Chapter 1
Dragon Nation, Huainan Province, Huayang City.
Zhiyuan Middle School.
Morning sunlight, thin as a cicada’s wings, streamed through the windows of Class A, Grade 12, as the heat slowly began to build.
“Everyone’s bloodline concentration is at least fifty percent by now, right? The higher your bloodline concentration, the purer the bloodline you inherit. And you can only awaken as a junior warrior once it reaches fifty percent... In a few days, when you awaken, you’ll inherit whichever of your paternal or maternal bloodlines is stronger.”
At the sound of his voice, they turned to see a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old boy in a Zhongshan suit strolling across the platform with his hands behind his back. He looked languid and wore gold-rimmed glasses.
By the back window, Su Jiu lay sprawled over her desk like a salted fish and slowly opened her eyes.
She raised a hand to shield her eyes, then glanced down at the hot pants beneath her ragged white T-shirt. A sigh rose in her heart. “Summer’s here again before I knew it. Has it really been a year since I transmigrated into this villainous young miss? The male lead must be about to get his cheat soon, too.”
That’s right. Su Jiu was a transmigrator.
Her transmigration was anything but ordinary—it was downright bizarre. In her previous life, she had worked hard, listened to her parents, and gone to a teachers’ college. After graduating, she got her teaching certificate and worked as a homeroom teacher at a key high school for several years. As time passed, she became a handsome middle-aged man.
To find some comfort in her dull teaching life, she confiscated the novels her students secretly kept in class.
One night, after grading papers, she went to use the toilet with one of the newly confiscated novels in hand. She was halfway through it when she transmigrated.
She had transmigrated into Global Upgrade, a power fantasy aimed at male readers, as a green-tea villainess who bullied the male lead’s younger sister early in the story. The novel itself had become a ring, firmly stuck on her index finger.
At first, Su Jiu didn’t believe it. Then the original owner’s memories came crashing down like an ocean, and she tried out some of the spells and techniques, never expecting them to actually work.
Though the effect was tiny and insignificant.
At first, she felt a faint flicker of excitement, but then it hit her: she was utterly terrified!
Because another memory showed the original owner having people throw a sack over the male lead’s younger sister and beat the living daylights out of her, shattering her front teeth.
What? You want to know why?
The male lead was already in college and needed Body-Tempering Fluid to become an advanced warrior. A bottle cost as much as his blue-collar father earned in a year, and his dad couldn’t afford it while paying off the mortgage.
So the male lead’s younger sister tried everything to raise money for his Body-Tempering Fluid. She even challenged her foolish younger brother to a fight and won with ease... Sure, the male lead’s sister had brought it on herself, but she was the male lead’s sister!
Someone second only to the male lead might be protected by the so-called Mandate of Heaven. Either way, Su Jiu was a little scared.
So Su Jiu came up with a plan—take the opposite path from the green-tea villainess, give up completely, and fade into obscurity, becoming just another face in the crowd.
Only then could she ensure that the male lead and his sister’s paths diverged from hers completely.
“Su Jiu! If you keep spacing out like this, I won’t hesitate to call your father in.”
Lu Nan adjusted his glasses, set down the book in his hand, and looked at the once-proud student with disappointment.
He had no idea what had happened. Over the past year, Su Jiu had gone from a well-behaved top student to a delinquent who couldn’t answer a single question. She didn’t wear her uniform, and during class she read who-knew-what extracurricular books about monsters and demons.
“Uh, my dad’s busy today. A while ago, they found something at a construction site in the eastern suburbs of Huayang City, so as mayor, he naturally has to go investigate. Old Lu, maybe you can have tea with him another day...”
Su Jiu stood up helplessly. Her waist-length black hair fell loose, and the long hem of her short-sleeved shirt covered her hot pants. Her sturdy, well-rounded thighs stood straight, balancing out her petite frame.
Before she could finish, laughter broke out below. But as Su Jiu turned her head, it abruptly cut off wherever her dead-fish eyes landed.
“Sigh... Su Jiu, if you keep this up, even if you inherit your father’s Ice Chi bloodline, you’ll fall behind others unless you work hard afterward. After all, it’s only an ordinary A-rank bloodline.”
Lu Nan kept his usual stern expression, but his words stirred envy among the students below. They began whispering among themselves.
“It’s the Ice Chi bloodline! The textbooks classify it as a rare bloodline. At Zhiyuan Middle School, apart from that monster Bai Ming—who went off to Magic City University a year ago—and his younger sister Bai Qianyu in the neighboring class, there are hardly any high-grade bloodlines.” A bespectacled girl gazed at Su Jiu admiringly.
