The moment the middle-aged woman entered, Lu Yu saw the Martial Soul Fragment inside her.
It was an ordinary red fire dragon. Although it gave off the aura of a Soul Emperor, the flames dancing over the Red Dragon were not much different from those of Wu Feng, who had two rings.
Six rings with quality on par with two. His assessment: inferior to Wu Feng.
"My name is Zhou Yi. I don't need to know your names, because I only teach monsters, not trash. In my class, anyone who fails an assessment or disobeys orders is trash. I only want monsters!"
As soon as the middle-aged woman stepped onto the podium, she swept an appraising gaze over the room, then spoke sharply.
Hearing this, the students' expressions stiffened. They had all gotten into Shrek. Outside, who wouldn't respectfully call them geniuses? How had they become nothing but trash in this old woman's mouth?
Zhou Yi ignored their looks and continued shouting.
"Anyone who has fought since registering, stand up!"
The classroom fell silent. After a short wait, only Wang Dong stood up.
Wang Dong glanced at Lu Yu, who was sitting motionless in the front row, surprise showing on her face. Why was this guy staying seated?
Lu Yu only wanted to say, Naive child, after those two self-important remarks from this old woman, could standing up possibly end well?
"Why didn't you stand up right away? You fought but don't dare admit it. What a piece of trash!"
"And the rest of you, don't you know that anyone who doesn't dare stir up trouble is mediocre? Only one person has fought since school started. You're all trash too."
"Everyone except her, go outside and run a hundred laps around the field. Anyone who hasn't finished within two hours will be expelled."
Zhou Yi pointed at the entire class and berated every last one of them.
The students below looked dissatisfied. Why should they be punished with laps just for not fighting? What kind of logic was that?
Without another word, Zhou Yi raised six Soul Rings beneath her feet: two yellow, two purple, and two black. The pressure of a Soul Emperor immediately bore down on the students until they could barely breathe.
"I'm giving you one minute. Anyone still in the classroom after one minute will be expelled!"
The pressure lifted. As though granted a pardon, everyone darted out of the classroom.
"Master, our homeroom teacher is far too unreasonable. And how does running laps count as teaching?"
After Lu Yu's instruction, Huo Yutong had gained considerable cultivation experience. According to their school's teachings, simply running laps was a practice from ten thousand years ago. It was far too inefficient.
"Yutong, Xiao Xiao, go all out from the start. Exhaust your stamina, then let the Mysterious Heaven Skill circulate automatically to cultivate. Don't waste cultivation time."
Lu Yu shook his head. Just as he had heard, all this Zhou Yi knew was making people run laps. Staying in a class like this was simply wasting his youth.
With that, he charged ahead, grabbing the hands of the two beside him and beginning to exhaust their stamina as quickly as possible, while accelerating their cultivation with the Mysterious Heaven Skill after their Soul Power merged.
The students beside them stared wide-eyed. Where did this lovesick bastard come from? Damn it, he even has to hold hands while running laps, and with two beauties at that! Running so fast-I curse you to drop dead in a minute!
Their wish did not come true, however. As Lu Yu and the two girls sprinted at full speed, their stamina and Soul Power were soon exhausted, but the rapidly circulating Mysterious Heaven Skill kept producing new Soul Power. Even after slowing down, they were no slower than the others.
Before they had run for long, Lu Yu saw Wang Dong rush down in a fluster and begin running laps too. Apparently, fighting had not earned her any special privileges.
With the Mysterious Heaven Skill circulating at double speed, they soon finished a hundred laps. However, Lu Yu and the two girls did not stop, simply continuing to cultivate as though they had not finished.
Only when two hours had passed did the three finally stop.
By now, all the students of Class One had finished running and were scattered loosely across the field.
Zhou Yi shouted sternly, "Tai Long, Cheng Cheng, Qiu Jianrao, Tang Dao, Shangguan Chentian... the nine of you, step forward! Do you think I'm blind? You're all expelled!"
"I refuse to accept this! We only skipped a few laps. What right do you have to expel us?" Tai Long stood up and shouted.
