Zhou Bai Gets Serious

Everything below the girl's neck had completely turned into something like a paper effigy.

Her limbs were nailed to the wall, as though she were a painting hung up for display.

Zhou Bai lowered his head and asked in a grave voice, "Who did this!"

Li Xiuzhu stepped up from beside Zhou Bai and looked at the paper-effigy girl on the wall. "She did it herself."

"What?" Zhou Bai said in disbelief. "Why would she do this to herself?"

"To raise her Daoization Degree." Li Xiuzhu sighed. "Didn't you say she was about to be expelled? As far as I know, Donghua Dao School holds assessments every two months. If there's no obvious improvement after repeated assessments, students are expelled, saving resources to cultivate those with greater potential."

"This girl... clearly didn't have enough talent. The result of forcibly improving herself was aberration."

"The sound you heard earlier was probably her banging her head against the wall. Everything below her head had already completely aberrated, becoming something like a paper effigy that could even pass through walls."

"But because her head retained a certain human form, it was liable to get stuck while she passed through walls, producing those banging sounds."

Zhou Bai looked at the girl before him, who had already lost all signs of life, and sighed. "Why... why did she have to insist on improving...?"

"On the path of cultivation, if you do not advance, you retreat. Yet under the influence of the distorted Heavenly Dao, charging ahead without hesitation may not necessarily bring success either." Li Xiuzhu shook his head. "Whether to take a step forward or a step back—grasping that subtle balance is also one of the lessons of cultivation."

"One needs both the courage to press onward with fearless vigor and the decisiveness to withdraw from rushing currents and cut matters off when they must be cut off."

Zhou Bai frowned deeply. Cultivation... really was far too difficult.

Good thing I've got the Auxiliary System.

Zhou Bai looked at the girl on the wall and asked, "Did you kill her?"

Li Xiuzhu shook his head. "I'd been lying in ambush outside. When I saw you lose consciousness, I rushed in. But I had only just broken her Dao technique when she killed herself."

Looking at the pale girl before him, white as a sheet of paper, Li Xiuzhu sighed. "She should have still retained a trace of self-will, which was why she chose suicide. Perhaps it was also that remaining shred of will that stopped her from attacking you at the end yesterday."

What followed was a string of cleanup work. School teachers, police from outside, and all kinds of cultivators arrived at the scene one after another to analyze, inspect, and seal it off.

Li Xiuzhu also took Zhou Bai back to the police station to make a statement.

Before leaving, Zhou Bai spoke of something he had seen. "Earlier, I saw a square-faced man talking to her. He said he'd agreed to prepare something for him, and then they..."

As he listened to Zhou Bai recount what he had seen and heard, Li Xiuzhu narrowed his eyes slightly. "A square-faced man? I'll have someone investigate that. Your teacher will be looking for you next. Go talk to him."

When Zhou Bai left the police station, he encountered Lü Chongyang, who had been waiting outside for a long time.

"Zhou Bai." Lü Chongyang asked with concern, "Are you all right? I never expected a student to suffer aberration."

"I'm fine." Seeing Lü Chongyang now made Zhou Bai feel like a mouse that had seen a cat. The more concern the other man showed him, the more awkward he felt.

It was like when he had skipped class in his senior year of high school to go to an internet café, only to be caught and brought back by his homeroom teacher. The teacher had said nothing, merely sighed.

What moved Zhou Bai most was not scolding, angry rebukes, or contempt, but disappointment...

But then he thought about how he too was striving to grow stronger, for humanity's future, and Zhou Bai silently straightened his back.

Lü Chongyang could not sense the changes in Zhou Bai's heart and merely said, "Zhou Bai, you haven't attended class lately. Was that because of what happened next door as well? Now that the matter has been resolved, come back and attend class properly tomorrow."

Zhou Bai looked at Lü Chongyang. Though nervous, he still forced himself to say, "Teacher... I don't think I'll be coming to class anymore."

Lü Chongyang said, "What do you mean?"

