Chapter 315

Chapter 315
## Chapter 315. The Cold Wind of Late Winter (3)

—

The celebration finally concluded, largely because my father caused such a scene.
The martial artists from the Black Dragon Stronghold, who had been glaring with hostility because a seemingly insignificant middle-aged man was picking a fight, quickly discovered his true identity as my father and immediately shifted to deep, respectful bows.
“Ah! You were the Great Stronghold Leader!”
“…….”
For some reason, this only served to make my father even more furious, and he promptly threw the youngsters from the Black Dragon Stronghold out on their ears.
Naturally, he cast out all the gifts they had brought along with them.
Ah, what a waste, just think of how much wealth was sitting in that pile.
Left with no alternative, I sneaked out to meet with the representatives of the Black Dragon Stronghold under the dark cover of dawn once the banquet had fully wound down.
“Did you bring the items?”
“Ah, yes. Stronghold Leader.”
“I explicitly instructed you not to address me by that title.”
“My apologies, Stronghold Leader!”
“…….”
I genuinely detested being called the Black Dragon Stronghold Leader.
To begin with, it was completely illogical for me to be called a Stronghold Leader when I wasn’t even a bandit of the Green Forest.
“As per your directions, I have converted everything into promissory notes.”
“Is that so?”
Then again, money itself carries no sin, does it?
Forcing down the corners of my mouth that desperately wanted to curve upward, I examined the total sum written on the notes, tilting my head in slight surprise.
“Oh? There were rare metals included in the haul, yet you managed to get the maximum value for every single piece?”
“Ah! Because that particular merchant attempted to swindle us, I provided him with a bit of a physical education lesson.”
“…….”
To think they possessed the capability to wring out that much from a merchant notorious for being utterly heartless and cold-blooded when it came to profit.
These subordinates whom I had never met before today actually appeared to be remarkably competent.
I was beginning to take a bit of a liking to these fellows.
“Ahem.”
“Please hand down your decrees!”
To think they would react with such sharp alertness to nothing more than the sound of my clearing throat.
I was growing fonder of them by the second, wasn’t I?
“Listen to me closely.”
I drew a distinct boundary right then and there, just in case they were harboring any delusions.
“I am someone who cannot occupy the position of your Stronghold Leader, nor do I have any desire to take up that mantle.”
“What could you possibly mean by that……”
“Who exactly am I?”
In response to my inquiry, the rough-looking men tilted their heads in a dazed, timid fashion.
“You are the Black Flame Dragon…… Stronghold Leader.”
“No, not that. What is my public, official title?”
“The top student of the Martial Academy……”
“Precisely!”
The Black Dragon Stronghold operates hand-in-hand with the Green Dragon Stronghold.
The pair must be regarded as a single entity. And the true chief of this Twin Dragon Stronghold is Du-chil Bang.
I lectured them while gripping the promissory notes firmly within my fist.
“A person destined to become a foundational pillar of the White Path cannot simultaneously act as the chieftain of a mountain fortress.”
“…….”
For whatever reason, the Green Forest bandits stared intently at my clenched hand for a brief moment before lowering their heads despondently, looking exactly like abandoned puppies.
Gazing at the backs of their bowed heads, I supplemented my statement.
“Therefore, moving forward, you are to deliver the tribute straight to me, but only after you have fully converted it into promissory notes.”
“What was that?”
The lackeys jerked their heads up simultaneously, their expressions utterly bewildered.
“Because it will turn into a massive catastrophe if my father catches wind of this.”
“Hmm…… how does that work? Did you not just proclaim that you were not the Stronghold Leader……”
Why on earth were they struggling so much to grasp plain language?
I brandished the promissory notes directly in front of their eyes.
“You wish to present me with funds, do you not?”
“…….”
Given how relentlessly determined they were to offer it, I really had no choice but to accept.
Furthermore, it would be terribly discourteous to spurn someone else’s sincere intentions.
I am simply not the sort of ill-mannered scoundrel who would do that.
“Additionally, if it can be managed, make the delivery on a designated day every single month. If you dispatch such massive sums of wealth all at once, there is a distinct danger that the movement of funds might be tracked.”
“…….”
The Green Forest bandits found themselves entirely speechless.

The following morning, precisely as we had planned, we departed from the estate of the Great Heaven Merchant Group to make our journey back to the academy.
