novelbin Chapter 50
Chapter 50
Chapter 50: Studying Medicine Can't Save… No Wait—It Can!
14:50.
Ring ring ring!
The class bell rang out like music from heaven.
For Chen Tong, who had just walked the razor's edge between life and death, that sound was more beautiful than any symphony.
"Phew…"
Chen Tong let out a long breath. The black Pen Holder on the podium and those terrifying blood-red rule letters had vanished without a trace.
She felt as though she had just woken from a nightmare, but the surging power flowing through her body reminded her.
This was real.
E-Grade Physique.
She felt like she could throw a punch now and knock out her former self in 1 hit.
"Jiang Nan~"
Chen Tong clicked across the floor in her high heels, clack clack clack, rushing toward the back rows with that bright, eager smile of someone fishing for praise.
She made her way to Jiang Nan's side and gently began kneading his shoulders.
"How was it? I did pretty well just now, didn't I?"
Jiang Nan was still half-reclined in his chair, enjoying the service behind him. He gave a slight nod and tossed out a Notepad slip.
【Not bad.】
Understated as it was, coming from him, that already counted as high praise.
After all…
What Chen Tong had relied on just now was nothing but absurdly outrageous luck.
But luck was part of strength too.
In this apocalyptic world brimming with strangeness and uncertainty, a teammate with this kind of 'strong luck' attribute…
Was sometimes more useful than those brutes who only knew how to fight and kill.
If Chen Tong didn't have that luck, she never would have run into him on the very first day—let alone made it this far.
"Still…"
Jiang Nan opened his eyes and glanced at the now-empty podium.
'This school built for ghosts actually has a clear-stage reward mechanic.'
'Which means this place is essentially a large-scale Rule-Type Sub-Instance.'
'If possible… I could try my hand at it too.'
He needed to grow stronger—to reduce the cost extracted every time he activated his Word Spirit.
If rewards like this existed that could directly raise his stats, it might save him quite a bit of trouble.
And besides…
The incident with Sakuragi Yukishita going absent just now…
And the unfinished words of the dying Kamiya Konan—they had given him a rather interesting idea.
'The 4th ghost…'
The corner of Jiang Nan's mouth curved slightly. He glanced at Lu Shiyan, then once again placed a Notepad slip over his own face.
……
In the other corner of the classroom.
Lu Shiyan pressed a hand over his still-bleeding nose and painfully hauled himself up off the floor.
He glanced at the Notepad slip stuck to his face, reading the warning written on it—laced with killing intent.
"Heh…"
Lu Shiyan let out a bitter laugh, crumpled the slip into a ball, and tossed it into the trash.
'Figures. This guy won't tolerate even a grain of sand in his eye.'
'That was a warning. Next time… he'll actually kill me.'
He picked up the half-pack of Huazi that had fallen to the floor, pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and leaned against the wall, breathing in great heaving gulps.
Through the curling smoke, his gaze drifted.
Jiang Nan's punch had not only broken his nose—it had even cracked his orbital bone.
Right now his vision was blurred and doubled, like looking through a pair of 300-degree near-sighted glasses—with astigmatism thrown in on top.
"What a vicious hand…"
Lu Shiyan turned the scalpel over between his fingers, watching the blade split into 2 images before him, a quiet dread settling in his chest.
'Even I couldn't achieve that level of precise force control.'
'He hit me hard enough to strip away most of my combat ability, yet kept me just functional enough not to become a liability.'
'This guy is absolutely an expert.'
'Not just physically powerful—he has a profound understanding of the human body. He knows exactly where to hit for maximum pain and maximum disruption.'
'And besides… he seemed to have guessed my identity from the very beginning.'
'Could he be from the same line of work?'
Lu Shiyan was baffled.
His S-Grade Psychokinesis was powerful, but it had 1 fatal weakness: it required Visual Lock-On.
If he couldn't see it, he couldn't strike with precision.
Using psychic scanning consumed enormous time, and his physique couldn't sustain it.
Not to mention that with his vision now compromised, his combat power had been cut at least in half.
'Damn, what rotten luck—stepped out without checking the almanac and ran straight into this jinx.'
Lu Shiyan grumbled inwardly, then turned his head toward Kujo Ran beside him.
With his vision too blurry to make out more than a vague outline:
"Hey, you—what's-her-name… Seven-Strip? Eight-Strip?"
"Anyway, whatever Strip you are—you were in class just now, right?"
"Fill me in on what happened."
"It's NINE-Strip! Kujo Ran!"
Kujo Ran's temple veins throbbed with fury, but she didn't dare explode. She could only grit her teeth and grumble.
Then she recounted everything that had happened during English class to Lu Shiyan, detail by detail.
Right up to the very end.
