No Malice

Bai Mo's expression was cold. Light flashed in his eyes, and he lifted Lu Yuan straight up by the throat, choking those words dead in his mouth.

"Bai Mo, you!"

Seeing this, Lu Yilin wanted to step forward and stop him, but Bai Mo only glanced at him with those eyes gleaming with a cold silver light, and he no longer dared to move.

"Don't be nervous," Bai Mo said expressionlessly. "I bear no ill will toward this useless teacher of yours."

With that, he loosened his grip on Lu Yuan's neck slightly, allowing him to breathe normally. Then he said bluntly, "I don't care whether you Lu Family people were born with defective brains or developed mental illnesses later. In short, I won this match fair and square. In the face of absolute strength, those so-called plans of yours were nothing but a joke."

"Ding Yumian didn't send me any message, and I didn't need one. Even your team leader is this pathetic—why would I need to play tricks to deal with students?"

Hearing this, Lu Yilin's face darkened, and Ye Zi, who had been watching from the side, also fell silent.

If you're going to counterattack, then counterattack. Why did you have to deal splash damage too?

He was innocent!

After saying that, Bai Mo released the telekinetic restraint. With a casual shake, he let Lu Yuan fall to the ground, where he lay limp like a dead dog, gasping for air.

He swept his gaze around. The people from the other schools who had not yet left were all there, and the competition judges were still in the distance.

He gave a slight nod, counting it as a greeting, then took Ding Yumian's hand and turned to leave.

"The little fellow has quite the temper," Judge Zhong commented with a smile after watching the entire thing.

The person beside him also said, "That team-leading teacher from Mingzhu Affiliated High School was far too spineless. His own team wasn't strong enough and lost the match, yet he turned around and blamed his school's student instead. Professor Zhou, what do you think?"

"Most of Mingzhu Affiliated High School's teachers are students of Pearl Institute who took up positions there after leaving the university. Of course, they also hire some people from society. It's inevitable that a few individuals don't match the image and requirements of a teacher."

Professor Zhou looked calmly at Lu Yuan, who had already recovered, and said faintly, "Moreover, that person's magic aura is only at the level of someone who has just entered the Intermediate Level. His aura is impetuous. I doubt he graduated from Pearl."

On the road, Bai Mo walked without any particular destination. In any case, he couldn't stay at the place where the incident had been triggered. He carefully felt the cool, soft warmth in his palm and asked as if nothing had happened, "What's the deal with that teacher of yours?"

"There's no real grudge. He teaches ideological and political education, but no one at school listens to him, and the teachers look down on him too, because all he can do is read from the textbook."

"He cursed you like that, and you're not angry? You're not going to hit him where it hurts?"

"I don't care what he says."

"Then what do you care about?"

Hearing this, Ding Yumian turned her head. She first glanced at him, then lowered her gaze to their hands and pressed her lips together. "It's been two minutes."

"What do you mean, two minutes?" Bai Mo asked in confusion, his eyes darting all over the place.

"Your hand." Ding Yumian's face was expressionless, her eyes fixed on the hand he was using to hold hers.

Bai Mo pretended not to know what she meant. After a while, when the light across the road had already turned green and Ding Yumian still didn't move, simply staring at his hand, Bai Mo could only act as if he had just noticed. Following her gaze, he looked down, then let go of her hand and said, "Emmm, if I say I only just realized, would you believe me?"

"..." Ding Yumian said nothing and looked at him out of the corner of her eye.

Bai Mo scratched his head. The girls around him were all hard to fool. What was he supposed to do about that? After thinking about it, he decided to give up on pondering the question and changed the subject to a warning instead.

"If that teacher targets you at school, and if he does anything wicked, tell me!"

"He won't."

"Mm?" Bai Mo was a little confused. "Why?"

"My Mind Element talent is very strong. I can clearly sense other people's malice toward me, and from that, understand the schemes in their hearts."

Ding Yumian glanced at him indifferently. This person had put on an act of fear that was fake at first glance, so she continued, "I'm not crazy, nor am I a pervert. I can't bring myself to actively pry into people's minds. But resolving and avoiding plots aimed at me is very easy."

Bai Mo's eyes drifted. If Ding Yumian said that, then she could definitely do it. But in the original work, why had she fallen into Councilor Zhuang's trap?

"What are you thinking?"

"You can't tell?" Bai Mo asked. Ding Yumian knew he was asking why her Mind Element couldn't see it, so she shook her head.

"I don't want to look, and there are some things I can't see. There's a special power in your soul. It blocks my perception."

