Chapter 7: Transfer Student

Li Cheng was startled and immediately held his breath, listening at the door. Fortunately, he didn’t wake his aunt’s family.

He exhaled slowly and carefully examined the bone blades on both forearms.

Each bone blade was about sixty centimeters long—twice the length of the ulna—and widest at seven centimeters. The edges were as thin as cicada wings, razor-sharp, capable of slicing through steel wire, yet tough enough not to shatter like ordinary bone.

The bone blades were not formed as single pieces; they had a folding mechanism in the middle—confirming Li Cheng’s suspicion that they had grown out from his ulna.

Additionally, the inner side of the blades contained blood vessels, tendons, and other structures.

When Li Cheng focused his awareness, the blades would extend or retract at his will, like Wolverine’s claws.

The skin fissures on his forearms would automatically close, leaving no blood and no scars.

He swung his arms experimentally; the mantis bone blades sliced through the air with a hiss. Combined with the explosive muscle power granted by the grasshopper ant genes, they were strong enough to kill large predators like lions and tigers.

————

The ordinary world, the ordinary life—gone forever.

The next day at school, Li Cheng gazed out the window, his eyes deep and distant.

“Turn in your homework! Turn it in!”

The girl in front turned around, urging Li Cheng to hand in his assignment. “What are you thinking about? Your expression is so gloomy.”

“I was thinking that the third smartest animal on Earth is the dolphin, the second is the chimpanzee,”

Li Cheng turned back, dead serious. “Then what’s the smartest?”

“You’re acting crazy again. You’re in a good mood, huh?”

The girl named Mu Yulu rolled her eyes, took his homework from his desk, and passed it forward.

Mu Yulu, Li Cheng, and Han Letian had known each other since childhood.

As a child, Li Cheng was hyperactive and wildly imaginative—perfectly embodying the stereotype that crazy people have broad minds and brain-dead kids are endlessly cheerful.

He once picked up relics from a crematorium, tossed corpses around in the morgue;

When he had a nosebleed, he thought he was a tomato;

During a school visit to a nursing home, he gave hearing-impaired elderly people English listening exercises to “train their hearing”;

When bidding farewell to a substitute teacher, he stood on the podium and cosplayed from *Dead Poets Society*;

He nearly got arrested after inhaling white allergy powder at a subway security checkpoint while repeatedly moaning, “Too… too… too!”—prompting terrified police officers to drag him to the station.

Only as he grew older did he calm down, becoming normal.

Their homeroom teacher, Yang Hui, walked into the classroom and tapped her knuckles on the desks—*thump-thump-thump!*—silencing the morning reading.

“Ahem.”

Yang Hui cleared her throat. “Class Five, today we have a new transfer student. Please welcome her with applause!”

The classmates clapped enthusiastically, their eyes gleaming with curiosity.

After a year and a half together, the social circles in the class had nearly solidified; everyone preferred sticking with their small groups.

An unexpected transfer student was straight out of a light novel.

Under all their gazes, a girl with exquisite features stepped into the classroom.

She wore a beige Chanel knit sweater, her skin beneath the light scarf pale enough to reveal faint veins. Platinum bracelets adorned her wrists, and she carried a tiny, delicate handbag. Her timid, fragile gaze, paired with perfectly fluffy socks and vivid red leather boots, made her look like a meticulously crafted porcelain doll.

“Wow.”

Several classmates involuntarily murmured in awe. To his right, Han Letian pressed a hand to his chest and whispered low, “Is someone this cute even real in this world? Li Cheng, pinch me—I must be dreaming.”

Before he finished speaking, Li Cheng pinched him. Han Letian immediately winced. “Holy shit, you actually pinched me?!”

“The phenomenon where the terminal bud of a plant grows preferentially while lateral buds are suppressed is called apical dominance. By pinching off the plant’s tip, you can promote higher yields. By this principle, if you pinch off a person’s head, you’ll stimulate their bodily development.”

Li Cheng explained with perfect seriousness.

“Hello everyone, my name is Shao Wangshu, from Jincheng.”

The petite girl spoke, her voice as clear and soft as imagined. “Thank you for your welcome. I look forward to studying and growing together with all of you. Thank you!”

She bowed deeply—almost bumping her head on the desk.

After the introduction, Teacher Yang sighed in relief and asked gently, “Alright, Shao, where would you like to sit?”

There were forty-two desks in total: eight rows of five, plus two extra desks flanking the podium, jokingly called the “Left and Right Guardian Seats.”

The Left Guardian Seat was the class monitor’s spot; the Right Guardian Seat was usually empty, except during evening self-study, when Yang Hui’s daughter, Yang Ling—who was still in elementary school—would come to sit there.

Yang Hui’s husband had died years ago saving a drowning child. As a single mother, she had worked tirelessly to raise her daughter.

Since elementary school ended early and she didn’t trust her daughter to stay home alone, she let her come to the classroom after school. After-school, Class Four students often stopped by to tease Yang Ling, patting her head before leaving.

“Could you please assign me a seat… right there?”

Shao Wangshu raised a finger, pointing behind Li Cheng.

“Huh?”

The homeroom teacher froze. She’d only just learned this morning that a transfer student was coming. School administrators had repeatedly warned her: Shao Wangshu’s family background was extraordinary—treat her with extreme caution.

This was absurd. Zhuoyue Middle School was one of Yinxing’s top private schools—what kind of wealthy or powerful parents hadn’t she seen?

At parent meetings, a single brick could knock down a whole crowd of tycoons and elites—and yet the administration had never been this nervous.

Now, Shao Wangshu had specifically requested to sit alone in the very last row.

