Chapter 160: A Grand Game?
Translator: ryuxenji Editor: H2dH2mr
Still, Instructor Number Two was not as crazy as Instructor Number Five. Of all the countless ways he could use to torment Ling Lan, he only used the simplest of them, but it was still enough to frighten Ling Lan to within an inch of her life during every training session with him.
Who knew where Instructor Number Two obtained his intel? (Little Four was cackling smugly; of course the info came from him.) He brought the ghost movies and horror films of Ling Lan's previous world to life. Ling Lan had thought that after Instructor Number Five's perverse torments, she was already immune to any other torments, but who knew she still had a weakness ... actually being terrified of those illusionary ghosts and spirits.
These eldritch ghosts had no form, so physical attacks were useless against them. Many times, Ling Lan found her own sword turned against herself by these ghosts to disembowel herself or stab out her own heart, where she then breathed her last without being able to do anything. This greatly frustrated Ling Lan — she had never felt so helpless before. At least during Instructor Number Five's insane training, she had not been completely unable to fight back.
From the start, Instructor Number Two had not told her what she should do. Every time she entered the learning space, she would be thrown directly into all sorts of horror films to train, putting Ling Lan through time after time of unending terror. Ling Lan finally knew what a so-called endless trial was now ... it was truly unbearable.
In the course of dying five or six times, Ling Lan had tried countless ways, finally grasping the use of spiritual sensing to kind of sense the existence of those eldritch ghosts. And so she began to focus on training with the spiritual power training methods bequeathed to her by her father, trying to use her spiritual power to fight these ghosts in these horror films ... Only at this time did Instructor Number Two appear to instruct Ling Lan on how to pull out her spiritual power and teach her the way to divide it.
This extraction and fragmentation of spiritual power was agonizing — every time, Ling Lan would go through the suffering of having her spiritual power being forcefully ripped apart. This was much more painful and much more unbearable than the feeling of her physical body being torn apart — every time, Ling Lan would only barely succeed after she started puking from the pain. If it weren't for the fact that she did not want to die in myriad strange ways, Ling Lan would have lost all courage to even attempt a second time.
Still, this inhuman torment had significant results. Ling Lan's original one cord of spiritual power split into two cords, and then the two cords split into three cords, and so on until she finally succeeded in splitting out 12 cords of spiritual feelers. In Instructor Number Two's words, she had succeeded in becoming an initiate level spiritual power user. Of course, from the moment Ling Lan succeeded in extracting and projecting her formless spiritual power, this meant that she now had the ability to defend against those formless spirits, giving her the possibility of survival in those endless horror film scenarios.
In these three years, Ling Lan had pretty much lived through all the horror films in her previous world. From the start when she could only defend passively, till the point when she could finally fight back, to now where she could kill her way through the sea of ghosts — these three years caused Ling Lan to grow up very quickly! This method of Instructor Number Two's which forced Ling Lan to reincarnate repetitively caused Ling Lan to master the various uses of spiritual power in a very short amount of time. Ling Lan even managed to invent several spiritual power attacks of her own ...
Regarding this, Instructor Number Two could only exclaim in silence at how aberrant Ling Lan's tolerance was. Consequently, he further increased the difficulty — in several attacks in some scenes, he took part personally ... and so Ling Lan once again experienced the sensation of dying at ghostly hands, welcoming yet a new round of evolution.
Due to the endless pressure of terror, Ling Lan's innate talent awakened at a much faster rate than other people. Not only did her Profound Insight talent awaken completely so she could now use it as she willed, she even awakened a second innate talent — Ice Affinity, which allowed Ling Lan to learn the element of ice. This caused Ling Lan's body to emit a faint chill, and in tandem with her cold and expressionless ice-block face, a new generation cold-faced pretty boy came into the world!
The awakening of Ice Affinity not only took Ling Lan by surprise; the instructors of the learning space were also very surprised. Ling Lan's body clearly was not born with the element of ice, so why did this innate talent awaken? Later on, Instructor Number One made an irresponsible guess — perhaps because in her heart Ling Lan believed that cold-mannered slackfaced people were all good, while those who liked to smile were a black-bellied lot full of bad water, so the element of ice had become fond of her ...
Wasn't this just ridiculous? Look well, this was what is meant by an irresponsible guess!
Ling Lan truly shocked and surprised everyone with the awakening of her innate talents. The awakening of the innate talents of others would always show some sign, whether big or small — for instance, Qi Long's Animal Instinct had presented young and just became more and more obvious. During this period of time, his initiate instructor mentored him for a full year, letting him fully master Animal Instinct. He was now especially sensitive to those who tried to get close to him, directly being able to intuit their true intentions ... he was just like a human lie detector. Moreover, under his instructor's invitation, Qi Long also officially became his true disciple ...
Han Jijyun's awakened innate talent was Strategy, an enhanced version of intelligence. This would definitely aid him in becoming a perfect intelligence-type staff officer.
In comparison, Luo Lang's awakened innate talent was rather unexpected —— Alter Ego! When his innate talent activated, it would automatically create a new personality — this personality could be passionate, or heartless, or wrathful, or cold-blooded ... once, it even presented the personality of a ruthless fighting machine. At that time, both his attacks and his tactics were extremely scary, because Luo Lang had become so cold-blooded that he would even risk himself in his calculations ...
Whenever Luo Lang's innate talent activated, Qi Long would become extremely agitated, because only Qi Long's Animal Instinct could tell whether Luo Lang's new personality was good or bad. If it were a bad personality, the group would pounce on Luo Lang to control him, to prevent him from doing anything unforgivable. It was truly an undeniably dangerous innate talent to awaken! Of course, this type of uncontrollable innate talent like Luo Lang's was pretty much half-useless ... without Qi Long there, if a bad personality presented, no one would know. These personalities were all able to fake normalcy, so only Qi Long's Animal Instinct could detect it as its natural counter. Of course, this was also true of Ling Lan's Profound Insight, but no one knew about this innate talent of Ling Lan's. Everyone just assumed that Ling Lan's awakened talent was Ice Affinity.
