Chapter 1: Ten-Star Martial Saint! Back to Senior Year!

【Brain Storage Locker Number Pickup Counter】

.............

“I really was fucking asking to die!”

Fang Qingchen sat at his desk, staring blankly at his own hands.

His fingers were long, fair, and clean, nothing like the way they had looked in the final moment preserved in his memory—after he had perished together with the SS-rank feral beast, the Violet Lightning Mad Dragon, when his body had been drained dry and collapsed, riddled with wounds and ruined beyond recognition.

Then he looked up at his surroundings.

The classroom was clean and orderly. One familiar yet faintly unfamiliar youthful face after another sat obediently on their stools, heads raised toward the podium, watching the Old Witch write neat lines of chalk on the blackboard.

Outside the window, cicadas buzzed and sunlight poured down.

The scene was carved into his very bones. In an instant, it jolted him fully awake and made him understand everything.

“I’ve... been reborn to my high school years?”

The moment that thought appeared, the confusion in his eyes vanished and was replaced by perfect clarity.

The smile tugging at the corners of his mouth became impossible to suppress.

He pressed one hand against his forehead, his fingers plunging deep into his hair.

At last, the wild, unrestrained laughter could no longer be held back.

“Hahahaha...”

That laughter carried weariness, regret, and relief.

As well as an indescribable ecstasy.

Then, almost without thinking, he swung his arm in a full arc and slapped that devastatingly handsome face of his with all his might!

“Good thing I died!”

SLAP!

The crisp crack of the slap rang out like a thunderclap in the first class of the afternoon.

Several half-asleep students were startled so badly that they jerked upright on the spot.

“Holy shit! Was that thunder?”

“What the hell was that noise?”

“Damn it! That was louder than when my dad whipped me with his Seven Wolves belt!”

The classroom, which had been relatively quiet just a moment ago, instantly exploded into chaos.

Quite a few gossip-loving students turned their heads one after another and looked toward the very center of the classroom, where the sound had come from.

Even the Old Witch, who had been writing on the board with full concentration, was startled. Her fingers twitched, and the chalk in her hand snapped into two pieces.

Several top students had their train of thought interrupted, and the looks on their faces immediately turned ugly, their eyes filled with irritation.

But the moment they saw that the person responsible was Fang Qingchen, quite a few of them revealed gleeful expressions.

“Oh, it’s Young Master Fang, the lovesick fool. Then that’s nothing unusual.”

“I heard that this morning he confessed to the school belle, Lin Wanxing, for the seventh time, and she still turned him down.”

“That slap was brutal. He probably thinks the gift he gave her today wasn’t weighty enough.”

“This is gold. Absolute gold.”

“But to be fair, Lin Wanxing really is gorgeous. Especially those long legs of hers—they’re longer than my life.”

“Fang Qingchen’s family may have some money, but at most he’s just a minor rich second-generation kid. Among all of School Beauty Lin’s suitors, he doesn’t really stand out.”

“Besides, tomorrow is the day of our talent awakening. Lin Wanxing is far more calculating than she looks...”

The students whispered loudly, dragging out Fang Qingchen’s humiliation from earlier in the day and flogging it all over again.

Listening to the gossip around him, Fang Qingchen touched the bright red handprint on his face and smiled more miserably than if he had cried.

They were right.

In his previous life, he really had been exactly that kind of pathetic fool.

He clearly had a father at the Half-Step Martial God realm and a tycoon mother rich enough to rival a nation.

With a mere crook of his finger, countless beauties would have thrown themselves into his arms.

Yet somehow he must have had lard clogging his brain, because he had fallen hopelessly in unrequited love with Lin Wanxing and become utterly unable to pull himself free.

Compared to how hard he would simp for her after awakening his talent tomorrow, what he was doing now was child’s play.

And because his heart had never been on martial arts, he had wasted the golden years of martial cultivation for nothing.

After being rejected for the ninety-ninth time, his mentality had completely collapsed. He gave up on himself and spent his days drowning in drunken excess and luxury.

Not only had he thoroughly disgraced his parents, he had also become a laughingstock for the entire Great Xia Nation, a joke for its people to mock over dinner and idle conversation.

It was not until the day of his thirtieth birthday that he finally woke up, pulled himself together, and began striving again.

Though he had matured late, he eventually became the Great Xia Nation’s only Ten-Star Martial Saint, the one and only warrior whose combat strength was enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with a Martial God.

The strongest man beneath the Martial God realm!

Unfortunately, time waited for no one.

In the end, he still failed to step into the Martial God realm.

Then, during that apocalyptic beast tide that swept across the entire Great Xia Nation, he fought three SS-rank feral beasts to cover the civilians’ retreat, burning away every last drop of his blood and Qi until he died in battle.