"Shrek doesn't need trash! Much less trash that tries to game the system! What right do I have to expel you? Because I'm the homeroom teacher of Freshman Class One! Because I'm a Soul Emperor! And you're merely a Soul Grandmaster! Someone who cuts corners even during punishment has no right to enter Shrek! Now get out of here, immediately!"
Tai Long froze on the spot. He had never expected that, despite his rank-twenty-one cultivation making him one of the top geniuses in this class, he would be expelled on the very first day for a reason like this.
Her professional ethics are terrible. Lu Yu shook his head off to the side. Aren't teachers supposed to teach and nurture their students? If their character is poor, teach them properly and help them correct it. Is outright expulsion really necessary?
If every student is good, what do you even need teachers for? Does expelling the bad students and keeping only the good ones demonstrate your teaching ability? How is that mindset any different from treating students as tools?
Moreover, he remembered that Shrek's annual tuition and accommodation fees came to 500 Gold Soul Coins. An ordinary couple would have to work for seven years without eating or drinking to earn that.
And those tuition fees were not refunded upon expulsion!
Lu Yu saw that several of the expelled students had hands covered in signs of manual labor. For a child from a commoner background, how much effort and money must his family have spent to send him to Shrek?
And he was expelled just for slacking off once?
He decided to do something. However, stepping forward directly and offending Zhou Yi offered little benefit and plenty of harm. He would have to approach this from another angle.
As it happened, he also had some suspicions about internal rot. Logically speaking, Xiao Xiao had set up a challenge arena at the entrance and defeated Wu Feng head-on-a Soul Grandmaster with a top-tier martial soul and higher-ranked rings. How had she still ended up assigned to this bad class?
Surely Shrek doesn't ignore actual results and assess potential solely by Soul Rings and rank?
Could they refuse to grant us core disciple status even after we win the Freshman Tournament, just because I registered Blue Silver Grass and Huo Yutong has a white ring?
I might as well use this incident to test them. If it doesn't work out, I'll get out of here as soon as possible.
"I'm giving you fifteen minutes to return to your dormitories and change. Anyone who hasn't returned to the classroom in fifteen minutes will be expelled immediately!"
After expelling the nine students, Zhou Yi left those words behind and departed the field.
Lu Yu looked around. Once he was certain nobody was paying attention to him, he immediately used Simulation to change his appearance, turning himself into an unremarkable face combining the average features of Class One's students.
Then he decisively stopped the nine students who were about to leave.
"Fellow students, are you willing to leave Shrek just like this?"
Tai Long and the others clenched their fists. "Of course not! Who does she think she is? I'm going straight to the academic affairs office to report her."
Lu Yu shook his head, then sighed.
"That won't help. As far as I know, Zhou Yi used to be a senior teacher at Shrek. She likes subjecting students to obedience tests and expels them at the slightest defiance. Starting from the second year, in a class of a hundred students, she expels nearly ninety by graduation. None of her students have ever been expelled during an assessment, and her advancement rate ranks among the highest in the Shrek Outer Court. She's been named an outstanding teacher multiple times."
"Are you kidding me? Can she just expel anyone she wants? Does she own Shrek Academy?"
Tai Long and the others flushed red. If she could expel so many students and still be named an outstanding teacher, didn't that mean their own expulsion was already set in stone?
Lu Yu sighed again.
"She doesn't own it, but according to my investigation, a normal teacher who expelled so many students would certainly face complaints and lose their job. Zhou Yi gets away with it because she's the wife of a senior figure in the Outer Court. She was transferred to a freshman class this time because she expelled students from several major sects, who jointly reported her. Even then, she was merely demoted, not dismissed."
Despair spread across the nine faces. The eyes of several students from commoner families reddened. Their families had smashed their cooking pots and sold the iron to send them to school. They dared not imagine how they would face them.
Tai Long suddenly thought of something and raised his head as though grasping at a life-saving straw.
"You stopped us because you have a way, right?"
Before you continue