Chapter 3: Bite Marks
Chapter 3: Chapter 3: Bite Marks
But Fang Chen immediately suppressed the thought when he spotted a familiar figure sitting in the middle of the second row—his girlfriend, Xia Chu.
She sat up straight, staring intently at the blackboard. The lines of her profile were soft, and her long eyelashes stood out clearly in the static light.
He shook his head and thought, "Never mind."
It felt like doing that would be unfair to both Xia Chu and that female classmate.
Fang Chen walked up to Xia Chu. Feeling somewhat mischievous, he gently pinched the tip of her nose and squeezed her cheek. The touch was warm and soft, but she didn’t react at all.
"You actually have quiet moments like this," he smiled soundlessly.
Then, his attention shifted to her desk.
"Let’s see if you’ve been sneaking peeks at novels lately," he murmured.
He flipped through her books and rummaged in her desk drawer. Fortunately, he found no contraband reading materials. His gaze swept over a folded trash bag pressed against the corner of the desk. A corner of a piece of paper seemed to be poking out from underneath, with a few words faintly visible.
"A cheat sheet?" He raised an eyebrow. "Oh, caught you red-handed."
He pulled the piece of paper out, only to find it had been torn to shreds. As he pieced it together and smoothed it out, his expression instantly froze. This wasn’t a cheat sheet.
It was... a love letter?
Reading it with great interest, Fang Chen had already guessed the gist of it. Sure enough, the author was a Class Five student named Yang Fan.
Fang Chen had only one word to evaluate this guy: simp.
He had been pursuing Xia Chu for over two years, always spouting nonsense like, "With enough sincerity, even a heart of stone can be moved."
That would have been fine on its own, but Yang Fan also frequently challenged Fang Chen in the arena under the guise of wanting to leave an "indomitable" impression on Xia Chu.
"Sigh, a simp is left with nothing in the end," Fang Chen thought.
This shredded love letter was clear proof of that.
Fang Chen walked over to Yang Fan and patted his shoulder.
"Brother, look on the bright side. Butterflies are naturally drawn to fragrant flowers; improving yourself is the only way to go."
He actually didn’t have a bad impression of this guy. Although Yang Fan pursued Xia Chu, he never used dirty tricks. He even imitated Fang Chen in punishing bullies and protecting the weak in the academy. Though Yang Fan was usually the one getting beaten up, he wasn’t a bad person at heart.
Leaving Class Five, Fang Chen wandered around aimlessly, casually wreaking havoc along the way. Eventually, he strolled into the infirmary and saw Huo Ming.
"Compared to Yang Fan, you are an absolute scumbag," he said, coldly staring at Huo Ming, who was lying on the medical chair receiving facial treatment.
That face, swollen like a pig’s head, reminded Fang Chen of the evil deeds this person had committed in the past and might commit in the future. A surge of unnameable anger flared in his heart.
He shoved aside the frozen doctor and threw a heavy punch right at that face!
The already swollen cheek instantly deformed. A few teeth shattered, and blood immediately gushed from his mouth and nose.
He thought in surprise, "He can actually bleed in the Time Stop Domain?"
This gave him a new understanding, even though he couldn’t think of a way to utilize this trait just yet. Feeling a stinging pain on his knuckles, Fang Chen raised his hand and saw that deep tooth marks had actually been left behind.
This was...
He looked at Huo Ming and noticed that the teeth he had previously knocked crooked were currently fitted with steel braces for stabilization. His punch had landed right on those steel braces.
"It seems I can still get hurt in this space. In short, other than the fact that other people and objects cannot move independently, the physical laws here are almost identical to the real world," he analyzed.
He began exploring outward, trying to find the limits of the Time Stop Domain.
Eventually, he determined the range to be a radius of about one kilometer. Although he could faintly see the outside world, venturing beyond this distance caused his figure to blur. His sense of touch also became unreal, as if he might dissipate at any moment.
Not daring to risk the consequences of dissipating, Fang Chen had no choice but to retreat.