Meanwhile, Lin Wanxing, with the help of her own martial talent and Fang Qingchen’s increasingly excessive efforts and endless expensive gifts, soared into the sky in a single bound.

Before she even turned thirty, she had already stepped into the Martial Saint realm. Surrounded by countless halos, she became the Great Xia Empire’s hottest rising martial star and the nation’s goddess.

......

“In my last life, I must have been possessed!”

“To think I actually put myself through that many utterly humiliating scenes for the sake of Lin Wanxing. I really wasn’t acting human!”

As he recalled everything from his previous life, even Fang Qingchen—who had been tempered through countless battles of blood and fire—could not help feeling his scalp go numb and his old face burn red.

Around him, his classmates were still whispering and gossiping.

At this point in time, they still did not know Fang Qingchen’s true identity.

Naturally, they had no reservations when they talked about him.

“Oh, right. I remember that after Fang Qingchen’s confession failed, he even declared that after Lin Wanxing awakens her talent tomorrow, he’s going to give her a huge gift as proof of his sincerity!”

A freckle-faced girl muttered the latest bit of gossip with a look full of curiosity.

In the center seat of the second row, Lin Wanxing listened as everyone around her discussed both herself and Fang Qingchen.

A sweetly affected smile hung on her delicate, pretty face.

The subtle, carefully calculated makeup on her face made her already beautiful features look even more refined.

As though none of this had anything to do with her, she casually tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and continued taking notes.

Several boys who had been secretly stealing glances at her were so captivated that their eyes were practically glued to her.

Seeing that the classroom atmosphere had been completely stirred into a mess by Fang Qingchen’s laughter, the Old Witch said nothing. She simply turned around with a stern face and swept her gaze across every student in the room.

At once, the students went silent and did not dare utter another sound.

“Is it that funny?”

“This is a classroom, not a marketplace!”

After scolding them once, the Old Witch turned her gaze toward Fang Qingchen.

She frowned.

This student truly gave her a headache.

If she called him a bad student, his physical conditioning could still rank steadily within the top three of the class.

But if she called him a good student, all his thoughts were spent on pursuing Lin Wanxing.

Not only were his cultural subject grades terrible, even his martial arts grades were merely barely in the lower-middle range.

He was the textbook example of a useless rich second-generation kid who relied on his family’s money to pile up resources and inflate his physical stats, yet performed terribly in actual combat and refused to study.

He had disrupted classroom order, and he was a notoriously bad student to begin with.

When the Old Witch dealt with students like this, she never showed mercy.

Her face turned stern, and her gaze gradually narrowed and locked onto him.

Then she launched a death stare at him.

This move had never failed. No student could endure it for more than three seconds.

They would always obediently stand up.

But at that moment, Fang Qingchen was supporting his forehead with one hand and drowning in his own emotions, so he did not notice it at all.

“Young Master Fang has gotten bold. He actually dares to go against the homeroom teacher now.”

The students had not expected Fang Qingchen to be so tough today, and inwardly they were all praising his courage.

Every single one of them waited eagerly for the show to begin.

The Old Witch’s eyes were starting to ache from glaring so hard, yet Fang Qingchen still did not move at all. Her expression immediately became a little awkward.

After teaching so many classes over the years, this was the first time she had ever seen a student remain seated so steadily under her death stare, as though nothing were happening.

“Fang Qingchen, stand up right now!”

Whoosh!

With a flick of her hand, the broken piece of chalk shot out, drawing a white line through the air.

It flew straight toward Fang Qingchen’s forehead.

It was so fast that nobody had time to react.

This was her signature move—never missing, enough to leave you dazed, but not enough to damage your brain.

Just as the chalk was about to strike Fang Qingchen, his ear twitched ever so slightly.

The countless life-and-death battles of his previous life had already carved combat instinct into his flesh and blood.

He did not even need to raise his eyes. From the sound of the wind alone, he already knew the speed and trajectory of the chalk.

The hand that had been supporting his forehead turned and struck out in reverse.

In that instant, his palm became like an immortal crane soaring through the sky, graceful and unbound.

His index finger and middle finger became like a crane’s beak, swaying ever so slightly.

With effortless ease, and just one centimeter before the chalk could reach his forehead, he caught it between those two fingers!

Elegant beyond compare!

A basic martial art, the Crane-Seizing Finger!

Silence!

A deathly silence!

The students stared at Fang Qingchen with strange looks, as if they were looking at a monster.

Then the classroom exploded once more!

“Holy shit! He caught that?”

“Did anyone else feel like there was an immortal crane dancing inside his hand just now?”

“I must not be getting enough nutrition lately. My eyes are definitely playing tricks on me!”