The Academy’s Unrivaled Professor - Chapter 110

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Academy Absolute Professor, Episode 110
I Was About to Break the Fish Tank, But the Owner Is Too Frightening
‘……Mukseon Sadowl followers.’
They were the names of the demon beings that Kang Hyeon had cut down.
Followers of the Open Gate Sect Leader, those who trailed in Mukseon’s wake.
‘Now I understand why Dang So-yu called.’
If the enemy had been the Chinese government or public security, he would have tried to handle it within his own means somehow.
But if the opponent was a demon being, things were different.
Dang So-yu, still in the midst of her growth, was nowhere near capable of handling this alone.
‘She made the right choice.’
In truth, the reason Kang Hyeon had chosen not to hide and instead revealed himself before them was precisely because he had recognized them as demon beings.
‘The World Hunter Association currently designates demon beings as public enemies.’
China was also a member state of the Association.
Only by informing Liu Chen, who appeared to be a powerful figure here, of the demon beings’ appearance would the Chinese government take genuine action.
“You, there.”
Liu Chen still couldn’t believe it.
Those demon beings, which had been difficult even for A-rank Hunters to contend with, the masked man had butchered in a single breath.
He didn’t even seem to be using much strength.
Slash and slash again, and they were dead.
There’s a saying.
If someone makes something look easy, that person is a master of the highest caliber.
‘A monster.’
At minimum, S-rank.
Possibly even someone who had already set foot in the SS-rank tier currently being discussed in the World Association.
‘Who in China is someone like that?’
No one came to mind immediately.
Liu Chen asked carefully.
“Just who are you?”
“I’ve said it three times now. Someone here on business at the Research Facility.”
“That’s not what I’m asking!”
As Liu Chen raised his voice, Kang Hyeon let out a snort.
“If I’d ever intended to reveal my identity of my own accord, would I have come all this way with a mask and hat pulled down over my head?”
It was a fair point, so Liu Chen fell silent.
Still, the fortunate thing was that this monster was not in league with the demon beings.
Liu Chen took a step back.
“Then perhaps you’re from Sichuan? Your manner of speech sounds like old-fashioned dialect one would hear in Sichuan period dramas.”
Kang Hyeon nodded.
There was no reason to refuse when someone was kind enough to provide a cover story.
“That’s right. Someone with ties to the Dang Family.”
“The Sichuan Dang Family?”
“While I’m at it, let me say this. Inside that Research Facility is someone of the Dang Family’s bloodline. Does that answer suffice?”
Liu Chen’s eyes widened.
Did the Dang Family have an expert of this caliber?
Nothing came to mind, but given the rumors that China harbored many reclusive masters, he let it pass.
“I understand.”
Once Liu Chen stepped back, Kang Hyeon produced a small vial of pills from his pocket.
Hwanggidan refined by Baek Yu-yeon.
A supreme-grade elixir that rapidly replenished an emptied Dantian.
Kang Hyeon tossed two pills into his mouth as he spoke.
“We’re pressed for time, so let’s hurry downstairs. And one more thing.”
Rumble!
He opened the iron gate leading to the basement as he continued.
“While you’re at it, get the S-rank Hunters gathered quickly.”
“S-rank Hunters? Me?”
Liu Chen echoed the words stupidly.
He wasn’t normally a stupid man.
It was just that sometimes, when events spiraled into chaos like this, people became fools.
“Come to your senses! Demon beings have appeared! The very demon beings the World Association designates as enemies!”
Spurred by Kang Hyeon’s sharp rebuke, Liu Chen snapped to attention and hurriedly seized his mobile phone.

* * *
Research Facility basement, medical ward.
Inside a narrow, dark ventilation duct that led up toward the women’s restroom.
In Dang So-yu’s hand, crawling through that space, was a cracked mobile phone.
“Huff… huff….”
It had taken her roughly a month and a half since returning from the Global Exchange Tournament before she could place that call to Kang Hyeon.

* * *
A month and a half earlier.
After the escape in Paris, her confinement at the Research Facility had only tightened.
First, her internet access was cut off immediately.
Because of this, she heard nothing of the tournament’s progress or of Ariana Ashford’s congratulatory remarks.
Dang So-yu understood.
She had caused a serious incident, after all.
“I won’t do it again.”
She complied, conducting herself as she had before.
Poison was extracted from her, and she quietly mastered the Poison Technique they taught her.
Fortunately, they allowed her to download the dramas she’d been watching; while viewing them with a blank stare, she memorized the incantations of the Saengjang Tongjejin.
As time passed, it became progressively easier to regulate the poison within her body.
Then, suddenly, a thought occurred to her.
‘Why are they teaching me the Poison Technique?’
