I'm a Serious Student, I Only Drink Nine Potions a Day

That sound was not something a human throat should have been capable of producing.

Shrill, crazed, and filled with reckless aggression.

It was a technique of unrestricted fighting: in a street conflict, a sufficiently unhinged howl often made an opponent more inclined to back down than a fist did.

Because normal people did not make sounds like that. Only truly suicidal lunatics did.

And the actual effect of the roar was far better than Evan had expected.

The brain damage caused by the trial medicine seemed to have left Evan a screw loose at that moment, stripping the shout of any intimidation.

Instead, it was filled with something bizarre and deranged.

The last person loosened his grip on Evan's arm.

Evan threw off the blanket in one motion, and cold air and light rushed in together.

Static had turned his hair into a wild mess. His face was flushed red, his eyes bloodshot, and he looked like an evil ghost that had just crawled out of hell.

His gaze instantly locked onto Lebon.

The blond young man in a light-blue shirt was crouching two steps away. He still clutched the copper tube in his hand, his lips pressed to its opening, the smile on his face not yet gone.

Evan raised the heavy schoolbag stuffed with textbooks in both hands and swung it at Lebon's head like an iron hammer.

"Die!"

The chemistry textbook, physics textbook, notebooks, and metal pencil case in the bag weighed at least ten pounds combined.

Bang!

A dull thud.

The bottom of the schoolbag struck Lebon squarely in the forehead.

The copper tube flew out of his hand and clattered twice across the marble floor.

Lebon let out a short scream and crouched down, clutching his forehead with both hands as blood seeped through his fingers.

Thompson, behind him, flew into a rage and stepped forward to charge.

Evan turned to face him.

Then he did something no one had expected.

He coughed hard from deep in his throat, dredging up a thick glob of phlegm from his windpipe, then spat it precisely at Thompson's face.

The sticky mass trailed strings as it smacked onto Thompson's right cheek.

"Welcome to the French Pox Boys' Club, hehehe..."

Evan's voice was strange and absurd. His face was red, his eyes wide open, and a twisted smile hung from the corner of his mouth.

He did not look like an eighteen-year-old university student. He looked more like one of those desperadoes from the alleys of Gooding Street, men who would risk anything.

Thompson's face instantly went pale.

He was scared.

Syphilis, French pox, the cursed...

Those words exploded in his mind like a bomb.

He came from the middle class, attended a prestigious university, was a rising football star, and the pride of his entire family.

If he caught that disease, even if it was only a rumor, everything in his life would be over.

He hurriedly backed away, frantically wiping his face with one hand while holding the other in front of himself.

Evan gave him no chance to catch his breath.

He stepped forward, drove power through his waist and hips, snapped up his right leg, and launched a General Yu flying kick straight into Thompson's abdomen.

With Evan's 1.003 Constitution, the force of that kick far exceeded what a sickly weakling should have possessed.

Thompson's wall-like body was actually kicked back three staggering steps, his heel striking the edge of the stairs.

He fell backward onto the staircase, his tailbone slamming into the sharp edge of a marble step with a dull impact.

All four of them had been injured.

One curled up on the floor clutching his crotch, his face deathly pale and his lips trembling soundlessly.

One hugged his foot and limped backward.

Lebon crouched on the floor, covering his bleeding forehead as tears and blood ran down together.

Thompson lay on the stairs, wiping his face, his expression full of disbelief.

The entire hall fell deathly silent.

Everyone was stunned.

The students who had been laughing moments ago now stood with their mouths open, as if someone had pressed pause.

Evan stood in the middle of the hall, his chest heaving and his breathing heavy.

He bent down to pick up his scattered schoolbag, opened the outer pocket, pulled out a fountain pen with his right hand, and a steel compass with his left.

The pen nib and the compass needle gleamed coldly under the lights of the hall.

Holding those two objects, he turned toward Lebon, who was clutching his forehead and trying to stand.

"I'll give you two red buffs!"

His voice was not loud, but every word seemed to be squeezed through clenched teeth, carrying undisguised killing intent.

Lebon raised his head and saw Evan's face through the blood between his fingers.

Those bloodshot eyes, flushed cheeks, twisted smile, and the two sharp objects gleaming coldly in his hands.

What he saw was not a classmate, but a lunatic who might stab someone to death at any moment.

A dark wet patch spread across Lebon's crotch.

He let out an off-key wail, spun around, and fled on all fours. His gold-plated collar pin popped free as he ran.

It landed on the marble floor with a ding, was stepped on by him, and skidded far away.

Evan chased him for two steps, then stopped and turned to look at Thompson on the stairs.