Zhou Bai felt an imposing aura crash down upon him like Mount Tai bearing down on his head. He felt like a small boat in a raging storm, tossed by wind and rain, as though boat and man could be destroyed at any moment.

But Zhou Bai took a deep breath and said seriously, "Teacher, I have my own method of cultivation. The standard process doesn't suit me. I want to proceed at my own pace."

Lü Chongyang's gaze sharpened as he said word by word, "Donghua Dao School has stood for more than a hundred years. In compiling the Dao Canon, Ninety-Nine Chapters alone, thousands of our predecessors died. Only after paying countless prices did we have the teaching materials and courses you use for cultivation today.

"And though I cannot compare to those predecessors, I am still a fifth-realm cultivator with a Daoization Degree of 56%. Do you think self-study will make you stronger than learning from us?"

Listening to Lü Chongyang's words, Zhou Bai could not think of any reasonable rebuttal, because everything the other man said was correct. No ordinary student, no matter how astonishingly gifted, could surpass the century-long accumulation of Donghua Dao School through personal effort alone.

As Lü Chongyang spoke, the aura of the fifth realm surged toward him, like tangible atmospheric pressure crushing Zhou Bai's body and spirit.

Zhou Bai could even feel his bones making faint cracking sounds.

That crushing weight was enough to make an ordinary person bow down in worship.

But Zhou Bai was no ordinary person.

He had already cultivated four star points on the Supreme Unity Disc. His body had undergone four rounds of enhancement and was long no longer what it had once been. His Primordial Spirit Value of 99 also gave him formidable mental resistance.

Together with the confidence the Auxiliary System gave him, he was able to withstand the pressure released by Lü Chongyang and reply seriously, "Teacher, the unified curriculum... is too slow. I can cultivate faster through self-study. I don't want to waste my time on classes.

"I want to become stronger faster, faster, faster. I want the power to kill Heavenly Demons and contend against monsters."

Zhou Bai looked at Lü Chongyang and expressed the true reason in his heart another way. "If I obediently attended class now, it would indeed be much safer, and I could slowly grow stronger in peace..."

Zhou Bai slowly clenched his fists as countless dark images flashed through his mind. "But... this isn't the path I want to walk. I have talent. I have aptitude. I should go faster and farther. I can bear more. I can become stronger."

"Instead of being like today, like before—always protected by others while being unable to do anything myself."

Zhou Bai raised his chest and stared fixedly at Lü Chongyang. A bearing he had never possessed before slowly rose from him.

"If I can't take first place in the assessment two months from now, then it will mean my talent is nothing special. I promise I will never skip class again."

Lü Chongyang stared steadily at Zhou Bai. In the other's eyes, he saw a seriousness far beyond his years.

Lü Chongyang said coldly, "If you miss class for two consecutive months and still fail the assessment, it won't be a matter of simply returning to class. You'll be expelled."

An even heavier pressure was cast upon him. Zhou Bai felt as though he had been thrown into the depths of the sea. The air around him became incomparably stifling, while thoughts of giving up continuously rose within his heart.

He took a deep breath and made up his mind. "If I fail, I'm willing to accept any arrangement the school makes."

Watching Zhou Bai force himself to maintain his bearing as he said this, Lü Chongyang realized something.

This kid... he's serious. He truly believes that even if he doesn't attend class for two months, he can still pass the assessment—and even take first place, despite not even knowing what the assessment will cover.

Lü Chongyang was also somewhat surprised by Zhou Bai's persistence. Originally, he had only wanted to use his aura to suppress Zhou Bai a little, making him return from his strayed path and obediently attend class.

Yet under the pressure of his aura, Zhou Bai had not only refused to yield, but instead revealed the persistence and seriousness in his heart. That especially earnest look even slightly surprised Lü Chongyang.

At that moment, Lü Chongyang recalled something someone had once said: "The path of cultivation is one's personal will, a choice one makes for oneself time and time again. As for what the future holds, only they themselves can grasp it."

"I'll always keep your seat in class for you, but you only have two months."