As I said, Long Fan Xue would suffer quite the…sad demise later, but I only learned about that far in the future. She hadn't been officially expelled yet, but she would be gone in a few days without me even noticing her absence. After all, I had better things to do than keep track of someone like her.
Instead, I focused more on the lesson that was being delivered by the professor at the front of the lecture hall.
"Good morning, students." He was a middle-aged man, average looking with glasses and a brown suit, complete with a plain tie. Even so, he radiated an air of wisdom as he stood in front of the screen, his PowerPoint slides being projected to the front. He smiled and did a slight bow. "I'm Ling Zhen, and I'll be your teacher for spirit arrays."
The students murmured amongst themselves as they watched him. A couple of hooligans in the back scoffed.
"He doesn't look strong."
"Why did they assign us such a weak teacher?"
Ling Zhen raised an eyebrow as he stared at them. "If you think I'm weak, then you're more than welcome to leave the class. I have no interest teaching unmotivated and disrespectful students."
"Hah! Who do you think you are, old man?"
"We'll teach you a lesson!"
The two delinquents jumped on top of their desks, before launching themselves at the stationary Ling Zhen.
"Hey! What do you think you're doing?" One of the other students demanded, rising to her feet. "You can't just attack the lecturer so randomly!"
"Shut up, Su Ling!" One of them snapped. "You know how the world of cultivation works! Strong eats the weak! If the professor dies, then it's his own fault for being too weak! And we can do whatever we want because we are STRONG!"
What the fuck was with this bullshit logic?
I was about to intervene, my hand extended to draw my Obsidian Drake bow from my storage device, but I detected a subtle change in qi. Realizing I didn't have to do anything, I stayed my hand and remained seated.
The two delinquents, though, didn't realize how screwed they were. They had finally come within range of the podium, their fists glowing with qi. One was using fire, the other was using lightning. The destructive energies scorched the stage, leaving black smears.
Even so, Ling Zhen didn't budge. His hands behind his back, he smiled as he watched the two errant students approach him.
Then suddenly, the stage was engulfed in blinding light. Runes floated around Ling Zhen, coalescing into patterned circles. Serpents and dragons made up of spiritual qi surged forth, slamming into the two hooligans with tremendous impact that dissipated their aggressive qi immediately and sent them crashing down. The both of them howled in pain as they writhed, their limbs twisted at unnatural angles.
"W…what?! How?!"
"Did you forget what I'm supposed to teach you?" Ling Zhen held up a hand, casting an ominous figure amidst the arcane illumination of his glowing spirit arrays. The two hooligans gulped. The professor tilted his head to the side, spinning his finger about. "I wonder how I should deal with you."
The dragons and serpents reared up around them, growling silently as they glowered at the two delinquents.
"Y…you can't!" One of them blurted out, tears rolling out of his eyes. "You can't kill us! It's against the law!"
"Y…yeah! Violence is illegal! You're a teacher! A professor at the renowned Divine Path University! You aren't allowed to raise a hand against students!"
Ling Zhen threw his head back and laughed, even as all the other students stared at the two morons in utter disbelief. Surely they couldn't be this shameless? Su Ling shook her head, bewildered, before she glared at them in outrage.
"You were the ones who attacked the professor first!"
"T…that's…!"
"We were…we were simply trying to test his strength!"
"This is amusing." Ling Zhen chuckled and slowly turned his gaze from one ruffian to the other. "Beforehand, the two of you were spouting quite the nonsense before you attacked me. Something about strong eat the weak, and if I die, it's because it's my fault for being too weak. Conversely, the same principle should apply to the both of you. If you die at my hands, it's your fault for being too weak, isn't it?"
"No! You can't!"
"It's against the rules!"
"See?" Ling Zhen shrugged. "Now that it's to your disadvantage, you suddenly discard that logic and want to rely on rules now. So you have to accept that either this world isn't as simple as strong eat the weak like all those trashy cultivation web novels or manhuas would have you believe, or you have no choice but to die at my hands right now because I'm a strong person eating you weak idiots."
"S…sorry, sir."
"We won't do it again."
The both of them lowered their heads. As much as they could when they were already sprawled on the ground, anyway.
"Should we bring them to the infirmary, sir?" I asked, not wanting to be distracted by them while they were lying in front of the lecture hall. I didn't feel sorry for them, and they deserved the punishment that Ling Zhen dished out, but that didn't mean we should leave them there. As Ling Zhen rightly pointed out, the whole "strong eat the weak" rhetoric was just nonsense bullies came up with to justify their breaking the rules. In the end, we were still bound by rules, and should strive to be good people, not the ruthless edgelord murder hobos that trashy cultivation web novels and manhuas advocated.
"Oh, I can take care of them." Ling Zhen adjusted the runes in the air, and the spirit arrays changed, the previous circles replaced by new ones with a warmer, gentler light. Golden rays suffused the bodies of the two hooligans, and their limbs twisted back to normal. They winced and got up to their feet, gingerly rubbing their arms and legs.