The rising football star met his eyes.

In that instant, Thompson saw something in Evan's eyes that sent a chill down his spine.

It was not anger. He had seen anger before.

It was something deeper, more primitive, like a wild beast driven into a corner. It no longer cared whether it would die; it only cared whether it could tear off a piece of its enemy before it did.

He had only come today to bully a sickly weakling for fun.

He had not come to risk his life.

He still had a bright future ahead of him: a football scholarship, his father's business, and his family's expectations.

He could not leave all of that in the hands of a madman.

Thompson scrambled to his feet from the stairs, turned, and ran. His burly body made heavy footsteps in the corridor as he shouted while fleeing.

"Arkham's gone mad! The Arkhamite has gone crazy again!"

His voice grew farther and fainter before finally vanishing around the corner of the corridor.

The remaining two, one clutching his crotch and the other hugging his foot, had taken advantage of Evan chasing Lebon and Thompson to scramble away without a trace.

Only Evan remained in the middle of the hall.

He stood there, gripping the fountain pen in his right hand and the compass in his left, his chest heaving violently.

Sweat slid down his forehead and dripped onto the marble floor.

He turned to face the students still standing there in a daze.

Men and women, those in three-piece suits and those wearing tie clips—everyone was staring at him, their eyes filled with shock and fear.

"Don't fucking mess with me again."

Evan's voice was hoarse yet forceful, echoing back and forth between the marble walls.

"Four against one, and you still couldn't win. What a bunch of trash."

Several girls were so frightened by the shout that they burst into tears on the spot, covering their mouths as they shrank behind the crowd.

The male students all took a step back as well. No one dared meet his eyes.

Hasty footsteps came from the far end of the corridor.

Several teachers had finally arrived.

They rushed into the hall and found a complete mess.

A torn blanket, a copper tube, a gold-plated collar pin, and several trampled textbooks lay scattered across the floor.

A few drops of blood marked the marble floor, trailing from the center of the hall to the bend in the corridor.

And in the center of the hall stood a lone, skinny young man in a patched jacket.

Both hands were stained with blood. He held a fountain pen in his right hand and a compass in his left. His face was flushed, his breathing heavy, and the bloodshot in his eyes had not yet faded.

"Student! Put down your weapons immediately!"

The lead teacher barked the order, obvious tension in his voice.

Evan instinctively raised his hands.

His expression returned to calm within seconds. Panting heavily, he said,

"It's a misunderstanding, sir. These aren't weapons. They're stationery."

His voice was calm and clear, even carrying a trace of politeness.

"Besides, I'm the one who was bullied."

Excited Pulis

Over the next ten minutes, the four students who had fled in terror were rounded up one by one by the academic affairs office from different corners of the teaching building.

Lebon was found in the first-floor men's restroom, squatting in a stall and refusing to come out.

Thompson was intercepted beside the sports field, clutching his backside as he headed for the school gate, claiming he needed to see a doctor.

The other two had hidden in a storage room at the end of the second-floor corridor. When the academic affairs staff knocked the door open, their faces were pale as rabbits pulled from their burrows.

By the time the four were brought to the academic affairs office, each of them looked utterly disheveled and still shaken.

A piece of gauze hastily obtained from the infirmary was taped to Lebon's forehead. Blood had already soaked through the first layer, leaving a dark-red stain.

But compared to the wound on his forehead, the dark wet patch on his trousers was even more eye-catching.

It stretched from his crotch to the inner sides of his thighs. When he walked, his legs were held unnaturally apart, and the fabric made faint rubbing sounds against his skin.

A faint smell of urine hung in the air. Everyone smelled it, but no one mentioned it.

After briefly questioning several student witnesses who had been present, the three academic affairs teachers quickly figured out what had happened.

The group was brought into the dean's office.

The office was small. An oak desk took up most of the space, with a green-shaded lamp, a stack of documents, and a brass inkwell sitting on it.

The wall bore Sage University's school motto plaque and a portrait of the university's founder.

The five students stood in a line, Evan on the far left and the other four on the right, with a subtle distance between them.

Lebon spoke first, his voice shrill and trembling like a string stretched to its limit.

"Sir! Arkham is a murderer! He brought weapons! He tried to kill me!"

Evan stood beside him without speaking, merely taking out his fountain pen and compass.

The dean seated behind the desk looked up.

He was a stern-faced man in his fifties, wearing black-rimmed glasses. His graying hair was combed impeccably.

The buttons of his dark-gray three-piece suit were fastened all the way to the top, and his tie was tied with perfect precision.

He looked as though he had stepped straight off the cover of an administrative management textbook.