Chapter 1: The Mysterious Academy

  Hú Sī Míng had a long, strange and wonderful dream.

  In his dream, he seemed to have returned to the time when he was in college with his roommates playing League of Legends all night. It felt like they had been playing for a long time, yet it also felt like only a few minutes had passed, and the scene shifted to him entering the professional League of Legends arena a year after graduation. At the end of the dream, the frozen laptop screen, due to their victory, transformed into a dark abyss that swallowed him whole.

  The feeling of being swallowed was so real that Hu Si Ming suddenly woke up with a start, and his back broke out in cold sweat.

  After gasping for a few breaths, Hu Siming gradually came to from his daze. It was only then that he noticed he was lying on an ordinary single-person desk, with his name engraved in the top left corner of the desk in shadow script. The room he was in was no longer the team's training base, but an unfamiliar classroom.

  What happened?

  With a hint of surprise, he stood up and looked around.

  The classroom was strangely designed, with only one door and no windows. The only light source came from the pendant lamp on the ceiling, emitting a harsh white glare. At the front of the classroom were the usual blackboard and lectern, with a large box of white chalk on top. Due to the limited space, there were only twenty sets of desks and chairs in the back row. Of the corresponding twenty people, a small portion had already woken up, looking around in confusion and panic.

  However, there were still over a dozen people who remained unconscious, lying motionless on the tables, looking almost like corpses.

  This bizarre scene made Hu Siming's scalp feel a bit numb.

  "Where is this place?"

  He couldn't help but mutter a sentence in his heart, and before he had even finished speaking, an answer automatically popped up in his mind.

  "This is the Tianhui Campus of DOTA Academy, a first-class school district, 04986 public classroom!"

  His response was so swift, as if he had been asked what 1+1 equals. It seemed to have come out instinctively. Perhaps triggered by this information, a string of intelligence about the Tower of Death Academy was forcibly fed into his brain. The overly crowded information flow severely disrupted Hu Si Ming's thoughts, giving him a splitting headache.

  "What is this information?"

  It took Hu Shiming several minutes to sort out these astonishing messages bit by bit.

  As his mood calmed down, the memories before he fainted gradually came back to him. With these inexplicably obtained pieces of information, Hu Si Ming's thoughts became clear. It seemed that at the time, he was in the middle of a match at the team's training base when a pop-up window resembling an online game appeared. Hu Si Ming had only casually clicked on it before his laptop screen transformed into a black abyss, swallowing him whole with an irresistible force that no human could resist.

  When I came to again, I was already in this classroom.

  Although hard to believe, the information in his memory clearly told him that this was an illusory space detached from the real world, directly under the control of the Academy of Death. All newcomers who were pulled in could accept challenges and tempering here, and finally obtain the power of those heroes in the knife tower!

  "It sounds like it's going to be pretty good."

  As a die-hard fan of Dota, suddenly learning that such supernatural powers really exist in the world is definitely something to yearn for. But not everyone is as thick-skinned as Hu Siming, facing unimaginable encounters and completely unfamiliar environments, more people are filled with fear and doubt.

  "This is definitely not an April Fool's joke?"

  "This place is so eerie, I want to go home..."

  In the public classroom, someone whispered like this, instantly causing a lot of resonance. Of course, there were also two bold guys who not only didn't get scared but instead actively looked around for people with similar tastes to make friends. The same experiences and encounters gave them common topics to talk about. Soon, the fear in these people's hearts dissipated a lot.

  Hu Si Ming had by now completely calmed down and noticed that almost all of the people summoned here were already awake.

  "Shall we get started?"

  In his heart, a hint of expectation appeared out of nowhere.

  Soon, as the last person slowly got up, the partition in front of the huge blackboard automatically slid to both sides. A piece of white chalk was held by an invisible hand, flew out from the podium and started writing words suspended in mid-air on the blackboard.

  That is a neat handwriting in regular script.

  "Newbies, welcome to Dota Death Academy."

  The wise principal has prepared a small entrance test for the new students. Please complete today's challenge under the guidance of the teaching assistant.

