Chapter 170 - 130 Reckless Youth

Chapter 170: Chapter 130 Reckless Youth"Today during class, the teacher asked us what our dreams were for when we grow up. My classmates all said they want to become Mutants, and even said they want to be the most powerful Mutants in the whole world! Hmph, a bunch of little brats. What’s so great about being a Mutant? I’m going to be the greatest scientist in the world!" Ji Xinghuo flipped to the very first entry. It was one he posted in the second grade of elementary school, at just eight years old, using his foster father’s phone to register an account and send out his first diary entry. Back then, hardly anyone left a message, but now there were over a thousand comments, mostly filled with teasing. "Uh..." Ji Xinghuo’s old face turned red. If it were not for this entry, he wouldn’t even remember that his childhood dream was to become a scientist. "Sigh, math is so hard. I only got 78 points on the final exam." Sёarᴄh the ηovelFire.ηet website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality. This entry was posted when he was in fourth grade. The comments were all "Hahahaha..." and "With that score, you still want to be a scientist?" the kind of people who revel in others’ misfortunes. "The Sun King is so awesome!" "In the future, I want to fuse with Laser Eye so that with a fierce glare, I can scare people to death, hehe!" His thoughts after watching a Sun King video for the first time when he just started middle school. "Exercise is so tiring, but it feels so good!" Accompanying the text was a photo of sweat-soaked clothes, face not shown, with the background being the running track on the sports field, having just finished running ten kilometers. "The only one who can defeat me is myself." with a cool expression of nonchalance. "Wang Chaozhuo is actually in a relationship, dammit, and his girlfriend is the class beauty from the class next door. Alas, women, women only affect my training efficiency. Ji Xinghuo, oh Ji Xinghuo, you are going to become the strongest man in the world, hang in there!" Ji Xinghuo slapped his forehead as he read this. He checked the date; this was posted during his third year of middle school, when he was fifteen. Wang Chaozhuo was his deskmate, secretly dating at the time. This love affair lasted for half a month. "Hahaha, Wang Chaozhuo was dumped because he’s so ugly, hahaha..." He posted this content half a month later. "Skywalker actually lost, fuck..." "RNM, refund!" Ji Xinghuo gritted his teeth as he read this. Skywalker was a team in the Asia-Pacific Community Super League. Back in its heyday, it dominated the competition by a wide margin. Sixteen-year-old him had bought a high-priced ticket to the championship game to show his support. However, on the day of the match, Skywalker seemed to sleepwalk through the game, losing miserably and missing out on the league championship. After the match, he posted seven or eight entries venting his anger at Skywalker. Years later, he learned that some members of Skywalker were involved in match-fixing. They may have lost the championship on the field but ended up with their pockets full off the field. "I am the most handsome man in the Milky Way!" Rambling online on a sleepless night. "Sun King, pfft, just wait, I’ll trample him underfoot someday!" At seventeen, after watching the Sun King defeat several Heavenly Kings and secure the unshakable number one ranking worldwide, he went online and rambled again. "An eighteen-year-old Sword Master, it’s outrageous, it’s exaggerated, the Sword Immortal is invincible!" "Zhao Manying is so beautiful!" "If Zhao Manying asks me to be her boyfriend, although I’m not swayed by women, considering her beauty and strength, I might consider it." Ji Xinghuo nearly jumped up when he read this entry. He had forgotten that he had posted such egotistical stuff in the past. Checking the date, it was the day Zhao Manying was elevated to a Martial Arts Grandmaster, and he was eighteen. This entry had the most comments, totalling over ten thousand. They were all mocking him. At that time, Zhao Manying had just become famous, known as a prodigy and her popularity and fame were not as terrifying as they were now, so when he posted it, only a few classmates and friends cursed him for being shameless. Now, thousands of people were angrily swearing at him, most of them Zhao Manying’s fans. Even though it was apparent at first glance that it was just banter, something many had posted similarly about, now that he was also a Mutant in the ladders, his status had changed, and so had the implications. "A toad lusting after swan meat." "Don’t you look in the mirror to see what you really are?" "What the hell are you dreaming about!" "How could the Sword Immortal ever fall for you? Don’t think that because you’ve achieved a little and climbed the ladder, you are something special. What will happen when you fall off the ladder? Who will remember you? Stop dreaming." These were just the more politely worded insults, but among the mockery, ridicule, and swearing, many engaged in personal attacks and even maliciously insulted his family. Along with a bunch of mocking emojis. Within the Asia-Pacific Community’s internet, it isn’t lawless. Any comments involving personal attacks, especially severe ones, can be reported, deleted, and sued with a single click, sent to the Network Speech Court for trial. The person doesn’t need to appear in person to make the offender pay a legal price. Ji Xinghuo had been in the Star Realm and hadn’t seen these comments, so there had been no commotion. Therefore, some people became increasingly uninhibited. Ji Xinghuo, with an expressionless face, reported and filed lawsuits one by one. At least thirty people were going to be fined and spend a few months in jail. However, he didn’t delete any comments or close his social media account. This was the last entry. After turning eighteen, Ji Xinghuo focused on training and, having entered university, had matured a lot mentally, and thus never posted anything online again. From the age of eight to eighteen, over a span of ten years, Ji Xinghuo posted thousands of pieces of