"That ghost called 'Sakuragi Yukishita' just vanished—skipped class. So that woman surnamed Chen got an S-Grade reward completely out of nowhere."
Kujo Ran's voice dripped with envy and bewilderment.
However.
The moment Lu Shiyan heard those words, the fingers holding his cigarette went rigid.
"Sakuragi Yukishita… disappeared?"
He paused—but didn't answer.
Instead, he instinctively reached into his chest pocket and pulled out an old Pocket Watch, squinting to bring the time into focus.
Then he looked at the cigarette burning rapidly between his lips.
Silence.
Only the faint hiss of the cigarette in the stillness, its ember flickering in and out.
Kujo Ran, seeing that he wasn't responding, stopped bothering with this strange man.
She had more pressing things to worry about right now—after the next Chinese language class, it would be her turn for math class!
She had to use what time she had left to get her head straight. Dying on the podium would be the greatest humiliation of all.
……
Yet.
Every one of these subtle movements had been caught by Hoshino Hikari, seated in the front row.
Hoshino kept her head low the entire time, pretending to space out—while her peripheral vision was laser-locked on Lu Shiyan.
'Something feels… off.'
'Why did Lu Shiyan show no reaction when Kujo-sis mentioned Teacher Chen receiving her reward…?'
'But the moment he heard that 'Sakuragi Yukishita' had disappeared… his cigarette suddenly started burning faster?'
'He's nervous?'
Even though Lu Shiyan's face showed no expression whatsoever, the sudden quickening of his breathing had betrayed him.
And apart from Hoshino Hikari.
There was another pair of eyes, watching all of this from the shadows.
'Heh, creepy old man.'
'Bet you had no idea I've been staring at you this whole time, huh?'
Liu Yuqing sat in her seat, pen spinning between her fingers, a cold smirk playing in her heart.
Her current state was extraordinarily bizarre—left eye on guard duty, right eye on lookout!
Not cross-eyed—genuinely standing watch on 2 fronts!
It was a secret technique she had honed since elementary school, as an elite top student!
Whenever she finished a test early, she would use this wide-angle peripheral vision to sweep across her classmates' answer sheets!
Running real-time comparisons, filling in gaps!
Her vision wasn't all that was exceptional—her hearing was something else entirely.
Definitely not because her gambling-addict father frequently withheld food from her…
Forcing her to crouch at the village entrance, drinking the north wind—training her Sound-Location Tracking!
Lu Shiyan, with his vision impaired and his mind weighed down with worry, had utterly failed to notice that 2 people had already locked onto him.
……
3:00.
Ring ring ring!
The class bell rang again, right on time.
The schedule on the blackboard refreshed automatically.
【Subject: Chinese Language (3:00–4:00)】
【Instructor: Fujino Juro】
Upon seeing that name.
Every Huaxia person in the room couldn't help but freeze for a moment—all except Lu Shiyan.
Fujino?
That surname, combined with the role of Chinese language teacher.
It was hard not to think of the professor who had once mentored the great literary master—Fujino Genkuro, from the middle school textbooks.
"This… couldn't actually be him, could it?"
Wang Meng muttered under his breath.
However.
The Sakura Nation male student seated in front of Guo Shuai—upon hearing that name—began to tremble violently.
It was terror that came from the very depths of the soul.
"Hey buddy, what's wrong with you?"
Guo Shuai, seated in the row behind, poked the boy's back with mild curiosity.
"What's this Teacher Fujino like?"
"Is he a refined and gentle good teacher with a neat little mustache?"
The boy turned around, his face deathly pale, fixing Guo Shuai with the look one reserves for absolute idiots, and sneered.
"Refined and gentle?"
"Heh… More like he teaches how to slaughter pigs!!"
"Slaughter pigs?"
Guo Shuai was dumbfounded.
A Chinese language teacher teaching pig-slaughtering?
What kind of cross-discipline curriculum was this?
Just then.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The ground began to shake violently. Even the pens on the desks were dancing.
"Earthquake?"
Everyone looked toward the doorway in bewilderment.
Then.
A massive shadow engulfed the entrance.
A terrifying creature that could only be described as a demon of muscle forced itself through the classroom doorframe!
It stood 2.5 meters tall, every muscle on its body jutting out like granite!
It wore a White Lab Coat—long since shredded apart by its own muscles—splattered with bloodstains.
In its hand: a Pig-Slaughtering Knife!
With every step it took, the floorboards groaned in protest.
It walked up to the podium and slammed the knife onto the desk.
Bang!
The lectern split clean down the middle.
It swept its gaze across the room, opened that fang-filled maw of a mouth, and recited its teaching philosophy.
"Studying literature… cannot save humanity…"
"But studying medicine…"
It raised the Pig-Slaughtering Knife and swung it through the air.
"CAN SAVE!!"