I Am the Victim

From the moment Huang Tian began to speak, the entire training ground fell into a deathly silence, not a single sound to be heard.

The instant he opened his mouth, everyone was left dumbfounded, staring blankly like wooden chickens.

But immediately after, their expressions became incredibly colorful; they craned their necks and pricked up their ears, their eyes gleaming with intense light, lips tightly pursed to prevent themselves from accidentally laughing out loud.

In their brief lives, they had never seen such an arrogant student, nor such a volatile child, and certainly never a low-level soul master so thick-headed in the face of a Soul Grand Master.

When these three traits converged in a single person, the scene could only be described as exceptionally stimulating.

However, while they remained silent on the surface, many teachers felt a secret thrill and cheered inwardly.

Having been colleagues for years, they were already disgusted and fed up to the point of nausea with that ugly face—a man who was utterly useless yet postured and put on airs every single day.

There were plenty of incompetent people in the world; if one accepted reality, accepted their own mediocrity, and lived a quiet life, no one would say a word.

"Well said."

"Badass."

"These young people today, damn, he just said everything I've been keeping inside."

"Is his martial soul his own guts? Is his first soul skill 'Audacity'?"

"Gangzi, oh Gangzi, tell me, why did you have to provoke a child? Don't you know that children are the most fond of telling the truth?"

"It's a bit strange, though—where does this kid get his confidence?"

Yu Xiaogang was practically stunned into a daze by the verbal assault. Bearing that noble surname, let alone commoners, even powerful soul masters rarely dared to speak to him in such a manner.

The air remained silent for three seconds before he raised his arm, extended a finger, and pointed it at Huang Tian's nose, his hand trembling violently; even his lips and facial muscles could not stop twitching.

At this moment, he already regretted it. He had assumed this was just a first-year student who would be easy to manipulate, never imagining he would be so difficult to deal with.

It wasn't just the difficult temper; no amount of foul language could shake that wall-like face of his, and the real kicker was that he actually managed to hit the nail on the head.

What Gangzi feared most, was that if some of these words reached Tang San's ears, the consequences would be dire.

Thus, he flew into a rage even more explosive than before:

"As a student, how dare you speak to a teacher like this?

Insulting a teacher as a dog, babbling about baseless rumors, and roaring and screaming in front of a teacher—where is there any semblance of a student in you? You are nothing but a living lunatic.

How did your parents raise you? How did your teachers teach you? Where is your politeness and respect for your elders?

Even if I was a little impatient, it was out of concern for my disciple, and I wanted to teach you how to conduct yourself properly. Can't we communicate calmly and reasonably?"

While he appeared extremely furious on the surface, he felt a sense of triumph in his heart.

Arguing over the content of an opponent's words only makes things look worse. Don't I know the truth about those things myself? Don't I know my own background?

But no matter how eloquent you are, a child scolding an adult is wrong, and a student scolding a teacher is wrong. Let's see how you handle this.

As long as I win the argument on any point, I can tell Tang San afterward that he won the entire debate.

Those words will naturally become nothing more than the barking of a loser and the slander of someone who has lost their composure.

"Heh~"

Huang Tian laughed out loud immediately, his voice filled with undisguised contempt that everyone present could clearly feel.

The flavor of this was just too pungent: failing a debate, ignoring the specific facts, and instead criticizing the attitude of the speaker.

Regardless of whether you make sense or not, he just asks: is your voice loud? If it's loud, then you're wrong, you're guilty, and you should apologize.

Then, if you apologize, you're admitting you were wrong, and if you're wrong, he's right. You're clearly in the wrong yourself, yet you're still so self-righteous?

In the future, he can rewrite history, claiming every time that your character is flawed.

If he had truly started to dwell on the tone of the conversation, then as a student, he would be at a natural disadvantage in status and would be wrong no matter what, falling right into his opponent's trap.

Unfortunately, someone who had scolded away several girlfriends was a veteran of a hundred battles and wouldn't fall for this trick at all.

Huang Tian laughed:

"So, you're admitting you're a loser? Admitting you're a hypocrite? Admitting you're just twisting logic?

Is it just because my tone wasn't 'peaceful' enough when I called you a loser, pointed out your hypocrisy, and exposed your circular logic?

You lost the debate, got poked in your sore spot, and now you're claiming the other person's tone was bad to try and shift everyone's focus—do you really think that works?

I can't help but ask:

You, a dignified teacher—when you were turning black into white, when you were slandering and disparaging others, and when you were standing on the moral high ground to slap labels on innocent students, where were your grace, your professional ethics, and your magnanimity then?

Demanding that students respect their teachers while you, as a teacher, act recklessly—if this isn't hypocrisy and a double standard, what is it?

And another thing: in just this short while, everyone has been watching with their own eyes as you openly confuse right and wrong. Are you insulting everyone's intelligence?

How can your face be so thick? If you had even a shred of shame, you wouldn't be this outrageous.

If this isn't hypocrisy, then what is?"

And you say my tone is poor?

You've already slapped me with five or six charges—ruthless and vicious, cold-hearted, harming a classmate, jealous of others, and disrespectful to teachers—and you actually call that just being "a little anxious"?

How about I get a little anxious too, then?

If I didn't stand up right now to refute you face-to-face and clarify things point by point, would I ever be able to wash the mud off my name later?

You were the one who decided to agree to the soul duel with Tang San, and you were the one who invited Teacher Zhao to be the referee; with so many people watching the entire process, everyone, ask yourselves: is the truth really what he described?

Oh, because your pride was stung and you couldn't accept a single defeat in a soul duel, you have to spread rumors and smear your opponent, but my reputation and innocence don't matter, right?

This time, Huang Tian truly didn't roar or scream; aside from a few choice words, he spoke in a flat, steady, and articulate manner.

Yet, the shock and surprise he stirred up were no less than before.

Many of those who were just watching the spectacle, those who thought Huang Tian had indeed been too heavy-handed, and the teachers who had instinctively felt dissatisfied that a child and a student could be so ferocious, all subconsciously fell into deep thought. The more they pondered, the more sense it made; the more they thought, the more they looked at him with new eyes, even feeling a sense of dread.

"That's right, the kid has been slandered like this, so what if he raised his voice a little?"

"No wonder he was so furious."

"That was close, I was almost fooled too. I actually thought it was wrong for a student like Huang Tian to roar at a teacher just now."

"I never would have guessed Yu Xiaogang could be this shameless, plotting against a six-year-old child."

"His own disciple couldn't beat someone else, so he tries every trick in the book to ruin the other person's reputation. He's an animal—no, he's worse than an animal."

"I knew Yu Xiaogang's character was low, but I never expected it to be this low."

"If it were me facing this kind of person and this kind of situation, I think I would have already summoned my martial soul and charged at him."