The Grudge Platform

Chapter 46: The Grudge Platform

After a quiet night, Luo Mu woke just as dawn began to break. After a brief session of breathing exercises, he felt refreshed and full of boundless energy.

After washing up, Luo Mu recalled the spirit insects he had released overnight to keep watch, then stepped outside.

Today was the first day of the school year at Jinxiu Academy. A steady stream of cultivators in the academy's uniforms poured through the gates. Some arrived in groups of three or five, while others came alone. The usually quiet Jinxiu Academy was lively once more.

The students who knew one another chatted away, enjoying themselves. From time to time, they exchanged cultivation insights. Judging by the smiles on their faces, they had clearly gained a lot.

Some of the female students chattered nonstop, but they weren't discussing cultivation. They were talking about where they had traveled during the break, which places had powerful demon beasts, and how they had stumbled upon a few spirit herbs and come away with a bountiful harvest.

Standing at the academy gates and watching so many students stream inside, Luo Mu couldn't help but sigh in wonder. Back then, he had exhausted his entire household's wealth trying to cultivate, only to fail. It showed just how great a stroke of fortune one needed to become a cultivator. And yet so many cultivators had gathered at Jinxiu Academy before his eyes. How could Luo Mu not be astonished?

He shook his head helplessly and didn't dwell on it. After straightening his uniform, he fastened his identity token to his waist, like the other students, and strode through the gates.

A formation had been set up around the academy gates, though with Luo Mu's current cultivation, he couldn't detect it. The enormous formation took the shape of a sphere and enveloped the entire Jinxiu Academy. As Luo Mu approached the invisible barrier, the identity token at his waist trembled slightly, and a beam of white light shot from it and struck the barrier.

Luo Mu passed through the formation as if he were intangible, entering the academy with ease.

It was Luo Mu's first time inside Jinxiu Academy. The sight of the buildings before him left him thoroughly stunned, and he couldn't help stopping in his tracks.

"Hee-hee, Senior Sister, look at that masked freshman. He looks completely dumbstruck." Two young female students passed by Luo Mu and caught sight of his astonished expression. One of them couldn't help laughing.

"Heh, what a country bumpkin. Hm?" The other student glanced at Luo Mu with disdain and laughed. She had seen countless country bumpkins like him and had thought no more of him than to sneer at him. Suddenly, she stared at Luo Mu in surprise, and her expression changed.

"What's wrong, Senior Sister?" Seeing that her senior sister looked uneasy, the other student asked in confusion.

"Let's get out of here first." The student didn't answer. With alarm on her face, she hurried away. The other student was puzzled, but followed close behind.

"That country bumpkin's cultivation isn't low. I'm at the fourth level of Qi Refining, yet I couldn't see through him!" the senior sister said once they had left Luo Mu.

"What? You couldn't see through him, Senior Sister? How's that possible? From the way he's dressed, he's clearly just a freshman!" the other student said, unable to believe it.

"There's no mistake. His cultivation is indeed above mine. As for why someone at his level is only a freshman, I have no idea," the senior sister said, still looking alarmed.

After hearing her senior sister say that, the other student's expression changed as well. Then she thought of the academy's rules, and both of them shuddered inwardly, grateful that Luo Mu hadn't taken offense.

The cultivation world was ruled by the law of the jungle. To help students better adapt to it after leaving the academy, Jinxiu Academy had established quite a few rules that ordinary people would find incomprehensible.

Everyone knew that fighting was strictly forbidden in Jinxiu City, and anyone caught would be severely punished. As a result, brawls were rare. If one did break out, it was usually because one side had powerful backing or overwhelming strength, enough to make the city authorities turn a blind eye. But such cases were few and far between.

Jinxiu Academy, however, was the exact opposite!

The academy not only allowed fights, it actively encouraged them. It had even set aside several acres of land to build a huge fighting arena called the "Grudge Platform," where students could settle their personal disputes through combat. One-on-one or group fights were both allowed.

The academy had its reasons for doing this.

Every student at Jinxiu Academy was a rare prodigy, one in ten thousand, and every one of them was proud and ambitious. Once they discovered they had the aptitude to cultivate, they tended to think they were different from ordinary people and walked a higher path than mortals. It was only natural for them to grow arrogant.

