Unmasking the Hypocrisy

"My name is Zhou Yi, and I'm your homeroom teacher. I'm not sure how many of you will make it through the coming year with me. But let me tell you this: in my class, no trash will ever pass the assessment. What I intend to cultivate are monsters, not idiots. Do you understand?"

Her hoarse words sent a chill down Ling Tianchen's spine.

The corner of his mouth twitched.

Here it was again, that familiar PUA-style speech.

He knew that Second-Year Class One was also taught by Zhou Yi. In other words, as long as he passed the freshman assessment, he would have to remain under this old hag for at least another year, perhaps even two.

Just thinking about it made his future seem utterly bleak.

No, Ling Tianchen could not stand having to look at Zhou Yi's sim face all day.

He might as well step forward now and sing a different tune. With his talent, he naturally did not need to worry about being expelled. Even if Zhou Yi was not transferred away, he could reasonably switch classes and escape this insane woman's class.

No sooner said than done, Ling Tianchen threw back his head and laughed.

"HAHAHAHA!"

The sudden laughter sounded especially piercing in the silent classroom.

Everyone froze, and countless gazes turned in unison toward the window-side seat at the back.

Even Xiao Xiao was startled. She hurriedly reached out and gently tugged at Ling Tianchen's sleeve.

"W-What are you laughing at...?"

At the podium, Zhou Yi's expression darkened as well.

Naturally, she recognized this boy. Du Weilun had specifically spoken to her about him yesterday.

He had specifically instructed her to temper the boy's temperament a little, to curb some of his arrogance and teach him greater respect for his teachers.

Zhou Yi had always been exceptionally skilled at suppressing students. Whether they were sons of dukes or young masters of sects, they were all the same in her eyes. So long as they did not conform to her educational philosophy, she would expel them without mercy.

At that thought, Zhou Yi narrowed her eyes slightly.

It seemed... she would not need to seek out an opportunity herself. This brat had jumped out first.

"What are you laughing at?"

Her voice suddenly grew several degrees colder.

Ling Tianchen slowly stopped laughing and raised his head toward the podium.

"I'm laughing at Shrek's lack of wisdom, and Yan Shaozhe's lack of judgment, for placing such importance on a teacher who misleads her students."

He raised a hand and pointed toward the podium from afar.

"I'm talking about you, Zhou Yi."

The entire class instantly fell dead silent, and everyone's eyes widened.

Was he insane? On the first day of school, someone actually dared to curse out the homeroom teacher in public?

Zhou Yi's face darkened at once.

"Ridiculous! A quarter of the students I, Zhou Yi, have taught have entered the Inner Court! You should know that when they first enrolled, they were no more than one of you hundred pieces of trash! And you call that misleading students?"

Ling Tianchen merely shook his head disdainfully.

"Taking shame for pride. Do you have no idea how many students you expelled during that time? Besides, after year after year of rigorous assessments, those who could successfully advance into higher grades were already few and far between, people of extraordinary talent."

"Those who remained were the cream of the crop. How could your advancement rate possibly be low? Put another way, even if you put a pig in your position and had it watch those geniuses cultivate every day, its advancement rate would not be much lower than yours."

"You're talking nonsense!"

Zhou Yi gritted her teeth and spat out those three words.

"The ones I expelled were troublemakers with crooked intentions, who cut corners and played tricks! Only by clearing them out could the remaining students study and cultivate in peace!"

"Oh?"

Ling Tianchen raised an eyebrow.

"Then what counts as having crooked intentions? Is there a uniform standard? Or is it that... whoever Teacher Zhou says has crooked intentions simply has crooked intentions? Isn't that just Teacher Zhou having the final say?"

"They're all eleven- or twelve-year-old children. Perhaps some merely made a mistake, or perhaps some were simply dissatisfied with your arbitrary behavior. Yet as a teacher, instead of thinking about how to guide them toward correction, you call them useless and trash at every turn, even directly sentence their futures to death."

"This is Shrek Academy's gold-medal teacher?"

Zhou Yi looked at him coldly.

"Whether I'm a good teacher is naturally for my students to judge. What are you supposed to be? What makes you worthy of judging me?"

As she spoke, her gaze swept across the class. Her eyes looked as though they might devour someone, and her voice suddenly rose.

"Do you think I'm a good teacher?"

The classroom immediately became silent as a grave. Anyone could see that this was not a question at all, but an attempt to force everyone to take a side.

Quite a few freshmen lowered their heads, not even daring to meet her eyes.

Seeing that no one contradicted her, a trace of smugness immediately appeared on Zhou Yi's face.

"Do you see? The masses have sharp eyes."

"Pah!"

Ling Tianchen spat without the slightest courtesy.

"They've all been scared so badly by you that they don't even dare speak, and you call that a student evaluation? Zhou Yi, I've truly seen it today. So as long as you make students fear you, that proves you're a good teacher. Under your nearly insane physical training, many Outer Court students developed hidden injuries at a young age. Don't tell me you want to say there are healing-type soul masters to treat them again?"

"Don't make me laugh. With that kind of high-intensity exploitation every single day, even if you gave me a healing Titled Douluo, I wouldn't be willing to do it. Besides, do you really have enough influence to invite healing soul masters from the Inner Court every time? What do you use to invite them? A failure who couldn't enter the Inner Court—if you hadn't latched onto Fan Yu from the Soul Guidance Department, no one would give you that courtesy even once!"

The moment those words came out, Zhou Yi's expression turned even uglier.

Yet Ling Tianchen showed no intention of stopping.

"Could it be that you couldn't enter the Inner Court yourself, so your mind became twisted? That's why you vent all your jealousy of geniuses on your students, suppressing them in every way, physically and mentally, enjoying that lofty feeling. Watching them fear you, dread you, and obey you—doesn't it make you feel like a queen who controls everything?"

"The students don't respect you. They're terrified of you. After being brainwashed and PUA'd by you for so long, even after being expelled, they only think they didn't work hard enough. Little do they know, they're merely tools you use to decorate your resume and boost your advancement rate."

Ling Tianchen's lips curved slightly into a mocking smile.

"And then there's your so-called last-place elimination system. The Academy already holds uniform assessments every year, eliminating students who fail to qualify. Since that is the case, why establish an additional elimination system? Is it really to motivate students? Or is it to weed out in advance those who might drag down your advancement rate? Teacher Zhou, do you dare pat your chest and say you've never thought that way?"

Without the slightest regard for Zhou Yi's face changing from white to green, then from green to purple, and finally the color of pig liver, Ling Tianchen poured out everything he wanted to say in one breath.

When his final sentence fell, the entire classroom sank into dead silence.

All the freshmen stared blankly at the ice-blue-haired boy in the back row.

Because while they had not understood every word he said, they had all heard, more or less, of Zhou Yi's bad reputation in the Outer Court.

Besides, people were emotional creatures after all.

One was a handsome, extraordinary boy their own age with an exceptional temperament. The other was a wrinkled old hag who had called them useless and trash the moment she arrived.

Whom they should believe—the scales in their hearts had already quietly tipped.

Meanwhile, Zhou Yi stood at the podium with her chest heaving violently. Her face had turned hideous, and the hands gripping the edge of the podium trembled faintly, her knuckles whitening from excessive force.

After teaching for so many years, this was the first time a freshman who had only just enrolled had utterly demolished the teaching philosophy she had always been so proud of in front of the entire class.

The false outer layer she wore had been forcibly torn away.

At that moment, she could even feel that the gazes in the classroom which had once regarded her with awe had quietly changed.

And that was precisely what Zhou Yi could not accept most.