Chapter 76
Chapter 76: Deaf to Dog Barking
“Qian Qi! What the hell are you doing?!” Xu Jing shouted, face burning as people stared. “Let go of me! Don’t think selling some crappy magic potion means you can do whatever you want!”
Thanks to hemostatic magic potion and defense fruit, Qian Qi had a name on campus, sure—but in this school, fame wasn’t power.
Qian Qi ignored him like a dog barking behind a fence. She dragged him down to the stone benches outside the dorm building and shoved him onto one.
When he tried to fight back, she planted both hands on his shoulders and pinned him in place. Zhang Feng stepped in and tied up Xu Jing’s hands while he struggled and swore.
Students from the skills department poured downstairs to watch.
Qian Qi adjusted the headset of her megaphone and spoke lightly, like she was chatting over tea.
“Classmate Xu Jing, you’ve got it wrong. I’m not acting however I want.”
She leaned closer, voice soft.
“I’m saving your life.”
“What?”
Xu Jing blinked, genuinely confused—until Qian Qi seized his jaw and forced his face toward the crowd gathering across from them.
“See that?” she murmured.
“The magic plant department students came to get revenge.”
Only then did Xu Jing notice the bodies—so many bodies. The dorm building was surrounded. Hundreds. Then more. It swelled until it felt like the whole campus had shown up.
He stared, slack-jawed.
“What do you want?” he shouted, voice cracking. “Are you insane?! This is the skills academy! Not your magic plant college! Why are you storming our academy?!”
“You don’t remember what you did this morning?” Qian Qi asked, almost kindly.
“You smashed someone’s magic plants.”
“So what?” Xu Jing spat. “It wasn’t just me. Skills department students go to the magic plant department to kill a few magic plants all the time!”
The school had never officially banned it, so it had become an unspoken rule: a privilege with a shrug.
Skills department students couldn’t enter instances whenever they felt like it. If they wanted practice, they went up to the magic plant department’s back mountain and looked for mature magic plants to “train” on.
If the plants looked unhealthy, they didn’t bother. Practicing on something weak was boring. They were picky—even in cruelty.
Students from the magic plant department had resisted before, but both academies’ leadership had turned a blind eye until it fizzled out.
So it stuck. It became tradition. A rotten one.
“Let me go!” Xu Jing bellowed as more spectators gathered. “What the fuck is this? Magic plant department students have lost it! They’re challenging our skills department! They’re kidnapping me—”
Qian Qi glanced down. “Huh.”
Then she pulled off Zhang Feng’s sock and stuffed it into Xu Jing’s mouth.
Xu Jing: “Mmmph—mmmph?!”
Zhang Feng, sockless: “…”
Brutal.
Qian Qi cracked her neck and rolled her shoulders. “Numbers look good. Time to fight back.”
Zhang Feng, Liang Yu Ting, and the others stared at her. Confusion flickered in their eyes—but something stronger sat underneath it now: trust.
At some point, Qian Qi had become their backbone. When they didn’t know what to do, they looked to her.
Sure, every time they asked for advice, she charged them a bit of Little Qian.
But even that couldn’t stop them from slowly, stubbornly deciding she was someone they could rely on.
Qian Qi cleared her throat and turned the little bee megaphone to max volume.
“Fellow students of Awakeners University!”
Her voice carried—bright, firm, and loud enough to hook every head in the crowd.
“Today, our magic plant department suffered a serious incident.”
She lifted Xu Jing by the back collar like a prop.
“Our classmate Xu Jing, along with his classmates and friends, barged into our magic plant department’s back mountain and smashed our magic plants to pieces—destroying months of work.”
“And I learned something even worse.”
Her voice tightened with outrage.
“This kind of thing has happened countless times!”
A ripple ran through the crowd.
“I truly didn’t expect skills department students to do something like this,” Qian Qi declared, pained and furious. “It makes our magic plant department hurt. It makes us sad. It makes us angry!”
She swept her arm across the dorm buildings like she was pointing at a courtroom.
“Every skills department student who participated, watched, or ignored it—you owe us an apology!”
Voices rose, arguing immediately.
“Isn’t it basically allowed?”
“It’s just a few magic plants. Why are you acting like someone started a rebellion?”
“And I didn’t do anything! Why am I getting dragged into this?”
But the noise only grew—and with it came the real power.
The commotion drew the Principal, and it drew Skills Department Dean Fan Jing Hai.
He pushed through the crowd, face dark, barking like he owned the air.
“What are you doing?!” he thundered. “All of you gathered here—are you trying to rebel?!”
Xu Jing’s eyes lit up. He started wriggling like a trapped worm, desperate to speak—only to make muffled noises through the sock.
Qian Qi gave a “so thoughtful” little nod and yanked the sock back out.
Xu Jing spat twice like he could cleanse his soul through saliva. “Dean! Save me! I’ve been kidnapped by Qian Qi!”
He added quickly, as if building a legal case. “And I suspect she’s a strength-type awakener!”
His voice rose, righteous and offended.
“The school rules say you can’t use awakening abilities on ordinary students! I didn’t fight back because I didn’t want to hurt a classmate—I followed the rules out of kindness! But she used her ability on me!”
He puffed himself up, adding the final touch like a cherry on garbage.
“I could’ve fought back if I wanted. If I hadn’t been going easy because she’s a girl.”
Then, unbelievably, he turned to Qian Qi and softened his tone.
“Classmate Qian Qi, let me go. This was your fault. Apologize, and I won’t stoop to your level.”
Fan Jing Hai frowned, gaze sharpening as he looked at Qian Qi.
“Explain,” he snapped. “What’s going on with your magic plant department? And you—why are you kidnapping this classmate?”