He wandered aimlessly for a while longer. Finding it utterly boring, a thought flashed through Fang Chen’s mind, and he deactivated Time Stop.
In an instant, World Revert occurred.
The overturned desks, the shredded books, Yuan Xiao sprawled on the ground, Huo Ming with his knocked-out teeth... Everything had been reverted.
Fang Chen was also back in the position he stood before the Time Stop. He replayed what had just happened in his mind.
"Wait! I... Why can I remember what just happened?" Fang Chen’s expression drastically changed.
Wasn’t this supposed to be a revert? A memory reset?
Pushing down Yuan Xiao, pinching Xia Chu, punching Huo Ming—he remembered all of it!
"I remember! I remember everything! I can remember what happened in the Time Stop Domain!"
Next, Fang Chen began to ponder what practical scenarios this could be applied to.
"If I go on a mission in the future and encounter a suspected ambush site, I can just activate the Time Stop Domain, walk over there myself, and fish out the hidden enemies one by one. This way, the possibility of being sneak-attacked from the shadows is entirely eliminated."
Finding a viable and practical application made him feel a little more at ease. He unconsciously rubbed his fist as he analyzed the situation.
"Since both involve reverting, why is my situation different from the Superpower User with Seeing the Future that the Spirit Awakener mentioned?"
Fang Chen recalled his own side effect: World Revert.
"Could it be... my side effect reverts the Time Stop World, while that person with Seeing the Future mostly likely experienced a personal revert, which is why their memories were reset?
"Or perhaps... that person didn’t tell the truth? I don’t know if there’s Magic in this world that can read memories either. Whatever, other people’s business has nothing to do with me.
"But looking at it this way, my rating should be at least a blue tier-three. It can at least function as an investigative Superpower."
Unfortunately, he had already loaded his Spirit Core, and his Spirit Seal was formed; there was no changing it now. A trace of indignation welled up, but he quickly suppressed it.
"Forget it, it’s fine to keep a low profile and reap the rewards," he reasoned. "I might receive fewer allocated resources in the early stages, but blessings and disasters go hand in hand; it’s not necessarily a bad thing."
He habitually squeezed his fist hard, and his knuckles let out a crisp CRACK.
HSS!
A distinct wave of pain shot from his right hand.
Sensing something was wrong, Fang Chen lowered his head and focused his eyes. There, starkly imprinted on his right knuckles, were a few distinct... tooth marks!
"This is..." he gaped. "The tooth marks left from punching Huo Ming in the Time Stop Domain? They... they were actually brought out too?!"
Fang Chen’s brain worked at lightning speed.
"Aside from memories, even injuries aren’t reset?" he thought.
This discovery gave Fang Chen a completely new understanding of the rules governing the Time Stop World.
"I get it now. World Revert—what’s being reverted is that Time Stop World, and I don’t belong to that world, so I won’t be reset!"
An even bolder idea struck his mind like a bolt of lightning: "What if... I train myself and improve my cultivation in the infinitely long Time Stop Domain? Will the growth I obtain through hard work also be brought back to the real world, just like these tooth marks?"
The moment this thought emerged, Fang Chen was so thrilled he almost sprang up from his seat.
He instinctively wanted to re-enter the Time Stop Domain to verify it, but the recharge countdown displayed on his panel splashed over him like a bucket of cold water.
[Uses Remaining: 0]
[Recharge Countdown: 22:48:16]
"Damn it, I still have to wait almost a whole day!" he cursed.
He felt that these twenty-something hours would be longer than an entire century. But the heart of a Martial Artist forbade impatience and rashness above all else.
Immediately noticing the chaos in his Aura, he took a deep breath and secretly circulated his Guiding Technique, forcefully soothing his churning Qi and Blood along with any stray thoughts.
"It’s just one day, no rush," he reassured himself. "Figuring out the true use of Time Stop is already an astronomical gain."
During the entire afternoon of academic classes, Fang Chen didn’t absorb a single word. His thoughts had long since drifted away, entirely focused on tomorrow’s Time Stop test as he wondered, "What else can be done in the Time Stop Domain?"