Chapter 193 - 192: I Want This

Shen Gu’s eyelid twitched anxiously.

He lowered his voice. "Don’t go. If you’re really angry, we can have a Chief step in."

He glanced around. There were no Chiefs, only upperclassmen.

Steeling himself, Shen Gu prepared to rush over to Pei Yuan. "I’ll go in your place!"

"What are you doing?" Jian Yu grabbed Shen Gu.

She wasn’t scared, just a little embarrassed. "I have to fight. I already made the challenge. Don’t ruin my momentum."

Jian Yu knew her own personality well.

In real life, she wanted to make money and was used to swallowing her pride, worried her boss wouldn’t pay her.

She wasn’t someone who liked or was good at arguing. On the rare occasions she got angry and fought, her heart would race even more crazily than when she was kissing Xi Yu and the others.

Jian Yu thought of Yan Qin. "If I don’t fight, there will only be more trouble like this in the future. Shen Gu, it’s not that I don’t think you can handle it, but what if you’re not here next time?"

Shen Gu hesitated. "Then I should at least tell the Chiefs."

"That’s fine." Jian Yu didn’t object. She had planned to tell them anyway; who knew if Pei Yuan would play dirty.

The first idiom Jian Yu learned was that a tall tree catches the wind. The first saying she learned was that the bird that sticks its head out gets shot, and the local bully gets taken down.

She wasn’t one to seek the spotlight. Most of the time, she just wanted to be invisible, especially during class.

If she had a little money, she might want to show it off online. But if she struck it rich, it was a different story—she’d hide it away, terrified of anyone finding out.

Her first instinct when faced with trouble was to dodge it, walk away, and avoid making a scene, but that didn’t mean she was a coward.

Jian Yu unconsciously raised an eyebrow. "I’m confident. Trust me." ’The worst that can happen is I get a little injured,’ she thought.

Shen Gu froze for a second.

Jian Yu’s face was expressionless, but that raised eyebrow gave off a strangely dissonant, familiar feeling. She seemed a bit like someone he knew.

Shen Gu couldn’t place it. Seeing Jian Yu walk away, he quickly led the others to follow her.

A crowd gathered around them.

Jian Yu stopped in front of the challenge stage and signed the duel agreement.

The title was two words: "Light Contact."

Rules: The challenger and the challenged must place their bets beforehand.

Stakes: Can be Beast Crystals, Beast Plants, Beast Fruits, Star Coins, EV value, or anything else the participants need.

Jian Yu looked up. "What do you want?"

Pei Yuan was blunt. "If I win, you will help me form a Contract with an Alien Beast of at least Level 2S or higher."

Jian Yu paused. "Aren’t Contracted Beast Levels only A Rank?"

Pei Yuan pulled up the latest official interstellar announcement. "This is how Alien Beast Levels were always supposed to be."

He added disparagingly, "That Green Spider Ant you happened to help someone Contract successfully last time was just the weakest type of A-class Beast within the A Rank. Under the new system, its Level is only S."

Jian Yu glanced at the announcement.

To make it easier for Contractors to select Beast Pets, Primordial Beasts were officially removed from the Alien Beast category.

Furthermore, the A Rank for Alien Beasts was subdivided by strength into: Level 3S, Level 2S, and S.

Jian Yu analyzed the situation. After helping Shen Qing form his Contract last time, she actually had strength to spare. However, in the two training sessions that followed, she’d clearly felt her energy being depleted.

’I can easily form a Contract with an S-Level. A Level 2S shouldn’t be too much of a stretch either.’

’Most importantly, it’s not a given that I’ll lose.’

Jian Yu accepted the terms. "Alright."

Pei Yuan looked down on her. "What do you want?"

Jian Yu didn’t hold back either. "You drop out of school."

Pei Yuan frowned. "That’s impossible."

Weis Lan Noble Academy has the most resources in the entire interstellar region. Especially during the sophomore year, if he fights for it, he’ll have a real chance to get his Contracted Beast promoted.

With his Level, he couldn’t possibly leave a place like this and go somewhere else.

If he hadn’t spent all these years unable to find a Contracted Beast he liked, and then failing to form a Contract with the ones he did like, he wouldn’t still be without one.

Pei Yuan’s expression was grim. "Name something else."

Jian Yu paused, then twisted the knife. "Well, what do you have? Do you need me to accommodate you? Are you going to offer a low-level Beast Crystal in exchange for me getting you a 2S Contracted Beast?"

Pei Yuan looked mortified. "Anything but that. Name something else, and I’ll agree to it."

"Oh." Jian Yu thought for a while.

She glanced at Pei Yuan. "Then from now on, stay away from me. Don’t ever appear in front of me again."

Pei Yuan scoffed. "Who’d want anything to do with you? Once I get my Contract, I’ll want to stay a hundred meters away. Do you really think you’re such a hot commodity that everyone will fall in love with you?"

He sneered. "They say the higher an Awakener’s Level, the worse their brain and judgment. It’s really true."

Just then, an electronic announcement sounded.

[The value of the wagers is drastically different. To ensure the fairness of the match, the blue-side participant is requested to add to their wager immediately to reduce the value gap.]

