Chapter 2: Genius, Good-for-Nothing

When Ding Ling opened her eyes again, three days had already passed.

The moment she opened her eyes, she saw a young medical cultivator changing her dressings.

Nurse Xiao Xu felt a wave of pity as she applied the ointment. A young girl had lost all her hair and eyebrows, her skin charred iron-black by lightning until she resembled a burnt corpse.

Just as she let out a quiet sigh, she looked up and met Ding Ling’s eyes.

Those eyes were strikingly clear, set against the scorched skin. The sudden sight gave her a sharp fright.

Nurse Xu quickly recovered. “You’re awake! Hold on, I’ll go get Teacher Song right away!” In her fluster, she forgot to press the call bell by the bed and jogged straight toward Professor Song’s office.

Ding Ling looked around.

White walls, a white table, a white bed, and a white quilt. Everything in sight was completely unfamiliar, and long needles were stuck into her arm.

A thick fog seemed to cloud her mind, and for a moment she could not recall why she was here.

Before long, an older woman in a white robe entered. “You’re awake. How are you feeling?”

Her internal organs had been treated in time, and her bones and nerves had been reconnected. As long as she took her medicine and rehabilitated on schedule, her flesh, skin, and hair would all regenerate without leaving a single scar.

Seeing no reaction from her, Professor Song walked up to the bedside. “Do you know your name? Do you know where you are?”

Ding Ling’s mind was in chaos, the roar of thunder still echoing in her ears.

When she instinctively probed her spiritual manor^[1], she was shocked to realize that this was not her body.

“Ding Ling?”

The girl on the bed looked up. The name was correct, but the body was wrong.

The smile faded from Professor Song’s face. Ding Ling only responded to her name; she seemed to know nothing else.

“Xiao Xu, hurry! Go find Director Chen right away!”

The collapse of the Rank-A secret realm had made the Five Continents Network News^[2].

Parents, reporters, and city officials arrived wave after wave. Principal Li and Director Chen had to deal with interviews every day while keeping away numerous media outlets that wanted to interview Ding Ling.

Calls even flooded the infirmary, forcing Professor Song to assign a nurse specifically to answer phones and handle the press.

Several teachers on the night patrol were either fired or disciplined. The kids who had gone along for the test of courage were handed major demerits before they even stepped back through the school gates.

When Nurse Xu went looking for Director Chen, he was trapped on the phone with a reporter. The moment he heard that she was awake, he hung up immediately and rushed to the school hospital.

On the way, he asked, “How is she?”

Nurse Xu thought for a moment and whispered, “It seems… it seems she was struck silly by the lightning.”

“What?”

Chen Dahai’s voice reached a new high!

Over the past three days, when he was not dealing with public opinion, he was discussing Ding Ling’s future placement with the school leadership.

The best solution, naturally, was to transfer her to an ordinary high school.

Following the resurgence of spiritual qi, only a small fraction of people could become cultivators. The vast majority of the population remained ordinary people incapable of awakening a spiritual root.

The school ultimately decided to transfer Ding Ling to No. 1 High School next door.

Her tuition and miscellaneous fees would be covered, and the school would also provide a sum of compensation. The Ye family was also exceedingly generous, offering enough money to buy a small apartment in the suburbs of Jiangcheng.

Ding Ling’s hometown was a small village in the South Polar Continent, an area so starved of resources that it did not even have a decent cultivation school. Her admission to No. 1 High School had been entirely due to her exceptional aptitude, and Chen Dahai had recruited her in person.

No. 1 High School had covered all her tuition and fees; now they would still cover those fees, just for her to study somewhere else.

The Ye family even promised that if Ding Ling was willing, they would provide her with a job after graduation.

When Chen Dahai went to recruit students, he had met Ding Ling’s family. The young girl lived with her grandfather. Her grandfather was old, and her uncle and aunt had long been unwilling to support another “freeloader.”

He still needed to remind Ding Ling that it would be best not to let her uncle and aunt know about the compensation money.

Once she graduated and found work, she could bring her grandfather over. Outside of the Central Continent, the living conditions and medical standards in the Four Polar Continents were far too backward.

Though unfair, this was already the best option for Ding Ling under the circumstances.

“She was injured because she severely violated school rules and regulations. If she had been unhurt, expelling her would have been the normal course of action,” Vice Principal Gao had said.

With Principal Li speaking on her behalf and the Ye family mediating, the transfer was already settled.

Nobody could have anticipated that Ding Ling had been struck stupid by the lightning.

Director Chen paced anxiously back and forth in the corridor, craning his neck from time to time to look inside.

The curtain was drawn around the hospital bed, and Professor Song was inside conducting a thorough examination on Ding Ling.

After waiting for more than an hour, the door finally opened. Professor Song came out and shook her head at Director Chen.

Chen Dahai’s heart sank halfway. “Is she really stupid?”

“She isn’t stupid,” Professor Song said, shaking her head.

Chen Dahai’s expression relaxed slightly. “Then what is it?”

“A closed brain injury.”

“The patient is currently experiencing memory impairment along with cognitive and psychological dysfunction. In the future, she may also suffer from sensory deficits, motor impairments, behavioral disorders, and more.”

Chen Dahai listened for a long while before slapping his thigh. “Th-that just means she’s gone stupid!”

Professor Song did not refute him this time. In layman’s terms, that was indeed what it meant. She sighed. “I remember you saying her grades were very good.”

“Yes, her academic scores were at the very top in Nanzhou. Even at No. 1 High School^[3] next door, she would at least be in the middle of the pack.” The girl worked hard; entering in the middle, she would surely strive her way to the top with a bit of effort.

Professor Song glanced into the room and shook her head. “She won’t be able to go.”

On the hospital bed, Ding Ling held one arm stiffly above her head while clutching several sheets of paper in her other, uninjured hand. Because of her charred skin, one could not tell how grave her expression was.

Even so, from the words of the two medical cultivators, Ding Ling had pieced together the general situation.

The original owner of this body had been a disciple of this sect who trespassed into a forbidden zone and got herself killed.

Having taken over the shell, Ding Ling had intended to find a way to conceal her identity. She never expected that the female medical cultivator would thrust several sheets of paper printed with black characters in front of her and ask her to “take a test”?

Ding Ling had assumed it was some kind of secret sect talisman. She could not read a single character on it, and just when it seemed her possession of the body was about to be exposed…

Just as she gripped the long needle on the back of her hand, ready to make a desperate move…

The female medical cultivator diagnosed her as “stupid.”

Soon enough, the news that Ding Ling, the genius from the South Polar Continent who had tied for first place with Ye Yibai, had been struck stupid by lightning spread throughout the summer camp.