The Third Place on the Villain Rankings Revealed: Shi Nian's Dark Psychology of Cruelly Butchering Geniuses!

[The flakes of skin on those hands... are they human??]

[Canghui Academy? Which Canghui Academy? That second-rate academy in the north of the Heaven Dou Empire?]

[An underground cultivation chamber? Torturing geniuses? Why do those words together make me feel more sickened than all the previous ones combined?]

[True Villains Ranking · Third Place]

[Canghui Academy Vice Principal, Level 72 Nightmare Soul Saint—Shi Nian]

The comment section was confused at first.

[Who???]

[A Level 72 Soul Saint... a vice principal... I've never heard of this person.]

[Canghui Academy came in last at the Advanced Soul Master Tournament every year. What kind of villainous deeds could a vice principal commit to rank third? Han Kun sold his niece and Xue Beng stomped on a child, yet they only ranked tenth and eighth.]

The Sky Screen ignored those questions.

The image shifted to the first recording, with a note in the upper left corner—twenty-seven years ago.

On a small path behind Canghui Academy, a young man walked beneath the moonlight. He had delicate features and wore the uniform of a Canghui Academy instructor. Beside him followed a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old boy, with the emblem of Heaven Dou Royal Academy pinned to his collar.

The two seemed to be chatting.

The boy's expression changed from wary to relaxed. He laughed and said something.

The young man smiled as well.

Then he raised a hand and pressed it against the back of the boy's head.

A ring of grayish-white light spread from his palm. The boy's pupils lost focus in an instant, and his body stiffened...

A martial soul information panel appeared in the lower right corner.

[Shi Nian · Martial Soul: Nightmare (mental-type · control-type)]

[Nightmare ability: drags the target into a customized dreamscape, using the target's deepest fears as material to construct an inescapable mental prison. All mental trauma suffered by the target in the dreamscape will be reflected proportionally upon the physical body.]

The atmosphere in the comment section changed.

[Wait—mental-type martial souls can drag people into dreams? Then torture them with fear?]

[Isn't this a forbidden-art-level mental attack from Spirit Hall? How did the vice principal of a second-rate academy get something like this?]

The Sky Screen continued playing.

The scene shifted inside the boy's "dream."

There was no distinction between heaven and earth in the grayish-white space. The boy stood in a void, and before him appeared his mother—or rather, a Nightmare construct imitating his mother's appearance. The construct's face changed from kind to twisted, its mouth splitting all the way to its ears as it let out a piercing laugh.

The boy broke down. He crouched on the ground with his head in his arms, his mouth wide open, but no sound emerged from the dream.

The scene jumped forward seven days.

Inside a dormitory at Heaven Dou Royal Academy, the boy sat at the edge of his bed, staring straight at the wall, his pupils completely empty.

His fingers had pinched rows of bloody marks into his own forearm, and his nails were packed with flesh.

A suicide note lay on the table beside him.

The image lingered for two seconds on the first line of the note:

"Every time I close my eyes, I see those things. I can't wake up."

The Sky Screen displayed the boy's name and what happened next—three days later, he jumped from the bell tower of Heaven Dou Royal Academy.

He was only fifteen years old. His Soul Power Level was thirty-seven.

Heaven Dou Royal Academy's record at the time listed the cause of death as: cultivation deviation, mental collapse.

Within three seconds, comments flooded the entire edge of the Sky Screen.

[Heaven Dou Royal Academy · Dean of Academic Affairs: Lin Yuan!! That child was called Lin Yuan!! I remember him—he was the academy's most talented wind-type soul master back then! Cultivation deviation? We investigated for three months and never found the cause! So someone murdered him!!]

[Level 37! Level 37 at fifteen! That talent would still make him a top seed even now! And some monster drove him to death in a dream?!]

The Sky Screen gave no one time to process it.

The second recording immediately followed. The time jumped to twenty-two years ago.

The same method. This time, the location was an inn in a town. The target was an exchange student from Five Elements Academy, seventeen years old, Soul Power Level forty-one, a fire-type genius.