What she didn't say was that every time she stayed by Bai Mo's side for a while, Ding Yumian could feel the Mind Wave, which had originally surged violently because of her talent and required great effort and time to calm, changing. It would turn into a slow current that could be guided very well. She was just afraid that if she said it now, Bai Mo would think she had approached him for this reason.

"A special power?" Bai Mo wondered inwardly. Could it be the protective power of the Origin Wind? As for the fact that she could usually guess some of his thoughts?

How should he put it? People who understood each other even a little could also guess what the other was thinking.

Seeing that Ding Yumian was still waiting for his question, Bai Mo looked at those unique, bright eyes of hers, tranquil and indifferent like moonlight, and asked, "I was thinking, if one day, you willingly let yourself be targeted, what would it be for?"

"I don't know." Ding Yumian shook her head, looked at him, and said something inexplicable. "This world was originally boring, but later, it began to become interesting."

"I'm grateful for that interestingness, and I'll protect him too."

"Protect the world? What a great goal! Amazing. Then you protect the world, and I'll protect you." After hearing this, Bai Mo didn't really understand. He praised her in an extremely exaggerated way, then threw in a cheesy pickup line.

Then he drew an eye-roll from the girl. He scratched his head again. "Why would it be boring? How could it be?"

"You wouldn't know."

"How am I supposed to know if you don't tell me?"

"I'll tell you later."

"How much later?"

"I don't know."

"..."

Bai Mo was speechless. What a riddle-talker. He decided he would make her pay for dinner later, in protest against this kind of behavior.

The two stopped in front of Plum Blossom Restaurant.

Three cups of water had gone by, and five dishes had been tasted.

"What made you think of coming to see me today?" Bai Mo asked.

Ding Yumian raised a hand to call the waiter over and settled the bill, then glanced at him and said leisurely, "I came because I wanted to."

After that, she asked, "You've more or less graduated from high school now. What are you planning to do?"

"I haven't thought it through yet, hmmm." Bai Mo let out a thoughtful hum before saying, "Cultivate, go out and have fun, do missions, and then hang out with you. That's about it."

"Who wants to hang out with you?" Ding Yumian rolled her eyes.

"Oh, so that's how it is, you heartless woman!"

Ding Yumian couldn't be bothered with him. She got up, indicating that they were done eating and should leave.

The two walked along the street for a while, hailed a car, and after parting with her at the entrance of Pearl University, Bai Mo went home.

Patriarch Bai's secretary said Patriarch Bai had something for him, and that it had already been placed in his room.

That made Bai Mo a little curious. No need to think—of course the Bai family had already found out about the Magic Competition, and this was a reward.

What could it be?

Tsk, it seemed the parcel from the University Alliance had arrived too.

He was looking forward to it!

There were two boxes on the table. One was a wooden box, and the other...

Was a metal box.

The metal box had been sent by the University Alliance. Bai Mo opened it, and a golden light... did not appear at all.

Inside the metal box, one large and one small box sat quietly.

He opened the larger one and saw a small, dark-silver suit of armor lying quietly inside. The fine patterns on the armor were like dragon shadows, as though they were swimming and roaring, majestic and extraordinary.

Bai Mo took the armor out of the box, but he was in no hurry to leave his imprint on it.

Because he had seen the instruction sheet padded beneath the armor.

He set the armor aside and unfolded the instructions.

Only after reading it did Bai Mo learn that this Armor Magic Item was called Xuan Yue Armor.

It had been forged from the unusual scales and Unusual Bone of a pseudo-dragon from Tai Lake called the Xuan Yue Crocodile Dragon.

The Xuan Yue Crocodile Dragon possessed the bloodline of the Commander-in-Chief Level, but since this armor could be given to him, the one killed had clearly been a Xuan Yue Crocodile Dragon that had not yet reached the Commander-in-Chief Level.

But that did not get in the way of anything. Aside from its powerful physical body, the Xuan Yue Crocodile Dragon also controlled powerful earth and light attributes, so its defensive power went without saying. More importantly, under moonlight, its combat strength was doubled.

This suit of armor used its scales and bones as the foundation, so its defense against Mid-Level Magic was already extremely strong. According to the estimate in the instructions, it would have absolutely no problem blocking three consecutive Liequan-Jiugong spells with a Spirit Seed.

The forger had even applied the Xuan Yue Crocodile Dragon's trait of having its combat strength doubled under moonlight to this suit of armor.

This allowed the Xuan Yue Armor's defensive power to double under moonlight.

Bai Mo smacked his lips. If only there was a moon by his side.

He did not open that small box. He could figure out with his eyelashes that it was a Nebula Spirit Vein.

Instead, he opened the wooden box Patriarch Bai had given him.