Chapter 7: Uchiha Sasuke

I’ve said before that there are three gifted students in Ye Xuan’s class.

Chen Hao’s gift, “Hawk Eye,” grants him vision comparable to an eagle’s; Zhang Yu’s gift, “Taotie,” enhances his digestion, increases his appetite, and allows him to extract more nutrients from food to strengthen himself.

So who’s the third one?

Many might not guess—it’s their homeroom teacher, the very same Li Director who just gave the lecture; they call him Director because they like it and are used to it.

Unlike Chen Hao and Zhang Yu’s self-focused gifts, the Director’s ability resembles healing in anime—it restores a certain amount of health, manifesting in reality as accelerated wound healing.

The Director has always lamented that his gift restores health instead of mana; otherwise, he could cast it when teachers grew tired or students grew exhausted, reviving their energy and improving teaching and learning efficiency.

Fortunately, it’s not.

“By the way, have you all seen the news these days?”

“It seems like Sakura Country has reported something resembling Sasuke Uchiha’s Susano’o—no one knows if it’s real.”

“If it’s true, it’s not good news for me.”

Zhang Yu spoke with a tone of annoyance.

Though Zhong Lao’s power makes Sasuke Uchiha’s ability unnecessary to fear, the thought of Sakura Country acquiring such power still irritated him.

“Anime character templates aren’t that easy to awaken—you know how much these news outlets exaggerate.”

“If someone in Sakura Country really awakened Sasuke Uchiha’s template and even unlocked the Mangekyō Sharingan, it wouldn’t be us talking about it—it’d be them.”

Chen Hao had seen the news too, but he didn’t believe it for a second.

Since the dimensional incursion, the multiverse artifacts on Blue Planet are numerous, but aside from items like the Devil Fruits that directly turn figurines into fruit, most are extremely hard to detect.

The hardest to detect of all are anime character templates.

Take Zhong Lao, Big Xia’s current guardian, who awakened the template of the Geo Archon from Genshin Impact—if not for his grandson’s obsession with Genshin, who insisted on renaming himself Zhongli and demanded Zhongli’s figurine, Zhong Lao would never have encountered such a thing.

During an interview with Zhong Lao, someone asked how he originally awakened Zhongli’s template.

Many assumed Zhong Lao had accidentally recited Zhongli’s most famous line: “In this world, demons and gods rise together; though I have no desire to vie for supremacy, I understand the suffering of mortals—I wish only to cleanse the four corners and protect a single corner of this fleeting world.”

The truth was, he did recite a line—but not the one they thought. It was: “All power comes at a cost; a thousand kinds of authority carry a thousand kinds of responsibility.”

Zhong Lao probably never imagined that his grandson’s obsession with Zhongli, and the figurine bought to soothe him, would spark Zhong Lao’s curiosity, lead him to learn about Zhongli’s lore, and ultimately cause him to encounter this line he deeply admired—gaining the power countless others crave.

Had he merely gained power, while countless people rejoiced that Big Xia had acquired Zhongli’s strength, countless others would have grown wary of Zhong Lao.

Once a person possesses power far beyond others, they struggle to see others as their equals.

Today he protects Earth; tomorrow he protects “my” Earth—it’s entirely plausible.

But Zhongli’s template gave Zhong Lao not only power, but responsibility.

Zhong Lao once said that when he first fused with Zhongli’s template, he gained only a portion of Zhongli’s power; to gain more, he had to align himself with Zhongli—or rather, the Geo Archon himself.

He had to be steady and dignified, calm and composed; he had to treat contracts as inviolable supreme principles, emphasizing fairness, order, and promise; he had to act with cold rationality, unswayed by emotion; he had to be indifferent to fame and fortune, yet cherish the warmth of mortal life; he had to bear the responsibility of protecting all living beings.

“The gods love humanity”—this phrase feels false in many works, where gods often place themselves above humans; but in Genshin Impact, gods possess a kind of “love” for humanity that humans themselves struggle to imagine.

Even the most extreme gods cannot be denied their love for humanity.

Thus, once people understood this, all their fears vanished—they had found exactly the guardian they had dreamed of.

Yes, they trusted Zhongli, the “god,” more than any “human” who stood “above” them.

And indeed, it was true.

With Zhong Lao’s acquisition of Zhongli’s template, Big Xia underwent unprecedented change.

Past mistakes were corrected, their sources purged, and all who violated contracts received their due punishment.

Humans are swayed by interest, emotion, and power—but gods are not.

In the past, this was unimaginable to countless people; even now, how many still feel it’s like a dream?

So they were grateful—the first person in the world to awaken a character template came from Big Xia, and his template came from the Geo Archon Morax—Zhongli!

Knowing how difficult it is to awaken a character template, Chen Hao refused to believe anyone in Sakura Country had awakened Sasuke Uchiha’s template, let alone unlocked the Mangekyō Sharingan or Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan.

If such a person truly existed, under current conditions, Sakura Country couldn’t hide it—even if they tried, America would expose him first, and Big Xia’s news wouldn’t give it only a few lines of coverage.

This is a message capable of reshaping global dynamics.

So it’s definitely fake.

“Ye Xuan, what do you think?”

Zhang Yu turned his gaze to Ye Xuan.

“Even if someone truly awakened Sasuke Uchiha’s template, it wouldn’t matter—as long as they haven’t unlocked the Six Tomoe Rinnegan or entered the Six Paths realm, even if they’ve already unlocked the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan, they pose no great threat to us.”

“The one we truly need to pay attention to is Tony, who has definitively acquired the Mark III armor and returned to the American film industry.”

I won’t even mention JARVIS’s near-sentient autonomous decision-making—the armor may or may not contain JARVIS, but the arc reactor as its energy core? Its value to a nation speaks for itself.”

Ye Xuan didn’t care whether anyone had awakened Sasuke Uchiha’s template.

(End of chapter)