The grind began

After that, Chen Ping ran into no more familiar faces. Even his dorm room remained empty.

He had no idea whether he had happened to be assigned a room with a vacant spot, or whether his roommate had taken one look at the conditions and gone straight off to rent a place, or even stay in a hotel.

In any case, throughout those first few days of freshman enrollment, no one else came to Chen Ping's room.

Delighted by this, he simply turned his own bed sideways and stood the other upright against the wall, forcibly squeezing out a patch of space large enough to exercise in.

Still, it left Chen Ping with quite a few complaints about Shrek's accommodations.

The place was barely bigger than a postage stamp. Even living there alone, Chen Ping felt cramped when exercising, never mind washing up and everything else.

Then there was cultivation. What if his roommate got an upset stomach halfway through cultivating, went thundering off to the toilet, then came thundering back?

Even if most students were considerate enough to understand the unspoken agreement to remain absolutely quiet while others cultivated, any freshman saddled with one or two reckless brats as roommates would have plenty to endure.

Precisely for that reason, Chen Ping secretly felt rather pleased about having a room to himself.

Figuring he still had about an hour before class began, Chen Ping chose not to continue cultivating in the dormitory and instead headed straight for the teaching building.

The white teaching building's doors stood open, but only a scattering of sixth-year students in black uniforms passed him. He had arrived a little too early.

He made his way unhurriedly to his classroom. Finding it completely empty, Chen Ping quickly picked out a window seat in the front row.

If he wanted to be a proper king of the grind, how could he fail to carry forward the spirit of claiming seats early?

Having set off an hour ahead of time, he was not merely the first to reach Class Nine, but the first in the entire freshman teaching building to reach Class Nine.

That was the benefit of mastering Movement Meditation and Left Circle, Right Square. Whenever Chen Ping wanted, he could cultivate anywhere, without worrying much about being disturbed.

Taking out a first-year textbook, Chen Ping quickly flipped through the contents and immediately breathed a sigh of relief.

The system-generated Five Years of Soul Hunting, Three Years of Simulation was still useful. It covered most of the material contained in the textbook.

Put plainly, the Shrek Outer Court was just a Soul Master school combining junior and senior secondary education. Perhaps the academic pressure would increase in later years.

But the thin textbook in Chen Ping's hands already told him that Shrek students would not face much pressure from theoretical studies during their first few years.

That was good news not only for the other students, but for Chen Ping as well. After all, however hard he worked, his energy was ultimately limited.

The more time he devoted to studying Soul Master and soul beast theory, the less he would have to study Soul Tools.

Once he realized this, Chen Ping immediately threw himself into studying. He planned to chew through all the material in this book that was absent from Five-Three within a week, then squeeze out extra time to study Soul Tools.

But that led to something else.

When the other Class Nine students trickled into the classroom after eating their fill, the first thing they saw was Chen Ping, textbook in his left hand and notes in his right, utterly absorbed in studying.

For a moment, an immense anxiety welled up from the bottom of their hearts, born of the most primal human instinct, and lingered over every student who entered the classroom: the fear of falling behind.

I came this early, and someone still beat me here?

Coming early was one thing, but he was actually burying himself in a textbook?

Even if the Shrek students who arrived early were not particularly studious, they were at least hoping to leave a good impression on their teacher.

Seeing Chen Ping shut his ears to everything beyond the window, his whole heart devoted to the wisdom on the page, they immediately fell as silent as cicadas in winter, not daring even to greet him.

They hurried to find suitable seats, then grabbed whatever books they had in their Storage Soul Tools and began reading.

Among them were Ning Tian and Wu Feng.

They were also members of Freshman Class Nine, and had reached the classroom right after Chen Ping.

When they saw Chen Ping, both were genuinely surprised. He was a freshman in their year-and even in their class?

But when they saw that Chen Ping's gaze did not shift in the slightest at their arrival, that he remained wholly focused on leafing through his textbook, Ning Tian and Wu Feng could not help feeling their hearts tighten.

Back in their sect, both had enough cultivation talent that no one nagged them over slightly poorer theoretical grades.

Yet just a few days earlier, Chen Ping, a One-Ring Soul Master wielding a single Insect Glaive, had suppressed them so thoroughly that even using several Soul Skills had failed to gain them the slightest advantage.

Most of the arrogance they had acquired from cultivating faster than everyone else their age in the sect had been rubbed away that night.

Now, seeing that Chen Ping had arrived first and was poring over his textbook without even an interest in who entered the classroom, how could they keep chattering?

Both hurriedly chose front-row seats just like Chen Ping, sitting immediately to his right, and took a careful look at the book he was reading.

Then, like cats tracing the shape of a tiger, they followed his example and began preparing for class.

It triggered a chain reaction like falling dominoes. Ning Tian and Wu Feng saw Chen Ping starting to grind, and instinctively joined in.

When the students arriving afterward saw three people already seated there early, reading without a word, their heads buzzed as though struck by a heavy hammer.

They immediately scrambled to sit down quietly as well. Whether they could absorb anything or not, they first opened their textbooks and stared at the pages.

Remembering any of the material was secondary. First, they had to open a book to soothe the anxiety of not being part of the studying.

If the chain reaction had stopped there, it would have been a minor matter. But the students next door were neither blind nor deaf.

Seeing Class Nine as quiet as an empty room, the students from Class Ten next door poked their heads in. The sight of everyone in Class Nine studying with their heads lowered nearly made their eyes pop out.

Those young Soul Masters from Class Ten returned to their classroom in a daze and began studying, spreading the grind virus through another round.

Soon, this habit of reading with heads bowed spread like a real virus from the classrooms at the far end of the corridor, slowly reaching its middle, then its entrance...

"Out of all ten classes in the freshman year, only our Class One is chattering away in the classroom, quacking like a hundred ducks."

"I made a point of looking inside. The farther down the corridor the classrooms were, the more students I saw reading!"

"My name is Zhou Yi, and I'm your homeroom teacher. I don't know how many of you will make it through the coming year with me."

"But let me tell you this: in my class, no trash will ever pass the assessments. And as far as I'm concerned right now, every last one of you is trash!"

Suddenly, an unpleasant, hoarse voice-the voice of a middle-aged woman, like a cracked gong being struck-rang out from the entrance to the classroom corridor. Even Freshman Class Ten at the far end heard it perfectly clearly.