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The steady beep of the ventilator echoed through the monitoring room.

The trainee commissioners, who had been chatting and laughing as they discussed whether the newly awakened S-Rank freshman would embarrass himself during the test because of his Word Spirit, all fell silent.

It was not merely because the director of the Executive Department had arrived.

More importantly...

On the surveillance feed, they watched Li Lin tear apart an entire concrete wall with his bare hands, then casually wave his hand and piece the concrete rubble back together. He even performed Tai Chi in an open area, forcibly separating the reinforced concrete and kneading and pushing it together between his palms like gray mud. Then he formed a Tai Chi pattern and sent it crashing into the force-testing equipment, shattering it instantly.

Most hybrids could only control elements for the brief instant when they released a Word Spirit. The activated elements surged toward the target, and that was generally enough to realize the Word Spirit's combat value.

People like Li Lin, who could command the elements within their domain at will, were usually grandmasters recorded in ancient texts—figures who had comprehended the natural laws of heaven and earth.

But for Li Lin, doing this was truly effortless.

The earthbending talent brought by his rebirth had already given him an innate foundation for controlling earth elements, while his past-life experience of using Earthbending in place of his eyes had developed his extraordinary elemental perception.

To Li Lin, a Word Spirit was merely a key used to reopen the lock called "Earthbending."

Thus, with Xia Mi present, Li Lin discovered for the first time that the Dragon-Slaying Binding System did not react in the slightest.

"Wait, did he turn concrete into armor?! Is that level of precision even human?"

"That's why he's S-Rank. I'm completely convinced now. Anyone with the same bloodline rank as the principal really is a monster."

Seeing Li Lin pull off another earth-shattering stunt, the previously silent monitoring room suddenly erupted.

"Holy shit, how did he lift the ground directly?! Is he not going to need elevators anymore?!"

"..."

Before the trainees could make sense of it, Professor Schneider, who had rolled in from the back in his wheelchair, completely lost his composure.

His eyes nearly bulged out as he stared in disbelief at the surveillance feed, where Li Lin had directly used his Word Spirit to raise the concrete beneath his feet nearly ten meters into the air.

Just as Schneider was about to sound the alarm and have Li Lin seized and interrogated as a dragon spy—

Li Lin, standing atop the newly formed concrete pillar, suddenly began gushing blood from his nose. It was a sign that his mental strength had been overdrawn and his domain had collapsed outright.

Seeing this, Schneider withdrew his right hand from the button in relief, then broke into a violent coughing fit.

After witnessing Li Lin's astonishing performance, Schneider found Xia Mi's brief flight and levitation in the neighboring testing area, achieved with the miniature tornado generated by "Word Spirit: Eye of the Wind King," to be nothing remarkable.

But this only made him more suspicious.

Even if Li Lin was S-Rank—

He was still only a freshman whose bloodline had just awakened. How could he have mastered his Word Spirit to such an extent in just one night?

Even if he had begun developing his Word Spirit in the womb, there was no reason a sixteen-year-old could use dragon language commands to freely manipulate the elements within his domain.

So Schneider wheeled himself over to the console and instructed the trainees to save the recording. He had to inform Angers about what had happened here.

As the surrounding trainees watched the old man with half his face burned away approach, they instinctively kept their distance.

Meanwhile.

At the testing grounds, Ye Sheng listened to the continuous hum of concrete breaking apart and reforming, the girl's cheers, and the shriek of the roaming wind. This senior student, who was about to graduate and begin work, completely lost control of his expression.

The facts proved that using Earthbending through a Word Spirit really could not be too wild.

When using earthbending normally, he could sense the limits of his "physical strength" and "mental strength," because commanding elements was an innate talent of both body and soul.

But things were different now. When Li Lin controlled elements, it was equivalent to issuing orders to nature through the channel of a "Word Spirit." And his earthbending talent in this world could even rival that of many pure-blooded dragons, so usually the command would be carried out before the domain turned around and extracted its price from him.

With the concentration of dragon blood currently in his body, he still could not support such reckless manipulation of the elements.

The concrete pillar Li Lin had pulled from the ground just now weighed around seventeen tons. The backlash from the domain's collapse had nearly made him feel as though his brain was being burned into charcoal.

Fortunately, the bloodline refined by the system was indeed powerful. Li Lin forcibly endured the side effects. After bleeding from the nose for a while and sitting dazed in place for about an hour, he recovered.

He cautiously dug his hands into the softened concrete and climbed down the seventeen-ton pillar he had formed by draining the surrounding ground, then accepted Ye Sheng's suggestion and prepared to restart the test.

The results of Li Lin's second Word Spirit test were much more normal.

Without inducing extreme fatigue, his maximum output within his domain allowed him to freely control matter weighing no more than half his own body weight for attacks, or directly deform building structures weighing roughly three times his body weight to a certain degree.

Such precision was something Ye Sheng had never even heard of.

Because he had personally watched Li Lin crouch down, slap the floor with both hands, and imitate a line from an anime as he shouted, "Earth Style: Earth-Style Wall!" Then a concrete wall rose from the ground. Li Lin even had enough energy left to carve a rather ugly dragon head into it.

Xia Mi, who had long since finished her own test, stood nearby with her arms folded as she watched Li Lin's antics.

Every now and then, she looked up at the cameras positioned around the testing ground, her eyes filled with anxiety.

Finally, when she saw Li Lin run off to imitate Naruto and mess around with Earth Style, Xia Mi could not hold back any longer.

If Li Lin kept fooling around like this, he really would be arrested and interrogated as a dragon spy.

And if Li Lin was a dragon spy, could she, his childhood friend who constantly fought him to a standstill, possibly get away with it?

Li Lin was a genuine hybrid. No matter how the Secret Party interrogated him, they would find nothing.

But Xia Mi did not dare gamble that she could remain undiscovered through surveillance and interrogation by the Executive Department that might last months—or even years.

Xia Mi hurried over and interrupted Li Lin's play.

"The testing should be about finished, right? It's almost noon. After lunch, we need to go back and study the details of our club activities. We can't really treat that activity fund as our own money. Once you've accepted someone's hospitality and taken their money, you owe them something. Don't you understand?"

"It's rare to get a chance to use your Word Spirit however you want. Aren't you going to play around a little longer, Xia Mi?"

"Of course the important matters come first. You'll have plenty of chances to use your Word Spirit when you go on missions for the Executive Department later. But that one million dollars is activity funding specially issued this semester by those rich big shots. If we really just collect money for nothing, what will the other officers think of us? Are we still going to get along in the Student Union after this?"

As she spoke, Xia Mi put on an intimate act, directly hooking her arm through Li Lin's and dragging him away as if they were a lovey-dovey young couple.