Chapter 51

Fang Yuan skips class the day the academy elder himself is teaching, and the students whisper over his empty seat while the elder’s expression turns dark, privately gloating that he has finally caught the weakness he could not find the day before. Wanting to seem impartial rather than eager to punish him, he sends two guards to the hostel to fetch Fang Yuan, intending only to make him stand outside for three hours, a humiliation meant to crack his image of invincibility in front of passing classmates. ^{ch. 51}

As the class waits, restless and unable to focus, Gu Yue Fang Zheng looks at his brother’s empty seat and thinks privately that Fang Yuan brought this punishment on himself by challenging the elder’s authority. When footsteps finally reach the door, a student opens it eagerly, then freezes and screams, stumbling backward over a desk at the sight of a bloodied hand gripping the frame. ^{ch. 51}

Fang Yuan stands in the doorway bathed in blood, dragging a guard by the hair whose left arm has been torn off, evidently unconscious with blood still gushing from the shoulder, while the second guard sent to fetch him is nowhere to be seen. Panicked students recognize the guard and cry out that Fang Yuan has killed again, this time turning on the academy’s own men, and the room dissolves into shouting and fear. The academy elder, who would not have cared had two external martial artists simply died, flares into rage at what he takes for the murder of the academy’s own guards, reading it as a challenge to the academy’s prestige and to his own face. ^{ch. 51}

Fang Yuan releases his grip and the guard’s head drops into the spreading pool of blood, spattering his trousers, before he cups his fists to the elder and states calmly that he has something to report. The elder, arms folded behind his back and expecting to finally have grounds to punish him, tells him coldly to speak. ^{ch. 51}