A few days later, the recruitment season came to an end.
Shrek Academy's Outer Court welcomed a new batch of students, and the entire campus seemed to be filled with the air of fresh blood.
Mu Tianyi had been assigned to Freshman Class One, with Zhou Yi as their homeroom teacher.
He was very curious whether Zhou Yi would dare use those intimidation tactics of hers on him.
It was not that he was worried Zhou Yi would learn his identity and become hesitant in her actions.
Mu Tianyi's file was classified top secret. At Zhou Yi's level, she was not even qualified to know about it.
As for why he had been assigned to Class One, Mu Tianyi already had a rough guess.
Shrek's Outer Court had ten classes, each with nearly a hundred students. Yet Class One, taught by Zhou Yi, had always been known for its high promotion rate and low enrollment.
Anyone with eyes could see through such blatant exploitation of loopholes, so why had Zhou Yi been allowed to run rampant year after year?
Where did Zhou Yi get the confidence to expel Outer Court students so freely and threaten them with expulsion at every turn?
It was not because she herself was particularly capable, but because of the person standing behind her.
Her husband, Fan Yu, was an eighth-class Soul Engineer and the future pillar of Shrek Academy's Soul Guidance Department.
Mu Tianyi could not be bothered to involve himself in the mess between the Martial Soul Department and the Soul Guidance Department.
However, he had enrolled on the very day he rejected the Soul Guidance Department, only to be assigned to the class led by Zhou Yi.
Mu Tianyi could not help feeling that, when strung together, these events were far too coincidental.
His instincts told him that Yan Shaozhe's shadow was all over this matter.
As for why Yan Shaozhe had stuffed him into Zhou Yi's class, Mu Tianyi could figure it out with his toes.
He simply wanted to kill with a borrowed knife.
He wanted Zhou Yi, that knife, to test Mu Tianyi, this hard bone. If she shattered against him, Yan Shaozhe would be happy to see it; if she did not, she could still make trouble for Zhou Yi. Either way, he lost nothing.
Unfortunately, Mu Tianyi had never been an easy weapon to wield.
His way of handling things had always been simple: soldiers came, generals blocked them; water came, earth dammed it.
If Zhou Yi truly dared use her methods for ordinary students on him, he would not mind letting this "famous homeroom teacher" learn what it meant to stumble into the Tian Family.
The white freshman teaching building stood at the easternmost side of the Outer Court. The entire structure was snow-white, making it especially eye-catching beneath the sunlight.
Quite a few freshmen were already waiting in the small plaza before the building.
Mu Tianyi and Gongyang Mo passed through the first-floor lobby, turned twice along the corridor, and stopped outside a classroom.
Freshman Class One.
More than half the classroom was already occupied, with chatter rising and falling everywhere.
Mu Tianyi swept his gaze over the room. It could hold around a hundred people, with desks and chairs arranged neatly and a blackboard hanging above the podium.
Mu Tianyi's thinking was clear.
Back row by the window, the king's homeland.
Mu Tianyi casually chose a window seat and sat down. Gongyang Mo naturally sat beside him and began looking around at their classmates.
Mu Tianyi's gaze drifted carelessly around the classroom before suddenly stopping in one direction.
In the diagonally opposite corner by the wall sat a girl.
Her long light-blue hair fell to her waist, gleaming with a cold sheen in the morning light.
Her skin was so fair it was nearly translucent, and though her features were exquisite, her face held no unnecessary expression.
Her pale-blue eyes looked calmly ahead, as though covered by a thin layer of ice.
She sat there quietly, with two empty seats around her and no one nearby, as if even the air automatically dropped three degrees around her.
The chill that radiated from her bones was like snow deep in the mountains—clean, immaculate, untouched by dust—making people want to approach her while not daring to do so.
Mu Tianyi watched her for two seconds before withdrawing his gaze.
This blue-haired girl was probably Ling Luochen, one of the future Shrek Seven Devils.
She was far too easy to recognize: long light-blue hair, an ice-element martial soul, and that icy aura that warned strangers to stay away.
Perhaps due to a Soul Master's sharp senses.
Ling Luochen seemed to have noticed Mu Tianyi's gaze as well. She turned her head, her phoenix eyes meeting his without the slightest hesitation.
Mu Tianyi did not avoid her gaze either, meeting it openly.
Their eyes met. It was as though a thin frost had formed in the girl's eyes, cold and distant.
Mu Tianyi, however, felt no discomfort. The corner of his lips even lifted slightly.
Such a pretty girl—there was no loss in taking a few extra looks. Trying to hide it would only make him seem guilty.
Tap, tap, tap...
The sound of high heels drew closer and closer.
Logically, such a sound should have been so soft as to be nearly inaudible.
Yet with someone deliberately amplifying it using Soul Power, every step seemed to land on the beat of their hearts, so precise that it made people tense for no reason.
Anyone who had read the notice board knew that Freshman Class One's homeroom teacher was named Zhou Yi.
A two-character name like that was the sort that immediately made people think things.
Combined with those crisp high-heeled footsteps, quite a few bros had already begun fantasizing, hurriedly redirecting their aim and transforming into ace pilots ready to take off at any moment.
The instant the door opened, every gaze snapped toward it.
The first thing to enter was a leg.
More precisely, a slender, long leg wrapped in black stockings.
It wore a pair of red patent-leather high heels. The heels were as thin as nails, yet her steps were perfectly steady.
Above that was a well-tailored black business skirt suit, cinched perfectly at the waist and outlining a woman's curves to perfection.
Higher still...
Was a face.
A face covered in wrinkles.
The bros of Class One: "Don't fire! Don't fire! Stop firing! We've been tricked!"
The male students who had still been imagining a gorgeous, alluring female teacher watched their expressions shift from anticipation to confusion, from confusion to terror, before finally freezing in the despair of I want to die.
Mu Tianyi glanced at the changing expression of a round-faced boy beside him and nearly burst out laughing.
Brother, that expression of yours was more entertaining than any comedy I had ever seen.
This was a tribute to a legendary pilot.
There were still six or seven years before the original story began. At this time, Zhou Yi was merely a high-ranking Soul Ancestor.
The footsteps paused briefly at the doorway.
The teacher's arrival plunged the previously noisy Freshman Class One into dead silence in an instant.
Zhou Yi pushed open the door and entered. At the same time, an invisible pressure of Soul Power surged from her body like a tide, silently sweeping across the entire classroom.
Most of the students in the classroom only had one or two soul rings.
Under Zhou Yi's pressure, heads lowered one after another, like wheat stalks cut down by an invisible sickle.
Zhou Yi stood on the podium, the corners of her lips beneath her mask lifting slightly.
This was exactly the effect she wanted.
First, she had to let them know who was boss. Only then would they be easy to manage in the days ahead.
Mu Tianyi alone, despite being a Soul Ancestor, remained completely unaffected upon sensing Zhou Yi's laughable pressure. Instead, he met Zhou Yi's gaze directly.
Noticing Mu Tianyi's gaze, Zhou Yi immediately guessed his identity. There was an eighty percent chance that he was the genius student she had seen last night.
With her attack blocked, Zhou Yi felt a trace of displeasure rise in her heart.
But even more than that was the interest of a hunter sizing up her prey.
She was just about to increase the pressure and teach this little brat who did not know his place a lesson.
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