Two in the Preparatory Class

Li Lin skillfully worked the mouse and keyboard, controlling the "Rogue" on the screen to pull the monsters together for execution.

The story stage came to an abrupt halt, quickly transitioning into a cutscene. By coincidence, "Descendants of the Dragon" was playing in the noisy lobby of the internet café, its song faintly seeping through the walls into the private booth.

Watching the black dragon on-screen twist its massive body and command earth elements to devastate the land, he suddenly turned to his childhood sweetheart beside him with a grave expression.

"Xia Mi, I've actually been thinking about something. Do you think it's possible that I really am one of the 'Descendants of the Dragon'?"

Hearing this, Xia Mi, who was sitting beside him doing her summer homework, answered casually.

"Didn't Cassel College's instructor say so long ago? We mixed-bloods naturally inherit dragon genes..."

"No, I mean... maybe my bloodline comes from Deathwing, lord of the Black Dragonflight, the Earth-Warder, the great Neltharion."

The moment he finished speaking, an eraser smacked Li Lin squarely in the forehead.

"You haven't even awakened a Word Spirit yet, so stop muttering nonsense!"

"Isn't this me praying? The 3E Exam is next week, but my bloodline assessment hasn't come out yet. I don't want to go all the way to the main campus in America only to awaken some trash Word Spirit and get the lowest-tier scholarship."

At that, the girl merely put on a smug expression and held out her hand for the eraser.

"Relax. Xia Mi here has an A-grade bloodline assessment~ The Word Spirit I awaken will definitely be amazing. Classmate Toppasa L. Lee, it's not too late to decide to become my lackey now. Once this young lady achieves fame and success, you'll be a great contributor with the merit of following a dragon..."

She kept rambling on about nonsense that Li Lin completely ignored.

Her slender, delicate palm unfolded beneath the light, white and lovely like an orchid.

Following that thin wrist upward, one could immediately see the refined, youthful face that even her plain school uniform could not conceal.

No matter how many times he saw her, Li Lin had to admit that Xia Mi was a girl of flawless beauty.

She was like a masterpiece that had exhausted an artist's skill, possessing the magnificent splendor and exquisite detail of every beautiful fantasy in the world made visible. No one could say a bad word while looking at that face. She seemed like a female demon who had stepped out of a painting, so beautiful that she utterly clashed with the layout of the entire internet café.

If there was one thing that could be called a "flaw"...

It was probably that she had a mouth.

After ten consecutive years under Xia Mi's influence, coupled with the intertwined memories of two lives from childhood to adulthood, even Li Lin—a Bender whom his friends from his previous life had called "quiet and taciturn"—had been cured of his poker face and repressed flirtatiousness.

After listening to Xia Mi's bragging,

Li Lin secretly rejoiced that his Word Spirit was finally within reach. He placed the eraser in Xia Mi's hand, then turned back to fiddle with his well-worn, grease-polished mouse and keyboard.

Several years had passed since Xia Mi had shoved Li Lin headfirst into the world of mixed-bloods. Even now, concepts such as "dragons," "Cassel College," and "preparatory class," not to mention this planet covered in the internet and reinforced concrete, still gave him a surreal sense of displacement.

It was as if, one second ago, he had still been the blindborn heir of the Northern Water Tribe, a high-spirited fourteen-year-old following the current Avatar of the Air Nomads to stop Ozai's plot in the Fire Nation.

Yet in the blink of an eye, he had become a child in a BJ orphanage, raised by a group of kind uncles and aunties. Not only had he gained a pair of eyes that could clearly see the world, but he had also received the name "Li Lin."

Just as Li Lin was working hard to fit into this world, preparing to begin his six years of elementary school step by step, get into a good middle school, enter a good university, build a successful career, and return to repay the orphanage...

Xia Mi's appearance disrupted all his plans.

He clearly remembered that it had been a morning in first grade. Lemon-yellow sunlight drifted over the desks, curtains fluttered in the cold wind, and a short-haired little girl rested her head on her textbook, dozing off.

Li Lin noticed the homeroom teacher's displeased gaze and was about to remind his deskmate.

Yet the instant his eyes fell on Xia Mi, Li Lin froze abruptly.

A huge Windows pop-up frame had boxed in Xia Mi's entire head, its FangSong block letters rapidly filling the screen:

[Dragon-Slaying Binding System activating... Activation successful!]