With so many people gathered in one place, conflicts were inevitable. Countless disputes broke out at Jinxiu Academy every day. So how could those disputes be resolved?

Reasoning things out was out of the question; it didn't fit the rules of survival in the cultivation world. So the academy came up with a solution: settle things with force. If there was a dispute, a fight was the best way to resolve it. Whoever had the bigger fist was right.

The academy's approach proved effective. It resolved disputes between students while giving them an early taste of the cultivation world's cruelty. The law of the jungle meant that improving one's strength was the only way forward. As a result, students trained even harder, with excellent results.

Although the academy encouraged students to resolve disputes through force, it had one clear rule: no matter what grievance led to a fight, neither party was allowed to take the other's life. You could cripple your opponent, but you had to leave them breathing.

Anyone who took a life would be punished according to the severity of the offense. For a lesser offense, the academy would cripple the offender's cultivation and expel them, turning them into an ordinary person. For a more serious offense, the academy would kill them on the spot!

Of course, the academy alone decided how serious an offense was.

That was why the senior sister had panicked after mocking Luo Mu as a country bumpkin and realizing that his cultivation was even higher than hers. She feared that her remark might spark a conflict with Luo Mu, and that they might end up meeting on the Grudge Platform. That would hardly be worth it.

Luo Mu, however, knew nothing about this. At the moment, he was still puzzled.

First, how had the other student known he was a freshman? And after insulting him, why had she suddenly changed expression and hurried away?

After observing those around him, Luo Mu finally figured out the answer to his first question.

The sleeves of many students' uniforms bore designs that his own did not. His sleeves were completely blank, while many of the others had emblems on theirs.

Some had an iron hammer embroidered on the left sleeve and a large character for "Artifact" on the right. Others had a pill furnace on the left and a large character for "Alchemy" on the right. Still others had a burning talisman on the left and a large character for "Talisman" on the right. Most students had the five characters for "Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth" embroidered on their sleeves.

There were even more students with the five elements embroidered on their sleeves. Luo Mu hadn't paid much attention to them, but he now understood how the others had recognized him as a freshman at a glance.

The designs and characters on the sleeves must have been added after the students chose their departments! Since Luo Mu hadn't yet reported to his department, both his sleeves were still blank.

He thought back to the Jinxiu Academy students he had killed that day and the designs on their clothes. They must have been from the Talisman Making Department. No wonder Luo Mu had dispatched them all in just a few moves.

The Talisman Making Department wasn't known for powerful offensive arts. Its students only learned a few basic spells for cultivation or travel. Those people had already been weak to begin with, and they had gone to the Ten Thousand Snake Mountain Range to hunt demon beasts. Clearly, they weren't from wealthy households; they were probably hunting just to earn spirit stones for making talismans.

As luck would have it, they had just sold the talismans they had made that day and weren't carrying any. Then they ran into Luo Mu, a baleful star, and died at his hands without being able to fight back.

If they had still had a few talismans on them, perhaps they wouldn't have died so quickly. They had only themselves to blame for being so arrogant, thinking that just because they wore Jinxiu Academy uniforms, few people would dare touch them. Little did they know they would run into Luo Mu. They had been far too ignorant.

Once Luo Mu had cleared up his doubts, he smiled casually. After asking around, he headed straight for his destination.

The Alchemy Department's freshman registration office lay ahead. Even though a month had passed, Luo Mu had not changed his mind. He still chose the Alchemy Department.

He wasn't very interested in artifact refining or talisman making. He had also considered the Five Elements Arts Department, but he knew he didn't possess the five-element spiritual roots. He was unlikely to accomplish much by cultivating the five-element arts, so he might as well stick to the path of poison cultivation.

As he walked along, Luo Mu's mask drew sidelong glances from quite a few students. It wasn't the mask that drew their attention, of course. It was the fact that Luo Mu had already reached the sixth level of Qi Refining, yet was still only a freshman. That was bound to make the other students curious.

What Luo Mu didn't know was that in just half a day, word had spread throughout the academy that two dark horses had arrived among the freshmen. Luo Mu was one of them!