CHAPTER 182: I DIDN'T DO IT ON PURPOSE!

Huang Yifan and the other senior figures could see that Xue Yiren had lost his train of thought, and they were eager to further compound his woes.

"Is Dong Yunyu alright?" Huang Yifan yelled. "Someone check on him to make sure he's not concussed or anything. Instructor Li, I'll get you to check on his condition."

Li Changkong immediately caught onto what Huang Yifan was doing, and he replied loudly, "I can't conduct a concussion test when he's unconscious!"

"Anyone have any pills?"

"What type of pills are you looking for?"

Their loud conversation only served to further scatter Xue Yiren's thoughts, completely dooming his efforts to recall what he had been saying earlier.

Only after a long while did a flash of recollection finally appear in Xue Yiren's eyes, and he yelled, "Silence!"

"Have you finally recalled the purpose of your visit, Master Xue?" Li Changkong jibed.

"That's right! Fang Che needs to take responsibility for the damage that he has caused to our Xue Clan's reputation!"

He was finally able to restart where he had left off, but he had lost all of his previous conviction and flair, making it sound as if he were negotiating rather than dictating terms.

Fang Che stepped forward, then asked in a polite manner, "How should I take responsibility, Master Xue? Please enlighten me. At the time, I stepped onto the platform in a rush of blood to the head because I couldn't stomach Xue Wanshi's insults. I didn't dare to underestimate a prodigy from the Xue Clan, so I went all-out from the very beginning. I truly had no idea that Xue Wanshi had never killed anyone or even engaged in any battles of life and death!"

Xue Yiren's cheeks instantly became flushed with embarrassment upon hearing this.

Indeed, who could've imagined that the number one first-year prodigy of Celestial Being Warrior Academy had never fought in a real battle before?

In other words, he hadn't made any contribution to society. He hadn't killed a single demonic church member, not even a demon beast, and he had never experienced any real danger.

This was more scathing a remark than any insult that Fang Che could've delivered, and it was irrefutable because he was right!

"If he had even fought in a single true battle in the past, then he wouldn't have ended up like that! We're all warriors, so I'm sure we're all familiar with how baleful qi is accumulated. I'm only seventeen this year. Even if I started killing people straight out of the womb, how many people could I have possibly killed in my life?"

Xue Yiren had no response for this.

Indeed, how many people could a first-year student have possibly killed? If demonic church members were so easy to kill, then the Church of the Self-Righteous would've fallen long ago!

"Master Xue, I'm sure you've endured countless battles of life and death in the past, so let me ask you this: how many people have you made shit themselves from pure intimidation alone? Surely you'd struggle to do that even if your cultivation base were an entire tier above theirs!"

The answer to that question was very easy for Xue Yiren to work out because it was zero! He had never intimidated anyone into shitting themselves before!

"So what am I supposed to do?" Fang Che asked with a sullen expression. "I'm more shocked than anyone at what happened! How was I supposed to know that I would make him shit himself just by yelling at him? You accused me of fully anticipating the outcome, yet still doing what I did, but that's completely absurd! Xue Wanshi's cultivation base was only a single rank below mine.

“Could even the likes of Master Bing Qianshan and Master Xue Fuxiao say with absolute certainty that they could replicate this feat on someone so close to them in cultivation base? I wasn't even competing in the tournament! I was just watching from the stands when Xue Wanshi suddenly started insulting me in front of everyone!

“Of course I had to defend my honor, and Xue Wanshi insisted on challenging me! If I had turned down his challenge in front of all of those hundreds of thousands of people, our entire academy would've been put to shame, so my hand was forced. I roared to stimulate myself, yet before I even had a chance to attack, he's already shat himself!"

Fang Che was telling the truth. He had anticipated that Xue Wanshi could surrender on the spot or fall unconscious, but never had he anticipated that he would shit himself!

"I understand that my actions have caused severe damage to the Xue Clan's reputation, and I sorely regret this. If I had known he would shit himself, I would've rather turned down his challenge and been denounced as a coward than make an enemy out of the Xue Clan! In a sense, I'm also a victim in all of this!"

