The Almighty Ring

At six in the morning, the servers went offline, and Jiang Fei returned to reality.

Jiang Fei went to class as usual. However, as he now had 10 more Attribute Points, the journey to the school seemed to have considerably shortened. Not only did Jiang Fei arrive five minutes earlier, he was barely even breathing fast!

Not only that — even the difficult questions from the teachers sounded much easier to Jiang Fei. In liberal arts, they had to memorize facts that amounted up to a dictionary. Although Jiang Fei could not remember everything instantly, he still found it far simpler.

“Hehe! Looks like I’ll have to add my intelligence. I might even end up as an elite scholar!” Jiang Fei thought to himself.

Just ten points of Intelligence and Spirit — and learning has become so much easier for him. When his ring levels up later on, he could don some equipment that added intelligence and quickly end up as a child prodigy, right?

With so many inspirational thoughts running through his mind, the lessons today were not as boring as they used to be. Previously, he would zone out and go to sleep. Now, Jiang Fei could understand what the teacher was saying at once, so he listened with relish!

Even after morning classes ended, Jiang Fei felt that he had not yet gotten enough.

“Brother Fei! Let’s go eat!”

Zhao Feng patted Jiang Fei’s shoulder and said.

“Yeah, let’s go!” Jiang Fei packed up, then stood up and headed out to have lunch with Zhao Feng.

The both of them got out of the school building and walked towards the canteen. When they passed by the school field, they realized that a large group of students had gathered there.

“Brother Fei! Let’s go see what’s up!” Zhao Feng just could not resist poking his nose into things.

Before he could even reply, Zhao Feng had dragged Jiang Fei into the crowd. After they forced their way to the front, they saw two groups having a face off. One group was led by Xu Hao from the sixth class, and all of them were wearing the same school uniform as Jiang Fei. The other group wore different uniforms.

“What’s up?” Jiang Fei asked curiously.

“The punks from Nagawa High School are trying to stir up some trouble. Xu Hao is leading our defense!” someone explained.

“Nagawa High School? Why haven’t I heard of this school?” Jiang Fei frowned. Just listening to the name of the school already made him frustrated.

“That’s a private school. It’s a high school run by Japanese people. Generally, the school only recruits children of Japanese expats!” Zhao Feng explained.

“Oh! I see!” Jiang Fei nodded. He had heard about China’s economy being far stronger than Japan’s. Many Japanese people have not been able to earn a living due to their domestic economic crisis. So, they have come to work in China. It did not take long before their families followed. However, most of them did not want their children to receive Chinese education, as they were worried of falling victim to cultural assimilation. Thus, they had established such schools and continued teaching their children in Japanese.

“Then what business do they have here?” Jiang Fei asked again.

“Sigh! The school officials have gone crazy. They’ve started some kind of international, friendship vanity project, so they’ve hosted a get-together with Nagawa High School on Saturday. Didn’t your class get selected to be the audience? Don’t you know about this?” A student from another class looked at Jiang Fei curiously.

“What! A get-together with the Japanese?” Jiang Fei said with a disgusted face. Although Sun Mengmeng had mentioned it before, she did not say which school it was with. Jiang Fei was never bothered to even ask, being who he is. He had not expected such a disgusting proposition!

“You guys have to leave!”

“We’re not leaving. Let us show you how basketball should be played!”

Just as Jiang Fei started groaning, a group of Japanese students within the crowd challenged Xu Hao and the others, speaking in Chinese clumsily.

“Hah! You guys wanna show us how basketball should be played? Why not fix your pronunciation first?” Xu Hao laughed, his arms folded. He was open-minded and more importantly, not a coward. He was not one to shy away from the challenge, not even when it came from the Japanese.

“Pronunciation? What does that mean?” The Japanese student was confused.

“In China, the word for pig’s tongue or beef tongue is pronounced the same! They’re pretty delicious!”[1] Jiang Fei spoke up.

“Mmm! I’ve eaten it before! Really delicious!” The Japanese guy did not immediately get the joke and even gave a thumbs up.

“Wait, no! Baka! Who are you calling a pig!”

It finally settled in after a while.

“Ah! A pig eating pig’s tongue, cannibalism! You guys are really perverted!” Zhao Feng muttered.

“Ahahaha…” Although Zhao Feng was not really loud, the crowd was tight enough for everyone to hear it.

“Hmph! You guys only know how to talk! If you’re really that good, let’s battle it out on the court!” The Japanese students were deeply embarrassed. If not for the Chinese students outnumbering them, they would have already started a fight.

“Sure! We Chinese are all around 1.7 meters tall. Why should we be afraid of Wu Dalang’s descendants?” Xu Hao sneered. The leading athletes from their physical education class were all here. What reason was there to fear them?

Very quickly, the crowd moved to the basketball court.

“Half-court or full court, you guys choose!” Xu Hao asked with a smile, arms still folded.

“We don’t have many people, three versus three, half court!” The Japanese students were mainly here to talk about things relating to the get-together, so not many of the group knew how to play basketball. Unable to get five people, they could only settle for a half-court game.

“Brother Fei, come play for a bit? What do you think?” Xu Hao noticed that Jiang Fei was there. As he was destroyed by Jiang Fei on the court the last time, the entire school knew that he was a beast on the court.

“I…” Jiang Fei was about to say: I’ll pass, you guys go ahead. However, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a Japanese student that stood out from the crowd. He was no average Japanese. He was not particularly tall, standing at only around 1.6 meters, but his eyes were gleaming, and there was a faint smile on his face.

“There’s something up with this guy!” Jiang Fei thought to himself. Jiang Fei realized that these Japanese students had seen Xu Hao and the others play basketball before. Since they dared to challenge them, they definitely had to have some skills.

Jiang Fei could careless about Xu Hao’s pride. However, Jiang Fei would never allow a group of Japanese students to swagger around his own school triumphantly!

“Sure, whatever, let’s play!”

As soon as he thought about this, Jiang Fei immediately changed his words!

“Alright! Big man[2], come up here. We’ll play with Brother Fei. Let’s teach these Japanese kids how to play basketball!” Xu Hao made a gesture with his hand.

“Got it!” The two-meter-tall giant walked to the front of the Japanese students, turning the Japanese group into a bunch of elementary school kids. Some of their heads did not even reach his belly button!

“Our team’s complete, who’s playing on yours?” Xu Hao asked the leading Japanese student.

“Kato, Matsui, let’s go!” At that moment, the guy who had caught Jiang Fei’s finally stepped out.

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Translation note:

[1] The Chinese word “口条” is being used here — in some Chinese dialects it relates to how someone speaks (refer to either grammar, pronunciation or anything similar) and in some other dialects the same word is commonly used to refer to pig’s tongue (猪舌头) or beef tongue (牛舌头).

[2] The center (C), also known as the five, or the big man, is one of the five positions in a regular basketball game. The center is usually the tallest player on the team and often has a great deal of strength and body mass as well.