Then her eyes dimmed, and she sighed softly. “Maybe no matter how hard we train every day, even if our bloodline concentration reaches seventy percent, we still won’t measure up to these spoiled rich kids born with talent by the time the college entrance exams come around.”
“Forget S-rank bloodlines—even A-rank ones are probably rare at our school. Huayang City isn’t exactly a big city...” Her deskmate, a boy with slicked-back hair, slowly wiped the smile from his face. He looked at Su Jiu with a trace of disgust, then clenched his fists and said softly:
“The teacher said bloodlines can be improved later on. Once we get into college, we’ll have a chance to improve ours... Besides, if we can get our bloodline concentration above seventy percent before awakening, we’ll already be stronger than most people our age.”
“True. Seventy percent already makes you a genius. I wonder what those who reach eighty percent are like.” The girl shook her head, quickly took out her notebook, and began copying the key points Lu Nan had written on the blackboard. Her bloodline concentration was already at sixty-eight percent, so his notes were very important to her.
Similar scenes played out to varying degrees throughout the classroom.
A-rank bloodlines might not mean much in big cities, since there were still S-, SS-, and SSS-rank bloodlines above them. But to students like them, whose parents were ordinary people, an A-rank bloodline was already something they could only look up to.
They had long known that people were not born equal, but they still despised seeing someone squander such excellent talent so wantonly!
“You really don’t plan to study seriously? The college entrance exams are coming up. Without a bloodline concentration of at least fifty percent, you can’t awaken—and you won’t be allowed to take the exams.”
Seeing that Su Jiu said nothing, Lu Nan put down his book and asked her again, very seriously. After more than a decade of teaching, he still took his responsibility to himself and his students seriously. If she answered no, all he could do was give up.
Even if her father was the mayor.
“Old Lu...” Su Jiu started to make some casual excuse, but then she met Lu Nan’s eyes, which looked just like her own used to. The teasing words died on her lips, replaced by a few soft ones. “Don’t worry. I won’t let you down.”
At her words, Lu Nan’s eyes brightened slightly. He thought this once-excellent student had finally come around.
But the next moment, Su Jiu simply sat down and pulled a book from her desk that looked like an encyclopedia of low-tier monsters.
Seeing that she wasn’t going back to sleep, Lu Nan sighed softly, picked up his book, and continued lecturing, leaving Su Jiu to slack off.
Lu Nan had tried more than once to rekindle Su Jiu’s ambition and get her back on her feet. But after several talks, she remained unchanged: sleeping through class, vanishing without a trace after class, and no longer training hard—as if she had completely lost all desire to improve.
“Ring, ring!”
When the dismissal bell rang, Lu Nan saw Su Jiu, who had been reading a comic book, sit bolt upright, suddenly full of energy. She ambled out of the classroom, and he grew even more disappointed. He sighed to himself, “How is she any different from Zhong Yong in ancient times? As a boy, he had a peerless Red Dragon bloodline, but wandered around without training. In the end, his strength couldn’t even match that of a Battle General with an ordinary bloodline.”
Su Jiu jogged away from the school building and soon reached a secluded corner of the campus, where she sat beneath an ornamental mango tree.
Su Jiu knew the strange looks the teachers and other students gave her, but that was exactly the effect she wanted. It was the only way she could feel safe while doing what she needed to do.
Others assumed Su Jiu was too talented to bother studying, but she knew the truth: she had never been lazy. Though she sometimes did seriously read comics to sell the act, she had a reason she couldn’t tell anyone.
She lightly bit her finger, squeezed out a drop of blood, and let it fall onto the ancient, lustrous white ring coiled like a dragon around her left index finger. The ring slowly absorbed the blood, and a flash of blue-white light streaked across it.
Her body leaned unconsciously against the base of the tree. Her consciousness felt as if it were passing through an illusion; the surrounding scenery shifted like reflections on a lake, changing again and again until she arrived in a place resembling an arena.
The floor tiles were pale and webbed with cracks. Blood stained the area, and aside from a few loose railings, there was nothing else. At the center, Su Jiu’s frail figure stood facing a giant wolf nearly two meters long, its fur a fiery red.
At the center of it all, Su Jiu held an iron sword and breathed in the air, thick with the smell of rust. She looked up at the enormous creature opposite her and said slowly, “A low-tier warrior-level monster, a Crimson Flame Wolf. If I kill you, I wonder if my bloodline concentration will rise from ninety-five percent to one hundred.”
At the thought, a burning light appeared in Su Jiu’s eyes. One hundred percent! That was an absolute realm only a monstrous prodigy like the male lead could reach!
“Come on, little wolfie.”