IWYTBW - Chapter 46

 Chapter 46

Doing Good Deeds Without Leaving Your Name is the Premise of Being Awesome.

A figure slowly walked out of the woods.

No, “walked” still overstated his presence. He was more like a ghost drifting, or seeping, out of the dense, lush woods, a refraction of light in the void. One moment you saw him far away, and in the blink of an eye, he was standing just three or four steps from you.

It was still daytime, yet some students were already sweating from fright. If it were a dimly lit night, he could certainly scare three or five timid people to death.

The leader’s anger was like a bucket of ice water had been poured on it, more than half extinguished by this eerie entrance. He cautiously asked, “Who are you? This is a private matter between Imperial Heavy Industries and First Tech. No need for others to interfere!”

The person who had arrived had a very strange appearance. His face was a mess of white and yellow, with raised and sunken areas, as if the old skin had been scraped off, exposing the new skin underneath that hadn’t fully healed. The boy’s gaze couldn’t help but drift to his shoulder, where a dark green scorpion was perched, as large as an adult’s hand. If not for the swaying tail hook, it would have looked like a glass decoration. He couldn’t tell what species it was.

Such a person, with such a scorpion, he might as well have worn a jacket with “troublemaker” written all over it and paraded around.

“A competition is a competition. What private grudges?” He gave a strange smile, his voice clear. “Besides, there are twenty-three of you, all ganging up on her. It’s hardly fair. What if I insist on interfering?”

Tiansue Bailu glanced at his wristband and couldn’t help but furrow her brow. 12. The preliminaries had only been going on for nineteen hours. For this person to have eliminated twelve contestants was a decent score. If they really clashed, it might be a bit tricky.

She relayed this discovery to the leader. “Ouwei, look at his wristband. Twelve people.”

“Only twelve people,” Ouwei scoffed, deliberately shaking his wristband that showed the number 24. “If he wants to play hero, I’ll let him have his fill.”

“Hey,” he called out, “What’s your goal?”

Yi Zhen smiled. “What a coincidence. You’re interested in their wristbands, and I’m also very interested in yours.”

“Fuck, what did you say?”

“Such big talk from an ugly freak!”

Yi Zhen unexpectedly touched his face, finding it quite novel. For so long, people had called him a slut, a woman of loose morals, a man who didn’t adhere to male virtues, but no one had ever called him an ugly freak. It was quite interesting to hear for the first time.

“You want our wristbands, but have you ever thought about the fact that we’re from Imperial Heavy Industries? Offending us is equivalent to making enemies of all Imperial Heavy Industries students,” Tiansue Bailu spoke up. She was like the team’s tranquilizer, their calming needle. When she spoke, everyone quieted down. “Our main target isn’t you. Leave now, and we can all go our separate ways.”

Yi Zhen continued to smile. “It’s very simple. If I eliminate all of you, then no other Imperial Heavy Industries students will know about this, will they?”

Such an arrogant statement!

Tiansue Bailu was momentarily speechless. Yi Zhen’s figure suddenly vanished from everyone’s sight.

The armor flashed a blinding light, slicing across the face of the burly male student, splattering tiny droplets of blood. Before coming, Yi Zhen had coated the tips of the armor with a conceptual toxin of gastrodia elata powder. Anyone who came into contact with it would be paralyzed for sixty minutes, with no other antidote.

The boy was caught off guard and instantly fell to the ground, his limbs twitching uncontrollably.

This attack was as fast as lightning. Ouwei immediately shouted, “Mechas! Get in your mechas!”

Even with his arrogant and nasty personality, his first assessment of the battle situation was indeed accurate. Yi Zhen was carrying an ancient-looking bow on his back and had a strange-looking pet on his shoulder. Such a person was usually not skilled at piloting mechas. He might not even have a mecha!

Ouwei was right about all of this, but he had miscalculated one thing.

Yi Zhen’s speed.

In the few moments of conversation, Yi Zhen had already identified who the key figure in this team was, besides Ouwei. Tiansue Bailu cried out. A poisonous scorpion was standing on her shoulder, its tail hook approaching her fair cheek.

She smelled the pungent stench that made her nose ache, and at the same time, she felt the skin on her face burning, as if it were about to boil as the scorpion’s tail got closer... As a pharmacist, she could already see her end. If this scorpion stung her, even her teeth would turn into flowing pus!

