Chapter 814 – Three Thousand Mirror Ruins 81

When dawn broke the next day, the same grueling pace began anew.

Classrooms, training grounds… her figure appeared constantly at different locations.

After a full week of this intense schedule, Mo Lan had gained a clear understanding of the difficulty level of each course she had selected, each teacher’s instructional style, and her own rate of absorption.

Which courses required more effort, which ones could be progressed through more quickly—she had it all figured out.

As soon as the week’s courses concluded, she immediately contacted each of her teachers and booked her follow-up lessons directly, extending her already impossibly packed schedule even further into the future.

Immersed in her own frenzied rhythm of learning, Mo Lan had no idea that she had already dropped a bombshell within the faculty circles of Mirror Ruins University.

Every single teacher who had given her private lessons had been, without exception, stunned by her terrifying learning ability, absorption efficiency, and talent for drawing inferences from a single example.

Whether it was complex martial techniques or abstruse theory, she typically needed only one or two demonstrations or explanations to grasp the essence, and could even raise remarkably insightful questions.

For the teachers, this kind of teaching experience was nothing short of exhilarating.

However, the aftereffects of this “ultimate experience” soon made themselves apparent.

When these teachers finished their highly efficient one-on-one sessions with Mo Lan and turned around to teach regular group classes, the enormous gap hit them like a wall.

Watching students below who needed repeated explanations just to barely understand, who still couldn’t get their movements right after practicing multiple times—this “normal” learning pace left several teachers momentarily unable to adjust.

This was especially true for Zhan Min, the notoriously strict Advanced footwork instructor.

She had just finished several private lessons with Mo Lan that could only be described as “a pleasure,” and then turned around to see Advanced class students stumbling through even the most basic chain direction-changes. Her temper flared up instantly.

“Center of gravity! How many times do I have to say it? Lower your center of gravity! I didn’t tell you to hunch over like a shrimp!”

“Anticipate! Are those eyes on your face just for decoration? Can’t you see the trajectory of the simulated attack?”

“Too slow! At this speed, you’d be a mirror beast’s appetizer in a real mirror space!”

The atmosphere in class was oppressive beyond anything they’d experienced before, and the students were scolded until they were thoroughly demoralized and miserable.

Finally, one bold student couldn’t help muttering quietly after class: “What’s gotten into Instructor Zhan Min lately? Did she swallow gunpowder? She’s a hundred times more terrifying than before!”

As luck would have it, Zhan Min overheard this. She whipped her head around, her gaze sharp as a blade, and said coldly: “What’s gotten into me? I’m trying to save your lives! At your current level, if you don’t work harder, even the freshmen who just enrolled will surpass you!”

The students erupted in murmurs, exchanging bewildered glances, unable to believe what they’d heard.

Which freshman was so impressive that she could make Instructor Zhan Min say something like that?

Similar scenes played out across different classrooms one after another.

Whenever the teachers lamented their students’ lack of progress, they couldn’t help but hold up Mo Lan as an example:

“Look at yourselves! Mo Lan only learned this material yesterday, and today she can already apply it proficiently!”

“This question—Mo Lan raised an even deeper line of inquiry about it during her very first lesson…”

“If any of you put in half the effort she does, you wouldn’t need to spend mirror coins retaking the same course over and over!”

The name “Mo Lan,” carried along by the teachers’ various praises and comparisons, spread rapidly among both new and returning students.

Everyone was privately asking around—who exactly was this “Mo Lan” who had appeared out of nowhere?

When all the information was pieced together, it pointed to a single jaw-dropping fact: Mo Lan was a freshman in this year’s youth class!

The number of courses she had enrolled in was staggering, as if she needed no digestion time at all, completing one course after another in rapid succession. Courses that took other students an entire semester or even a full academic year, she could pass the assessments for in about a month—with outstanding marks!

“Are youth class students really that incredible?”

“I’m in the youth class too, and I can confirm—she’s definitely a monster…”

“Does she not need to sleep or cultivate?”

Before long, students browsing obscure texts in the library space happened to notice that on the borrowing records, the most recent borrower’s name on a great many books was—Mo Lan!

And the sheer volume was staggering.

When word got out, everything clicked into place.

It turned out that it wasn’t just her pace in class that was terrifying—even her reading speed outstripped everyone else’s.

Youth class students were already astonishingly talented, and now one of them was also outworking everyone else by a wide margin.

For a time, the returning students of Mirror Ruins University felt an unprecedented pressure, while the freshmen, after their initial shock, began to see Mo Lan as the benchmark to chase.

Foot traffic in the library space noticeably increased, the training ground lights stayed on later, and even the dining hall buzzed with more discussions about coursework.

An unprecedented wave of fierce competition, sparked by Mo Lan—this suddenly appeared “ultimate grinder”—quietly swept across Mirror Ruins University.

Yet Mo Lan herself, at the very center of the storm, was completely oblivious. The one-month mark had arrived, and she was in the training ground, preparing to spar with Qu Luo.

In stark contrast to Mo Lan’s eager, even slightly excited state, Qu Luo gripped a pair of utterly unremarkable short spikes in her tense hands, her head hanging low, eyes darting evasively. Every cell in her body radiated an intense aura of “I want to go home” and “I don’t want to fight.”

If Instructor Mei Ye hadn’t been standing to the side with her arms crossed, watching with an expressionless face, Qu Luo would probably have already activated her mirror emblem and fled.

“Begin.” The moment Instructor Mei Ye’s words fell, Mo Lan moved.

Her footwork was nimble, closing the distance like a gust of wind, her long training blade tracing an arc as she launched a probing strike toward Qu Luo’s shoulder.

Yet in the instant the blade was about to make contact, Qu Luo—who had been hanging her head the entire time—transformed into a completely different person!

Her previously hunched body snapped sideways and back like a startled spring snake, the movement minimal in range yet blindingly fast, allowing the blade’s edge to pass her by with barely a hair’s breadth to spare.

At the same time, the short spikes in her hands instinctively thrust straight at the wrist and elbow joints that Mo Lan had exposed during her attack.

“!” Mo Lan’s heart jolted. She hastily altered her technique to parry, and the training blade collided with the short spikes in a crisp clang.

She had taken a weakening potion, which had diminished her physical capabilities, and now her wrist tingled slightly from the impact.

What fast reflexes! What a practical fighting style!

The fighting spirit in Mo Lan’s eyes burned brighter. She began deploying the various techniques she had learned in class one by one—her footwork shifting, her bladework flowing in relentless combinations.

Qu Luo’s responses, however, remained utterly consistent—supremely concise, efficient, even carrying a wild, instinctive ruthlessness.

She almost never initiated attacks, but every dodge was perfectly calibrated, every parry landed at the point of least resistance, and every counterattack struck directly at vital points, forcing Mo Lan to pull back and defend.

And yet, after each counterattack, she would look deeply vexed and apologize—only to strike at Mo Lan’s next opening all over again.

Delivering the most vicious attacks with the meekest demeanor—that was Qu Luo in a nutshell.