Both Han Jijyun and Luo Lang had also been taken in by their instructor as true disciples; this was especially imperative for Luo Lang. His dangerous innate talent gave his instructor no choice but to seek help from his sect, hoping they would be able to think of a good way to resolve this latent threat of Luo Lang's.
Of course, both Qi Long and Luo Lang's talents were suitable for operating mecha, but compared to the relatively unstable Alter Ego, Animal Instinct was undoubtedly a level better.
Lin Zhong-qing's awakened innate talent was Concealment. When it was activated, his presence would vanish without a trace. As Ling Lan would say, he was a person very suited to become an assassin.
Han Xuya's awakened innate talent was Violence. Once it activated, her combat strength would multiply by several folds. This was also a low-level innate talent very suitable for mecha operation. Everyone lamented that this innate talent was wasted on Han Xuya, causing Han Xuya to fly into a rage and demand a PK 1 from them with her talent activated. Then, this strongwoman would beat them into the ground with her abominable strength ... it was clear to see that the talent of Violence was very helpful in terms of providing combat strength.
The most unique talent was Luo Chao's. Initially, everyone thought that the shy and pacifist Luo Chao would awaken some type of lifestyle related innate talent, such as Favourable Impression, or Voice Control etcetera ... But surprisingly, she actually awakened Navigator, which was very rare among females. This meant that Luo Chao would become an excellent starship captain in the future.
Yuan Youyun's awakened talent was Energy Reservation, most suitable for drawn out battles, while Luo Shaoyun's was Berserker, the complete opposite of Yuan Youyun's. Luo Shaoyun's talent lent itself well to a quick-paced battle, where he could just rain a torrent of blows down on the opponent to crush them, and was not good for a drawn out battle. He Chaoyang awakened Phantasm, while Li Jinghong awakened Thousand Li 2 Astral Projection. Both these innate talents were not really combat-suited and were extremely common. Still, the two boys were very happy, because many of the other students in their class did not even awaken any innate talent at all. In other words, they did not undergo a spiritual mutation.
Some of the awakened talents of the members of the two teams were counters of each other or very similar, so the two teams often PK-ed among themselves. The relationship between the members increased steeply till they were all bosom buddies, however, they all also knew that some of them would be leaving once they turned 16. This was because the paths they would walk in the future were divergent.
Everyone also knew that the youngest little sister Luo Chao had a crush on Boss Lan, but Boss Lan did not seem to reciprocate ... he treated Luo Chao exactly the same as he treated them all. They felt that this was a bit of a shame, for they were actually very willing to leave the adorable little sister Luo Chao in Boss Lan's hands.
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One day, Ling Lan was studying some class materials on the virtual network when she suddenly heard her communicator ring blaringly.
Ling Lan glanced down and saw with some surprise that it was Luo Lang. Normally, either Qi Long or Han Jijyun would be the one to contact her; it was extremely rare for Luo Lang to do so. Why was this fellow contacting her ...? Curious, Ling Lan connected the call and asked, "Luo Lang, what's up?"
"Boss, come to the academy canteen quickly! Qi Long is going up against some tenth grade students ... the other side has over about 20 people!" Luo Lang's tone was anxious. Qi Long was indeed very strong, but against so many people, his pair of fists would still be unlikely to defeat the opponents' horde of fists.
"Calm down. What happened?" asked Ling Lan calmly.
"A female student from Class-B accidentally bumped into the other, and an argument broke out. One of the girls on the other side actually slapped the Class-B student several times. We just happened to be in the area, and Han Xuya could not overlook it and so went out to defend the student. Boss, you know how hot-tempered Han Xuya is. After some bickering back and forth, they almost wanted to hit Han Xuya as well, so Qi Long stepped out. And then twenty students suddenly emerged from their side to surround Qi Long, demanding that Qi Long kneel down and apologise! They also said they wanted to teach us arrogant juniors 3 a lesson ..." Luo Lang detailed the entire stream of events to Ling Lan.
"Got it. I'll be there at once! Also, delay for as long as possible!" After giving these instructions to Luo Lang, Ling Lan hung up. After some thought, she immediately contacted Wu Jiong, "Wu Jiong, notify all the students of Class-A and Class-B to gather at the academy canteen!"
"Uh? Okay!" Wu Jiong was stunned for a moment, but immediately agreed and then asked, "What's going on? Why do the students of both classes need to go there?"
A sly smile appeared on Ling Lan's lips, "Do you want to play a grand game with me?"
"A grand game?" Wu Jiong's interest perked up instantly.
"I'm very curious ... what the 'grand armed melee' which has disappeared from the academy for over a hundred years is like ..." Ling Lan's smirk was sinister. At this moment, she seemed to be channelling a faint shadow of Instructor Number Five.
"A grand armed melee!" yelled Wu Jiong in shock. He was drenched in cold sweat in an instant.
"What? You don't dare to play with me?" Ling Lan's tone seemed mocking, but sounded more like the seductive tone of a demon.
Wu Jiong felt his heart pounding violently, his mind filled with the idea of a grand armed melee ... He gulped audibly, swallowing a mouthful of saliva then said, "Fine, I'll play with you! Who's the opponent?"
Translator's Thoughts
ryuxenji ryuxenji
Please note that the term 'legacy disciple' will be changed to 'true disciple'. Retroactive changes have already been made. This is to avoid confusion with inheritors of legacies, as well as to match up with the change of term by the original author herself.