Earth Star, Great Xia, Yang City No. 3 High School.
"What happened? Someone stabbed that scumbag Xu Yuan?"
"Who did it? Good for them!"
"He bullied us ordinary people every day just because he was a divine martial artist. That son of a bitch finally got what was coming to him..."
The clamor reached Xu Yuan's ears, gradually clearing his muddled consciousness.
As the blurry scene before him sharpened, Xu Yuan suddenly felt utterly bewildered.
He clearly remembered being in a public restroom, stopping two beasts from assaulting a woman and trading his life for both of theirs. But the scene before him...
A blackboard, a teaching podium, desks...
Mountains of books, walls covered in motivational slogans like "Until heaven and earth are settled, you and I could both be dark horses"...
This was clearly a classroom.
"What's going on... am I hallucinating before I die?"
Xu Yuan murmured under his breath, his mind hopelessly dazed.
Clack!
Just then, a soft sound caught Xu Yuan's attention.
Looking toward its source, Xu Yuan saw a ballpoint pen coated in blood.
His gaze traveled upward, first to a pair of slender little hands, bloodstained and trembling nonstop, then to a girl's face-innocent, youthful, and almost dazzlingly beautiful.
Clear eyes, an exquisite, delicately upturned nose, and a little mouth that still looked soft despite its lack of color...
Xu Yuan swore he had never seen such a beautiful face in all his twenty-six years!
But now, terror and panic covered the girl's face, diminishing its beauty somewhat.
"I-I didn't mean to..." the girl said, her voice trembling.
Xu Yuan froze.
What did she mean?
The next instant, a flood of memories that did not belong to him burst into Xu Yuan's mind like water through a broken dam!
Earth Star?
Great Xia?
Divine martial artists?
Information utterly different from Earth's civilization instantly shattered Xu Yuan's established understanding!
"I... transmigrated???" Xu Yuan gaped.
But something even more outrageous followed.
Extorting classmates...
Verbally abusing his own mother...
Beating his little sister...
Scene after scene of inhuman behavior played through his mind like a movie, leaving Xu Yuan dumbstruck.
Transmigration was one thing, but he had at least been stabbed to death doing the right thing. How had he ended up in a scumbag's body?
Just because they had the same name?
Wasn't this matchmaking system complete garbage?
"Make way! Make way!"
Shouts came from outside, and the school doctor and two police officers in blue uniforms squeezed into the classroom.
The officers belonged to the Public Security Bureau, Great Xia's law enforcement agency responsible for maintaining order among ordinary people.
Divine martial artists, however, fell outside the category of ordinary people and were overseen by Great Xia's Martial Suppression Department.
Upon entering, the school doctor headed straight for Xu Yuan, whose clothes were stained with blood, while the two officers approached the helpless girl with grave expressions.
"I didn't mean to..."
The girl murmured, her misty eyes filled with terror.
"Whether you meant to or not, someone was injured. You'll have to come with us."
Expressionless, an officer took a pair of handcuffs from his belt.
At the sight, the watching students instantly erupted!
"You've got it wrong, haven't you? Xu Yuan's a divine martial artist. Luo Yaoxi's just an ordinary person. How could she hurt him?"
Everyone on Earth Star knew that divine martial artists were like monsters compared to ordinary people!
Even a divine martial artist at skin tempering first tier had two hundred jin of strength in a single arm!
Their reaction speed and physical agility also left ordinary people far behind.
Unless he stood completely still, a slender high school girl could never injure a divine martial artist.
"Forget about that! Speak up for Luo Yaoxi first! Officer, don't arrest Luo Yaoxi!"
"Right! She's just an ordinary person. She couldn't have done it!"
"Even if she did, that scumbag Xu Yuan must have been trying to bully her. It was self-defense!"
"Xu Yuan bullies his classmates every day. We can all testify..."
Listening to the students' shouts, the two officers could not help looking at Xu Yuan in surprise.
He had nearly been stabbed to death, yet nobody sympathized with him. Instead, a whole crowd of students was accusing him. It seemed this kid was a menace.
But even if the victim was a menace, they had their duties and still had to act according to the law.
"Everyone, quiet down. We're only following procedure and taking the suspect back for questioning. If she acted in self-defense, we'll release her very soon."
The officer shouted at the top of his lungs, putting away the handcuffs as he spoke.
Only then did the outraged students gradually quiet down.
"Come on. We won't cuff you."
The two officers breathed sighs of relief and looked back at the deathly pale girl.
But as though she had not heard them, the girl kept repeating in panic, "I didn't mean to."
Seeing this, they could only take hold of her arms, one on either side.
The girl did not struggle or resist, but the last trace of color drained from her little face.
"Wait."
Just then, Xu Yuan spoke.
From the fragments of his predecessor's memories, he had already worked out what had happened.
His predecessor had not been a scumbag as a child. He had once protected this girl named Luo Yaoxi when she was being bullied.