Every single member of the Tae-eul Sect lined up outside to send us off.
“……I do not catch sight of the Outer Hall Master.”
Well, everyone except for my father.
As Sa-ryeon directed a deeply concerned gaze toward me, I merely shrugged my shoulders dismissively.
“I expect he has his hands full with work.”
Right at that moment, Chae-seok Kang walked over to me, holding a modest cloth bundle.
“Keep this with you.”
“What might this be?”
“Your father crafted this for you during the past summer season to present to you. Well…… though he did toss it right next to the firewood pile yesterday evening, claiming he was going to reduce it to ashes.”
He truly is an absolute fool when it comes to his son.
A smirk slipped past my lips as I pulled open the cloth wrapping.
Resting inside was the familiar dark martial attire that I frequently sported.
“Is it not a time-honored tradition for parents to fashion garments when their child achieves the rank of top student? Your father, having caught wind of that custom rather late, sought out the most skilled embroiderer in the entire region multiple times.”
Understated, elegant designs were woven into the fabric with silver threading, and the characters for “Tae-eul” were neatly stitched into the sleeves.
What a massive relief it was that he hadn’t emblazoned “Top Student” across the center of the chest.
I offered a smile as I bound the cloth wrap back together.
“Kindly convey my gratitude to him.”
“He will almost certainly spit out a curse, demanding to know why I bothered doing something so utterly pointless.”
“Even so, please pass it along.”
Our parting words were brief.
This was because the entire assembly of the Tae-eul Sect was walking on eggshells around Mu-jeon Jin, entirely due to the chaotic events of the prior evening.
In stark contrast to our journey out, we traveled back toward the academy in complete comfort this time by employing the services of an escort bureau.
As we progressed from Hefei toward Wuhan, one could distinctly feel the icy weather beginning to soften.
While our carriage rolled along, I passed the time listening to the endless chatter of the junior disciples, and whenever the designated hour arrived, I partook of the meals prepared by the laborers of the escort bureau.
The absolute finest perk of journeying alongside an escort bureau is that one is entirely spared from standing night watch.
For the vast majority of the trip, we lodged at established taverns, but even on the rare occasions we were forced to camp under the open sky, there wasn’t the slightest bit of discomfort.
In that orderly fashion, by the time our group finally arrived back at the academy grounds.
Vernal blossoms were beginning to unfurl across the campus.
“Oh? You made it back today? Had I been aware, we ought to have traveled back together from Hefei.”
Mo-ran Seong reached the academy on the exact same day as us, traveling alongside Seon-hwa Nam-gung.
“It was absolutely, incredibly fantastic!”
Seol-ran Eun, who appeared to be in an even more radiant mood after spending time back in her ancestral home, rolled in two days later.
“Good grief, Hyung-nim……”
Jae-hwa Mo-yong made his appearance three days after us, and strangely enough, a blade was fastened at his hip.
“My grandfather demanded to know what I intended to do if I ever completely ran out of arrows.”
His elder no longer forbade him from utilizing bows, but when instructed to master the blade as a contingency plan for dire emergencies, Jae-hwa Mo-yong had readily acquiesced.
“Ugh……”
He lamented that he had realized far too late that those specific instructions would transform his entire vacation into a living purgatory.
He had been subjected to grueling individual training sessions with Kang Mo-yong without receiving a single day of rest throughout the entire duration of the holiday, or so the story went.
“Is that not an incredibly fortunate thing?”
When Eun-ho offered a swift rebuttal upon witnessing him whining despite having received private tutelage from an unrivaled grandmaster, Jae-hwa Mo-yong looked as though he might break down into tears at any given second.
“H-he, just like this, like this, he would drive the blade straight at my throat, and my skin was genuinely sliced open, ugh…… I literally blacked out from the blows. B-but do you know what the absolute most terrifying part was……?”
“…….”
“The agony was so intense that I honestly believed I was on the verge of death, yet the very next morning, I would wake up completely whole and fine again. And then that exact same cycle would repeat…… I genuinely wanted to flee for my life on multiple occasions……”
Faced with Jae-hwa Mo-yong’s intensely vivid account, Eun-ho, who had just been dismissing his complaints, began to nod his head in profound comprehension, reaching out to pat his companion’s shoulder comfortingly.
“Indeed, indeed, I understand, I completely comprehend that sensation of truly believing you cannot endure another second, yet somehow finding yourself doing it all over again……. Go ahead and weep. It is perfectly fine to cry!”
