Chapter 18: “He is the strongest one who possesses ‘Heaven and Curse’!”

“It was me.”

Xi Ran’s voice wasn’t loud, yet it landed like a block of ice in the frozen air—shattering Lin Zhizhi’s mind with a ringing buzz and making Bai Linlin, still suspended in midair, momentarily forget the throbbing pain in her face.

“Ah?!”

Bai Linlin let out a short, startled cry. Her eyes widened to saucers.

Xi Ran… she just confessed everything herself?

“Haha… hahahahahaha!”

After a brief, deathly silence, Lin Zhizhi exploded into wild laughter.

She clutched her still-bleeding palm, shoulders shaking, tears nearly streaming from her eyes. But there was little joy in the sound—more like a volatile eruption of rage and manic exhilaration mixed together.

“Heh…”

When the laughter finally subsided, she took a heavy breath. Raising her uninjured left hand, she wiped away the tears that had formed from laughing so hard. Her gaze, however, remained nailed to Xi Ran’s expressionless face.

“So you actually want to get beaten that badly… fine!”

Before the words fully left her mouth, her left foot slammed into the ground. Her body launched forward like a cannonball, the intact left fist whistling through the air straight toward Xi Ran’s face!

“Then take this punch!”

This strike was more than twice as vicious as the ones she’d landed on Bai Linlin—fast enough to leave afterimages in the air.

Yet just as her fist came within half a foot of Xi Ran’s face, an invisible, intangible chill—sharp enough to freeze the soul—suddenly radiated from Xi Ran’s body.

It wasn’t wind, but it made the surrounding air seem to solidify and frost over.

Lin Zhizhi’s fist jerked to a halt in midair. Her heart felt seized by an icy grip. A primal, instinctive terror—of a higher predator—surged through her without reason, making her shiver violently. Her charge stopped dead.

Xi Ran didn’t even blink. She simply stared at Lin Zhizhi with those pitch-black eyes, as though regarding an insect that bared its teeth but posed no real threat.

“There’s one more thing I forgot to mention.”

Xi Ran spoke again, tone still flat and calm.

She took a small step forward. Though physically smaller and more delicate, she now radiated an overwhelming sense of looking down from above.

“Lin Zhizhi.”

She pronounced the name syllable by syllable, each one falling like ice beads.

“I have not yet given you permission—”

She paused, her gaze sweeping over Lin Zhizhi’s frozen fist, then over the bleeding hand.

“—to continue ‘bullying’ me.”

“‘Bullying’ me,”

Xi Ran tilted her head slightly, as though stating the simplest fact in the world.

“is a ‘task’ and a ‘privilege’ that belongs solely to Linlin. You do not qualify.”

She looked at Lin Zhizhi’s face, now rapidly turning ashen, and delivered her final ultimatum.

“Stop now, and I can reluctantly overlook this rudeness of yours.”

“Otherwise—”

Xi Ran’s pupils looked like bottomless frozen pools under the moonlight.

“I will make you learn with your body exactly how the word ‘death’ is written.”

Lin Zhizhi’s breathing grew ragged.

Not from exhaustion—but from fury, humiliation, and… a sliver of fear she refused to acknowledge, the kind born when one’s momentum is utterly crushed by another’s presence.

Her body began to tremble uncontrollably. Her teeth ground together audibly.

“Don’t…”

Her voice was dry. She tried to mask the tremor with ferocity.

“Don’t joke around like that, Xi Ran!”

She shook her head violently, as though trying to fling away the inexplicable dread. Her eyes reignited with stubborn, vicious determination as they locked onto Xi Ran.

“Beating you… beating you feels way too good! There’s no way I’m giving that up!”

“Last time was an accident—this time I’m definitely going to—”

“Is that so.”

Xi Ran cut off her baseless bravado. For the first time, something resembling an actual “expression” appeared on her face.

A faint, almost bored trace of disdain mixed with contempt.

“You won’t give up?”

That look was the same one an adult might give a noisy child demanding candy—completely unaware of the abyss they were reaching toward.

“I see… you won’t give up.”

Xi Ran repeated it once more. Her tone remained level, yet it made Lin Zhizhi’s blood feel like it was flowing backward.

“You’re looking down on me?!”

The final thread of Lin Zhizhi’s rationality snapped under the utter disregard and scorn.

She retreated two steps, as though creating space to unleash something. Her injured right hand hung limply at her side, blood dripping steadily into the grass. Her left fist clenched tightly in front of her chest.

“Xi Ran!”

She practically roared, voice distorting from excitement and something about to be unleashed.

“You probably still don’t know who I really am!”

“I don’t care who you are.”

Xi Ran didn’t even bother with an expression of exasperation—only pure, indifferent coldness remained. Lin Zhizhi’s declaration seemed less worthy of attention than the rustle of leaves in the wind.

That attitude finally ignited Lin Zhizhi completely.

“Fine! Fine! Very fine!”

She spat the three words through clenched teeth, rage twisting into a grotesque grin.

“Open your ears and listen carefully!”

She drew a deep breath. Her spine straightened. The aura around her began to shift.

No longer mere anger or ferocity—something more primal, more violent, was awakening and churning inside her.

The grass beneath her feet stirred without wind, bending outward in a faint circle centered on her.

“I, Lin Zhizhi!”

She spoke each word like rolling thunder.

“am the strongest bully!”

Blood vessels crept into her eyes. Muscles bulged and writhed unnaturally beneath her uniform. Faint, ominous dark-red patterns surfaced on her skin, as though some power was being forcibly dragged out from deep within her body.

“The one who possesses the ‘Heavenly Binding Curse’—the absolute strongest!!!”