Exposing the Plagiarist to His Face!

Green maples swayed along the shaded path through Nuoding Junior Soul Master Academy, while cicadas called in wave after wave.

Su Chen had just led Xiao Wu down the steps of Dorm Seven when a rush of hurried, uneven footsteps came toward them.

Tang San, who had scrambled away in disgrace earlier, now followed a middle-aged man in a gray robe, his face deathly pale.

His right hand, its finger bones shattered, hung in a makeshift cloth sling across his chest.

Blood still stained the corner of his mouth, and his eyes brimmed with venom.

Ahead of Tang San walked "Grandmaster" Yu Xiaogang, hands clasped behind his back and face as stiff as iron.

Tang San had burst into his room covered in blood, sobbing that Su Chen had attacked him without cause in Dorm Seven. Yu Xiaogang could no longer contain his fury.

The humiliation of having his secrets exposed by Su Chen before the academy gates had yet to fade.

Now his sole direct disciple—the one on whom he had pinned all his hopes of turning things around—had been gravely injured by Su Chen too!

Su Chen was openly trampling on Yu Xiaogang's dignity and authority!

"Stop right there!"

Yu Xiaogang lunged forward and planted himself across Su Chen and Xiao Wu's path.

His chest heaved.

His habitually rigid face had turned an ashen blue with rage.

He looked down at Su Chen, his voice hoarse and stern, laden with the carefully cultivated authority of a teacher.

"Su Chen! This academy is no place for such conduct. You're a Work-Study Student, yet instead of getting along with your classmates, you formed a clique in the dormitory and picked fights! You viciously attacked a fellow dormmate and broke his bones! With your violent nature and contempt for your elders, even if you were born with a top-tier Martial Soul, you'd only become a menace and a disgrace!"

His sharp rebuke drew passing students and junior instructors to a halt.

Whispers spread through the crowd.

"Isn't that Yu Xiaogang, the guest adviser from the academic affairs office? Why is he arguing with a new student in the middle of the path?"

"I heard the one with the broken arm is Tang San, a Work-Study Student. And the one who hit him... is Su Chen, the peerless prodigy Spirit Hall certified as having a god-tier Martial Soul!"

Tang San stood behind Yu Xiaogang, his lowered eyelids hiding a gleam of satisfaction.

With a teacher versed in the continent's laws and Martial Soul theory backing him, he stood on unassailable moral ground under the academy rules!

"What nonsense are you spouting, old man?" Xiao Wu's pretty face flushed with anger as she stepped forward to argue. "Tang San overestimated himself and tried to ambush Su Chen! He got hurt because he wasn't good enough, and now he has the nerve to play the victim!"

Su Chen rested a hand lightly on Xiao Wu's shoulder, signaling her to step back.

He met Yu Xiaogang's icy gaze without the slightest trace of panic. Instead, he gave a cold laugh.

"A clique? Contempt for my elders?" Su Chen took half a step forward.

He was still small, but the supreme, domineering aura of the Chaos Ancestral Dragon radiating from his very bones left Yu Xiaogang struggling to breathe.

"Yu Xiaogang, after I tore away your fig leaf at the academy gates, you fled in disgrace. Now you've taken a crooked-minded good-for-nothing as your apprentice, and when he loses a fight, you come after me like a stray dog looking for revenge. You think you're fit to lecture me about respecting elders?"

"Bastard! How dare you!" His sore spot struck, Yu Xiaogang pointed at Su Chen's nose in fury. "Arrogant brat! Do you really think being born with a god-tier Martial Soul means you can run rampant across the continent? Do you have any idea how vast and profound the mysteries of Martial Souls are? Without systematic theoretical guidance and precisely matched Soul Rings, your Martial Soul will turn its overwhelming power against you. In the end, you'll explode and die!"

At that, Yu Xiaogang forced down his rising panic and straightened his back again.

He brought out the argument he took the greatest pride in, raising his voice until it rang along the entire shaded path.

"I, Yu Xiaogang, devoted decades to research. The Ten Core Competencies I proposed are supreme truths encompassing Martial Soul Awakening, Soul Ring combinations, Martial Soul Mimicry, and Limit Absorption! There are only useless Soul Masters in this world! Today, as a master of theory, I warn you: without these truths of mine to set you on the right path, your Chaos Ancestral Dragon is nothing but a fleeting blossom—a castle in the air!"

Yu Xiaogang delivered his declaration with ringing conviction.

Quite a few young students who did not know the full story gazed at him with awe and admiration.

But hearing him boast, Su Chen could not help throwing back his head and laughing.

His laughter rang clear as a dragon's cry.

Yet its merciless mockery cut like a blade, exploding beside Grandmaster's ear!

"The Ten Core Competencies? Supreme truths?"

Su Chen stopped laughing. A fierce violet-gold divine light flashed deep within his Ancestral Dragon Divine Eyes.

His aura surged. Every word struck like a knife, aimed straight at Yu Xiaogang's weakest point.

"Yu Xiaogang, do you truly think you're the only clever person on this continent and everyone else is a fool you can deceive? Since you brought up those ten core theories you're so proud of, today, before the entire academy, I'll peel off every last scrap of that false skin you wear to steal fame and fool the world!"

A sudden unease gripped Yu Xiaogang.

But his fierce pride drove him to snap back, "Arrogant brat! My theories are truths distilled from the lifetime wisdom of the Soul Master World. You have no right to slander them!"

"Distilled from the Soul Master World's wisdom? You're not even fit to call what you did deduction."

Su Chen raised one finger and smiled coldly. "First, that slogan you never stop repeating—'There are only useless Soul Masters in this world!' It's a colossal lie that would make the whole world laugh!"

"Martial Souls are born unequal. That's a law of heaven and earth! Take a peasant woman who awakens Blue Silver Grass while hoeing her field, without a trace of Soul Power in her body. No matter how hard she trains, could she withstand a single blow from a top-tier Clear Sky Hammer at the same level? The Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect is the finest support sect in the world, with countless brilliant direct disciples. Why, then, do so many prodigies spend their whole lives struggling only to stop at level seventy-nine as Soul Saints, never breaking through the level-eighty barrier? Because their Martial Soul has an inborn ceiling: a pagoda of only seven tiers!"

Su Chen fixed his blazing gaze on Yu Xiaogang's paling face and pressed on.

"And what about you, Grandmaster? If your Martial Soul isn't useless, why have you spent more than fifty years reading countless books and cultivating day and night, yet still can't cross the threshold of level thirty? You've been stuck at level twenty-nine as a Soul Grandmaster your whole life, a laughingstock to everyone! You feed commoners at the bottom this poisonous bowl of comfort to numb them, all to hide your own shame and impotence over your Martial Soul's malignant mutation into a pig!"

"Y-you..." Yu Xiaogang swayed violently, every trace of color draining from his face.

The watching students and instructors looked shocked.

Many commoner Soul Masters who had once treated that saying as scripture felt towering waves rise in their hearts.

That's right!

If Martial Souls aren't better or worse than one another, why do the great sects fight to the death to protect their god-tier inheritances?

Why can't the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda reach nine rings?

Why can't Grandmaster himself break through level thirty?

Su Chen gave Yu Xiaogang no chance to catch his breath.

He raised a second finger, his voice louder and colder still.