A Demon in Human Skin

Two choices appeared on the Heavenly Curtain.

"Option one: faced with Zhou Yi's powerful background and strength, you chose to swallow your anger and endure it, only to die a miserable, wretched death."

"Option two: after your parents died tragically and your life was ruined, you had nothing left to lose. Unable to endure it any longer, you became an Evil Soul Master."

The scene on the Heavenly Curtain paused there. The perspective shifted back to the detached, omniscient narration.

"To help everyone better understand how an ordinary person felt when faced with a teacher like Zhou Yi, I'll let you experience it from a first-person perspective."

"I'm sure you can all see it. If you were in that position, what could you do when faced with a teacher like Zhou Yi?"

"And if the person outside the screen were you—the original you, with a bright future ahead—you might not have been able to continue your studies at Shrek Inner Court, but you could still have learned plenty."

"You could even use your title as a student of Shrek Academy to find a good job and repay your parents, who had worked so hard all their lives."

"But Zhou Yi, a polished egoist who cared only about improving her advancement rate and whether she could earn a senior professional title, destroyed all of that."

"What could you do? If you still had any backbone, you'd have to fight for yourself, for the life Zhou Yi had ruined, and for revenge for your parents."

"You were forced onto this road of no return."

"No!"

The instant the Heavenly Curtain fell silent, a voice filled with resentment and indignation rang out across the room.

"That's not what happened! They were all bad students who broke the school rules. I wasn't doing it for myself. I was doing it for the students, for their sake!"

"I'm a good teacher with a high advancement rate!"

Zhou Yi shouted at the top of her lungs, utterly convinced she was in the right. Her cries could have shaken heaven and earth!

Her furious roar echoed again and again through the silent room.

"Those bad students deserved to be expelled. I was only doing my job as a teacher. I had to be strict with them so they would listen to me and become useful talents for Shrek Academy."

"Everything I did was for the Academy!"

At that moment, Fan Yu saw his former lover in such a crazed, almost unhinged state.

Disbelief filled his eyes, and an indescribable sorrow slowly welled up inside him.

It was as if he were seeing Zhou Yi's true face for the first time.

But before anyone else could curse her out, the Heavenly Curtain was already pointing a finger at Zhou Yi and tearing into her.

"Moreover, a polished egoist like Zhou Yi would make grand, self-righteous claims that she was doing it to cultivate better students for Shrek Academy, not for herself."

"Or she'd make excuses, saying the students she expelled hadn't completed the tasks she set, and that was why she expelled them."

"But let me tell you: what Zhou Yi says is complete bullshit!"

"Take the hundred laps she made them run. Tell me, which school rule at Shrek Academy says students who fail to finish them must be expelled?"

"As I recall, the only thing that could get a student dismissed from Shrek Academy was the annual academy assessment."

"And Shrek Academy itself decided the assessment. It wasn't something a single teacher like Zhou Yi could decide, was it?"

"Fine. You say it's your rule: anyone who doesn't finish a hundred laps gets expelled."

"Then what if Yan Shaozhe, the head of Shrek Academy, made a rule for teachers like Zhou Yi? Wouldn't he be allowed to do that?"

"Any teacher whose Soul Power doesn't increase by fifteen ranks in a year gets expelled. Anyone who objects gets their Martial Soul crippled."

The people outside the screen might not have known whether the Heavenly Curtain was right, but everyone at Shrek Academy—from Mu En and Yan Shaozhe to teachers like Mu Jin—knew.

The Heavenly Curtain was absolutely right. The annual academy assessment was only meant to make students aware of the risks. Apart from students who learned nothing at all, it barely got anyone expelled.

Lies didn't hurt. The truth was the knife that cut deepest.

In fact, the number of students Zhou Yi had expelled on her own nearly equaled the combined total of all those expelled by the other teachers and those dismissed after the academy assessments.

Fan Yu couldn't bear to watch anymore.

He truly hadn't known that Zhou Yi had done so many outrageous, infuriating things behind his back, even using his name as cover.

He lowered his head in shame, unable to face any more of the Heavenly Curtain's words as they struck him where it hurt most.

But reality was cruel. The Heavenly Curtain wouldn't stop just because Fan Yu didn't want to hear it.

"Perhaps everyone has trouble understanding what it means to make students run a hundred laps, so let me compare it to something from everyday life."

"You're a student with a weak foundation who barely managed to get into high school. On the first day of school, you meet a teacher named Zhou Yi."

"In her very first class, she teaches you nothing. Instead, she forces you to complete five practice exams, with at least eighty percent accuracy, before class ends."

"If you don't finish, you're expelled. If you look up the answers, you're expelled. If you copy someone else, you're expelled. If your accuracy is too low, you're expelled."

"Your foundation is poor, so you can't finish the exams. You're expelled immediately. You report it to the school, but Zhou Yi's husband is the vice principal—and the next principal."

"Now do you understand how outrageous Zhou Yi's actions were?"

The people on Douluo Continent didn't understand the example the Heavenly Curtain had given, but that didn't stop them from grasping what it meant.

The Heavenly Curtain was stripping away Zhou Yi's disguise completely, then cutting into her with the sharpest blade it could find.

"That's simply not something a human being should do. Would a responsible teacher really expel a student just for failing to finish running?"

"Never mind the student who had no choice but to run five laps fewer. Even if some students were deliberately slacking off, should they really be expelled just for not finishing?"

"Besides, Zhou Yi would even expel students for being a few minutes late."

"Tell me, honestly: have you never made a single mistake in your entire life?"

"To me, a truly responsible teacher is someone like Dance Sky from The Legend of the Dragon King, not someone like Zhou Yi, who expels students at the slightest disagreement."

"Zhou Yi tossed out the word 'expelled' as if it meant nothing, but it could destroy a child's future and shatter a family's hopes!"

"Don't try to claim that Xiaoqiang's parents had nothing to do with Zhou Yi. If you have any heart at all, you can see that Xiaoqiang's parents weren't worked to death, nor were they eaten by Soul Beasts."

"They were driven to their deaths by that demon, Zhou Yi!"

Every expulsion list Zhou Yi submitted represented the despair of another family whose hopes had been destroyed!

Each one exposed an injustice concealed beneath Zhou Yi's halo as a renowned teacher!

"Zhou Yi was a demon in human skin!"