“No, no...” Her face was pale, but the skin near the scorpion’s tail was abnormally red and swollen. Tiansue Bailu’s pupils trembled. “No!”

Ouwei’s expression changed. His mecha reached out. “Bailu!”

It was a feint... This person had used a feint to deceive them. His real target was Tiansue Bailu, who they were heavily protecting.

“Hostages are always an effective method,” Yi Zhen said leisurely, approaching Tiansue Bailu. “Now, come out. Just like your wheel battle with First Tech, have a round with me—or you can disregard your companion’s life and bombard me to your heart’s content. I don’t mind either way.”

He gently lifted Tiansue Bailu’s wristband and pinched it with two fingers. The sturdy polymer band instantly snapped in two.

Just in case, the students fighting Yan Qing had placed their important competition qualifications with their classmate. The wristband Yi Zhen had broken belonged to the unlucky guy who had been hit by the gastrodia elata powder and was lying on the ground.

He was out. The number on Yi Zhen’s wristband jumped. 13.

Tiansue Bailu stood stiffly, blood dripping from her nose, unable to utter a word.

Ouwei’s face was grim. Without another word, he retracted his mecha. The boy’s figure bent in the air like a powerful thunderbolt. He drew the weapon at his waist. It was a curved blade, flowing like water, with a special forging process that created agate-like patterns on the blade.

He brandished the blade. As soon as it touched the air, it ignited with a raging white flame. He looked as if he were holding the flaming sword of Surtr from Norse mythology, the staff of divine punishment, and slashed it down at Yi Zhen!

Yi Zhen’s eyes lit up at the power of this slash. He leaped high into the air. The flames only singed his shadow. Yi Zhen said in a low voice, “Very good!”

He was like a dancing butterfly, but much larger and faster. In the blink of an eye, he had flitted behind Ouwei, about to strike, when a burning blade slashed upwards from below, its spine running along the boy’s back.

Su Qin carrying the sword, a classic move in ancient Chinese swordsmanship that combined both defense and counterattack, was skillfully executed by a foreign boy wielding a Damascus longsword in the interstellar age!

Yi Zhen quickly retreated. His speed of retreat was as fast as his approach.

In this world, he rarely saw people using cold weapons. Nishikawa Hiroki was one. His longsword was covered in high-voltage electricity, not only capable of killing people but also countering small mechas. Another was the Imperial Heavy Industries student he encountered today, a boy named Ouwei.

Generally speaking, the simpler the weapon, the better, especially for cold weapons. Why make something so fancy that’s meant to take lives? Are you planning to hold an outdoor BBQ after destroying the corpse?

Therefore, flaming swords and electric knives, if the user’s skill was limited, would have an effect similar to a circus performer. But conversely, if the user’s skill was superb, then it would be like what Yi Zhen was seeing now.

—The boy was almost surrounded by a halo of burning light. It seemed as if he were wielding not a blade, but a whip or a chain!

In his graceful dodging movements, Yi Zhen had already removed the armor.

This Mineral Essence Gauntlet was indeed priceless, comparable to a divine weapon, but it also greatly hindered the use of finger techniques. When he raised his hand again, five throwing darts were already pinched between his fingers.

Poisonous weapons like the Snow Wax Needle and Blood Tribulus were too deadly. He didn’t intend to kill, so ordinary throwing darts were the best option.

Streams of light bloomed. More than a dozen gusts of wind shot towards Ouwei’s fire net from the front, back, left, and right. His blade aura was as strong as a cage, but was it truly impenetrable?

This question would soon be answered.

Amidst a series of clanging sounds, Ouwei deflected fifteen steel darts. Like a flash in the pan, these fifteen steel darts were merely a supporting feint. The sixteenth was the final exposed stamen, like a viper’s fang, striking his collarbone.

The darkness of dizziness and paralysis instantly engulfed Ouwei’s nerves. This stormy duel ended as abruptly as a storm. The longsword clattered to the ground. He fell backwards. The white flames, having lost their master’s control, also extinguished.

Yi Zhen walked over, tore off his wristband, and then went to Tiansue Bailu, removing some of the scorpion venom she had inhaled.

“Anyone else want to fight me?”

Even Ouwei, the strongest in overall ability, had fallen to the ground, his life or death unknown. The remaining students were hesitant, a mix of shock and apprehension on their faces.

Tiansue Bailu didn’t bite her lip. As a pharmacist, she knew that exposing the wound to the air would immediately cause it to be corroded by the scorpion’s venom. She only bit the inside of her cheek until it bled.

