Chapter 53
Zhao Jiayi and his other buddies, who were sitting together with Hao Ren, had also heard the conversations around them. He b.u.mped Hao Ren with his arm and said, "Ren, it seems like you are quite popular."
"Whatever," Hao Ren lifted his book as a s.h.i.+eld and lowered his head behind it to avoid being looked at.
Hao Ren was now well-known as Huang Xujie's rival and Su Han's "boyfriend"; any one of those t.i.tles would result in him being in the center of the attention.
"We'll watch a good show tonight."
"I guess Huang Xujie will teach him a good lesson!"
The conversations continued.
"Huang Xujie is a vicious guy. He called you out for a fight and then spread the news to everyone," sitting next to Hao Ren, Zhao Jiayi commented with a fierce frown.
"Ignore him. He thrives on attention," Hao Ren rested his head on the desk and said.
For some unknown reason, he felt tired and desperately wanted to take a nap after breaking through the second level of the Spirit Concentration Scroll. He was in a hurry when he left Su Han's office and didn't ask her if this was a typical reaction.
Compared with the business of the Dragon Tribe, Hao Ren thought the incident with Huang Xujie was trivial and not worthy of his attention. It was like a man who had hundreds of millions of yuan wouldn't care if he had lost 20 yuan on the street.
"Su Han can easily destroy me if I don't work hard on cultivating. That is the real danger…" Hao Ren sighed and clutched his head in his hands.
They sat in the last row which was next to the windows at the back of the cla.s.sroom. Hao Ren regulated his breathing and re-entered the second level of the Spirit Concentration Scroll as he carefully tried to understand the essence between the heaven and the earth.
The nature essence which had been running around him was now being sucked into his body, and the parts that couldn't be fully absorbed were tossed out. This process repeated continuously.
Hao Ren found the Dragon Core that he had swallowed begin to respond to the circulation of nature essence flow. Under the repeated rush of nature essence, it started to automatically store the nature essence in Hao Ren's limbs and other parts of his body.
"The Dragon Core is indeed impressive…" Hao Ren was amazed.
The nine main acupoints in his body were slowly
"How can this guy fall asleep when there is trouble waiting for him tonight…" Zhao Jiayi felt resigned when he saw Hao Ren closing his eyes.
"Auch!" Hao Ren yelled suddenly, and his head bounced up from his desk.
Seeing the teacher and students sitting in front of him all looking toward the last row, he lowered his head in a hurry and pretended to act innocent. Luckily, most of them didn't know who had yelled.
The teacher paused his lecture and berated the students without a specific target. Without catching the troublemaker, the teacher had to resume the cla.s.s.
Seeing that everything had settled down, Zhao Jiayi reached out and touched Hao Ren. "Hey, why did you yell?" he asked.
"I'm fine…" Hao Ren gritted his teeth and waved his hand at Zhao Jiayi.
A moment ago, the nine acupoints in his body suddenly hurt like h.e.l.l as if someone was piercing needles into him. Now, his whole body was in so much pain that he felt like he was being split apart.
Seeing Hao Ren sweating in pain, Zhao Jiayi was alarmed. "Are you ok?" he asked.
"I'm fine…" Hao Ren held his breath and pressed his clenched fists against the desk; he felt acute pain in every inch of his bones.
Now he knew that the listlessness and sleepiness a moment ago and the tumbling of his organs and bones that happened just now were all parts of the process of cultivation.
"So painful… Even cultivating the second level of the Spirit Concentration Scroll, which is the most basic cultivation technique, is so painful. Can I survive on the rest of the cultivation path?" Hao Ren gritted his teeth while those thoughts crossed his mind.
The pain was finally over after a dozen deep breaths. Hao Ren looked down at his sweat-soaked s.h.i.+rt and then turned to Zhao Jiayi, Zhou Liren, and Cao Ronghua who were staring at him with astonishment and concern in their eyes.
"I'm fine now. I had a cramp," Hao Ren explained.
"Man, it was an artistic cramp! Your whole body was twisting," Cao Ronghua said.
With a bitter smile, Hao Ren swept a palm over his sweaty face, thinking that the pain was not less excruciating than the cruel ancient tortures.
He now understood why Zhao Yanzi, the only daughter of a Dragon King, was so weak in terms of cultivation. One reason was that she couldn't focus her attention, and the other was that she couldn't withstand the pain.
He remembered her words about the dangers of cultivation, "The least danger was the loss of limbs and the worst danger was death."
Although the path of cultivation wasn't as scary as she had described, the risks were indeed high.
Then, he suddenly thought of Su Han who was also a female but had become a Heavenly-level Master in her twenties. That not only required unusual talent but great fort.i.tude as well.
In her office, Su Han looked up at the clock and murmured to herself, "Well, the pain should have pa.s.sed. If he couldn't withstand such small hards.h.i.+ps, he will never make it through in the future."
Then she put away the bottle of small golden pills she had in her hand.
In the lecture hall in Academic Building C, Hao Ren, who was hardly in the circle of cultivation yet, was oblivious to the fact that there were pills that could alleviate such pain.
He stretched and found that every joint in his body was more flexible, and his strength had reached its peak level.
"Don't you think that Hao Ren is a bit taller all of a sudden?" Zhou Liren, who was sitting farthest from Hao Ren, asked Cao Ronghua in a whisper.
Cao Ronghua turned to look at Hao Ren. He didn't think Hao Ren had grown taller but believed that Hao Ren's presence was different.
His skin was smoother, his eyes were brighter, and even his hair was softer…
"d.a.m.n! Am I into him now?" Cao Ronghua s.h.i.+vered in discomfort.
"After careful considerations, I think tonight you should…" Zhao Jiayi turned to speak to Hao Ren and paused in the middle of his sentence.
For a second, Zhao Jiayi thought the guy sitting next to him was someone else. He looked again and realized that the guy was indeed Hao Ren.
"Am I hallucinating, or Hao Ren suddenly became more handsome all of a sudden?" Zhao Jiayi wondered and totally forgot what he was going to say.
At that moment, Hao Ren's mobile phone vibrated.
He thought it was Xie Yujia calling to ask him about tonight's fight, but when he answered it, he heard Uncle w.a.n.g's anxious voice. "Ren! Your grandma's blood pressure suddenly rose, and she has fainted!"