Later, when they reunited in high school, Luo Yaoxi had been overjoyed, only to discover that his predecessor had become the sort of person she hated and feared most.
She had not dared reveal who she was, merely continuing to write letters in silence, trying to awaken his predecessor's conscience.
Just now, while everyone was away eating, Luo Yaoxi had placed another letter on his predecessor's desk, only to be caught by him.
After Luo Yaoxi confessed everything, his predecessor had actually tried to drag her off to get a room without another word, saying that if she wanted to repay him, she should just get on with it.
The girl had been terrified and refused to go, so the son of a bitch had tried to force her. During the struggle, she had accidentally stabbed him to death.
Yet for some unknown reason, Xu Yuan could survive those same injuries after transmigrating into his body.
In short, he could not let the officers take her away. Otherwise, once they questioned her-oh, great, she had acted in self-defense, and he had attempted rape. Wouldn't he be screwed?
So he had to take the blame himself.
"I did this to myself. It had nothing to do with her."
His voice was somewhat weak, but it reached everyone's ears clearly.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
Hundreds of gazes landed on Xu Yuan at once.
Surprise, confusion, astonishment...
Their eyes held all manner of reactions.
Xu Yuan looked perfectly composed, not even blinking. "Really. The blood on her hands got there by accident."
The two officers stopped and turned to remind him, "Are you sure? We're warning you: once this case is classified, you'll have to bear the consequences yourself, no matter what problems arise with your health later."
"I'm sure. I did it to myself!" Xu Yuan said decisively.
"All right. Then we'll leave it at that."
They had given the necessary warning, and this kid was a menace anyway. Naturally, they were happy to spare themselves the trouble.
Besides, seeing the girl in this state really did make it hard to have the heart.
Only after watching the two leave did Xu Yuan turn to the school doctor. "How is it? I'm not going to die, am I?"
"You won't die."
The school doctor shook his head. "But without a second-tier divine medicinal solution or better, you won't be able to take next Monday's martial arts class assessment."
Second-tier divine medicinal solution?
Martial arts class assessment?
What were those?
Xu Yuan was briefly at a loss, before the relevant memories from his predecessor automatically surfaced in his mind.
Fifty years ago, Earth Star had undergone a drastic transformation, and a special substance that only a small number of people could sense had appeared in the air.
Before long, some plants and animals began mutating, and reports of mutated animals eating people appeared around the world.
Afterward, powerful individuals capable of fighting mutated animals barehanded began emerging among humans as well.
After the first two years of turmoil, Earth Star's nations officially named the special substance in the air divine substance and published a cultivation system.
Within this system, the ability to sense divine substance was called divine talent.
Those with divine talent who crossed the threshold of cultivation were known as divine martial artists.
Many things related to divine martial artists were divided into nine tiers within this system.
Talents, medicines, martial techniques, cultivation methods... all had classifications from first to ninth tier.
The so-called second-tier divine medicinal solution cost around thirty thousand per vial and could heal the vast majority of external injuries within twenty-four hours.
As for martial arts classes, they were special classes Great Xia had established at high schools throughout the country to train divine martial artists.
Any boys or girls found to possess divine talent at age fifteen could enter a martial arts class to cultivate.
However, with limited resources, the nation could not possibly train every divine martial artist indiscriminately.
The martial arts class assessment was a selection process that kept the strong and eliminated the weak.
Only those who passed could remain in the martial arts class, receive more resources for their training, and then take the grand martial arts examination to pursue further studies at a martial arts university.
Those who failed could either take the ordinary college entrance examination or join a local Divine Guard Army and become rank-and-file soldiers.
With Xu Yuan's bottom-of-the-class strength at skin tempering second tier, he could not possibly pass the assessment even uninjured, let alone now.
So Xu Yuan had only one path left.
Join the City Guard Army and become a lackey.
As for giving up martial arts and taking the ordinary college entrance examination, that was out of the question.
During academic classes, Xu Yuan was either throwing paper balls at people and pulling girls' hair, playing on his phone, or sleeping like a log.
There was not the slightest trace in his memories of knowledge ever having trodden there.
Get into university?
Roasting sweet potatoes was more like it.
What the fuck...
Xu Yuan felt completely numb.
In his previous life, he had at least been the owner of a small studio. Why did transmigrating mean becoming a lackey instead?
And a lackey so despised by gods and ghosts that even dogs would shake their heads at him.
"Pointless. This is seriously pointless."
Xu Yuan looked up at the girl, his face a picture of giving up. "How about you give me another stab and just finish me off?"
The moment he finished speaking, a deep, eerie voice filled with malice, enough to make one's hair stand on end, as though it would drag one into an endless abyss, suddenly exploded inside Xu Yuan's mind:
"Xu Yuan: extortion, blackmail, theft, robbery, attempted rape... accumulated sin value: 2,314. Ranked among the top ten on the Evil Demon Ranking. Awarded one Reincarnation Martial God's brain..."
PS: New author, new book. Please bookmark, keep reading, and urge me to update. Orz...