“Don’t use me as a hostage...” she said, holding back tears, her whole body trembling, “It’s... it’s disgusting...”

“I’m sorry, but that’s how the competition is,” Yi Zhen shrugged, repeating her words back to her. “Do you think it was honorable for you to use the First Tech students’ concern for their injured comrade to threaten and play games with them in a wheel battle?”

“If you’re so capable, then have my companion fight you with a mecha!” Tiansue Bailu finally couldn’t take it anymore. She disregarded the scorpion’s tail near her face and turned to yell at Yi Zhen.

Yi Zhen spread his hands wide. “I’m not capable. Besides, why make things difficult for myself when there’s an easier and faster way to win?”

He smiled. “Or you can all come at me at once. There are twenty of you left. I bet you’re good at teamwork? Come on then, all at once. Consider it my handicap to you.”

The remaining students exchanged glances, their eyes flickering with a restless, vengeful light.

One-on-one, this person was strong. But what about one against ten, one against twenty? It was said that two fists were no match for four hands. Could he, alone, withstand forty hands?

This was also a test for Yi Zhen himself.

Ouwei, who had been knocked to the ground, was close to the threshold of A-grade in physical fitness but still lost to Yi Zhen. His companions had an average grade of around B.

Yi Zhen could easily defeat opponents of the same level or even a few levels higher. But that was one-on-one. What would the result be if it were one against many?

In an instant, Yi Zhen darted out.

His figure was so fast that it was hard to see with the naked eye, like a leopard pouncing into a pack of wolves. He didn’t use the Mineral Essence Gauntlet coated with Gastrodia Elata powder. He rushed bare-handed into a boy’s chest, the back of his hand bent, his wrist bone thrusting forward, sending the boy flying. The boy was quite agile. He was about to adjust his posture in mid-air when a powerful force pulled him back. Yi Zhen instantly grabbed him back and chopped him on the neck.

A surge of true qi made the boy’s head buzz, and he coughed up saliva, all strength to resist gone, allowing Yi Zhen to tear off his wristband.

“Nineteen,” Yi Zhen said in a low voice.

All of this happened too quickly. The others only saw a blur. After three lightning-fast moves, one of them had already been eliminated.

Yi Zhen locked onto his next target. The remaining boys and girls hurriedly took countermeasures. Without using mechas or thermal weapons, they naturally had other methods.

Nineteen daggers were drawn in unison, like cold stars in the night sky, flashing with sharp, cold light. These boys and girls were all students from Imperial Heavy Industries. With their school’s strong financial backing, how could they not give their students something to defend themselves?

Daggers were a powerful weapon for close combat, and they were well-suited to deal with Yi Zhen.

Nineteen intersecting gusts of wind flowed in the sunlight, forming a complex spider web, a silver-white Milky Way. As soon as Yi Zhen attacked one person, eighteen alloy daggers would simultaneously appear from behind and to his sides, aiming at his openings.

Yi Zhen smiled slightly. He really did move forward again, intending to use the same technique to grab a student’s arm. Seizing the moment when his defenses were wide open, four sharp blades stabbed towards his ribs, four towards his spine, and the rest circled around the outside, preventing him from escaping.

It was a foolproof net. The students to his sides and behind him all wore triumphant smiles. They were convinced that this mysterious person had no chance of escaping. He had walked into a dead end.

But this smile quickly froze on their faces.

Their daggers seemed to have been caught in a cloud of mist. They could even hear the sound of their blades clashing against each other, but there was no sensation of cutting into flesh.

If they weren’t currently on the battlefield, they would have put everything down and rubbed their eyes vigorously to see if they were blind!

“Eighteen.” Yi Zhen seized the fleeting opportunity and forcefully tore off the wristband of the student in front of him.

“Seventeen.” Another girl was struck on the back of the neck with a knife-hand and sent flying.

“Sixteen.” A bent forefinger suddenly struck the Tanzhong acupoint in the center of the sternum.

“Fifteen.” A palm turned into a blade, slicing through the thin, soft band tied around a neck.

In the blink of an eye, nine people were defeated, the injured lying all over the ground. Only ten people were left who could still fight Yi Zhen.

Yi Zhen stood in place and sighed.

This sigh was like an invisible slap, making the faces of the ten students burn.

