Chapter 75

Chapter 76: Deaf to Dog Barking

Xu Jing snapped at her as she dragged him across the courtyard: “Qian Qi! What are you trying to do?”

He did not know why Qian Qi had come for him, but being hauled along in front of everyone was humiliating, so he cursed and struggled, shouting through clenched teeth: “Let me go! Don’t think that just because you sell some shoddy magic potions you can do whatever you want!”

Thanks to the Hemostasis Potion and the Defense Fruit, Qian Qi did have a bit of a name on campus, but that alone was not enough to throw her weight around across the whole school.

Qian Qi kept her ears shut to the barking; she dragged Xu Jing to the stone bench under the dorms and shoved him down.

When she felt him tense to fight back, she set both hands on his shoulders and pinned him hard to the bench, then told Zhang Feng to tie his hands.

Seeing students from the Skills Department pouring down the stairs to watch, Qian Qi adjusted the headset mic on her Little Bee Amplifier and said lightly to Xu Jing: “Classmate Xu Jing, you’re wrong. I’m here to save your life.”

“What?” Xu Jing stared at her. He was wondering if Qian Qi was a Strength Awakener, because how could she be this strong, when she suddenly clamped his jaw and forced him to look straight ahead.

Qian Qi pointed across the way and said in a low voice: “See that? The students from the Magiplant Department are here to settle accounts with you.”

Only then did Xu Jing notice that the dorm complex was ringed by nearly a thousand students, and he went slack with shock.

What was going on?

He began to thrash and yell: “What do you want? Are you crazy? This is the Skills Department! Not your Magiplant Department. Why are you maniacs here at our dorms?”

Qian Qi reminded him, her tone almost kind: “Did you forget what you did this morning? You smashed a student’s Magiplant.”

“So what?” Xu Jing frowned and swore as he glared at her: “It wasn’t only me. Skills students going to the Magiplant Back Mountain to cull Magiplants for practice is totally normal.”

The school had never banned it, so it became a silent, allowed thing. When Skills students felt like it, they went to the Back Mountain of the Magiplant Department to look for ripe Magiplants to practice on. Of course, you had to be lucky. The mountain did not always have healthy plants, and practicing on weak ones was boring. They were picky.

Magiplant students had fought back before, but the two deans ignored it and let it slide, so nothing ever changed.

Smashing Magiplants turned into a hidden privilege for the Skills Department, and anyone who tried to make a fuss about it, like Qian Qi was doing now, would only ask for trouble.

“Untie me! Did you hear me?” As the crowd grew, Xu Jing lost it and bellowed: “The Magiplant students are nuts. These lunatics want to challenge the Skills Department! They’re going to kidnap me, mmm mmm mmm!”

Since Qian Qi wasn’t wearing socks, she yanked off one of Zhang Feng’s and stuffed it into Xu Jing’s mouth.

Xu Jing mumbled in shock: “Mmm mmm mmm?”

Zhang Feng stared, speechless: “…”

[Okay, you’re brutal.]

Qian Qi rolled her neck and loosened her joints, then said in a steady voice: “The numbers look about right. Time to start our counterattack.”

Zhang Feng, Liang Yu Ting, and the others looked at Qian Qi with confusion, but even more with trust. At some point, Qian Qi had become their backbone. Whenever they ran into trouble they could not solve, they wanted to ask her what to do. Even if every answer cost a bit of Little Qian, it did not stop them from changing how they saw her and treating her as someone they could rely on.

The person they relied on cleared her throat and turned the Little Bee Amplifier to full volume.

She raised her voice, bright and ringing, and called to the campus: “Fellow students of Awakener University!”

She always knew how to catch attention. She said: “A very serious incident happened today in the Magiplant Department.”

She lifted Xu Jing by the collar and said: “Our classmate Xu Jing led his classmates and friends into the Back Mountain of the Magiplant Department. They smashed the Magiplants we planted and wrecked months of hard work.”

Then she added, pained and clear: “And I learned that this has happened countless times.”

Her voice shook with hurt: “I did not expect students of the Skills Department to do such things. It makes us Magiplant students heartbroken, sad, and angry.”

She let the words land and cried: “All Skills students who took part, looked on, or chose to ignore it, you owe us an apology.”

Her strong voice drowned the murmurs. The whole block of Skills dorms heard her clearly. Students in other dorms leaned out their windows to see.

Hearing such a huge accusation, many Skills students shouted back at once: “Isn’t this allowed by default?”

“It’s just a few Magiplants. Why are you making a scene? Someone might think you’re starting a riot.”

“They smashed plants, not us. What’s it got to do with me?”

“Great. Sitting in my room and a pot falls on my head. I did nothing and now I’m supposed to apologize?”

The noise drew the Dean of the Skills Department and the Principal. The dorm manager had called the dean as soon as it felt wrong, and a Magiplant teacher, seeing Qian Qi’s group head toward the Skills dorms to fight, had called the Principal.

Pushing through the crowd at a fast pace, the first to arrive was Fan Jing Hai, the Skills dean. He frowned and scolded them: “What are you doing? So many of you gathered here. Are you trying to revolt?”

“Mmm mmm! Mmm mmm mmm!” Seeing the dean, Xu Jing perked up and wriggled like a worm, but the sock in his mouth turned his words to mush.

Qian Qi kindly pulled the sock out.

Xu Jing spat twice, disgusted, then yelled to Fan Jing Hai: “Dean, help me! Qian Qi kidnapped me!”

Trying not to look weak, he added fast: “Dean, I think she’s a Strength Awakener.”

He argued loudly: “The school rules say you can’t use an Awakener skill on ordinary students. I followed that rule because I didn’t want to hurt a classmate, and that’s why she got to tie me up. But she used a skill on me.”

Then he forced a gentle tone as he turned to Qian Qi, acting like he was the bigger person: “Qian Qi, let me go. You’re in the wrong here. Apologize, and I’ll let it slide.”

Fan Jing Hai frowned at his words, then looked at Qian Qi and asked with a scowl: “What’s going on with you Magiplant students? And you, why did you tie up this classmate?”