If they meant only to keep her locked away and extract poison, there’d be no reason to make her stronger, would there?
She couldn’t even tell what they did with the poison they extracted.
‘Surely….’
This wasn’t mere isolation.
There was definitely something more.
As Dang So-yu practiced controlling the poison within her, she discovered that activating it caused her body temperature to rise.
After that, she deliberately ran a fever.
“I’m not feeling well. Could you send me to the hospital? I think I must have caught something while I was in Paris.”
Even the confined had the right to medical treatment when ill.
Not allowing it would be admitting to false imprisonment rather than legitimate quarantine.
Fortunately, treatment proceeded by bringing in external medical staff to the ward.
From that day forward, each time Dang So-yu went to and from the medical ward, she committed to memory the corridor’s length, the number of doors, the positions of surveillance cameras, the colors of the key cards, the guard shift schedule, the elevator floors, and even the direction of the ventilation ducts.
She also discovered that the formally dressed man who accompanied her whenever she moved was a direct subordinate of Ju Cheon-myeong.
‘If I need to escape, I’ll steal that man’s mobile phone.’
The Research Facility had no internet.
His, however, did.
The odds of him being able to make calls were high.
When roughly a month had passed, Dang So-yu had mastered even the advanced applications of the Saengjang Tongjejin.
“I’m still not feeling well. Why won’t this fever go down? Don’t you think we need to change medical staff?”
Then, one day.
While being escorted, Dang So-yu coughed, and by chance, her saliva splattered outside her toxin mask and landed on the formal man’s hand.
“Oh! I’m so sorry! Are you alright?”
Sizzle.
His skin began to dissolve, yet the man’s expression didn’t change as he answered.
“I’m fine.”
That’s when she felt something was off.
‘How can a person be like that?’
Shouldn’t he have cried out or gotten angry if he was in pain?
Or even if he genuinely were fine, he should show some emotion—but that response was far too mechanical.
“You should wash it quickly. You know what my saliva is mixed with—deadly poison.”
“I’ll wash it later. Keep moving.”
She found it strange, but let it slide.
And recently.
During a meeting with Ju Cheon-myeong, she learned that her mother—who had always made a point of showing her face through the glass partition once a month—had not come.
It was a first.
A full month had passed without her mother appearing.
‘That’s strange.’
Her instincts sent out a warning.
Even livestock, it’s said, instinctively know when the time for slaughter draws near.
That was exactly what it looked like.
‘Something’s happening right now, clearly.’
Dang So-yu made her decision.
She deliberately used the Saengjang Tongjejin to roil the poison within her body.
The suppressed toxin released its heat, and her forehead began to gleam with perspiration.
She moved back to the medical office and spoke to the man in the suit.
“Excuse me, I need to use the restroom.”
The women’s restroom in the Research Facility wasn’t heavily trafficked, and there were no surveillance cameras.
She’d also spotted a ventilation shaft beforehand.
“That’s not possible.”
“My stomach hurts, though?”
“Still not possible.”
“Should I just go here? Will you clean it up?”
……
“If I have to do that, I’ll be too humiliated to cooperate with poison extraction.”
“Just a moment, then.”
“Yes.”
The moment Dang So-yu entered the restroom, she locked the door and carefully opened the ventilation shaft in the ceiling.
It was to confirm her final escape route.
But then.
‘Hm?’
She heard the man outside speaking on a call to someone.
It was a sound she wouldn’t have heard before—was this the effect of the Saengjang Tongjejin?
Her hearing had definitely improved.
– Yes, Deputy Chief. We’ve moved Mukseon to the medical office, but now she’s gone to the restroom.
‘Mukseon?’
Dang So-yu’s ears perked up.
‘Why does he call me Mukseon? And he’s reporting every time I go to the restroom?’
This too was the sense of wrongness she’d been feeling lately.
If this was quarantine to prevent social chaos, wouldn’t they be a bit more relaxed about it?
There had to be a reason the security had tightened so much recently.
– Yes, I’ll keep watch continuously.
Moments later, the man made another call to someone else.
– Are the ritual preparations complete? Be thorough. It’s in three days.
‘A ritual? In three days?’
Dang So-yu felt her ominous premonition was proving correct.
The air had definitely shifted recently, and she’d felt nothing but the sense that something bad was coming for her.
‘Does that ritual need me?’
Just as she began to pry open the ventilation shaft, he pounded on the door from outside.
“Come out.”
“Not yet.”
“If you don’t come out in one minute, I’m coming in.”
“Then we go to war.”
Dang So-yu, grinding her teeth, carefully wedged the ventilation shaft back into place.
Then she attempted casual conversation.
