Chapter 77
Chapter 77: I Got Beaten Too—How Could You Be Left Out?
“You’re the Skills Department Dean?”
Qian Qi studied Fan Jing Hai—short, round, and stomping with authority—then smiled like she’d spotted a crack in a wall.
“Perfect. As a student of Awakeners University, I have every right—and duty—to question your teaching ability.”
“Nonsense!” Fan Jing Hai barked, laughing like he’d heard a child claim the throne. “When I took the position of Skills Department Dean, your parents probably weren’t even born. What right do you have to question my teaching?”
Qian Qi’s smile vanished.
“Then let me ask you this.” Her voice dropped, cold. “Are you the one who allows skills department students to come to our magic plant department and use magic plants for practice?”
Fan Jing Hai paused, the situation clicking into place.
“This is what you’re making a scene over? Just because of this?”
“Just because of this?” Qian Qi gripped Xu Jing’s collar tighter, knuckles whitening. “You’re actually saying that?”
“So what?” Fan Jing Hai’s tone turned casually firm, like he was explaining the weather. “Skills department students can’t enter instances often. Most of the time, they can only duel classmates. If they don’t get enough practical combat, they’ll panic when they meet a real magic beast.”
He shrugged.
“So they practice on magic plants first.”
Then he even had the nerve to sound reasonable.
“They’re doing it to get stronger and protect you ordinary people. Yes, it may harm your interests, but I hope you can be understanding.”
Zhang Feng surged forward, furious, but Qian Qi lifted a hand and stopped him.
She stared at Fan Jing Hai for two seconds, then gave a slow, sharp laugh.
“So skills department students are so weak they freeze up when they meet a real magic beast.” Her eyes narrowed. “Sounds like your teaching really is terrible.”
Fan Jing Hai’s face darkened.
No matter what he said, the message was clear: don’t make it big. The school had allowed this. If the magic plant department pushed, they’d get crushed.
“Practicing on magic plants benefits us,” he said flatly. “It benefits you too.”
Xu Jing, still pinned and tied, seized the moment to act smug.
“You heard him, Qian Qi.” He lifted his chin. “Magic plants are basically magic beasts anyway. Letting us practice on them is normal. When we get stronger, who do we protect in the end? You.”
Qian Qi looked at him.
Then she turned off the megaphone and leaned close to his ear, voice low and unpleasant.
“You’re right,” she whispered. “But I was thinking… when I smashed someone else’s magic plants in the past, I got beaten for it.”
Her grip tightened just enough to make him stiffen.
“And you lot got away clean. That really annoys me.”
I got beaten too—how could you be left out?
Xu Jing went still.
Then: “…What?”
Qian Qi turned the megaphone back on and faced the sea of magic plant department students.
“My magic plant department brothers and sisters!”
She shouted, voice booming.
“Did you hear that? Skills Department Dean says we should understand them and provide magic plants for their students to practice on for free—because they’ll protect us in the future!”
The magic plant department crowd surged with fury—
And then Qian Qi, with perfect timing, pivoted.
“He’s right,” she yelled. “We should understand them. They want to protect us, so they’re willing to hurt our magic plants to increase their strength.”
Fan Jing Hai’s expression loosened slightly, satisfied.
“It’s a fair trade!” Qian Qi declared, loud and bright.
Then she snapped her gaze toward the skills department students, eyes suddenly full of sorrow.
“But what about us?”
Her voice turned sharp.
“We work ourselves to the bone researching magic potions to protect them too!”
“We spend our lives in test fields, day and night, solving hard problems. We carry mockery, endure bullying, and keep searching—searching for things like defense fruit that can be eaten directly, and medicines like hemostatic magic potion that can save people from dying in seconds.”
She stabbed a finger toward the skills department dorms.
“Why?”
“Isn’t it so that skills department, beast-taming department, and commander department students have one more chance to live when battle hits?”
She let the question hang.
“If this is a fair trade—where is our payment?”
The crowd erupted.
“Yeah! Where’s our payment?”
“You smash our magic plants because you ‘protect’ us—then what do you give back when we protect you?”
Qian Qi threw her arms wide, voice turning grand again, like she was preaching.
“My fellow students—we are not like them!”
“We don’t demand payment. We don’t treat this like a cold transaction. We give our time and our lives, silently and selflessly, to research magic plants that benefit humanity, so people can survive this instance crisis!”
“And the ones who destroy our magic plants?” Her voice sharpened like a blade. “They destroy more than our work. They destroy the lives of countless soldiers and innocent civilians out there.”
“And even their own lives!”
“How can we stand by and watch something so stupid?!”
“We can’t!” the crowd roared back, perfectly trained now, passion blazing.
Nearly a thousand voices shook the skills academy. Skills department students stared, dumbfounded.
They’d smashed a few plants.
And somehow, they’d become mass murderers in a public speech.
Qian Qi drew a breath so hard she nearly wheezed, then forced her voice even louder.
“So today, we are here in the skills academy for one reason!”
“To make you apologize—to yourselves—for not cherishing life, and for destroying your own future with your own hands!”
“And to apologize to the magic plant department students who research in silence to protect you!”
“And to apologize to the soldiers fighting on the battlefield, to your parents who fund your schooling, and to the alumni and friends who walk beside you—because every time you smash our work, the research that could save their lives gets delayed again!”
She snapped her head toward Fan Jing Hai.
“So I’ll ask you, Skills Department Dean—are you willing to apologize?!”
The Principal arrived just in time to hear the last line, and his mouth twitched.
This felt… familiar in the worst way.
Fan Jing Hai’s face went green. Qian Qi had wrapped the skills academy in a moral noose, and somehow he couldn’t find a clean way to cut it.
“You—you…” He jabbed a finger at her, spit flying. “Since when has your magic plant department been so selfless? You’re just useless freeloaders living off school subsidies! Hemostatic magic potion? Defense fruit? Nonsense!”
The Principal’s stomach dropped.
Bad. Very bad.
Qian Qi let out a sharp laugh.
“Fine.”
She shoved Xu Jing toward Fan Jing Hai like tossing trash.
“Fine.”
Then she turned back to her people, voice like a verdict.
“From today on, any hemostatic magic potion we make, any defense fruit we grow, and any medicine we produce in the future—none of it is allowed to be sold to the skills academy.”
“If anyone does, they’re making an enemy of every magic plant department student.”
She stared into the crowd, eyes dark with something deeper than anger.
“Can you promise me that?”
“Yes!” the magic plant department students roared.
“We’re not cowards!”
“If they won’t admit they’re wrong, they can stop buying our potions!”
Fan Jing Hai and the Principal didn’t even have time to panic.
The skills academy students panicked first.
“No—!”