Teaching Beyond the Curriculum

"Your performance was indeed decent, but if you had considered your teammates more, perhaps you would have been the ones to win yesterday. With your control over the elements, you should have been able to do that. Gu Yue, a Soul Master cannot achieve perfection through individual strength alone," Wu Zhangkong said.

Gu Yue nodded silently, but she had not taken Wu Zhangkong's words to heart. She knew very well that one person's strength was limited. Even as the Silver Dragon King, she needed her subordinates' assistance to fulfill her long-held wish of reviving the Spirit Beast race.

But making her acknowledge someone was not something Wu Zhangkong could accomplish with a few words. Neither Tang Wulin nor Xie Xie caught her eye. If the Class Promotion Tournament had not required them to form a team, she would not even have wanted to team up with them.

Gu Yue's attitude gave Wu Zhangkong a headache, but he also understood that a genius like her naturally possessed her own pride. If he could not earn her acknowledgment, no amount of talking would matter.

At last, Wu Zhangkong turned his gaze to Yun Chen. "What about you? How do you think you performed?"

"Not very well." Yun Chen shrugged and voiced his thoughts.

"Go on," Wu Zhangkong said.

"Overall, I think some of my judgment calls in battle still lacked precision?" Yun Chen tried to put into words some of the issues he had found while reviewing yesterday's match.

His battle with Gu Yue yesterday seemed to have awakened some kind of fighting instinct, greatly improving his practical combat ability. But when he reviewed the fight afterward, he realized that he could have handled many details much better. Yet yesterday, he had fallen into a state driven by instinct and had completely failed to notice them.

"Your combat techniques do indeed need further refinement. I will focus on that in future training. But more importantly, you need to develop your own understanding of battle. This is a step every Soul Master with a Body Martial Soul must go through. I once heard a Soul Master with a Body Martial Soul say that only in battle can a Body Martial Soul's potential be stimulated to the fullest extent."

Wu Zhangkong stopped there. He did not know much about Body Martial Souls himself. Thus, in teaching Yun Chen, he could mainly serve as a guide. As for how much Yun Chen could learn, that depended on himself.

Overall, though, Wu Zhangkong was not particularly satisfied with Yun Chen and the others' performance in yesterday's Class Promotion Tournament. Whether it was Yun Chen, Xie Xie, or Gu Yue, each of them had fought on their own. Deep in Wu Zhangkong's mind remained the philosophy he had learned at Shrek Academy: "There are no perfect individuals, only perfect teams."

However, the Class Promotion Tournament only involved teams of three. Even if they wanted to rely on teamwork to compensate for individual weaknesses, there was only so much they could do.

But Class Zero now had six people. If those six could be united into a whole, they might form a decent team. As for whether to add a seventh person, Wu Zhangkong had yet to decide. But if he did add someone, he would be willing to give Tang Wulin, who was still recovering in Eastsea Hospital, a chance.

"Today, I'll teach you something you haven't encountered before: Mecha." After commenting on their performances, Wu Zhangkong began the official lesson. He had never intended to arrange Class Zero's curriculum step by step. Even in the first lesson, he taught many things completely beyond the reach of children Yun Chen and the others' age.

Mecha was one of them. Later, he even covered some material related to Battle Armor.

The moment the words Battle Armor were spoken, Xie Xie and Zhang Yangzi's eyes immediately lit up. They might never have seen Battle Armor in person, but they had heard of it. After all, it represented the strongest power in the world!

Yet by the end of class, everyone in Class Zero felt their heads buzzing. Wu Zhangkong's first lesson had truly gone beyond the curriculum for them!

In the cafeteria, Xie Xie lay sprawled across the table, looking utterly lifeless. His head still hurt after being bombarded with knowledge. Even though the academy provided the Grade A meal for free, he had no appetite.

Zhang Yangzi and Wang Jinxi were in much the same state. Yun Chen and Xu Xiaoyan, on the other hand, seemed unaffected as they calmly ate the food on their trays.

"Say, you two, did you understand everything Teacher Wu taught?" Xie Xie asked suspiciously as he watched them act as though nothing had happened.

"Hm? No, I didn't understand it," Xu Xiaoyan answered frankly.

"Uh..." Black lines appeared across Xie Xie's forehead. Seeing how relaxed Xu Xiaoyan looked, he had thought she understood it.

"Relax, relax. I may not understand it, but I wrote it all down. As long as I remember it, I'll understand it eventually, right?" Xu Xiaoyan said.

Those words nearly made Xie Xie's head fall into the soup bowl before him. He seriously doubted his ears. What had he just heard? She did not understand it, but she could memorize it?!

"What about you, Yun Chen?" Wang Jinxi asked. "Could you understand it?"

"Half and half," Yun Chen said. "I understood most of the Mecha-related knowledge, but this was my first time encountering Battle Armor. I can't fully understand that."

Yun Chen had chosen forging as his side profession. In his usual work, he also took orders to make Mecha components. Therefore, he had some understanding of basic Mecha knowledge and was not completely lost. But Battle Armor knowledge was truly beyond the curriculum, and he could not understand it either.

"Sigh, who would have thought that the first lesson after entering Class Zero would be about this stuff? Just who is Teacher Wu, to be able to teach even Battle Armor?" Zhang Yangzi remarked.

After all, knowledge about Battle Armor was generally taught only in advanced academies. They had only just entered their first year at an intermediate academy, yet they were already learning it.

"No idea." Xie Xie shook his head. "Anyway, Teacher Wu is really strong. He can casually knock me, Wulin, and Gu Yue flat."

"Wouldn't knocking you flat be effortless?" Before Xie Xie's voice had even faded, a knife stabbed straight into his heart.

Xie Xie, nearly coughing up blood, glared at Xu Xiaoyan. Just as he was about to speak, Xu Xiaoyan beat him to it. "If you don't believe it, how about you spar with my brother? See whether he can knock you flat?"

"Uh, forget it. We just competed yesterday. I'm pretty tired," Xie Xie said awkwardly.

Hearing that, Zhang Yangzi and the others laughed. Amid their laughter, the lunch break swiftly passed.

For the afternoon class, Wu Zhangkong arranged practical combat. When he stood in the center of the classroom with a teaching whip in hand, Zhang Yangzi and the others immediately felt as though icy cold had enveloped them.