the chief student of Yellow Class Nine, was paying out of his own pocket to offer every Yellow Class Nine student a monthly stipend of ten merit points to join the "special training" he had organized!
He also publicly declared that any student who joined the training and raised their strength by one realm within three months would receive an additional reward of one hundred merit points! Those who helped the team achieve outstanding results in the Bloody Trial would receive rewards with no upper limit!
The moment this news came out, the entire Outer Academy exploded!
"Did I hear that right? Has Lin Xiao gone mad? Where did he get so many merit points?" "I heard he received fifteen thousand merit points in one go at the Gravity Tower! That guy is filthy rich!" "Ten merit points a month! My heavens, that's almost at the monthly stipend standard of the Xuan Class! And you get it just for joining? Why can't something this good fall into our laps?" "A hundred merit points for a breakthrough? Is he trying to turn all of Yellow Class Nine into an army of tigers and wolves?!"
Countless Outer Academy students, especially those from the other Yellow Classes, regretted it until their intestines turned green upon hearing the news. Their eyes reddened with envy, and they wished they could transfer into Yellow Class Nine at once.
As for the Yellow Class Nine students at the center of it all, after their initial shock and disbelief, they sank completely into wild joy and inner conflict.
Their joy came from the fact that this pie falling from the sky was simply too enormous! So enormous that it was enough to make them forget all their inferiority and dejection! Their conflict came from knowing full well that Lin Xiao's "special training" had only one purpose—to challenge the Heaven Class and fulfill the three-month agreement with the vice dean!
It was a thorny road destined to make enemies of the entire academy! Did they truly have the courage to go mad alongside Lin Xiao?
At dusk, on Yellow Class Nine's exclusive training ground.
Lin Xiao stood with his hands behind his back, waiting quietly. Shi Lei and Su Yue stood behind him on either side like two guardians.
The lingering rays of the setting sun stretched the shadows of the three of them long.
Figures began appearing one after another in the distance.
Most came in twos and threes, their faces carrying both unease and hesitation as they lingered at the edge of the training ground, unable to make up their minds.
Lin Xiao did not urge them. He simply watched calmly.
At last, a thin, dark-skinned youth who looked somewhat timid gathered his courage and became the first to step onto the training ground, stopping before Lin Xiao.
"Chief... Chief Lin..." The youth was so nervous he could barely speak clearly. "I... I'm Zhou Xiaoshu. I... I want to join the training!"
"Why?" Lin Xiao asked calmly.
"Because... because I don't want people looking down on me anymore!" A light utterly at odds with Zhou Xiaoshu's frail appearance suddenly burst from his eyes. "My aptitude is poor, my family is poor, and I was assigned to a Yellow Class—I accepted all that! But I don't want to stay at the very bottom for the rest of my life, treated as trash and trampled beneath others' feet! I want to grow stronger! Even if it's only once, I want to follow you, Chief Lin, and see the view from the mountaintop!"
His words were like a heavy hammer, striking the hearts of the students still hesitating outside the grounds.
"Well said!"
One, two, three... more and more people stepped out of the shadows and gathered behind Zhou Xiaoshu.
Unease still lingered on their faces, but a flame called "hope" had likewise ignited in their eyes!
In the end, Yellow Class Nine had thirty students in total. Apart from two or three who had truly given up on themselves and refused to come, the remaining twenty-seven had all arrived!
Looking at those youthful faces before him, faces filled with determination, Lin Xiao finally revealed a satisfied smile.
He knew his first step had succeeded.
"Very good."
He cleared his throat, and his voice carried across the entire training ground.
"I am very glad that you chose to believe in me. I promise you that today will be one of the decisions you regret least in your entire lives!"
"I will not spout grand words to raise morale. I will only tell you three things."
"First, from today onward, you are no longer trash forgotten by everyone. You are members of Yellow Class Nine! What you need to do is forget everything from the past, raise your heads, and straighten your backs!"
"Second, the training I have tailored for you will be hell! You will feel pain, you will feel despair, and you may even want to give up. But I demand that you carry out every one of my orders without condition! Whoever dares to quit halfway will forever have no place in Yellow Class Nine!"
"Third!" Lin Xiao's gaze suddenly sharpened like a blade. "What I promise you is hope! Dignity! Absolute strength that will make everyone who looks down on us tremble! In three months, I will make the name 'Yellow Class Nine' resound throughout Cloud Creek Academy!"
