Special effects? Your special effects can conjure a hundred tons of water out of thin air?!

Jinghai University, men's dormitory building three.

Lin Bei ambled slowly up the stairs.

He had just reached the fifth-floor landing when he heard Fatty Wang's piercing, ducklike voice.

"I'm telling you, this was definitely a cultivator! A living, breathing cultivator!"

Then came the sound of Liu Chen slapping the desk.

"Read a few more books, Fatty! Do you understand materialism? Where would immortals come from in this world? That was obviously a new swarm of firefighting drones secretly developed by the government, combined with optical cloaking technology!"

Lin Bei raised an eyebrow, walked to the door, and pushed open the wooden door that stood ajar.

Room 502 was practically a marketplace right now.

Fatty Wang had one foot planted on his folding chair, his other hand holding his phone high as he waved it wildly at Liu Chen.

Liu Chen sat firmly in his gaming chair, slurping noodles and rolling his eyes.

As for Chen Mo, he still held a textbook as thick as a brick, only occasionally lifting his eyes to glance at the two clowns.

"You don't know shit!"

Fatty Wang's face was flushed, and the veins in his neck looked ready to burst.

"Look at how clear this video is! Then look at that water! What special effects company could pull this off? Even Hollywood would have to kneel and call him Daddy!"

Liu Chen swallowed his noodles and wiped his mouth with a tissue.

"Fatty, and you call yourself a university student. These days, even seeing isn't necessarily believing. This has to be holographic projection technology secretly developed by the government, combined with the latest stealth drones to put out the fire! Do you even know what high tech means?"

"Pah!" Fatty stamped his feet in agitation. "Can holograms put out fires? Can your drones carry a hundred tons of water? What do you think they are, Y-20s?"

"Why couldn't they? It's high-pressure water cannon compression technology. If you don't understand physics, stay out of it." Like a dead duck with a stubbornly stiff beak, Liu Chen refused to yield, determined to defend his dignity as a warrior of materialism.

Lin Bei leaned against the doorframe, inwardly delighted as he watched the two trade barbs, spittle flying.

"Hey! Brother Bei, you're back!" Sharp-eyed Fatty Wang spotted Lin Bei, quickly jumped off his chair, and bounded over to him.

"Lin Bei, settle this for us!" Fatty grabbed Lin Bei's arm, spraying spittle in his excitement. "Tell me, that guy standing on a flying sword at the World Trade Center-wasn't he a sword immortal? Wasn't he a cultivator?"

Liu Chen also turned his gaming chair toward Lin Bei. "Old Lin, you're a sensible guy. Explain modern technology to this fatty. Cultivation, my ass. I think he's read so many cultivation novels he's lost his mind."

Both pairs of eyes fixed on Lin Bei, waiting for him to pick a side.

Lin Bei looked at Fatty's expectant face, then at Liu Chen's utterly confident expression, and sighed without batting an eye.

"Fatty." Lin Bei patted Fatty Wang's shoulder earnestly. "I think Liu Chen's right."

"What?!" Fatty Wang's eyes nearly popped out.

Liu Chen grinned and lifted his chin smugly at Fatty. "Hear that? The masses have sharp eyes."

Leaning against the doorframe, Lin Bei spouted nonsense with a perfectly straight face. "There aren't any immortals these days. It was probably some big magic troupe doing performance art, or special effects from a film crew shooting a movie."

"Bullshit!"

Fatty Wang completely lost his cool.

He felt that his faith as the sword immortal's number-one braindead fan had been gravely insulted.

He abruptly stepped forward and shoved his phone right into Lin Bei's face, the screen nearly poking into his nostrils.

"You call this magic? You call this special effects?"

"What magician have you ever seen conjure a hundred tons of water out of thin air to put out a skyscraper fire?"

"Look closer! When the sword immortal flew down from the thirtieth floor carrying someone, the airflow kicked up the dust on the ground! Can special effects look that real?"

Forced to lean his head back, Lin Bei looked at the glowing phone screen.

Playing on the screen was the very moment an hour earlier when he had stopped abruptly above the World Trade Center, holding the falling man in one hand.

Someone in the crowd below must have filmed it with a high-zoom lens. Although it was a little shaky, it captured his showboating pose with perfect clarity.

Looking at his cold, merciless, black-masked self in the video, Lin Bei couldn't help thinking, Nice angle. My clothes look a little wrinkled, though. Should've ironed them before heading out.

Outwardly, however, he still made a show of frowning at it for a while.

"Hmm... that really is some skilled wire work." Lin Bei rubbed his chin and offered a very fair assessment.