……Then again, why on earth was that fellow casting his gaze toward me?
Shortly thereafter, every single member of the Academy Representative Office arrived back as well.
“Have you been keeping well, Representative?”
“I caught wind of the events surrounding that Jeon-deung-mun.”
“As one would expect from you, Representative.”
The quarters of the representative assembly remained boisterous for a considerable period with discussions regarding the Jeon-deung-mun.
Everyone was incredibly eager to unpack their storehouse of tales, looking as though they had been counting down the moments for the academic term to commence.
“To think that an individual who had mastered forbidden techniques was covertly embedded right inside a martial sect of the White Path. It is honestly nothing short of bone-chilling.”
As one academy scholar remarked while shuddering as if his flesh were crawling, a fellow student chimed in with an incredibly solemn look.
“This time around, within my own territory as well, an event occurred where a sect was raided under the suspicion that they had been practicing forbidden arts.”
Triggered by his statement, nearly identical accounts began to emerge from the various members of the representative assembly.
“Oh? Right in the vicinity of my own sect, a school endured an identical fate.”
“We also witnessed a sect undergoing that exact same ordeal.”
Accounts began to burst forth from every corner of the room, almost as if they had prearranged the timing.
And the individuals who were exchanging these matching tales very quickly began to sense a profound bizarre nature to it all.
“……To think that this many distinct sects have actively pursued forbidden arts?”
The entire room fell silent as they confronted the utterly irrational scenario.
Even if there truly were numerous factions that secretly practiced forbidden techniques, bringing those suspicions into the light of day was no simple matter.
How could so many disparate sects have been pinpointed within such a brief window of time?
‘The wheels are already in motion.’
The systematic elimination of political rivals.
When one took into account that the vast majority of the accused sects were direct competitors of the factions leveling the charges, the true motive behind the situation was glaringly obvious.
Without even bothering to secure authorization or assistance from the Martial Alliance, they launched assaults against their rivals under the banner of eradicating forbidden arts themselves. Furthermore, even if the accusations ultimately proved entirely groundless down the line, the targeted sect had already been wiped from the face of the earth, meaning there wasn’t even an opponent left to demand an apology or rectification for the slander.
‘They view the window of time before the Alliance Leader’s Order is officially decreed as their golden window.’
Until the Alliance Leader’s Order was formally broadcast throughout the Martial Alliance, the cycle of accusations and sudden raids would not cease.
Because this period represented the ultimate chance for factions to aggressively expand their own spheres of influence.
‘I managed to stall for time, but did my actions simply end up triggering the exact same crisis in the long run?’
He had believed that by bringing a swift end to the Sichuan Blood Incident, he had successfully minimized the loss of life. He had never even dreamed that matters would fracture outward in this particular manner, leaving an incredibly bitter taste in his mouth.
He found himself struggling to even conceive of the sheer chaos that would unfurl once individuals who truly practiced genuine demonic arts began to openly emerge into the world later on.
In order to rein in the martial artists of the Jianghu who were presently whipped into a frenzy by the mere mention of “Forbidden Arts,” an immediate, decisive resolution from the Martial Alliance was absolutely vital.
“At the very least, it brings some peace of mind that an elder from my own faction possesses a solid connection with the staff over at the Inspection Pavilion.”
“It is precisely for circumstances like this that sects exhaust so much effort to secure a lifeline within the Martial Alliance.”
“We likewise need to land ourselves a highly favorable post. If we begin our service to the Martial Alliance stationed out at some backwater branch office right from the start, we will end up completely stranded in mediocrity.”
As individuals who had successfully earned entry into the academy, they were acutely aware that the heart of the current crisis didn’t actually revolve around “Forbidden Arts,” but was rather a ruthless “conflict over resources and authority.”
‘This truly is a filthy piece of business.’
Those who held exalted ranks within the Martial Alliance or those who nurtured intimate ties with the leadership would not be easily targeted in this sweeping “Forbidden Arts” purge.
If anyone dared to launch raids against factions that wielded significant influence through their alliance connections, they wouldn’t be able to easily brush the matter aside by simply labeling it a “regrettable oversight.”
In the grand scheme of things, the only time an aggressor could avoid answering for a “mistake” was when the victim happened to be significantly weaker than themselves.