Indeed, this had been a sequence of extremely misfortunate events for Fang Che.

Wu Zhibing and Shui Lianjiang had fought in a brutal battle, concluding with the sacrifice of an arm, yet there was no bad blood between the two of them at all, whereas Fang Che had somehow tarnished the reputation of the Xue Clan with just a single roar.

"That's what happened, you can do with me as you see fit, Master Xue," Fang Che said with a wry smile. "I take full responsibility for my transgressions, but I felt it necessary to explain some things and defend myself. Think about it: what would you do if you were in my position?"

Xue Yiren fell into deep thought.

He was not an unreasonable person, but he had only been considering this matter from the perspective of the Xue Clan this entire time.

A prodigy of their clan had been utterly humiliated at the World Academy Tournament by someone who wasn't even a contestant, and the Xue Clan's reputation had been dealt a major blow as a result.

It was with this pretense in mind that Xue Yiren had arrived, determined to make Fang Che pay, but after hearing Fang Che's recount of events, he realized that he may have been too quick to jump to conclusions.

How much baleful qi could a seventeen-year-old kid possibly possess?

With Fang Che standing right in front of him, Xue Yiren could indeed sense some faint baleful qi emanating from his body, but certainly nowhere near as much as everyone proclaimed.

Even if his baleful qi had been enhanced by his fury and adrenaline at the time, surely he couldn't have anticipated that it would be enough to make Xue Wanshi soil himself.

Hence, there was only one plausible explanation for what happened: Xue Wanshi was too fragile and couldn't withstand even the slightest blow to his psyche.

The two young men behind Xue Yiren were even beginning to sympathize with Fang Che.

If they were in Fang Che's shoes, they would be feeling just as helpless and frustrated.

All of a sudden, the situation took a complete turn, and everyone was beginning to see Fang Che as a victim of circumstance rather than a culprit.

However, the issue still had to be addressed. The Xue Clan's reputation was at stake, and something had to be done.

"I didn't come here today to pick a fight," Xue Yiren said. "In any case, Master Bing Qianshan has already warned us against taking retaliative measures. I came here to see what kind of person Fang Che was and also to come up with a solution with you all. A clan like ours cannot bear such a blight on its reputation, and this is also a mission assigned to me by the seniors of our clan."

Everyone was very relieved to see that Xue Yiren had calmed down and was taking a more reasonable and constructive approach.

"Let's have a discussion, Assistant Dean Huang," Xue Yiren said.

In light of the civilized turn that the conversation had taken, Huang Yifan was more than happy to oblige.

Li Changkong, Xiang Xinghe, and Lü Jiaoshan were also called upon, and the five men gathered together to come up with a plan.

The two young men from the Xue Clan were left with nothing to do, so they struck up a conversation with Fang Che.

"How did you do it? I've never even heard of anything like it before!"

"You'll have to ask Xue Wanshi that," Fang Che replied in a resigned manner. "If I had known what would happen, I would've rather taken a beating from him!"

"I did ask him," the young man said. "He told me that at the time, he felt as if the gates of hell had opened up before him, and countless demons came rushing at him. After that, he couldn't remember anything else."

A wry smile appeared on Fang Che's face as he extended his wrist forward.

The young man placed a finger on his wrist to examine his pulse, then exclaimed, "You're at the pinnacle of the eighth-rank General tier!"

"That's right," Fang Che confirmed. "I can make a breakthrough to the ninth tier at any time."

"Even so, that still shouldn't be enough," the young man mused in a perplexed manner.

All of a sudden, Fang Che drew upon the entirety of his cultivation base as he turned and pretended to lash out at the defenseless Yu Zhongge while letting loose a loud roar.

His baleful qi erupted toward Yu Zhongge in a palpable wave, and the latter instantly yelped in alarm as he sprang back in retreat. He had even unconsciously drawn his sword, and all of the fine hairs on the back of his neck were standing up on end.

"There you go," Fang Che said as he turned to the pair of young men from the Xue Clan. "He's also from a second-tier clan, and his cultivation base is two ranks below Xue Wanshi's."

The two young men instantly became flushed with embarrassment.