"Wire work, my ass!" Fatty nearly coughed up blood in fury, pacing two agitated circles on the spot. "You mortals don't understand the greatness of the divine! When the sword immortal starts taking disciples someday, I'll be the first to sign up. Don't come begging me to take you flying then!"

Just as Fatty was about to continue his grand missionary undertaking.

Chen Mo, who had been silent all this time, suddenly closed his book and walked up to Lin Bei without a word.

He neither looked at Fatty's phone nor joined the discussion about the sword immortal.

The eyes behind his glasses stayed fixed on Lin Bei's face, examining him up and down.

The dorm room suddenly fell silent.

Taken aback by Chen Mo's unusual behavior, Fatty and Liu Chen both turned to look.

"Old Chen, what are you looking at?" Fatty scratched his head.

Chen Mo ignored him and simply stared at Lin Bei, his brows drawing tighter and tighter.

Only after a full ten seconds did he slowly speak, a rare hesitation in his voice.

"Old Lin... have you noticed that you seem... different?"

"Different? Different how?" Lin Bei's heart lurched, but his face remained as unruffled as an old dog, and he even blinked innocently. "More handsome?"

"I'm not joking." Chen Mo moved a little closer, his gaze sharp. "Your skin... what's going on?"

At Chen Mo's prompting, Fatty and Liu Chen noticed it too.

The two hurried closer, and three heads immediately surrounded Lin Bei.

"Holy shit!" Liu Chen sucked in a breath, nearly dropping his bowl of instant noodles. "Lin Bei, your face... did you get hyaluronic acid injections?"

Fatty was even more over the top, reaching out his chubby hand and stroking Lin Bei's arm.

"Damn! This is fucking smoother than my goddess's skin!" Fatty looked as shocked as if he had seen a ghost. "Brother Bei, come clean. What exactly did you do this afternoon? Did some rich woman make you her kept man and take you for a full-body spa treatment?"

Lin Bei slapped Fatty's fleshy hand away in disgust, inwardly alarmed.

He had been careless.

When he had broken through to the Qi Refining Third Layer in the sky earlier, the torrent of vast spiritual power had completely remade him, transforming him down to his very bones.

He had already been good-looking, with good skin.

But now, Lin Bei's skin could no longer simply be described as good. It was fair and translucent, without a single visible pore, and his entire body carried a soft, jade-like luster.

Not only that, his muscle definition had become exceptionally balanced. Even in a loose T-shirt, one could sense his streamlined physique and the terrifying explosive power it contained.

The most troublesome part was his bearing.

A cultivator at the Qi Refining Third Layer naturally carried a cool, otherworldly air with every movement.

"Something's off. Seriously off." Chen Mo rubbed his chin as he analyzed him. "When you left this morning, you clearly still had an acne mark by your eye. Now not only is that gone, even your dark circles have disappeared. Ordinary skincare products definitely can't do this. Old Lin, did you get cosmetic surgery behind our backs?"

"Cosmetic surgery, my ass." Lin Bei rolled his eyes, knowing he couldn't let them dig into this. He had to bluff his way past it quickly.

Lin Bei pulled open a drawer, casually took out a bottle of Dabao SOD Honey that had been sitting there for who knew how long, and slapped it onto the desk with a smack.

"See this? The pride of domestic products." Lin Bei began making things up with a completely straight face. "I went to the bathhouse this afternoon and scrubbed off eighteen years of old grime, then rubbed on half a bottle of this. It's called having a good foundation. Get it?"

"Dabao?" Fatty picked up the red-and-white plastic bottle, looking as though his whole understanding of life had been shaken. "This stuff can do that? Who the hell are you trying to fool?"

"Believe it or don't." Lin Bei snatched the bottle back and tossed it into the drawer. "All right, stop crowding around staring at me. I'm not a monkey in a zoo. Fatty, weren't you going to argue with people on Tieba? Get going. Don't let me hold you up from defending the sword immortal's dignity."

With that interruption from Lin Bei, Fatty's attention was instantly pulled back.

"Right, right! Those science students on Tieba are still calculating water pressure. I've got to flame them to death!" Fatty hurried back to his computer and hammered the keyboard thunderously.

Liu Chen gave Lin Bei a dubious look, then turned back to continue eating his bowl of noodles, which had already gone soggy and clumped together.

Only Chen Mo remained where he was and looked Lin Bei over a couple more times. Without saying anything, he returned to his chair and reopened his book.

Lin Bei let out a long breath and leaned against the back of his chair, his back still prickling slightly.

Sometimes, these university students' powers of observation were fucking sharper than the National Security Bureau's radar.

It looked like he would have to suppress his spiritual power even harder in the dorm from now on, or these clowns would strip away his secret identity sooner or later.