Observing how this sudden “Forbidden Arts” panic was serving to aggressively fuel the academy students’ drive for academic performance was far from a pleasant sight.

The overwhelming majority of the student body returned to campus after wrapping up their holiday.
Nevertheless, the distinctly restless, energized ambiance refused to settle down easily.
It remained a mystery whether this restlessness stemmed from the winter vacation being notably longer than the summer break, or if it was a direct consequence of the ongoing “Forbidden Arts” situation.
Whatever the root cause, every single one of them appeared to be steeling themselves intensely for the brand-new semester that was about to kick off.
“Hey there.”
I managed to cross paths with Sun-jik Cheol just before the new academic term officially commenced.
This was because I possessed an item that I was obligated to deliver to him.
“It appears you made it through the break without getting yourself killed.”
For some reason, the subtext of his greeting felt heavily like, ‘How on earth are you still breathing?’
Tsk. Given that I instantaneously decoded the hidden meaning behind his words, I must have grown entirely too accustomed to his peculiar manner of speaking.
“If you were keeping close tabs on the Jong-nam Sect, you would have been well aware of the outcome, wouldn’t you?”
“It is simply that I possessed no particular desire to concern myself with it.”
How incredibly coy he can be.
“Setting that aside, did you bring the items along?”
In response to my query, Sun-jik Cheol tilted his head to the side.
“……Without a doubt, I am the individual who arrived here to collect something. No, in the first place, what could I possibly have to hand over to Representative Jin?”
What, so he didn’t even bother to bring them?
I shifted my posture to stand with my legs crossed and thrust my open palm straight toward his face.
“The iron pellets.”
“…….”
“You absolutely should have brought back the salvaged iron pellets. Do you have even the slightest inkling of how much those cost to manufacture?”
Sun-jik Cheol fixed me with an incredibly intense, unblinking stare.
Hmm, I am intimately acquainted with that specific look.
It is undeniably the exact facial expression that asks, ‘What kind of unmitigated lunatic am I dealing with right now?’
“What, did you genuinely fail to bring them back?”
Sun-jik Cheol scanned our immediate surroundings with caution before lowering his voice to a hushed whisper.
“Are you seriously ignorant of the fact that the complete narrative of a misdeed is invariably brought to light due to physical evidence? As a matter of course, I melted every single one of them down and discarded the metal.”
No, why on earth would you just throw them away?
You could easily reform them into an entirely different tool and put them to use.
Undeniably, having been born as the pampered offspring of an immensely wealthy clan, he lacks even the basic concept of utilizing materials economically.
“Tsk, I clearly cannot delegate a single task to your care.”
“……I possess absolutely no desire to perform tasks for you either.”
Gazing at Sun-jik Cheol, who pushed himself up from his chair with a thoroughly displeased countenance and made a move to depart, I extracted a compact, polished mother-of-pearl flask from the folds of my attire and placed it firmly down upon the wooden table.
Sun-jik Cheol’s frame, which had been tracking toward the exit, froze entirely in its tracks.
I indicated the mother-of-pearl flask with a subtle, sharp flick of my chin.
“The specific item I gave my word to provide.”
On account of this deal, I had ultimately found myself entirely unable to consume the spiritual medicine myself.
Then again, seeing as I had already ingested the Vajra Honey, it didn’t count as an earth-shattering loss.
“…….”
Sun-jik Cheol, who dropped back down into his seat and kept his eyes glued to the mother-of-pearl flask for a long beat, eventually lifted his gaze to stare directly at me.
His face still bore the look of someone completely unable to make heads or tails of the situation.
“Are you…… genuinely handing this over?”
“Of course I am delivering it in earnest; would I go through all this trouble just to present you with a counterfeit?”
Sun-jik Cheol reached out, claimed the mother-of-pearl flask, and pried the stopper loose.
And after drawing in its aroma for a brief moment, he slammed the cap back into place with incredible speed.
“It is the authentic article. Furthermore, the volume exceeds what I had anticipated.”
He then proceeded to lightly agitate the mother-of-pearl flask, calculating the approximate quantity contained within.
“……What is your motive for giving this to me? To begin with, even if you had asserted that the volume was negligible or that the refinement quality was inferior, I would have possessed absolutely no method to verify your claims.”
“Wow, even when I willingly hand over the goods, you find a reason to complain.”
“…….”
I locked eyes with him and gave a solitary, casual shrug of my shoulders.