  A good beginning is half the battle, it will determine your future destiny!

  The chalk that can write by itself is also a terrifying thing. The first few people who woke up quickly had somewhat adapted and were still relatively calm. The last few people to wake up probably hadn't figured out the situation yet, and suddenly seeing the chalk flying on its own almost scared them silly, letting out a shrill scream. Some even thought of horror movies they'd seen, lost control, and rushed towards the classroom door, trying to escape from here.

  Bang!

  Just as the person who was about to escape stumbled and rushed to the classroom door, the door happened to be pushed open from the outside.

  He was caught off guard and knocked to the ground by the suddenly pushed-open door, bouncing back five or six meters like a rubber ball, before heavily crashing onto the floor and losing consciousness.

  In this extremely oppressive atmosphere, a man in his late twenties walked in from the door. Seeing that everyone's gaze was on him, a hint of ferocity flashed unconsciously in his eyes, and he glared back fiercely. The suffocating sense of oppression almost immediately made people lose the courage to look at him, and they all lowered their heads.

  This reaction made the man's unpleasant face slightly ease up a bit.

  "Listen up, in the academy, showing sufficient respect to the strong is the most basic survival rule for freshmen. Otherwise, you will die quickly. Since you don't know anything, I won't bother with you this time, but remember it well from now on!"

  He spoke with a big tone, putting himself in a high position from the start, naturally causing dissatisfaction among the people in the classroom. Although most people eventually chose to remain silent due to the situation, there were also some hot-tempered individuals who stood up directly, with an expression of discontent, saying: "The last person who was arrogant in front of me, I found an opportunity to cripple one leg after two months. Who do you think you are?"

  Bare-faced threat!

  The man's expression changed to one of pity, and he let out a sigh. "Before I took on this teaching assistant task, I thought the seniors were exaggerating about some things. But it turns out that every year there are indeed idiots like you who appear. Well, since you said one leg, I'll give you two!"

  As soon as he finished speaking, the man's figure rushed out like a whirlwind.

  People who reacted slightly slower didn't even see him make a move, but heard that unlucky guy let out a miserable scream, both legs were broken at the same time and curled up in pain on the ground. The sharp fractured bone pierced through the calf muscle, causing blood to flow all over the floor.

  An extremely bloody scene caused a scream to erupt in the classroom again. The freshmen were really scared this time!

  "Shut up, all of you!"

  The assistant's patience seemed to be wearing thin, he let out a loud roar, his face full of murderous intent as he swept the room with a glance, instantly silencing everyone.

  "The newbies are the most annoying, if you don't scare them a bit they won't listen." The assistant said in a voice that was not loud but just enough for them to hear, while beckoning to the ceiling: "Academy, treat him!"

  Under the gaze of the newborns, a white light fell from the ceiling and shone on the young man with broken legs. In just a few seconds, the broken bones and flesh healed instantly, without even leaving a scar. Then, the young man who had been knocked unconscious earlier woke up under the illumination of the white light.

  This incredibly shocking scene left the newcomers in the classroom speechless once again, and Hu Shiming was also shocked.

  "Does anyone else want to speak?"

  The teaching assistant looked around the podium with a provocative gaze, but no one else jumped out. For a moment, the classroom was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop.

  Seeing his intimidation work, the assistant instructor's tone became a bit more gentle as he explained: "No need to be so scared, killing is absolutely prohibited within the academy. No matter what kind of harm you receive, you can get free treatment from White Light. However, not being able to kill doesn't mean you won't get beaten up. If any of you guys don't watch yourselves and provoke a senior with a bad temper, it's possible that you'll be hung up and beaten for an entire day. That kind of pain that makes you wish you were dead but can't die is something that will absolutely make you remember for the rest of your life!"

  His last few words were extremely twisted and made people's scalps numb when they heard them.

  There were new students who thought of that terrible scene and were scared to the point of turning pale, but with a precedent in front of him, he didn't dare interrupt the teaching assistant's words.

  This attitude made the male teaching assistant very satisfied, and his stiff face softened a lot.

  "Very good, it seems you already know how to show respect to your seniors."