Shi Nian invited her to tea under the pretext of an academic exchange. Over the course of a single cup of tea, he laid a hand on her shoulder and activated Nightmare.

This dream sequence was even longer.

In the dream, the girl was repeatedly burned to death by her own flames, revived, burned to death again, and revived again. Shi Nian stood at the edge of the dreamscape with his hands behind his back, watching her struggle, his face bearing that tiny curve of a smile that sent chills down one's spine.

He was enjoying the show.

On the ninth day after waking, the girl used her own fire-type soul skill to burn down the entire dormitory room.

Nothing remained, neither person nor room.

Five Elements Academy's recorded cause of death: martial soul rampage.

[Five Elements Academy · Vice Principal: Zhou Wanqing... Her name was Zhou Wanqing... Her father was my junior fellow disciple. After she died, her father searched all of Heaven Dou City like a madman for the murderer. He searched for three years and found nothing. In the end, he died in despair.]

[One person. He ruined two lives. No, three. That father counted as one too.]

Over the course of twenty-seven years, Shi Nian committed his crimes during the Advanced Soul Master Tournament and exchanges between academies, using the same method. Every target was a genius student from outside Canghui Academy.

The Sky Screen marked each victim's image with their name, age, Soul Power Level, and "official cause of death."

Cultivation deviation.

Martial soul rampage.

Suicide due to mental instability.

Cultivation accident.

There were nineteen names in total. The youngest was thirteen, the oldest twenty-one. Their Soul Power Levels ranged from thirty-two to forty-nine.

Nineteen geniuses.

The future pillars lost by the entire continent over twenty-seven years—crushed one by one in dreams by a Level 72 vice principal inside an underground cultivation chamber.

Comments from the Heaven Dou Empire practically erupted.

[Heaven Dou Royal Academy · Principal: This old man has overseen the academy for forty years. I always believed those children died in accidents... I always thought our protective measures were insufficient... But they were not accidents. They never were.]

[Five Elements Academy · Principal: Six of the nineteen were students from our academy. Six. I personally stamped their death notices.]

A comment suddenly appeared from Canghui Academy.

[Canghui Academy · Principal Shi Keyun: Where is Shi Nian.]

The image returned to a live view of Canghui Academy.

The door to the underground cultivation chamber opened from the outside. Shi Nian stood beside a stone chair, gripping the collar of a twelve- or thirteen-year-old Canghui Academy disciple and holding the child in front of him as a shield.

The child's face was deathly pale, and his lips trembled, but he did not cry.

"Shi Keyun." Shi Nian's voice came from the screen, calm and even carrying a smile. "You can't stop me. Nightmare is already attached to this child. If you dare make a move, his spiritual body will shatter into scraps within three breaths."

At the entrance to the underground cultivation chamber, Canghui Academy Principal Shi Keyun stood with seven instructors, blocking the way. Shi Keyun's hands trembled slightly within his sleeves, but he did not take a step back.

"You think I noticed nothing before the Sky Screen exposed you?" Shi Keyun's voice was terribly hoarse. "Three years ago, when you added rune layers beneath the East Court, I had people investigate what those runes were for. I had no evidence, so I couldn't touch you. Now the Sky Screen has laid out the evidence for me."

"So you set up an array in advance?" Shi Nian glanced at the sealing runes lighting up across the surrounding walls and laughed. "Worthy of an old fox. But you overlooked one thing—I have a hostage."

The first chain locked Shi Nian's wrists. The second locked his neck. The third through sixth locked his limb joints. The seventh pierced through the source of his martial soul—the instant chains stabbed through the grayish-white orb of light in his chest, Shi Nian's Nightmare connection was severed.

The child collapsed to the floor and was immediately scooped up by the nearest instructor.

The eighth and ninth chains tightened from both sides, suspending Shi Nian in midair.