His voice, brimming with strength and confidence, echoed beside every student's ears like a spell, making the blood in their bodies boil!
"Everyone, form ranks around me!" Lin Xiao shouted sharply.
The twenty-seven students instinctively followed his command and swiftly lined up.
"Very good. Our first lesson begins now!"
A devilish smile curled across Lin Xiao's lips.
"Everyone, to the Gravity Tower! Before today ends, every one of you must remain under the maximum gravity you can endure for a full shichen! Anyone who fails gets no dinner!"
Hell descended.
Over the next month, every Outer Academy student looked at those Yellow Class Nine lunatics as though they had lost their minds.
Every day before dawn, Lin Xiao led them in weighted cross-country runs around the academy track. In the mornings, they were driven into the Gravity Tower to undergo the cruelest bodily tempering beneath pressure strong enough to make their bones groan. In the afternoons, they carried out all manner of bizarre yet astonishingly efficient coordinated combat training designed by Lin Xiao on the training grounds. At night, when everyone else had already entered dreamland, the Yellow Class Nine dormitory area remained brightly lit. Lin Xiao personally explained the mysteries of Martial Skills and imparted his combat experience to them.
Lin Xiao was like the harshest demon instructor.
Using the system, he precisely analyzed every student's physical data, cultivation method traits, and potential limits, then devised an almost perfect training plan for them, detailed down to every shichen.
He perfectly combined military training from his previous life, modern physical fitness theory, and this world's cultivation system.
What he taught them was no longer individual combat, but teamwork! Coordination! Formations!
He exchanged merit points for vast quantities of body-tempering pills and handed them out to everyone as if they cost nothing, ensuring they received the most timely replenishment and recovery after extreme training.
Under such lavish resource investment and devilish training intensity, these "poor students" of Yellow Class Nine began undergoing rebirth-like changes at a speed visible to the naked eye!
Their eyes were no longer lost. Their bodies were no longer frail. The dejected air around them was replaced by a new bearing called "iron-blooded resolve" and "confidence"!
One month later.
When Yellow Class Nine appeared together once more at the academy's martial arena, everyone who saw them was too shocked for words.
Those perfectly synchronized steps, that mountain-like, solemn aura, those twenty-seven surging fighting wills gathered together as though they could pierce the heavens!
How were they still that trash class everyone could bully? They were clearly battle-hardened elites who had just emerged from mountains of corpses and seas of blood!
And at the forefront of this team, the aura of the youth leading them had become ever more profound and unfathomable.
After a month of bitter cultivation, Lin Xiao had firmly entered the Body Refinement Seventh Level! Shi Lei and Su Yue had both broken through to the Body Refinement Fifth Level! The rest of the students had each improved by at least one minor level!
Such a terrifying rate of progress was enough to make any Heaven Class genius ashamed!
Lin Xiao knew the time had come to draw his sword.
That day, he did not lead the team to train. Instead, he went alone to the most eye-catching place in the Outer Academy—the Life and Death Stage.
Beside the Life and Death Stage stood a massive Merit Monument, recording every merit challenge between students.
Under thousands of gazes—some shocked, some curious, some disdainful—
Lin Xiao walked to the Merit Monument, picked up the rune pen used specifically for records, and wrote in bold, sweeping strokes the first and most arrogant letter of challenge since his arrival at the academy!
[Yellow Class Nine, Lin Xiao, stakes all of his personal Heavenly Class monthly stipend resources, and challenges—]
[Heaven Class Three, chief student, Li Tianyi!]
[Time: Three days later, Life and Death Stage!]
The instant the three characters "Li Tianyi" appeared on the Merit Monument, the entire crowd fell into deathly silence.
Then, an uproar erupted into the sky!
"Li Tianyi! He actually chose Li Tianyi as his first challenge!"
"Mad! He is absolutely mad! Li Tianyi is a peak Body Refinement Eighth Level expert! He ranks eleventh on the Outer Academy's individual strength rankings! He is one of the beings second only to monsters like Xiao Lang!"
"This is no longer a challenge. This is suicide!"
Ignoring all the surrounding clamor and doubt,
Lin Xiao slowly set down the rune pen.
He turned around, his gaze passing through the crowd as though he could see the figure atop the cultivation tower, raging in fury over this news.
A cold curve touched his lips.
Xiao Lang, I'll help you pull out one of your claws first!
Before you continue