content, witnessing the journey of a person from childhood to adulthood. Although much of the content was very juvenile, rash and ignorant, this was his youth. Ji Xinghuo decided to keep it, not to touch it. Most importantly, he had posted thousands of posts including many photos, illustrations, and memes, but he had never revealed his face. Selfie shots were at most of his body from the neck down. Anything above the neck was cropped out before posting. In the photos posted by classmates and friends that included him, his face was pixelated out due to privacy protection settings. Unless one had met him in person, no one would recognize him. Ji Xinghuo breathed a sigh of relief. No matter how harsh the online vitriol, as long as it did not disturb him in reality or affect his family, it was all inconsequential. He glanced at the time. It was now January 1, 2225, at 12:30 PM. The new year in the Asia-Pacific Community was the most important holiday of the year, with seven statutory days off. At this time, his siblings must all be on holiday. They still didn’t know he had come back. After thinking it over, Ji Xinghuo decided to give his family a surprise, so he put away his phone and walked out of the teleportation hall. The Star Gate Fortress was a massive building that, from outside to inside, was fortified with seven layers of alloy and concrete, each layer of thick walls enveloping another, with wide streets formed in between which housed tens of thousands of merchants, as well as a large number of troops and nuclear weapon arsenals. Having passed through the indoor streets of the Star Gate Fortress and three security checks, Ji Xinghuo finally left the huge, boxy fortress. The bustling Chaka City unfolded before his eyes. The weather was cold, four degrees below zero. Ji Xinghuo was clad in lightweight ceramic-steel armor with average insulation, but this minor cold had no effect on him. He hailed an autonomous car with his smartphone. The interior was warm, and as he watched the swiftly passing scenery outside the car window, he felt a sense of being in a different world. Suddenly, a light screen projected from the front row of the car, displaying the upper body of a bald man. "Ji Xinghuo." Min Chongwu’s expression was not pleasant as he glared at Ji Xinghuo and said sternly, "You brat, you’ve finally deigned to come back from the Star Realm." But Ji Xinghuo was all ease, "Captain Min, long time no see." The Sword Bureau was slower to react than he had expected. He thought that as soon as his phone was powered on, a call from the Sword Bureau would come through. Min Chongwu stared at Ji Xinghuo for a few moments, and with evident irritation, he said, "You breezed into the Star Realm so breezily, making me get an earful from Director Zhou." "Director Zhou has a broad mind, he won’t hold a grudge against me, right?" Ji Xinghuo ventured a guess. "Humph..." Min Chongwu was noncommittal and said, "I knew you were trouble from the start. When Director Zhou wanted to recruit you into the Sword Bureau, I was opposed. It was Director Zhou who insisted. You’ve made him lose face. If you had died in the Star Realm, that would have been the end of it, but since you’re back, you’re definitely not going to have a good time." At this point, he seemed quite schadenfreude, as if looking forward to the drama. Ji Xinghuo’s face darkened, "Aren’t you afraid I’ll head right back to the Star Realm?" "You can’t go back." Min Chongwu smiled smugly, "This car has been taken over by the Sword Bureau, with a forced change of destination. The moment you came out of the Star Gate, Yan Xiao had already led a team on board a Sky Fighter. You’ll see him soon." Ji Xinghuo remembered that pale-faced, snake-pupil Evil Wind Guest. The one who had been most malicious towards him was Yan Xiao, who didn’t bother to hide it; he was after the alien species with the Rotating Magnetic Field. Yan Xiao was a Super Mutant. A year and a half ago, facing Yan Xiao, Ji Xinghuo could only feel a sense of powerlessness, needing to be extremely cautious, but now... The corners of Ji Xinghuo’s mouth imperceptibly turned up. He calmly said, "I’ve come back openly this time, not intending to evade the Sword Bureau." "That’s good!" Min Chongwu nodded, taking a careful look at Ji Xinghuo, his eyes filled with irrepressible curiosity, and he asked, "I have to say, Director Zhou really does have an eye for talent. Your strength has improved beyond imagination, rising from an ordinary person to a ladder-ranked Mutant in just a little over a year. How did you do it?" "Because I’m a genius," Ji Xinghuo replied earnestly. "Nonsense!" Min Chongwu snorted, and since all Mutants who made it onto the ladder were geniuses, he shook his head, "If you don’t want to talk about it, never mind." After saying that, he ended the communication. Ji Xinghuo looked outside the window, the autonomous car had changed its route and was not heading to the vacuum train station he had set. The car doors were also completely locked. Of course, if he really wanted to get off the car forcibly, it would be very easy to accomplish. But there was no need. A moment later, the car entered a remote building in Chaka City, which seemed to be a base of the Sword Bureau. A medium-sized Sky Fighter was parked in the spacious ground inside the building, with Yan Xiao standing at the hatchway, and seven or eight Sword Bureau Swordsmen scattered around. On the surrounding buildings and floors, at every high point and concealed spot, fully armed Swordsmen stood guard. Ji Xinghuo’s magnetic field senses swept the situation clean, and through the car window, he glanced at Yan Xiao and squinted slightly, thinking, "Unfriendly visitors indeed." Yan Xiao, who already had an ill-will towards him, was dispatched by Director Zhou to fetch him, suggesting that the director was truly angered. The Sword Bureau intended to intimidate him. Or was this a test? To see what his current strength really was? As Ji Xinghuo’s thoughts churned, he waited until the car came to a stop, pushed open the door and stepped out. Before he could speak, Yan Xiao waved his hand and ordered, "Take him down!"