Chapter 13
Rong Nian swam furiously, doing two laps around the lake to calm down slightly. But when he quietly poked his head out to look, Luo Shizhen and the others were long gone.
He felt inexplicably annoyed, and his tail swished even faster in the water.
That person, seemingly called Luo Shizhen?
New student?
So strange. How could his deepest, most hidden desire at that moment be grilled fish?
At the very least, shouldn’t it be getting rich?
If Luo Shizhen had said grilled siren, wanting to eat him raw, Rong Nian wouldn’t be this puzzled.
He lay on the shore, tail slapping the water surface pa-pa. The more he thought, the less he understood. He turned back into the water and caught a plump big fish.
Rong Nian’s hands were very white, looking even delicate, but every part of a Siren was dangerous, including his hands.
Nails that looked short but were sharper than knives methodically removed scales and sliced the meat. He ate until only a complete fish skeleton remained, then tossed the skeleton onto the bank.
Full, Rong Nian went ashore, dragging his dripping clothes toward the dormitory building.
Walking along, he annoyed poked at roadside trees with his sharp nails. While poking, he suddenly realized something.
When that guy named Luo Shizhen forcibly picked him up, he didn’t attack him.
Maybe it was because he hadn’t felt human warmth for too long, or maybe he truly felt not a shred of malice from the other.
A strange human.
As a human, how can he have no dark thoughts at all? Clean as a blank sheet of paper.
Even Mr. Chen had intense hatred for Anomalies, massive amounts of it.
Rong Nian couldn’t figure it out, so he got even angrier.
He sped up and sprinted into the dormitory building.
Behind him, several cleaners silently walked out, skillfully removing the trees destroyed by Rong Nian and replacing them with new ones.
Following the wet trail, they found the fish skeleton on the shore.
“Why only one today? No appetite?”
The cleaners threw the skeleton into the trash bin, chatting while working.
“Probably in a bad mood. Before, he destroyed at most three trees a day. Today seven suffered.”
“Listen to yourself. Has that kid ever had a good mood?”
“Seems so. Hello, cafeteria? This is cleaning. Student Rong Nian just ate a raw fish. Species? Big Carp. Should need deworming medicine.”
Although Rong Nian insisted he was no longer human, every time he ate raw meat, the school remembered to give him deworming medicine.
After the call, the cleaners continued chatting. There were only three of them, but cleaning the huge campus wasn’t strenuous at all. Their sweeping speed was fast enough to create afterimages.
The cleaners of Awakener School were naturally Awakeners too. After all, they needed to intervene when students fought.
The three cleaners appeared rapidly across the school. While cleaning near the principal’s office, they encountered the principal smilingly seeing off Luo Shizhen and the others.
One cleaner mopped head-down. Reaching Luo Shizhen, he saw the new student not only move aside to facilitate his mopping but also greet him with shining eyes.
“Hello.”
The cleaner’s pupils quaked. He looked up at Luo Shizhen blankly.
With a hesitant tone, he replied uncertainly, “Hello?”
Luo Shizhen smiled at him and left with Chen He’an.
The principal stood by the door, waving goodbye with a smile.
“Hello? Hello? Hello?!!”
Only after Luo Shizhen walked far away did the cleaner snap back to reality, muttering to himself and repeating it several times.
“Principal, Principal, did you hear that? That new student just said hello to me. Heavens! He said hello!!”
He was actually a burly man, two meters tall with a long scar on his face. Usually, when silent, he looked cool and intimidating. But now, he wished he could write his shock on his face.
“Our school actually has a student who knows how to say ‘Hello’?!”
The principal loosened his tie, in a very good mood. “More than that. That child is a Purifier.”
“Purification?!”
The cleaner froze first, then looked pleasantly surprised. “That’s a treasure. Eternal Day didn’t fight us for him?”
The principal huffed lightly. “That child is from our jurisdiction. Why shouldn’t he come to our school?”