A middle-aged man wearing Spirit Hall enforcement robes leaped down through a crack in the ceiling. When he landed, the hem of his robes sent a ring of air surging outward.

Bishop Salas.

"Principal of Canghui Academy. The enforcement team of Spirit Hall's Heaven Dou branch has been ordered to apprehend him. We borrowed your academy grounds. Spirit Hall will cover the repair costs afterward."

Shi Keyun nodded once, his voice dry. "Sorry for the trouble, Bishop."

Shi Nian hung in midair, his Soul Power sealed completely by the nine chains.

"You can't kill me—I am a Level 72 Soul Saint—Spirit Hall's rules—"

"The Sky Screen acts on behalf of Heaven's Will. Heaven's Will has judged you deserving of death. Spirit Hall is merely carrying out the sentence."

At the very instant Shi Nian drew his last breath, the Sky Screen played its final piece of content.

It was a sheet of paper. The yellowed page was covered in tiny regular script, the handwriting so neat it seemed pathological.

Shi Nian's private diary.

The Sky Screen enlarged one passage and projected it across the entire sky.

"When Lin Yuan died, I watched him fall from the bell tower through the window. At that moment, I felt deeply satisfied. His talent was something I could never obtain. Since I could not have it, I would destroy it. Watching geniuses go mad in despair is the greatest pleasure in the world. On the night Zhou Wanqing burned herself to death, I drank three cups of wine in celebration. A Level 41 fire-type genius, what excellent potential. A pity she was not from Canghui Academy. If she was not mine, she should not exist."

[This isn't a villain. This is a beast.]

[He killed nineteen geniuses out of jealousy? Over twenty-seven years? How did he live so calmly for twenty-seven years??]

["If they are not mine, they should not exist"—coming from an educator, that is more disgusting than the murder itself.]

The Divine Punishment Blade above the Sky Screen did not descend with light this time. There was no need.

Shi Nian was already dead.

But the Sky Screen issued another judgment.

[Heaven's Will Rectification Order—Canghui Academy]

[All royal funding for Canghui Academy is to be frozen, effective immediately. Canghui Academy is stripped of its eligibility to participate in the Advanced Soul Master Tournament, permanently. All Canghui Academy faculty and staff are to undergo a thorough investigation by the Heaven Dou Empire Soul Master Administration. All student records handled during Shi Nian's tenure are to be reviewed individually.]

There were no comments from Canghui Academy.

Shi Keyun probably had no time to comment. He had more important matters to deal with—for instance, kneeling on the ground while clutching the child Shi Nian had nearly taken hostage, the old man's shoulders shaking.

Inside the Heaven Dou Empire's imperial palace, Xue Ye's second decree spread throughout the imperial capital less than the time it took to drink a cup of tea after the Sky Screen issued its rectification order.

An order for a thorough investigation.

All Soul Master Academies within the Heaven Dou Empire were to immediately conduct comprehensive background checks and reviews of the past conduct of all mental-type soul masters employed by them.

In the comment section, the families of the nineteen victims appeared one after another.

[Heaven Dou City · Lin Family: My son Lin Yuan was fifteen when he died. Today, the Sky Screen has restored his innocence. This old man... this old man waited twenty-seven years for this day.]

A snow-capped mountain rising ten thousand zhang.

A storm howled around the summit, carrying ice crystals through the air. Visibility was nearly zero. The camera passed through the storm layer, and a sect's grand hall, blanketed in ice and snow, suddenly emerged atop the mountain range.

The plaque above the main entrance was mostly obscured by wind and snow, but the final two characters were clearly visible.

...Sky Sect.

The camera continued forward, passing through the hall doors and the empty main chamber before stopping at a dusty grand chair deep within the hall.

A hammer was carved into the chair's backrest.

The Clear Sky Hammer.

A line of text emerged in the lower right corner of the Sky Screen, its font one size larger than that of all the previous rankings.

[The top two places on the True Villains Ranking and the remaining entries on the Hypocrite Rankings involve the same force.]

[Clear Sky Sect]