The Mighty Barbarians

That evening, when he opened the Status Panel, Chen Shouyi found that the experience hadn't been without benefit. He noticed his Willpower had risen by another 0.2 points, now at 1.12.

But compared to Willpower, he wished it had been something else that grew stronger.

He never wanted to encounter a Barbarian again and still flee like a headless fly, pinning his life on fickle luck and the enemy's mood.

That night, he trained harder and more desperately than ever.

Swordsmanship, the Thirty-Six Body Tempering Forms, Entering Tranquility to Refine the Self—he practiced each in sequence until his body and spirit were nearly drained dry.

Yet once his energy recovered slightly, he lay back in bed and entered the Gray Mist Space.

Over the past month, his body here had grown increasingly solid.

Though it still felt illusory, it now had some texture. The little tree had also changed, growing a few inches taller, and the space itself seemed more stable.

But these were minor details. None of these changes had done anything to boost his actual strength.

He looked at today's Memory Leaf and soon immersed his mind in it.

He chose the segment where he'd encountered the Barbarian. As his mind entered the Barbarian's body, an indescribable sensation surged through him.

Powerful! Utterly powerful!

His body brimmed with explosive strength; his feet on the ground felt almost buoyant.

That wasn't all.

Like the sweltering heat after a thunderstorm, everything before his eyes seemed to come alive. His ears filled with a cacophony of sounds, his nose caught subtler scents, his vision sharpened, and his skin's touch became exquisitely sensitive.

After just a few seconds of this flood of information, Chen Shouyi felt dizzy and lightheaded, forced to withdraw his mind from the body.

The sensation was novel and shocking. Was this what a Barbarian was like?

Of course, a Barbarian who could kill Zhou Shaofeng while under siege by armed police firepower was no ordinary Barbarian.

Time flowed slowly in the Memory Space, soon reaching the moment when the middle-aged man stepped forward to face the Barbarian.

Feeling his dizziness fade, Chen Shouyi hesitated over whether to re-enter the Barbarian's body.

He wanted to feel how the Barbarian's muscles exerted force in combat.

But this was killing—brutal, bloody killing.

That middle-aged man's head would be shattered, brains splattering everywhere.

If this were a movie, he could munch popcorn, eyes glued to the screen, heart unruffled.

But this was a memory. That afternoon, that man had died right before his eyes, miserably.

And now he was about to enter the Barbarian's body and personally feel "himself" kill the man, crush his skull with a fist.

He wrestled with himself for a while, watching the battle memory slip by.

Finally, he made a decision.

The next moment, his mind entered... the middle-aged man's body.

His body was stronger than Chen Shouyi's, at least at the Martial Apprentice standard. But after experiencing the Barbarian's body, this one felt abnormally "weak."

Before the tragedy, he gripped his broom tightly, every muscle strung taut, as if about to unleash a "sword strike."

But the Barbarian was too fast—far beyond his Reaction Ability. In an instant, a gale swept toward him, and then the fist, from far to near, slammed heavily into his head.

Chen Shouyi only heard a deafening boom, saw darkness, and his mind was ejected.

If he could feel his heart, it would be pounding wildly by now.

The experience of death was unpleasant. Even as a watered-down version, a fraction of the real thing, it still sent a chill from the depths of his heart.

He rewound the memory to that moment again.

This time, he chose to enter the Barbarian. Having already died once in the man's place, his guilt had dwindled to nearly nothing, leaving little psychological barrier.

Looking at the corpse on the ground, Chen Shouyi withdrew from the Barbarian's body. He sorted through his tangled emotions, feeling somewhat disappointed.

The Barbarian's method of exerting force was crude, still at a primitive stage. Compared to an ordinary person, it might be well-honed and precise, but it couldn't match human martial arts.

Thinking it over, it made sense. One was the experiential technique passed down through generations of hunting in a primitive tribal era; the other was the collective wisdom of an information age.