Though he said that, he told the truth:
“It was luck too. Mr. Chen happened to be protecting Chu Xiao and Qin Yinian. That child goes to the same school as them and bumped into it right when he awakened. Mr. Chen reacted fast and took him for testing immediately.”
Purifiers were too rare. Once revealed, schools would basically fight for them.
Although Purifiers usually wouldn’t team up with their cohort classmates, three years in school would foster some camaraderie.
With camaraderie, if these classmates got polluted later, the Purifiers could smoothy help purify the pollution.
Schools naturally hoped their students had higher survival rates. Thus, every time a Purifier appeared, it was basically a frenzy.
Especially since the world was getting unstable lately; even the Awakener Center might intervene.
Thinking of that polite, obedient child who didn’t seem like an Awakener at all, the principal felt his school had gained a huge advantage.
“If it were any other teacher, maybe bringing him to school wouldn’t be so simple. But Mr. Chen… you know, when it comes to protecting students, he puts them first.”
The cleaner’s expression was complicated. “True. With Mr. Chen as his Safety Officer, at least regarding security, Eternal Day will be at ease.”
“Speaking of which, Principal, since he’s a Purifier, should we give him a separate dorm?”
The principal laughed. “No need. Living in a separate dorm, how can he get close to classmates? Feelings are built up by seeing each other constantly, aren’t they?”
Generally, Purifiers wouldn’t team up with their classmates.
But Luo Shizhen’s personality seemed so tolerant that the principal couldn’t help but look forward to it.
If, if Luo Shizhen could get along with this batch of students, and if these students were capable enough, maybe the unspoken rule could be broken, and Luo Shizhen could form a team with his twenty-seven classmates.
The principal knew it would be hard, so he only thought about it, planning to wait and see.
He thought of how nervous Luo Shizhen looked just now, sticking close to Chen He’an.
“That child seems to not realize yet what an amazing ability he has.”
“But it’s fine. He’ll know soon.”
This Awakener School in Luoxia City had no name, but the dormitory building did.
Static Thoughts Building (Jingsi Building).
From this name, one could see what expectations the teachers had for their students.
From the fact that Static Thoughts Building needed repairs almost every month, one could also see that the teachers’ expectations had failed completely.
Static Thoughts Building had only seven dorms. Nominally four-person rooms, in reality, aside from no walls between beds, everyone had a separate bathroom, balcony, entertainment room, and study.
But no matter how big the space, for Awakeners with strong territorial instincts, tolerating others moving around them remained a challenge.
So, except for the mandatory sleep time, roommates basically stayed in their own entertainment rooms or studies during the day when not in class, doing their own things.
The dorms were named after the Big Dipper stars: Dubhe (Tianshu), Merak (Tianxuan), Phecda (Tianji), Megrez (Tianquan), Alioth (Yuheng), Mizar (Kaiyang), and Alkaid (Yaoguang).
In the dorm named Yuheng, one person had always been missing.
But today, the empty bed was neatly made with comfortable bedding and a mattress.
A name was also pasted on the headboard: Luo Shizhen.
Rong Nian returned like the wind, intending to dive into his entertainment room (his was a big pool), but with excellent eyesight, he noticed the change in the dorm instantly.
Rong Nian couldn’t help stepping forward, staring at the three large, neatly written characters: Luo Shizhen.
It’s that person from just now. He was assigned to Yuheng right from the start.
Unfamiliar scent. These three characters weren’t written by a teacher. Did Luo Shizhen write them himself?
Rong Nian looked around, seeing no one. He stepped forward, leaned in, and sniffed, trying to distinguish if it was Luo Shizhen’s scent.
—Click.
The door opened. Standing there was a student with an upright posture and elegant temperament, looking like a noble young master at first glance.
He was handsome, immaculately groomed, wearing well-fitted clothes that looked tailored, and sporting a simple but expensive watch on his wrist.
Entering, he saw his roommate sniffing the headboard of the previously empty bed like a pervert.
