"I heard through the grapevine that your mother cut ties with you?" Gu Mingxuan teased when he saw that Ling Chen was ignoring him.
"Hahaha, turns out he's an orphan." One of the lackeys chuckled.
"Pitiful little thing, no wonder he's so poor," the second lackey chimed in.
The three young women all covered their mouths and giggled, acting all demure and ladylike.
Yet their wide-stance walks betrayed them, instantly giving away the telltale aftereffects of doing too many squats.
"Little junior, why aren't you saying anything? Don't tell me you're about to cast some weird sorcery of yours again?"
Gu Mingxuan closed the distance step by step until he was right in front of him.
For the past month, every time he remembered Ling Chen claiming at the assembly that he stole underwear, it made his blood boil with hatred.
Even though his family stepped in afterward to clear his name, and the school declared he had been wronged.
That incident had still taken a toll on his reputation, especially since some of the junior female students he fancied had stopped talking to him altogether.
Ling Chen smiled and pulled out his money, getting ready to pay.
"Quick, quick, quick, film this! Upload his pathetic, broke-ass look to the internet so netizens all over the country can have a good laugh at him!"
"I'm sure the vast majority of netizens will absolutely love seeing you like this."
An idea struck Gu Mingxuan, and he found his amusement.
The next second, all three girls whipped out the latest model smartphones and began shoving the cameras right in Ling Chen's face.
They even boasted wildly that taking pictures was their absolute specialty.
"You guys had better hide quickly; the dog-catching squad will be here soon," Ling Chen said, looking at the group.
[Rage value +9]
"Hehe, he's flustered, he's flustered, he's freaking out."
The group forced casual expressions as they spoke.
Ling Chen rolled his eyes. "You get bitten by a dog out of nowhere, wouldn't you be flustered?"
[Rage value +30]
The expressions on their faces shifted instantly. Just as they were brewing up a mouthful of curses,
Ling Chen cast a Silence Technique, humming a little tune as he sauntered away swaggeringly.
Being unable to speak once more drove Gu Mingxuan out of his mind.
Just as he prepared to lash out and teach Ling Chen a lesson, he discovered that no matter how he chanted the spells in his heart, he couldn't execute any martial arts techniques.
This horrified him, as he never expected Ling Chen to have such tricks up his sleeve.
He gritted his teeth and dashed out to engage in hand-to-hand combat, only to find that Ling Chen had already walked far away, out of sight.
Once the thirty seconds had passed,
a lackey chased after him, looking utterly aggrieved as he said, "Brother Xuan, there's no playing against this! This bastard was practically born invincible when it comes to arguing!"
Gu Mingxuan's fury still burned, and he said with a cold sneer, "He won't be acting so arrogant tomorrow. The people from Shaohua University are going to beat the crap out of him. Just wait and watch the show!"
...
Ling Chen did not return to school; instead, he headed to the outskirts to find a mountain cave.
He needed to seize every single second to cultivate, striving to secure a good ranking in tomorrow's grand tournament.
Between what the head of guidance said today and certain rumors he had heard, he could guess that the school might face the punishment of being demoted to a high school.
Ling Chen didn't want that to happen.
The principal and the head of guidance had both been very good to him.
Even though his fellow students were always yelling about beating him up, they didn't have malicious intentions—it was mostly just because he drove them crazy.
And he didn't want to wander the streets again either...
This time, Ling Chen swallowed every last drop of energy liquid stored in his Space Ring.
In an instant, fierce energy rampaged through his body, and as he breathed in and out, the ambient energy of heaven and earth converged toward this spot.
He marshaled this energy to batter the meridians and cells within his body—a mandatory step for breaking through to a major realm.
Meanwhile, after Gu Mingxuan and his crew uploaded the video to the internet,
it immediately skyrocketed to the trending search topics.
Ling Chen was currently the traffic code; anything associated with him was destined to draw massive amounts of attention.
When netizens first saw the video, they laughed nonstop, shouting in the comments that this was straight out of a web novel and felt oh-so-satisfying!
For a time, the overwhelming majority of posts were mocking Ling Chen.
Calling him poor.
Poor without a shred of self-awareness, yet thick-skinned to boot.
Shameless nonsense like student freebies was something only a guy like him could blurt out.
Yet very soon, these posts were drowned out by the praise faction.
Since the grand tournament hadn't started yet, they were afraid of provoking Ling Chen into forfeiting, so they still needed to coddle him properly.
Under a thread titled [Crowdfunding to Buy Trash for Ling Chen], a fierce discussion erupted.
"I'll chip in fifty cents, not a penny more."
"Deity Ling lives up to his name; with this peach wood sword in his hand, he can definitely unleash the might to slay deities and destroy worlds!"
"What the hell do you guys know? Our Deity Ling is a descendant of Maoshan Taoist priests!"
"Little darling Chenchen, aunty loves you. I donated five thousand, remember to thank me."
"I, Long Aotian from Shaohua University, donate ten thousand to help Deity Ling return in triumphant victory tomorrow!"
Through the efforts of the netizens,
in less than half an hour,
that diamond sword worth three hundred thousand was purchased and delivered straight to Haicheng University.
The biggest donors were the contestants from Shaohua University.
They had pocketed too many red envelopes from netizens, and if they didn't coddle Ling Chen into competing and torment him to the netizens' complete satisfaction,
the netizens would demand refunds.
Gu Mingxuan was completely dumbfounded.
In his wildest dreams, he hadn't expected that trying to get everyone to rile Ling Chen up would actually end up doing him a favor instead?
What the hell!
Were the netizens of this generation really this easy to fool?
He sighed inwardly, thanking his lucky stars that he hadn't filmed the pathetic state of Ling Chen's rented apartment.
Otherwise, the netizens probably would have crowd-funded a villa for him...
...
In the dead of night,
Ling Chen entered a state of deep meditation.
Using his mind to overlook the internal organs and meridians within his body, he continuously guided the energy to battering points.
The surrounding environment and sounds were completely blocked out by his consciousness, as if he had entered another world. Even if someone were to stand right in front of him and roar at that moment, it wouldn't wake him up.
At that very moment, a group of people silently approached along the muddy path outside the mountain cave.
There were about seven or eight of them, yet every single one radiated a formidable aura, the lowest among them being at the Wind-Riding Realm!
Leading them was none other than the dwarf who had previously hunted down Ling Chen.
"Hahaha, this dead brat's got some nerve, daring to go into closed-door cultivation alone in a place like this," the dwarf sneered.
"He probably figures we couldn't find him. Too naive, truly inexperienced in the ways of the world," a middle-aged man with a hooked nose chimed in.
"Let's go, finish him off early so we can report back and wrap this up," another burly, shirtless man picked up the thread.
The dwarf nodded and looked toward another, more scholarly-looking man.
He asked solemnly, "Are you certain you've sealed off this area? This dead brat is sly as a fox, and he has an extremely crooked movement technique for escaping—last time, even I couldn't catch him."
The scholarly man nodded in response, "Rest assured, the sealing array has already been laid down. Even if he wakes up right now, he won't be able to run out."
Hearing this,
the dwarf licked his lips, a flash of maliciousness and excitement gleaming in his eyes.
Recalling the humiliation he suffered at Ling Chen's hands last time, he wished he could chew this dead brat raw.
What kind of freakish specimen
could come up with the idea of mixing urine with mud and writing the curse, "Drop dead and rot your whole family if you chase me again"??
That was something he could never wrap his head around.