To an outsider unaware of the context, it would look like the teacher was mistreating her.

“Shao, the last row is far from the blackboard. Can you even read the writing clearly?”

After hesitating, Yang Hui asked gently, “Our seating rotates monthly. How about we put you closer to the front for now, so you can adjust? We’ll reconsider next month?”

Hearing this, Shao Wangshu bit her lip, stood on tiptoe, and whispered something into the teacher’s ear.

A flicker of surprise crossed Yang Hui’s eyes. She cleared her throat. “Uh, Han Letian, please move your desk behind Li Cheng. Shao Wangshu will take your original seat.”

“Huh? Why me?”

Han Letian, called by name, looked utterly bewildered—but he had no choice. Slowly, he dragged his desk to the back, behind Li Cheng.

“Uh…”

Li Cheng was equally stunned. At the teacher’s instruction, he brought over a new desk and chair.

Zhuoyue Middle School discouraged early romance, so boys and girls were Jinliang not seated together.

His long-term fixed desk partner on the right was Han Letian; his left-side partner, Ye Jiaying, was only temporary.

He hadn’t expected his partner to become a girl—especially a transfer student. Was this even allowed?

Dazed, he sat down again. Beside him, Shao Wangshu, already seated, extended a slender hand and smiled brightly. “Hi, classmate. I’m Shao Wangshu from Jincheng.”

“Hi. I’m Li Cheng from Yinxing.”

Li Cheng reached out and shook her hand.

————

During break, the naturally charming Shao Wangshu sat surrounded by a circle of girls, chatting about Jincheng’s scenery and cuisine.

Li Cheng and the other boys sat by the window, chatting idly, sharing a bag of Lay’s cucumber-flavored chips.

“I’m telling you, this new girl, Shao, comes from a seriously wealthy family.”

Han Letian lowered his voice, feigning profundity. “Not just rich—unimaginably rich.”

“Wait, how do you know that?” asked a boy named Evans.

“I can tell,” Han Letian rolled his eyes. “Her scarf is Colombo.”

“Columbus? What’s that?” asked another boy, Zhan Xinyu.

“An Italian cashmere brand.”

Han Letian, whose mother was a fashion designer and who had been raised with such knowledge, sneered. “They claim to be the world’s largest creator of luxury fabrics from rare animal fibers—including vicuña, cashmere, alpaca, and camel wool.”

If I’m not mistaken, Shao Wangshu’s scarf is made of Siberian mountain goat cashmere—its fibers are one-seventh the diameter of human hair and reflect golden luster in sunlight. Just that one scarf costs this much.”

He held up a seven.

“Seven thousand?”

“Seventy thousand!”

“Wow.” The classmates all murmured in varied tones of awe.

Zhuoyue Middle School had many second- and third-generation rich kids; extravagant fashion was nothing unusual.

But a seventy-thousand-yuan jade pendant, a seventy-thousand-yuan watch, and a seventy-thousand-yuan scarf were entirely different things.

“Now you understand. Anyone hoping to cling to a rich woman—shape up and behave.”

Han Letian slapped his thigh, then suddenly frowned at Li Cheng. “Hey, Li Cheng, why did she specifically ask to sit next to you? Do you two know each other?”

“No,” Li Cheng shrugged. He rode his bike every day to work, saving for college expenses. How could he possibly know a rich woman?

Han Letian scratched his head. “Think harder. Maybe you saved her when you were kids?”

Li Cheng rolled his eyes. “You think this is *Naruto*? You’re acting like Naruto saving Hinata?”

Han Letian kept speculating. “Maybe your dad and her dad made a childhood marriage pact? Now she’s come to check on her betrothed? Next thing you know, it’s the classic ‘broken engagement’ plot—you’re actually the hidden Dragon King of the city?”

“Fine, I’m the Dragon King. Then you’d better take over my homework this month. When I break through the void and ascend to the heavens, I’ll make you my personal attendant.”

Li Cheng said, squinting.

The other boys kept chatting. Evans clicked his tongue, sarcastic. “Seventy thousand for a scarf? Hmph. Guess we’ve really become prosperous. Living standards have improved.”

“What’s your point?”

Zhan Xinyu glared at him. “Why do you only see this? What about the poverty alleviation projects deep in the mountains—addressing root causes?”

Evans shot back. “You’re right. But how does that relate to people working 996 for 3,000 yuan a month, buying ruined apartments in Zhengzhou, having tens of thousands in rural bank deposits, buying a BYD that catches fire, getting beaten up for eating barbecue in Tangshan, finding blades in barbecue in Zibo, getting robbed at the Nanyang music festival?”

Zhan Xinyu sneered. “Better than last year’s 42,889 gun deaths in the U.S., 55 frozen to death in Texas during extreme cold, Black Lives Matter looting, Ohio’s toxic train derailment, lead pipes poisoning children’s IQ, private prisons going public, Lolita Island, Hawking studying black holes.”

The two suddenly launched into a rapid-fire verbal duel. The classmates around them were already used to it.

As a private school, Zhuoyue Middle School drew students from all over the country, showcasing extraordinary human diversity—every kind of oddball imaginable.

There were those with vast fortunes who nonetheless had a compulsion to steal classmates’ stationery;

and those who wore risqué anime shirts to school;

and those who, even as children, carried themselves like officials—fawning on teachers and ordering classmates around;

and those who spent their days studying the I Ching, bagua, divination, and feng shui.

Compared to these oddities, Tie Xue Zhanlang’s Zhan Xinyu and Evans, who had vowed to immigrate to America in this lifetime, seemed hardly out of the ordinary.

(End of Chapter)