The humiliation of being ganged up on, the cold reality of repeated defeats, and the determination to rescue their classmate and hostage, all these factors combined to completely cloud their minds, making them roar and rush at Yi Zhen without even exchanging glances.

Twelve minutes later, these ten students also joined the ranks of those rolling on the ground.

Yi Zhen had won a complete victory. The number on his wristband soared to 34, but he didn’t show any sign of joy, only sighing again.

“You... what are you sighing about!” a girl said, supporting herself on her neck and struggling to get up from the ground to glare at him. “We are students of Imperial Heavy Industries. We may be defeated, but we are still honorable. You despicable villain, what right do you have to act so regretful?!”

Yi Zhen stood among the injured and groaning students, calmly looking at the girl.

“So, you do know that I’m a despicable villain.”

The girl was stunned, rendered speechless by his response. “Wh... what do you mean?”

“School is school, and the battlefield is the battlefield. Since you knew I used underhanded tactics and took a hostage, then why did you still follow my rules?” Yi Zhen clapped the dust off his hands. “No mechas, no thermal weapons—I said it, and you actually did it?”

A boy on the ground clutched his abdomen, his face red with anger. “Because you had our friend!”

“Because we are people of our word! We said we wouldn’t use them, so we wouldn’t! What kind of pilot would go back on their word at the last minute?!”

Yi Zhen really wanted to burst out laughing now. “When you encounter a despicable villain, you have to lower your moral standards to their level and then use even more shameless methods to defeat them! In a life-or-death situation, a despicable villain can devour your flesh and not even spit out the bones for the sake of fame, profit, and power. What’s the use of you upholding your promise? Do you think you can influence them with your golden hearts?”

“Integrity, oaths, moral principles... things like that are meant for gentlemen. How can you use them against villains? It’s like using meat buns to hit a dog!”

He laughed, then said, still amused, “If you had all rushed me at once, it would have been chaotic, and I don’t have eyes in the back of my head. If you had taken a potshot at me then, would it have really hurt the hostage? And if you were afraid I’d use the scorpion to sting her, there are so many of you. Couldn’t two or three of you have snuck behind the hostage to try and rescue her? Wouldn’t that have been better than being wiped out by me?”

The students on the ground were speechless, completely stunned.

Yi Zhen beckoned, and the Bone-Eroding Spirit Scorpion scurried down from Tiansue Bailu and climbed onto his shoulder. Yi Zhen removed the poison from Tiansue Bailu. The girl anxiously asked, “Then they...”

She was referring to Ouwei and the other student who were still unconscious. Yi Zhen said, “They’ll wake up in forty minutes.”

His fingers brushed over Tiansue Bailu’s wrist, and a burst of true qi shattered her wristband. “If you go to the elimination point now, you can still take a shower and have a good night’s sleep.”

Tiansue Bailu pursed her lips and hurried over to take care of Ouwei and treat her other companions. Yi Zhen left this group of dejected students, shouldered the Griffin Bow, and walked towards the First Tech students.

From the moment Yi Zhen appeared, attacked, and finished, less than half an hour had passed. The once arrogant Imperial Heavy Industries students were completely wiped out, and even the combat genius Ouwei was lying unconscious on the ground. The First Tech students were all stunned. Only when Yi Zhen walked over did they remember to close their mouths.

Yan Qing, who was supporting Fu Mingsheng, suddenly frowned and said, “It’s you...”

She saw Yi Zhen’s bow and remembered the person in the sky who had told her to bump her parachute. With such an ancient-looking bow, it was unlikely there would be a second person with it.

Yi Zhen nodded at them. The Three-Smile Butterfly fluttered its wings and landed on his shoulder.

“A drop of kindness deserves a spring in return. Don’t mention it,” Yi Zhen said jokingly, “Well then, farewell. May our paths cross again.”

He didn’t wait for the others to respond, nor did he need their thanks. Just as he had appeared, he quietly seeped into the lush, dense shadows of the trees, disappearing in an instant.

Fu Mingsheng opened his mouth, but before he could even utter a word of thanks, the object of his gratitude was gone.

“Th-this...” His lips moved, and all his words turned into one sentence.

“...That was so cool!”

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qq words This novel has not been dropped! I just... am very sloww.... On the patreon I have up to chapter 66 posted ;a; - I'm also tempted to go back and redo a lot of chapters, the writing style really changes during this arc, so I'll just warn you in advance xD, Happy Reading!