Chapter 2: Reporting to the Principal’s Office

The iron gates closed shut behind them.

Jiang Xiaoyu followed the white silhouette deeper into the campus, the concrete road beneath his feet riddled with potholes, and not a single streetlight on either side was lit.

“The school doesn’t turn on the lights at night?”

“There are no streetlights.”

“Ah… I didn’t know a place could operate like that.”

“…You won’t trip.”

Jiang Xiaoyu was just about to point out that he had almost tripped three times already, but on second thought, it seemed his cousin had caught him every time he was about to fall.

“Where are we going now?”

“To report in.”

“Now? The principal is still here?”

“Mhm.”

“He’s that dedicated!”

“Mhm.”

Xiaoqi led him through a tree-lined avenue, stopping in front of an old-fashioned western-style house with gray walls and red tiles, its exterior completely covered in ivy, while a dim, yellow incandescent bulb flickered faintly above the entrance.

Pushing open the wooden door, the dark hardwood floors of the corridor creaked underfoot.

Several portraits hung on the walls on either side, framed in gilded gold, though the faces of the figures in the paintings were blurred.

At the end of the corridor, Xiaoqi knocked on a door three times.

“Come in.”

The door opened.

The room was incredibly spacious and semi-circular in shape, with one entire wall dedicated to floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

Right in the center sat a mahogany desk, where an old-fashioned desk lamp with a green glass shade pooled its light into a warm, yellow circular halo.

Behind the desk sat a figure.

Dressed in a dark formal suit, he sat impeccably straight.

His face remained hidden in the shadows cast outside the lamp’s halo, leaving only a sharply defined silhouette visible.

He held a cigar between his teeth, its cherry glowing intermittently in the darkness.

However, that silhouette didn’t look quite like a normal human’s.

His shoulders were too broad—not the broadness of developed muscles, but rather an unnatural skeletal proportion.

His neck was a segment longer than that of a normal person and leaned slightly forward.

The fingers resting on the edge of the desk possessed two extra joints, and the nails gleamed with a dull, keratinous luster.

Hidden in the shadows beyond the lamp’s reach, a pair of slit pupils was sizing up the young man at the door from head to toe.

The principal had initially planned to simply go through the motions; it was just a new student reporting in, something he could dismiss with a few perfunctory words.

Then, he caught sight of the person standing behind Xiaoqi, and an explosive aura of hostility erupted from his body in an instant.

“A living human! Xiaoqi, what is the meaning of this?”

“Jiang Xiaoyu,” Xiaoqi spoke, her tone flat. “My older cousin.”

Older cousin.

The principal’s cigar nearly dropped from his mouth.

Jiang Xiaoqi had an older cousin?

She was a century-old vengeful spirit, classified as S-rank from the very day she enrolled, with a file that stated in no uncertain terms: Background ambiguous, extremely dangerous.

He had never heard of her having any relatives, yet here she was, personally bringing a living human in and calling him her cousin.

Could anyone claiming to be her cousin possibly be a normal human?

The principal’s slit pupils shifted from Jiang Xiaoqi to Jiang Xiaoyu, then back to Jiang Xiaoqi again.

His body leaned slightly forward, and his fingers subconsciously tapped against the desk, the scales emitting a subtle, scraping sound.

Then he cleared his throat, his tone suddenly becoming extremely polite.

“Please, have a seat. Sit down.”

Jiang Xiaoyu sat down in the chair opposite the desk; he squinted in the principal’s direction, but all he could make out was a blurry, dark silhouette.

“Name.” The principal kept his voice very gentle.

“Jiang Xiaoyu.”

“Age.”

“Nineteen.”

“Place of birth.”

“City A.”

The air in the office suddenly froze.

The principal’s slit pupils dilated sharply, and something deep within the bookshelves rattled before swiftly falling silent again.

The wind outside the window abruptly ceased, and the curtains hung dead still, as if they, too, had been paralyzed by fear.

“City A?” The principal lowered his voice to a whisper, carrying a tone of careful, tentative probing.

“Yeah, City A.” Jiang Xiaoyu felt a bit perplexed. “Why, is something wrong?”

“Which City A?”

“Just the City A,” Jiang Xiaoyu grew even more baffled. “Is there a second City A out there?”

The principal slowly leaned back in his chair, the cigar trembling faintly between his fingers.

City A was the most densely populated zone for supreme overlords in the entire Eastern China supernatural circle; only vengeful spirits over three hundred years old even possessed the qualifications to roam its outskirts.

Of the aberrations that emerged from City A, which one wasn’t a regional hegemon?

In the entire century since Huangquan Vocational Institute was founded, there hadn’t been a single student from City A.

And now, one had arrived.

The principal took a deep breath and stubbed his cigar into the ashtray, his demeanor undergoing a complete shift.

If his earlier politeness was merely out of respect for Jiang Xiaoqi, his current courtesy stemmed from a genuine, deep-seated terror.

He stood up from his chair, bowed slightly, and adopted a tone of almost sycophantic warmth.

“Student Jiang, forgive my lack of manners. I was quite neglectful just now, so please don’t take offense. For you to travel all the way from City A to our humble little establishment is truly—”

“Wait a minute,” Jiang Xiaoyu interrupted him. “Has there been some sort of misunderstanding? I’m just here to study. My mom said your esteemed school guarantees job placement, so she told me to—”

The cigar dropped from the principal’s hand.

“Guarantees job placement.” He repeated those three words, his slit pupils contracting violently.

It all lined up! It all perfectly lined up!

Hailing from City A, escorted by Xiaoqi, and now adding the phrase “guarantees job placement” into the mix.

For those three words to come out of an ordinary student’s mouth, it would be nothing but a joke.

But for a mysterious new student from City A, personally escorted by an S-rank vengeful spirit, to so nonchalantly utter the words “guarantees job placement”—that was an ironclad answer.

This Jiang Xiaoyu was absolutely the child of some supreme supernatural entity, sent to Huangquan Vocational Institute merely to pad his resume.

For a vengeful spirit to “graduate” from here and enter the human world, the competition was as fierce as an army of thousands trying to cross a single-log bridge.

In the century since the academy’s founding, those who managed to obtain a pass could be counted on one hand, and the last vengeful spirit to graduate had cultivated within the academy for a full five hundred years.

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