"The healing spirit array doesn't really restore you fully, so you should go to the infirmary and receive treatment from an expert of healing techniques. This only mitigates the worst damage, but you still have several internal injuries that the arrays can't get rid of." Ling Zhen looked at them sternly. Then he grinned. "They have similar spirit arrays set up in the infirmaries anyway."
After the two of them left the lecture hall, Ling Zhen turned back to the rest of the class and switched slides, displaying a huge pattern of runes. He flicked his hand casually before demonstrating the activation of the spirit arrays from earlier. Dragons and serpents appeared earlier and he smirked.
"As you guys saw earlier, these are spirit arrays. To be honest, what those two students said earlier isn't completely false. In terms of cultivation, I'm weak. I'm only at the Yellow Rank, which is far beneath several of you who have already broken through to the Mystic rank. Yet I was able to defeat two opponents of far superior cultivation to myself. Why? This is possible through spirit arrays."
He reached out with his hand and touched one of the floating runes in the massive circles. It flickered, but continued to blaze brightly.
"Spirit arrays are formations of runes arranged in specific patterns to influence the environment and make use of the natural spiritual qi in the surroundings to alter cause and effect. To bring about great changes and shape them to your will. They can even be considered a type of domain. The power to bend the environment to your designs is a tremendous thing, indeed. You're not simply using your own qi, but tapping into ley lines and making use of vast quantities of spiritual qi from the world itself, which is why you can overcome the difference in strength between you and your opponent. After all, no matter how powerful the cultivator, even he or she cannot challenge the unimaginable amount of qi that runs through the veins of the world itself."
That sounded impressive, especially when he flicked his wrist and changed slides, now featuring a diagram that depicted long ley lines running all over the surface of Earth.
"Dragon veins. Ley lines. That's what you have to tap into when setting up a spirit array. And the relevant materials. Over this semester, I'll be teaching you a variety of spirit arrays and the runes and materials needed to set them up. Most of them just require spirit stones, though depending on the spirit array, certain minerals can bring up greater effect. For example, a fire type spirit array will benefit from having fire crystals at its core. Water type spirit array will be boosted immensely by a piece of sea steel. A spirit array making use of plants would have a more nourishing effect if a piece of wood is used in it."
He was switching to the next slide, featuring the different materials used for various spirit arrays.
"That said, you don't necessary need the materials. You can set any up as long as you have the knowledge of the correct runes required."
Ling Zhen paused and clasped his hands behind his back, looking solemn.
"For all their power, there are disadvantages to spirit arrays. They need some time to set up, so you can't just throw out one immediately. They are immobile and their sphere of effect is limited – so as long as your opponent stays out of the range of your spirit array, there is little you can do to pursue them. As such, the best spirit arrays are often the defensive or protective ones, such as the barriers powered by the Fortress spirit array covering the university."
He had changed to a slide displaying a shimmering barrier over Divine Path University. I studied it, impressed. It was far more potent than the defensive spirit arrays set up in my Deep Sea Palace. I knew they operated upon a similar principle, and the ones in my dungeon were powered by the spirit stones that my Collector Crabs brought back. I wondered if I would ever be able to craft similar spirit arrays to that. They seemed very complex from what I had studied whenever I had the time.
Well, that was why I was taking this class.
Ling Zhen grinned. "To be honest, I set up these spirit arrays before the class, otherwise those two would have clobbered me. Just don't tell them that, okay?"
That drew a few laughs from the students.
"There are several types of spirit arrays. You have the offensive ones, like the ones I used earlier, as well as several that can provide emergency healing. That said, it's only emergency healing, so you can't rely on spirit arrays to heal injuries completely. You'll still need dedicated healer cultivators. Then you have the defensive types like the one protecting this university. There are even cultivator-based spirit formations when you combine the qi of a military platoon into a single attack or barrier. I believe the military makes use of that, but because it requires extensive training and for the soldiers to be in synch with each other, it's not very common."
He tapped a button and the slide now showed soldiers standing in formation, combining their qi into one super potent spirit sword. I recognized the Nive Heavenly Sword Formation from an ancient sect, where it combined the spiritual qi of nine cultivators into a single spirit sword, allowing them to far on par with a single powerful spirit weapon wielder despite their weaker cultivation.
The so-called weak still had ways of fighting back against the strong. Even if they were individually no match for the supposedly stronger cultivators, by using their numbers and uniting as one, they could protect themselves. Which was why the whole strong eat the weak rhetoric was utter bullshit, and web novelists and manhua authors should stop spouting it.
However, it was Ling Zhen's next sentence that caught my attention.
"Oh, and there are also support type spirit arrays where you set up esoteric formations to buff your teammates' strength. Whether it's to increase the firepower of their techniques or harden their defense or maybe even boost their speed, these spirit arrays are more common in the military."
As he switched to the next slide, showing how a single individual set up a spirit array to power up his platoon mates, the gears in my mind finally clicked.
I finally knew why the system assigned the mission of taking spirit array classes.