Pei Yuan’s face darkened. He felt like he was being mocked. "Are you doing this on purpose to make a fool of me? I don’t believe you don’t want anything! You just Awakened, you probably don’t even know what a Beast Crystal is, do you? I have a lot. If you want them, just say so. What’s with this playing hard to get, acting all coy?"

’Coy my ass.’ Jian Yu rummaged through her Space Ring and took out a pile of Advanced Beast Crystals and Beast Plants. "Fine, you can give me these then."

Pei Yuan stared in shock at the Beast Crystals she produced. "How do you have Beast Crystals from a 3S Rank Mutant Beast? Someone like Pei Yin... he wastes his time in a research institute. Where would he go to hunt Mutant Beasts for you?"

Shen Gu cut in, "Our Yu doesn’t just have Chief Pei. Chief Si, Chief Ling, and Chairman Xi are all on our Yu’s side."

Shen Gu was surprised too, but he feigned composure. "Are 3S Beast Crystals that rare? Our Yu has them by the handful."

Jian Yu blinked. In truth, only the three in her hand were Level 3S.

Father Xi and Mother Xi had collected them a long time ago and never used them. Jian Yu couldn’t bear to waste them either. She only took them out to slap him in the face and show off a little.

Pei Yuan didn’t pay much attention to the forums. Although he knew about Jian Yu’s relationships with the other Chiefs, he thought of his philandering father and dismissed it as unimportant.

Pei Yuan was a misogynist; he couldn’t understand it.

All those resources, so many huge Beast Crystals, actually given to a woman!

’How could they be so wasteful?’ he thought.

Furious, Pei Yuan wagered his entire two-cubic-meter Space Ring. "The Beast Crystals inside are what I’ve accumulated over two years. The Levels aren’t high, but there are quite a few S-Levels. It’s more than enough to raise an A Rank Contracted Beast to S, and it’s certainly enough to cover the difference in value."

[Challenge agreement signed. Please enter Ring 3 within ten minutes, or you will be considered to have forfeited.]

Standing on the challenge stage, the wind blew strands of Jian Yu’s hair on either side of her face.

"Hmph." Pei Yuan let out an ambiguous laugh. "Wearing a dress to a fight. Don’t come crying to someone when it gets flipped up."

Jian Yu understood him. She silently put up a shield, choosing to defend first and attack later to gauge his strength.

The Jellyfish’s tentacles swayed. A five-colored mist swirled around Jian Yu, its hues shifting back and forth.

Pei Yuan attacked first. His Spirit Domain expanded, and he condensed three prismatic Spirit Blades.

The corner of his mouth lifted as the blades’ wake shot straight for Jian Yu’s dress.

Before they could even touch the hem of her dress, they were snared mid-air by a thousand silken tentacles and instantly disintegrated into a scattered wisp of air.

The smirk on Pei Yuan’s lips froze.

’He actually tried to tear my dress!’

’This is my most expensive Pink Crystal Dress!’

The color-shifting Jellyfish almost turned completely purple. Its tentacles suddenly shot out several meters, switching from defense to offense.

Pei Yuan’s eyes widened in terror, and he hurriedly raised his arms to block.

If he weren’t a Spiritual Power User, but an Awakener with a Soul Beast, he would probably already be suffocating under the pressure of Jian Yu’s Soul Beast.

Watching his Spirit Shield begin to crack, Pei Yuan swallowed hard. "You’re definitely not an Initial Awakener!"

The crowd below the stage jeered.

"Get down from there! Stop embarrassing yourself!"

"It’s obvious! With so many Chiefs pouring resources into her, how could our Little Fairy still be at the level of an Initial Awakener?"

"Being pretty really makes a difference. Even her Soul Beast is so ethereal."

"Little underclassman! Hit him! Why aren’t you hitting him? His relationship with Chief Pei is terrible, so you don’t have to hold back!"

...

Pei Yuan tried to block out the noise. Holding his breath and concentrating, he successfully defended against Jian Yu’s third attack.

He had extensive combat experience, and his Spirit Defense was comparable to a Level 3S.

After defending, he didn’t dare to get complacent. He frantically channeled his spiritual power, condensing attacking threads within his Spirit Domain.

"I don’t care how strong you are, I have to win this match!"

Several sharp Spirit Threads instantly churned the Jellyfish’s tentacles into a vortex. The Purple Fog’s color grew fainter and fainter, threatening to disperse and lose its form.

Jian Yu clutched her chest as her vision started to go black.

Every fight she’d had so far had been too easy. Now that she was in a real, serious battle, she finally realized the gap in strength.

Ling Yanzhi and the others were afraid of hurting her, so they never went too far.

Jian Yu had thought Pei Yuan’s strength was about the same as Yan Yu’s.

Hearing Pei Yuan’s wild laughter, Jian Yu could no longer afford to maintain her Soul Beast’s form.

She quickly gathered a large amount of Purple Fog and precisely directed it into the cracks of Pei Yuan’s Spirit Barrier.

"TZZZ."

Pei Yuan’s elation lasted less than two seconds before his Spiritual Power Shield began to crack as if it were being corroded.