“I gave my word. I am merely honoring that pledge.”
“A pledge……”
Just what sort of monster does he take me for?
“…….”
“If it is not to your liking, feel free to leave it behind.”
The moment I reached out to reclaim the mother-of-pearl flask, Sun-jik Cheol swiftly snatched the bottle up and shoved it deep into the inner pockets of his robes.
A faint smirk crossed my features as I took in the look on his face.
“In any event, our mutual arrangement is officially concluded. You are firmly established as an accomplice now. See to it that you do not sing a different tune down the road.”
Now that I had successfully secured Sun-jik Cheol’s silence with this exchange, I made a move to rise from my seat and take my leave, when suddenly.
“Are you aware that the entire Jianghu is presently in an absolute uproar over the ‘Forbidden Arts’?”
It appeared Sun-jik Cheol was eager to prolong our conversation.
It makes perfect sense, considering he doesn’t exactly boast an abundance of companions either.
I leaned my weight back into the wooden chair and settled myself down once more.
“And what of it?”
“Word is circulating that the instructional courses at the academy are on the verge of undergoing a massive overhaul.”
“What exactly does that imply?”
“It signifies that they intend to completely alter the metrics by which the academy scholars are assessed.”
“And what precise advantage do they intend to extract from making such a change?”
“The Nine Sects and One Union along with the Five Great Clans are each independently executing their own strategies to consolidate their strength.”
A quiet smirk escaped me.
This was because it was a piece of reality that I was already fully cognizant of.
“You are speaking as though the 12 Phoenix Stars are sitting idly by and not doing the exact same thing?”
Sun-jik Cheol pressed forward with his explanation, entirely disregarding my interjection.
“The current instructors and the head instructors are scheduled to be thoroughly replaced.”
They are only getting around to this now?
“They will be replaced by individuals who have accumulated experience serving at a minimum of the Hall Master tier within the Martial Alliance itself. Rumor has it that every single one of them stepped forward to apply for these positions voluntarily.”
“And the individuals who put in these applications happen to be loyal members belonging to the Nine Sects and One Union and the Five Great Clans?”
Sun-jik Cheol gave a firm nod of affirmation.
“This is an enterprise being carried out with the various Hall Masters and Elders of each respective department serving as the primary drivers. I caught wind that they fully intend to upend the instructional framework that has remained set in stone up until this moment.”
“And they are choosing to execute this specifically right now?”
If it were a systemic transformation of this magnitude, the foundational groundwork alone ought to require an immense stretch of time…….
To abruptly implement it right in the middle of an active academic term, moving at breakneck speed like roasting beans on a lightning bolt, simply because they lacked the patience to wait for a single term to conclude?
“Is that not executing matters with far too much desperation?”
“……Perhaps because the circumstances themselves are incredibly desperate?”
Could there possibly be an additional complication developing that I am entirely blind to?
“What exactly is so desperate?”
Sun-jik Cheol stared back at me with an incredibly intense gaze, offering absolutely no verbal reply.
Why on earth is this fellow choosing to clam up now?
“At any rate, this marks the absolute limit of the information I can share.”
In the final analysis, Sun-jik Cheol was the type of individual who consistently withheld the truly critical pieces of information.
Regardless, this caliber of data was strictly categorized as highly classified even within internal circles, so what precise motivation drove him to go completely out of his way to disclose it to me?
Sun-jik Cheol hesitated for a brief beat before casting his eyes downward toward the floor.
“……Let us consider this information as the compensation for this item.”
He gave a soft, rhythmic pat to his chest right where the mother-of-pearl flask was securely stowed away, and then promptly rose from his chair.

The day immediately preceding the official start of the academic term.
Precisely as Sun-jik Cheol had indicated, the entire roster of instructors and head instructors was completely replaced overnight.
The academy students vehemently voiced their grievances regarding the abrupt, unannounced overhaul, but their protests were utterly ignored.
To begin with, the total number of scholars who actually stepped forward to raise an objection was overwhelmingly minuscule.
Under those chaotic auspices, the brand-new semester officially kicked off.
Thud, thud, thud.
The adult male who strode into the lecture hall came to a halt and swept his eyes across the entirety of the room’s interior.
“Everyone is feeling rather bewildered by the sudden shift in circumstances, correct?”
The man pressed on with his remarks, a polite, disarming smirk plastered across his pleasant face.