“We’ve been seeing each other for a while, haven’t we? How old are you? That poison incident before—are you okay from it?”
She spoke while mixing in deep breaths.
‘I have to take a risk here.’
Today.
Dang So-yu planned to steal that man’s mobile phone.
‘They can’t kill me anyway.’
Her ominous premonition wasn’t about them killing her.
It was about them using her.
Simple logic.
To use someone?
You can’t kill them.
Using the Saengjang Tongjejin, she gathered enough poison in her fist to subdue her opponent.
“I’m fine. Just hurry up and come out.”
“But are you even human? Now that I think about it, something’s off. I feel like I’ve seen you before, ten years ago…… Why haven’t you aged?”
……
There was no answer.
Dang So-yu, pressed against the outside of the door, hurled another question.
“Who are you, sir?”
In that instant.
Bang!
The door shattered as a man burst through.
Dang So-yu thrust her fist forward by instinct, but the man caught it.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Using poison, sir.”
Hisss—
In that moment, the palm of the man’s hand that had seized hers began to dissolve.
Yet the man’s expression did not change.
Dang So-yu became certain in that place.
‘This isn’t human.’
The words of the man she had met in Paris suddenly came back to her.
– Becoming my disciple means walking a path of thorns far beyond what you imagine. One day you must endure endless bone-grinding training to prepare for the Demons that will descend upon the world.
‘Could it be.’
Were these the Demons that man spoke of?
Dang So-yu, who had initially meant only to restrain the enemy, now unleashed her poison with every ounce of strength.
The man had said something else as well.
– After that, you must endure using the incantation I just taught you. If you’ve truly mastered it, hardly any of them will even be able to approach you.
In moments of crisis, she was to hold the line with the Saengjang Tongjejin.
It seemed his words were true.
Hisss—
The man’s face, drenched in poison, began to melt away, revealing something grotesque and nightmarish beneath.
By no one’s measure was this a human being.
Unless it was a demon.
“So… it was real!”
The fight had begun, but this Demon Being could not withstand the Formless Toxin.
Thud.
Watching it collapse, she knew for certain.
‘Ju Cheon-myeong must be of a similar breed.’
She picked up the Demon Being’s mobile phone.
She had memorized the unlock pattern by watching the reflection of its hand movements in the window glass before.
Dang So-yu first called Kang Hyeon and summoned him.
‘Originally I intended to handle this alone.’
But that seemed impossible now.
Her opponent was not human.
Moreover, she could no longer pretend to comply.
She had struck down the enemy.
Which meant—
This might well be her last chance to make a phone call.
Dang So-yu shoved the Demon Being’s corpse into a storage room beside the bathroom and crawled up through the ventilation shaft.
“Haah, haah.”
Wiping away the sweat that streamed down her face, she turned on the internet.
The chaos was unprecedented.
Paris under attack, the emergence of Demon Beings, and more besides…
‘As expected.’
She had to keep her wits sharp.
Her enemy was a Demon Being.
Even as she crawled, she continued to compress the poison within her into a single point.
[Recording Log]
‘There’s a recent recording saved?’
She checked at once.
And…
She heard something shocking.
‘They’re going to turn me into a Demon Being? Kill my parents during the Ritual to provoke my emotions?’
Dang So-yu’s hands trembled.
That wasn’t all.
She had found records of the Ritual preparation process as well…
It was beyond ugly—positively sickening.
The blood of a thousand children had been required, and with it came the records of covert abductions orchestrated across the whole of China.
Now it was certain.
‘I have to get out. No matter what.’
Whether this mad scheme was the will of the entire Chinese government or Ju Cheon-myeong’s alone, she couldn’t say…….
‘I’m going to him.’
But how?
She had to survive ten hours.
Dang So-yu trusted that he would come for her within that time—the man had given his word.
He certainly possessed the power to do it.
But that trust proved fragile.
Crash!
From the women’s restroom below, the deafening sound of a door being torn apart exploded upward.
‘What—already?’
Dang So-yu’s breath caught in her throat.
Inside the narrow, dark metal shaft, her heart hammered against her ribs like a caged animal.
‘Please.’
She was just about to press her hands over her mouth to muffle the sound, praying that her heartbeat wouldn’t seep through—
Screech!
The iron grating of the ventilation shaft below tore away with a sound that scraped across her eardrums like taffy being ripped apart.
And in the dense darkness.
A smooth glide.
Something rose abruptly through the torn opening of the vent.
A neck bent at an impossible, inhuman angle.
“Dang So-yu.”
Two eyes gleamed in the darkness, raking across her.
“What are you doing in there?”
Lips pulled back in a grin that stretched to the ears.
It was Ju Cheon-myeong.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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