[The system has automatically bound the ■■ species with the highest bloodline grade near the host.]

[After binding, whenever the target makes progress in any area, if the host is inferior to the target in that area, the host will automatically synchronize to an equivalent level...]

Before Li Lin could make sense of this mysterious "Dragon-Slaying Binding System," Xia Mi was immediately called on by the ill-tempered homeroom teacher.

"Student Xia Mi, where had we gotten to in the lesson just now?"

To teach a lesson to this child who dared to doze off during her Chinese class in the very first week of school, the teacher at the podium put on an appropriately stern demeanor.

Just as Li Lin instinctively prepared to hand over his open textbook and point out "Quiet Night Thoughts," Xia Mi unexpectedly not only recited the poem offhand, but also eloquently told the entire class about the life of the "Green Lotus Recluse," as though she had seen him with her own eyes.

Immediately afterward, a huge pile of random historical documents flooded into Li Lin's mind out of nowhere, leaving him staring blankly at the flashing system pop-up before him.

[Xia Mi showed off her "pre-class preparation results." You have fully mastered "First-Year Chinese, Volume One." You have gained a deep understanding of Li Bai's historical image and life experiences.]

Over the following days, as Xia Mi gradually revealed her incomprehensible talent in every possible aspect,

Li Lin's life also began hurtling in a direction he could never have predicted.

For example, he suddenly gained a photographic memory, physical abilities far beyond what children his age displayed, and all sorts of exam knowledge crammed into his head right before tests.

This life continued until the summer vacation after the entrance exams, when an Italian old man calling himself the "Cassel College Preparatory Class Admissions Director" came to the orphanage with Xia Mi and found Li Lin.

Then Li Lin was stripped of his human status without explanation. After undergoing a series of worldview-shattering revelations such as "Black King’s Reign," "Rebellion of the Kings," and "Rise of the Mixed-Bloods,"

he accepted reality.

First, Xia Mi was a Mixed-Blood.

Second, because of that damned Dragon-Slaying Binding System, he, an ordinary person, had also been labeled a Mixed-Blood.

For the next several years, Li Lin's task was to disguise himself as a little dragon person as convincingly as possible.

Although Li Lin's physical capabilities and learning ability had both, with the system's help, caught up closely to Xia Mi's,

he had neither horns nor a tail, nor did he possess the distinctive Golden Eyes. The more he thought about it, the more he felt that he would be exposed someday.

Just as expected, during the summer vacation of the second semester of his first year of high school, the preparatory class students underwent their first bloodline assessment.

Li Lin's assessment grade was [?].

That was because blood testing could find only exceedingly faint dragon genes in his body.

Fortunately, Mixed-Bloods were always arrogant. Once they realized that neither Word Spirit: Emperor nor Word Spirit: Bloodline Jero could affect Li Lin in the slightest,

they would rather believe that Li Lin might be a once-in-a-century S-Rank than believe he was an ordinary person.

Especially since Li Lin had so many abnormal displays to serve as evidence, their speculation only became firmer.

The several instructors who had traveled all the way to China then hurriedly reported his special circumstances to the principal far away at the main campus.

Considering that Xia Mi was also a promising student in this preparatory class who had received an A-Rank assessment, this 3E Exam had been specially arranged for Li Lin and Xia Mi.

Thankfully, Xia Mi and Li Lin would be taking the exam together.

With the Dragon-Slaying Binding System, perhaps if Xia Mi awakened her bloodline and Word Spirit during the exam, it could also refine the "Dragon Blood" in Li Lin's body along the way.

Thinking of the "annual scholarship of 36,000 US dollars" that the instructors mentioned every day, Li Lin could not help but feel nervous.

If the system malfunctioned this time and the school discovered that he was just an ordinary person, he would probably have his memories erased and be sent back home, forever cut off from that exorbitant scholarship.

If he was lucky, they might consider putting him on academic probation, or even establish an entirely new bloodline grade specifically for him, but he definitely would not be able to reach that scholarship worth more than two hundred thousand yuan a year...

Beep beep... A string of notification bubbles interrupted the narration in the game.

Li Lin looked at the PPT window that had suddenly appeared on-screen, along with those illustrated "quick-clear mission guides." The academy secretary, Norma, had hacked into the internet café computer again, urging him to hurry up and finish the game, then pack his personal belongings with Xia Mi for tomorrow's flight.