“There is bound to be a sense of lingering regret over no longer being permitted to learn from the instructors you had grown close to…… and I caught wind that there were even a few individuals who dared to voice formal objections?”
Does this instructor genuinely possess that information?
The reality was that the grievance raised by the protesting academy scholars didn’t actually center on the sudden shuffling of the faculty, but rather focused heavily on the specific ‘factions of origin’ of the newly assigned personnel.
“Well, I imagine there was plenty of idle chatter regarding this matter, behaving exactly like those castrated, spineless bureaucrats over in Beijing.”
The instructor let his commentary fly without the slightest hint of restraint, looking as though the students’ underlying discontent didn’t matter to him in the slightest.
“Be that as it may, the absolute blame for this current state of affairs rests squarely on the shoulders of your specific class during this academic term.”
In response to the instructor’s blunt declaration, the ambient temperature within the hall plunged to an incredibly icy chill.
“Because your collective achievements lag dismally behind when measured against any of the previous graduating classes, we were ultimately left with no choice but to implement these highly aggressive, extreme countermeasures.”
Confronted with such an utterly preposterous, derogatory claim, a solitary academy student raised his hand into the air.
“……What precise meaning do you intend to convey by those words?”
They were individuals who had successfully secured their enrollment at the academy by clawing their way through the most fiercely competitive regular entrance examination in recorded history.
To dare claim that the performance metrics of such elite individuals fell short when compared to prior classes was absurd.
At this turn, the instructor nodded his head in an exaggerated fashion, treating the outburst as though it were an excellent inquiry.
Then, in the span of a heartbeat, he froze his features into an incredibly cold, severe mask.
“I mean to say that if we were to simply permit you to graduate under the current framework, you would end up inflicting severe damage and embarrassment upon the Martial Alliance.”
“……I still fail to comprehend your meaning clearly.”
“Ahem, as I suspected, does the graduating class itself simply possess an inherently inferior baseline of talent?”
“…….”
The instructor shook his head slowly, let loose a heavy sigh, and continued to spin his narrative.
“Allow me to paint a clear picture for you. In the era when I was a student here, an academy scholar possessing the meager level of talent required to barely squeeze into the White Wolf Pavilion would likely find themselves easily placed within the elite Red Dragon Pavilion in this current class.”
“…….”
“It signifies that there exists that massive of a disparity in raw capability. However, there is no need for you to panic. The newly arrived head instructors and instructors will aggressively forge your martial skills while simultaneously dictating exactly where you will be deployed based on a system of absolute evaluation……”
“Pffft!”
I, who had been enduring the instructor’s grandstanding speech in absolute silence, finally reached my absolute limit, and a burst of laughter tore right out of me.
This entire display is genuinely hilarious, is it not?
“Kh-pffft!”
“……!”
The instructor, who had been right on the verge of launching into the core lesson, ground to an absolute halt.
Before long, he began to sweep his sharp, piercing eyes across the assembled academy scholars, his gaze dripping with hostility.
“……Who was that? Who was the individual who just dared to let out a laugh?”
When not a single soul stepped forward to claim responsibility, the instructor began to slowly project a heavy wave of palpable killing intent throughout the room.
Beginning with the scholars seated in the very front row, the complexions of the students began to drain of color, turning a stark, ghostly white.
“So you refuse to present yourself? Every single one of you, assume the punishment position on your hands and feet immediately!!!”
His thunderous roar reverberated violently off the walls of the lecture hall.
That utterly worthless, archaic practice of collective punishment. Honestly, those characters hailing from the Martial Alliance invariably feel the driving need to flex their authority in the most obnoxious way.
They are such incredibly petty, small-minded people.
Left with no other realistic choice, I pushed myself up from my seat and stood tall.
“I was the one responsible for that noise. My sincere apologies.”
The instructor, whose eyes locked directly onto my form, let out a low, menacing growl from deep within his chest.
“……So-un Jin. Do you happen to find your instructor amusing?”
“No, sir. It was merely that my mind happened to drift to an entirely separate matter for a brief moment……”
The instructor cut my explanation off instantly, making it abundantly clear that he had absolutely no intention of listening to a single word I had to say.
“March yourself down to the front of the room.”
At the sound of his voice, which was completely saturated with an icy wrath, the remaining atmosphere within the lecture hall plummeted into an even more oppressive, suffocating weight.