He raised an eyebrow slightly but said nothing.
Startled, Rong Nian straightened up abruptly, vigilant and annoyed, yet with a hint of guilt.
Behind the noble student, a young man with a carefree face squeezed in. His appearance was much more unruly, looking a bit fierce, giving the impression of a wolf.
“Lu Qiujin, you opened the door but didn’t go in. What are you blocking the doorway for?”
The noble student reminded him out of habit, “My name is Lu Qiujin. Xiao Shan, you remembered my name wrong again.” (Note: The raws has the wolf boy call him ‘Lu Jin’, forgetting the middle character ‘Qiu’.)
“Oh, Lu Qiujin. Your name is too hard to remember.”
The young man rudely bumped the door open further, swaggered in with his bag, and was about to throw it onto the empty bed when he discovered it was occupied.
“Newcomer?”
He unceremoniously shoved Rong Nian aside, reading the name on the bed himself: “Luo Shizhen.”
“Tsk! Sounds like another boring guy.”
He looked at Rong Nian. “Hey! Standing here, what for? Couldn’t kill me or Lu Qiujin, so you want to assassinate the new classmate? Sure, tell me when you kill him; I’ll watch.”
Rong Nian’s expression shifted. Before he could recover from Lu Qiujin catching him sniffing Luo Shizhen’s handwriting, he heard this.
He glared viciously at the young man. “Xiao Shan, if you’re bored, go wash your brain. Don’t go crazy every day.”
Finished, Rong Nian entered his entertainment room with a cold face and slammed the door. Bang.
Xiao Shan was a bit surprised, looking back at Lu Qiujin, who walked in slowly.
“Sun rise from the west today? Before, if I bumped Rong Nian, he’d have extended his claws at me already.”
Lu Qiujin smiled seemingly gently, but his eyes held no warmth. “I’m going to rest. Suit yourself.”
He entered his study.
Xiao Shan clicked his tongue, indifferent to his roommates’ attitudes.
He was too busy every day, busy finding people to fight or training himself. He had no time to care about his roommates’ personalities.
Xiao Shan threw his bag on his own bed and went to his entertainment room. His room was full of fitness equipment and combat gear. Every time he went in, he wouldn’t come out for at least an hour.
As for the study? He knocked it down long ago. He didn’t read books anyway.
The school buildings were soundproofed well, but Lu Qiujin knew his two roommates’ temperaments well. Even without noise, he could guess Xiao Shan went boxing again, and Rong Nian was soaking in his pool.
Two boring, low-taste roommates.
Lu Qiujin was reading when his phone lit up. It didn’t ring, but messages jumped frantically.
[Qiujin, did you see the message I sent?]
[A new student with Purification ability has arrived at your school. Doesn’t your dorm lack one person? High probability he’ll be arranged in your dorm for the first month.]
[Seize the opportunity. Your pollution level is too high. If this goes on, you definitely won’t live past three years.]
[Even if he can’t thoroughly purify your pollution, you must have a good relationship with that Purifier.]
[Best to become friends with him, then bring him home as a guest. This is a Purification ability; it’s all connections.]
[Your younger brother worships Awakeners the most. Besides the Purifier classmate, bring other classmates home to play too.]
[Control your temper. Endure it in front of them. Build good relationships.]
[The family spent so much money for you; it’s time for you to repay us.]
[Did you see this? Qiujin.]
[Reply if seen.]
The gentle smile Lu Qiujin maintained outside had fallen. He looked indifferently at the messages popping up one by one.
The sender said to build a relationship with the Purifier for the sake of his pollution levels.
But every word and sentence expressed certainty that his pollution wouldn’t be thoroughly cleared and he wouldn’t live past three years.
So, he had to use his final value to pave the way for that younger brother he had barely met.
Lu Qiujin wasn’t sad. After all, he was used to it.
He replied unhurriedly: [Okay, Father.]
[I will be friends with the new classmate.]
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