Most crucially, the Otherworld manifested supernatural powers, while Earth had none. The different environments meant they didn't value technique as much as Earth did.

But his terrifying physicality made up for everything. "One force overcomes ten techniques"—Chen Shouyi had heard that saying before but never truly grasped it until now. Only then did he feel the true terror of raw power.

It could crush everything.

The next day, Dongning City was calm. His family's restaurant reopened.

And he faced his first monthly exam since starting senior year.

His mindset was steady now. When the Chinese exam paper was handed out, he worked through it smoothly, the pen tip scratching against the paper. Aside from a few poetry fill-in-the-blanks he left blank, he filled the entire sheet.

Whether he did well or not, he didn't know, but Chen Shouyi was quite satisfied.

The second subject, math, was much harder for him. He finished what he could first, then tackled the tough problems. By the end, two major questions still left him clueless.

The next day's English and comprehensive science exam also gave him a headache.

When it was all over, Chen Shouyi felt completely drained.

"Chen Shouyi, how did you do on the exam?" After walking out of the classroom, Zhang Xiaoyue suddenly quickened her steps to catch up with him.

Looking at Zhang Xiaoyue's charming smile beside him, Chen Shouyi couldn't help recalling the soft little hand he had held in his own the day before yesterday, and his heart couldn't help pounding a few times.

But his face showed nothing at all; this month of "training" had taught him to face women with at least a composed exterior.

"My results are probably hopeless."

He had missed too many classes, not something a month of effort could make up for.

"But you'll probably take the Martial Arts Academy exam, right?" Zhang Xiaoyue looked up at Chen Shouyi with a sweet smile, her bright gaze seeming to carry some unspoken meaning.

"Yeah, if nothing unexpected happens."

"What about you?"

"Not sure yet, but I'll go to a university in Zhonghai."

The two of them exchanged tacit understanding, leaving Sun Xin beside them dumbfounded, but neither paid him any attention.

Ahead, in the small grove, a crowd had gathered, seemingly in a fight.

Chen Shouyi didn't pay it much mind. In an ordinary high school like Dongning Fifth Middle School, discipline was lax, and fights were so common they were hardly surprising.

A bunch of hormone-driven youths would spark at the slightest friction.

"The one getting beaten looks like Zhao Yifeng," Sun Xin said quietly.

Chen Shouyi immediately stopped in his tracks.

Zhang Xiaoyue, hearing it was a classmate, quickly called out loudly, "Stop it, don't fight! Which class are you from? I'll tell the teacher!"

"Ooh, pretty girl, telling the teacher? I'm so scared!" The three of them paused, and one who seemed to be the leader, a tall guy, flicked his flowing hair and said with a cocky grin.

Chen Shouyi watched Zhang Xiaoyue's embarrassed and indignant expression and shook his head inwardly. Reasoning with people like that was useless; the more you yielded, the more you got bullied. Only a harder fist could convince them.

He had known this truth before, but lacked a harder fist. Now, he had one.

He charged forward immediately.

His speed was astonishing; in one stride, he was in the middle of the crowd.

The tall guy stood there, barely reacting, before Chen Shouyi gave him a light shove, sending him stumbling a few steps and landing on his backside.

The other two youths snapped to attention and rushed at him, trying to subdue Chen Shouyi together.

But against a near-Martial Apprentice, their resistance was as meaningless as a child fighting an adult.

He grabbed both their arms, pulled along with their momentum, and the two fell flat on their faces, eating dirt.

"You just wait."

"Don't you dare run!"

"Thanks!" Zhao Yifeng stood up, his face bruised and swollen, glanced at Chen Shouyi, then at the pretty Zhang Xiaoyue, and mumbled.

"Aren't we friends?" Chen Shouyi said.

"Zhao Yifeng, why did they hit you?" Zhang Xiaoyue asked.

"N... nothing!" His lips moved, and he said, red-faced.

Zhao Yifeng never said the reason, and soon limped away.

Chen Shouyi watched his retreating figure in silence, as if seeing his former self.