Facing such blatant favoritism, the students could only swallow it down. So far, all anyone who tried to argue with the Third Prince had managed to do was rouse his ire and gotten the same old answer, “If you can do it better than her, I’ll award you the points too.”

Because of this comment, many students had set Gu Lingzhi as their target to be surpassed. Yet, time after time, their failure to better her proved that the Third Prince’s favoritism was not without reason.

Although Gu Lingzhi’s performance was not always very outstanding, she managed to outdo everyone by just a bit every time. This alone showed that she was above average. Being able to surpass one’s peers while at a lower level, once or twice might be a coincidence, but to regularly do so meant that Gu Lingzhi’s control of her spiritual energy was definitely superior to the rest.

Be that as it may, the Third Prince still enjoyed giving her more pointers… or it could be said that he was just taking advantage of the chance to do so.

“No, you’re doing it wrong. In this case, you should slow down the release of your attack, like this,” the Third Prince guided. While he said this, his hands found their way around her arms. No matter how one looked at it, it seemed like he was embracing her rather than guiding her through the motions.

“Your Highness…” Gu Lingzhi complained, unable to hold herself back any longer. “It’s fine if you just guide me verbally from over there, you don’t have to do this.”

“No!” Rong Yuan refused.

Of course, given the chance to openly take advantage of her, how could he let such a good opportunity slip away?

“Your control of spiritual energy still needs more guidance, it will be much more effective if we do it this way!” Rong Yuan added. Secretly, however, he mused that Gu Lingzhi was truly brilliant, being able to achieve such splendid control when she was only a Level Six Martial Student. If he himself were not already exceptional in his control of spiritual energy, it would have been difficult for him to “guide” her any further.

Gu Linglong could not stand seeing Gu Lingzhi and the Third Prince behaving so intimately. She approached them and asked shyly, “Your Highness, I’m not too familiar with controlling my spiritual energy as well. Could you teach me too?”

However, Rong Yuan just stared at her blandly, coldly remarking, “As a Level Six Martial Student, you’re telling me that you can’t be better than a Level Four Martial Student? How useless, the school doesn’t need talentless wastrels like you.”

Instantly, the whole class atmosphere changed, and there were many varied expressions on the students’ faces.

They felt like Rong Yuan’s words were also targeted at them, the weight of his remarks falling on them heavily like a giant hammer.

Being chastised by the Third Prince, Gu Linglong became paler. She bit her lip and did not dare to say anything more.

Watching how the Third Prince’s words instantly silenced the entire class, Gu Lingzhi could not help but be impressed by his ability to shock others. Not everyone could stun an entire class just by saying a few words. In fact, most of her teachers in the previous semester were rarely ever critical, and most of them constantly gave positive encouragement to the students.

Even as all this was happening, Gu Lingzhi could still feel the heat of the Third Prince’s body behind her, causing her heart to skip a beat. In order to get herself out of this sticky situation as quickly as possible, Gu Lingzhi indicated that she was ready for the class assessment soon after the class began.

Rong Yuan’s eyebrows twitched, wanting but being unable to refute her. Unwillingly, he straightened himself and stepped away from her.

“Okay, begin.”

Gu Lingzhi began manipulating the spiritual energy within herself, and under Rong Yuan’s watchful gaze, morphed a ball of water about the size of her thumb into various shapes.

One, two, three, four...

When she had finally been able to make all ten shapes with water by controlling her spiritual energy, Gu Lingzhi shook her hand and caused the ball of water to dissipate into spiritual energy, which dispersed into the air.

“I’m done, can I go now?”

Officially, the Royal School did not require students to stay until the end of each class. Once they had completed the tasks set by the teacher in-charge, they could leave at any time.

“Mmm,” Rong Yuan nodded his head. Then, he continued, “You did well for the first part of the assignment. Now, you can begin the second part.”

What, there was a second component? When?

Pretending not to see the look of disdain on Gu Lingzhi’s face, Rong Yuan nodded seriously and said, “While you did well controlling your spiritual energy, as a Martial Artist, real-life experience is still the most important thing. Your task now is to capture one beast using your water-based spiritual energy. Injuring or killing it constitutes a failure.”

Hearing this, the expressions on the students’ darkened. They started to worry about their already pitiful point count. Water-based spiritual energy already had a low offensive power. Now, Rong Yuan wanted them to use it to capture a live beast.

Wasn’t he just making things difficult for them?

Meanwhile, knowing that Rong Yuan was just deliberately preventing her from leaving, Gu Lingzhi bit her lip and turned on her heel, stalking away towards the Red Leaf Hill.

Wasn’t it just catching a beast? Well, she’ll just do it to prove it to him then.

“Yuan Zheng, I’ll leave this place to you. I’ll go take a look out there,” Rong Yuan instructed, dumping all his responsibilities onto Yuan Zheng without a tinge of guilt.

Anyway, the students were already used to Yuan Zheng, the substitute teacher. In fact, they became even more focused in their training.

Since Gu Lingzhi could complete the task so quickly, they could do it too!

These students who were hard at work practicing may not have realized it, but in just a month, their control over their spiritual energy had already undergone great improvement. In the first few classes, only a few people could successfully complete the task. However, now, most of the students managed to complete the task successfully and they were also getting faster.

At the same time, there was a strange rumor going around at school.

According to the rumors, the class of Martial Students that the Third Prince was in-charge of was filled with cultivation lunatics. Other than the time spent in lessons, most of them spent their remaining time near the battle arenas. They also seemed extremely desperate to earn points, which was something that confused many other students.

As the person responsible for all these, Rong Yuan merely said that pressure was a good motivation. In order to help his students along the tiring path of cultivation, a healthy amount of stress was necessary.

Back at the Red Leaf Hill, Gu Lingzhi had caught sight of a beast and instantly began her attack. Using her spiritual strength, she formed several arrows made of water and shot them at the beast’s eyes.

Of course, she did not intend for this attack to actually blind the beast because the task required the beast to be captured unharmed. Rather, she only intended to change the beast’s escape trajectory.

Indeed, as she intended, the beast quickly shrieked and turned around the instant it detected the incoming water arrows. As it turned, however, it came face to face with more balls of water that Gu Lingzhi had fired and found itself trapped.

Taking advantage of the beast’s immobility, Gu Lingzhi activated her Sparrow Wings movement technique to quickly approach the beast. Stretching her hand out to grab it, she caught the beast that was half the height of a regular human.

Turning around to face Rong Yuan, she inquired, “Your Highness, can I leave now?”

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