"What, are you doing? Leave him alone!"
Despite still crawling on the ground, Tin tried to stand up for Shui. Shui did appreciate it, but he knew it wouldn't help. However, he didn't come here to cause trouble so he tried to talk his way out of this.
"Are you really gonna start trouble with me? Unlike that idiot, you should be able to tell who my master is."
Most of the gang surrounding him looked nervous when he brought up his master, but the one standing directly in front of him was unruffled. Standing at six feet tall with a firm body, he responded with a cold expression.
"You beat up one of our students. How can we back down so easily?"
"Hmph, is that how you wanna do this?"
"Yes. We can't let our students be bullied without doing anything. But maybe if you slap yourself twice and give us ten high-quality spirit gems, we can think about burying the hatchet."
When he said this, the rest of the group started snickering with devious smiles as they looked at Shui with his inferior cultivation. Although his master was indeed scary, he was only in the early Earth Realm while both of their deputy headmasters were in mid Earth Realm. He might be the disciple of an honoured array master, but as long as they didn't kill him they didn't think there would be much trouble since he attacked them first. Whether he submitted before the beating or after it, they would be satisfied as long as they took advantage of this moment to get some benefits from him.
Since they took a firm stance, Shui decided that the time for talk was over. He packed his silk coat into his space expansion bag so that it wouldn't get dirty and then signaled them to attack by gesturing with his right index finger.
With that as the trigger, one of the group went up and threw a punch at Shui, but it was easily dodged and his arm was grabbed and used to flip him to the ground. Although this would be a good oppurtunity, since they weren't enough of a threat he didn't bother draining his essence. Before they could regain their wits from seeing Shui easily take care of one of them, he jumped and landed a spinning kick on the head of another student. This boy was unprepared, but none of them expected him to be taken down with just that one kick. However, none of them had realised that Shui had a two-star saint body, which meant that with his body alone, he could put out the same amount of force as someone in early Soul Realm.
With this amount of strength, Shui took care of the entire gang without breaking a sweat.
"Tch, wasted my time."
Tin was in awe as he saw how overwhelmingly Shui defeated the gang. He was only in the fifth level in the Mortal Realm, but he knew that the strength Shui displayed was abnormal to say the least. In the past year, he believed that he had improved by a lot, but compared to Shui it didn't seem like much.
Since he had taken care of the gang, Shui put on his silk coat once more and was about to head on his way, when a fireball stopped him. Shui looked to his left and noticed a young man holding a hand fan near his face and walking towards him with a dark glare. Shui remembered that he was one of the core students who failed to become Nikolai's disciple and made a fuss.
"You're Shui, correct?"
"That's right. Are you going to apologize for your brash use of spells?"
This core student was at the sixth level in the Soul Realm, but that didn't make Shui back down. Shui's lack of concern over his appearance enraged the young man even further.
"After you beat up my followers, you dare call me brash!"
"Oh, these are yours? Then you should put them on a tighter leash. I don't know why your dogs thought they could mess with me."
The gaze with which the young man looked at Shui, became tinged with killing intent. After being rejected by Nikolai, he worked hard to become a disciple of one of the deputy headmasters and thought of himself as a genius without comparison in Cyrus. He believed that the martial path was the true way for a cultivator and that arrays and such were mere side paths that would never reach the apex.
But out of nowhere, the Headmaster picked some trash among the ordinary students and made him his direct disciple. Although he wasn't officially the next Headmaster, he would definitely be a candidate. When this trash suddenly tried to stand on the same stage as him, how could he not teach him his place?
He waited until the Headmaster went on a business trip and then repeatedly made things difficult for Tin. He wasn't planning on killing him, but the idea was certainly becoming more and more appealing. And while he was having his lackeys disciplining Tin, Shui appeared. He still hadn't forgotten how this boy had taken the position that should have been his, so he had looked forward to his pitiful figure after being beaten. However, all of his lackeys were beaten instead.
'Those trash! Can't even take care of one brat!'
"Hmph, even so, my dogs aren't people you can touch. If you want to leave, be prepared to pay for this debt."
"Oh really. I wonder who's going to make me pay."
Tin admired Shui, but even he didn't think Shui was strong enough to go up against Matt. He knew that Shui wouldn't back down but he couldn't even get back on his feet and help him or get help.
'Damn it! Why am I still so useless?!'
At this time, there were many who wanted to stop Matt from bullying someone an entire realm below him, but none of them were brave enough to stand out. Even a few of the weaker instructors, knew that they could only be a match for Matt at best, and rather than an outsider, they were more fearful of what would happen if they went against the deputy headmaster's disciple.
Matt closed his hand fan and pointed it at Shui. In response to this motion, five fireballs the size of his head flew towards Shui. If he relied on just his body, he wouldn't be able to dodge all of them in time. However, after getting more familiar with martial intent, he discovered another way of using it that allowed him to get even stronger.
By using martial intent as the glue, he could fully utilize his body, energy and soul at once without any rejection among these three powers. It wasn't at the level of fusion, but in this state of harmonic trinity it became difficult to properly assess his cultivation or his limits.
Under harmonic trinity, Shui felt as he was free from his mortal shell and was one with the world itself. He read the trajectories of the fireballs and dodged them with graceful dance-like movements while getting closer to the young man. By the time he dodged the fifth fireball, there was still about one cale of distance between them, but Shui crossed that in an instant and launched his fist at the young man's face.
Shui's punch was blocked by the young man's fan, but it was the young man who quickly backed away. Even he wasn't sure why he did so, and that fact made him even more wary of the freak in front of him.