Several classmates nearby heard the remark. They first glanced at the speaker—a heavy, burly guy with small eyes and a disdainful look on his face, who seemed like someone you shouldn't mess with.
Then they looked at Jiang Ning. Jiang Ning's expression remained completely blank, as if he hadn't heard a thing.
With that, the classmates easily concluded that Jiang Ning must be the type who wanted to avoid trouble at all costs.
Of course Jiang Ning had heard it. He knew exactly who the speaker was: Song Sheng, a boy from Class 8, Grade 1.
Even though No. 4 High School was one of the top three high schools in the city, it was still filled with students of all sorts of backgrounds. People like Song Sheng typically relied on their sheer bulk to bully other students.
Song Sheng's grades were decent—he was in the top ten of his class—and he was a local from the urban area of Yuzhou City. When a student like that decided to be a bully, he was all the harder to deal with.
Song Sheng often messed around at the back of the classroom. He was an advocate of violence who constantly picked people to spar with, engaging in wrestling and roughhousing. Sometimes, when he got too worked up, things would get so intense that several desks would be overturned, leaving a huge mess on the floor that he never bothered to clean up, taking pride in it instead.
He believed that bullying others allowed him to establish a kind of "authority" of his own.
Things like this couldn't be completely stamped out—let alone in 2013, even a decade later.
In his past life, two classmates had been bullied by him for an entire year. One couldn't take it anymore and was forced to transfer schools.
Another student had been tripped by Song Sheng during a scuffle, injuring his knee so badly that he had to stay home for a month before he could return to school.
Song Sheng received a major disciplinary demerit from the school. After that, he did rein himself in a little; his mouth remained foul, but he initiated fewer physical fights, staying out of trouble all the way until the college entrance examination and getting into a 211 university.
Two years after graduation, when Jiang Ning was catching up with an old classmate, he happened to hear someone mention Song Sheng.
The classmate had said with a gloating smile that Song Sheng had beaten someone up at work. Although his family was willing to pay compensation, the victim refused to take the money and managed to get him locked up. He was sentenced to two years, which pretty much ruined most of his life.
Jiang Ning recalled his memories regarding Song Sheng. He hadn't had much interaction with the guy; their only conflict had been when Jiang Ning was playing on his phone, and Song Sheng was roughhousing with someone else, crashing into his desk and knocking his phone to the ground.
Jiang Ning had picked up the phone and found the screen unbroken. Back then, knowing that Song Sheng was not someone to mess with, he had simply let the matter drop.
Now, living his life over again, Jiang Ning no longer cared about grudges from the past.
Song Sheng's actions today struck Jiang Ning as rather amusing—much like an ant strutting around, utterly ignorant of the immensity of heaven and earth.
Little did the boy know, Jiang Ning had countless ways to deal with him.
Jiang Ning channeled his Divine Sense, intending to give it a small test.
The Divine Sense technique he practiced was the "Golden Mystery Divine-Split Art" from his past life. When cultivated to the peak realm, projecting voice across ten thousand miles and killing with a single thought were merely the basics; he could even multiply his Divine Sense a thousandfold, making himself an almost immortal existence.
It was a pity that the Spirit Severing tribulation contained the rules of heaven and earth, and no matter how many divisions of Divine Sense one made, they could not escape annihilation.
Re-cultivating this secret technique in this lifetime, his progress was blazing fast. In just a few days, he was already able to unleash the "God-Shocking Sting" that came with the technique.
While Jiang Ning's thoughts were turning, Instructor Li shouted as usual:
"Halt!"
"Quick time... march!"
The formation moved forward.
Song Sheng broke out in a greasy sweat, thinking to himself that Instructor Li was simply inhuman. If the man hadn't been built like a tank, he would have gone up and slapped him across the face right then and there.
As for that punk from just now, he was really something else—trying to show off, were they?
Did he even stop to think whether his puny little arms and legs could handle it?
Song Sheng figured that once military training was over, he would just use that kid to practice his moves. When the time came at the back of the classroom, right in front of the whole class, he would mock him a bit; as long as the kid dared to show any defiance, he would pin him to the floor to establish his own authority in the class.
Once he covered the kid in dust and made him look like a total fool with a dirt-smudged face, no girls in the class would ever look at him.
That was exactly what he had done back in middle school, and it had worked every single time, successfully establishing his "authority."
