"With all due respect, when it comes to teaching ability and methods, you're the worst teacher in the entire Outer Academy. I don't even understand how someone like you could become a teacher at Shrek Academy."
"What did you say? Say that again if you dare!"
Zhou Yi could hardly believe her ears, and she instantly flew into a rage. She had never expected Huo Yuhao, a mere student, to dare pass judgment on her teaching ability.
Xuan Zi narrowed his eyes in surprise as well and said to Huo Yuhao, "Boy, you'd better explain yourself. If you can't give a reasonable explanation for what you just said, you really might have to leave Shrek Academy."
Insulting a teacher was unquestionably a violation of school rules, and everyone present knew it. Huo Yuhao didn't seem to have lost his senses, either, so why had he dared say something like that to Zhou Yi?
"Naturally, I have my reasons for saying this." Huo Yuhao nodded with a smile. "First of all, educating students means teaching them how to be decent people before anything else. I'm sure you have no objections to that. After all, the academy wants to produce powerful Soul Masters, not powerful Evil Soul Masters."
At those words, Xuan Zi's eyebrows rose in astonishment. Huo Yuhao's statement was very bold, but there was nothing wrong with it.
"In other classes, teachers and students share a relationship that's both teacher and student, and friend to friend. The teachers take great care with their students' learning, teaching them to respect their teachers and elders, stand together with their classmates, and cherish their companions. And the students feel tremendous respect and gratitude toward their teachers. Nothing I've said is wrong, is it?" Huo Yuhao asked Xuan Zi.
"You're right." Xuan Zi nodded calmly.
"But that isn't how things work in Teacher Zhou's class. What does she do? She expels students who can't keep up with her so-called pace to cover up her own incompetence, and uses threats of physical punishment and expulsion to shroud the entire class in fear."
"If I remember correctly, Class One had a full hundred students when we first enrolled. And how many students does Freshman Class One have now? Fifteen! You never gave those students a single chance or any guidance. In your mind, they were so-called poor students who couldn't win your favor, so you could expel them from Shrek Academy as you pleased!"
"I've read some books in the library. According to investigations, nearly one hundred percent of Evil Soul Masters suffered severe psychological trauma while growing up, and that was the direct reason they strayed down an evil path."
"If you educate students like this, the fear they suffer during their studies could very easily turn into fear and hatred of you, of the academy, and even of the entire Soul Master World. I don't need to explain what that means."
"Ten thousand years ago, Grandmaster, one of Shrek Academy's founders, once said that there are no useless martial souls, only useless Soul Masters! By abusing your authority and expelling students at will like this, you've completely disregarded the teachings of Shrek Academy's predecessors. You're smearing filth on Shrek Academy's face, trampling on its honor, and trying to turn Shrek into fertile soil for cultivating Evil Soul Masters!"
Hearing Huo Yuhao pin such an enormous accusation on her, Zhou Yi immediately panicked.
Even she wouldn't dare criticize those words Yu Xiaogang had spoken back then. Otherwise, she would face far more than simply leaving Shrek Academy-even Fan Yu wouldn't be able to protect her.
Inside, Huo Yuhao was grinning almost from ear to ear. Absurd as Yu Xiaogang's statement was, using it here really did put the finishing touch on his argument.
"What could a mere one-ring student like you understand? I have my own teaching methods. You can't recognize their brilliance because you're useless! My classes have the highest proportion of students advancing to the Inner Academy. Can anyone deny that?"
Zhou Yi changed tack. Rather than continuing to argue with Huo Yuhao about developing her students' character, she turned to the achievement she was proudest of: her students' rate of advancement to the Inner Academy.
"See? You're deceiving yourself again." Huo Yuhao laughed. "If you really could guarantee that a quarter of your students would advance to the Inner Academy, you'd have become a senior teacher long ago. Even if the powers backing your students frequently complained about you, the academy would never have left you in an intermediate teaching position, considering that level of teaching ability."
"You think you've found an airtight loophole that lets you fool everyone. In reality, though, you're the only one who's been fooled. Everyone else is just laughing at you."
"Take this year's class, for example. Xiao Xiao from Freshman Class One has twin martial souls, and Wang Dong is quite strong, too. The two of them are practically guaranteed to enter the Inner Academy. Does that mean your Inner Academy advancement rate has reached one in seven, Teacher Zhou? Heh, that isn't how you calculate it!"
"The other teachers know that the new students entering Shrek Academy carry their own hopes for the future and the earnest expectations of the families behind them. That's why they can't bear to expel students at will, and at least give them a chance to take the Freshman Assessment."
"But you're different. You expelled students until an entire class of a hundred had only a dozen or so left, drastically shrinking the base number and inflating the proportion. That's nothing but self-deception. If we calculate it using the hundred students in a freshman class, your Inner Academy advancement rate is a measly two percent. That's an indisputable fact!"
"Well said!"
Standing nearby, Mu Jin felt utterly refreshed by those words. The other teachers at the academy all knew about the things Huo Yuhao had described, but because of Zhou Yi's relationship with Fan Yu, no one had ever dared discuss them openly.
"Huo Yuhao, you're right!"
Suddenly, a somewhat weak voice came from a distance. Everyone turned toward it, only to discover that the speaker was Wang Dong, who had fought Huo Yuhao earlier.
The blood on Wang Dong's face had already been wiped clean, but she was still very pale. To everyone's surprise, rather than refuting Huo Yuhao, she joined him in challenging her own teacher.
"Wang Dong! You useless wretch! I've taught you for so long, and now you're conspiring with someone else against me!" Zhou Yi's face twisted hideously. She had never imagined that the class monitor of her own class would deliver a fatal stab to her back.
Yet a bitter smile appeared on Wang Dong's lips, and large tears kept rolling from her eyes.
"Teacher Zhou, in three months, you expelled a full eighty-five students from Freshman Class One! Some of them were people I barely knew, while others were good friends of mine. Yet you forcibly expelled every one of them from Shrek Academy without distinguishing right from wrong!"
"And if you'd merely expelled them, that would have been one thing. But you also blamed their expulsions on me, claiming they'd been expelled because I hadn't led Class One's students to cultivate properly!"
"Because of that one statement of yours, friends who'd once been close to me didn't even say goodbye before leaving. The guilt kept me awake every night and made it impossible to get myself back into form. That was the direct reason we lost!"
"You even used me as a stake, gambling recklessly with the teachers of other classes. After you lost, you berated me every day, calling me useless and trash!"
"I can tell you that, just like Xiao Xiao, I also have twin martial souls-and both of mine are top-tier martial souls. Unless something unexpected happens, I'll definitely be able to cultivate to the level of a Super Douluo in the future! But even if you spend your entire life cultivating, you'll at most break through to Soul Saint. What gives you the right to call me trash or useless?"
"Well said!" Huo Yuhao clapped vigorously. "Wang Dong, just for what you did today, your buddy here will treat you to barbecue for a month!"
Meanwhile, Xuan Zi, whose already rather unreliable brain had crashed under the sheer flood of information, finally caught the key point of the conversation.
"You just mentioned eating barbecue, right?"
Before you continue