Just as Song Sheng was daydreaming, a dark, overwhelming shadow surged into his mind. His brain suddenly suffered an excruciating spike of pain, as if a sharp nail had reached out from the depths of the shadow and instantly stabbed into his skull, causing him to scream at the top of his lungs.
The few male classmates beside him were startled, their stumbling steps thrown completely out of rhythm as they hurriedly looked over in his direction.
Song Sheng clutched his head and rolled around on the ground, a scene both pathetic and somewhat comical.
Ma Shicheng, standing nearby, was reminded of a fat pig rolling in the mud.
Instructor Li walked over with a frown. By this time, the pain had already subsided for Song Sheng—it had only hurt for a split second and he had already returned to normal—so he scrambled back up in a hurry.
"What are you playing at?" Instructor Li had been somewhat worried at first, but seeing the boy looking completely normal now, his temper flared up instantly.
"Rolling around on the ground to pitch camp or something?"
Internally, Song Sheng cursed Instructor Li up and down while also being filled with utter bewilderment. What on earth had just happened to him?
"Instructor Li, my head suddenly hurt just now, but it doesn't hurt anymore," Song Sheng explained.
Seeing that Song Sheng was covered in sweat, Instructor Li didn't continue to make things difficult for him.
"Resume training!"
The formation of Class 8 reassembled.
"Attention!"
"Next, we will practice turning!"
"Right... face!"
The formation moved.
Ma Shicheng turned to the right, only to end up face-to-face with the classmate beside him. Suspecting that he had turned the wrong way, Ma Shicheng quickly spun back around.
"Wrong, wrong!" Instructor Li roared:
"Which way is right? Which way is right? Can't tell your left from your right?"
"Attention, right face!"
The moment his voice trailed off, Jiang Ning once again activated the "God-Shocking Sting".
In an instant, Song Sheng felt his hair stand on end. He relived the terror of being dominated by that inexplicable pain once more. Accompanied by the descent of the shadow, it felt as though that horrifying nail was about to pierce into his brain the very next second...
"Ah!" Song Sheng let out a sudden, miserable scream.
Once again, it startled the surrounding classmates so badly that they shivered and cursed in unison:
"Shit!"
To Song Sheng's confusion, the moment he screamed out, that nail didn't pierce his brain at all; instead, it vanished without a trace—a false alarm.
Song Sheng stood frozen in place, feeling excruciatingly awkward.
Guo Kunnan, a slightly dark-skinned and somewhat roguishly handsome boy standing on the edge, chimed in merrily:
"Screaming like a stuck pig."
Someone laughed and said: "Clearly, he's the pig being slaughtered."
A classmate whose family sold pork retorted:
"He's the pig just dropped into boiling water to get its hair removed!"
"Hahahaha!" Students from both classes were amused, and the air filled with cheerful laughter.
Song Sheng's face turned livid. He clenched his fists so tightly that his nails dug into his palms without him even noticing.
He firmly etched the faces of the few people who had just mocked him into his mind, preparing to exact his revenge later.
Then, Song Sheng felt the light before his eyes darken. Instructor Li was standing right in front of him, saying unceremoniously:
"Run five laps."
Upon hearing this, Song Sheng wanted to commit murder, and his tone was extremely defiant: "Instructor, I didn't do it on purpose just now!"
"Ten laps." Instructor Li's gaze was ice-cold.
Song Sheng's forehead twitched, clearly on the verge of exploding, before he obediently went off to run.
Having been interrupted twice in a row, Instructor Li's training schedule was completely thrown off:
"Dismissed, rest in place for fifteen minutes."
And so, the boys of Class 8, Grade 1 sat on the grass and watched Song Sheng run.
Before long, the neighboring girls' formation also took a break. Since they weren't far away, the girls' formation had also heard Song Sheng's screams earlier.
Some outgoing girls, or those with close friends among the boys, came over to ask what had happened, prompting plenty of mockery from the male students:
"Don't even ask, some idiot just now must have had a screw loose in his head."
"First time seeing a freak like that, bad luck!"
"Don't say that. The fact that we get to rest is all thanks to the contribution Song Sheng made!"
"Haha, no lies detected. We'll have to properly thank him later!"
Amidst the chatter and laughter of the group of boys, word of Song Sheng's antics spread to the girls' side, instantly turning him into a laughingstock.