I'm in the Dragon Clan, bound to the Naruto Counterattack System

Chapter 164 The Arms Race

The next morning, the office door was pushed open.

Cesare Gattuso walked in without knocking, as if the office had always belonged to him.

Caesar wore a well-tailored black suit, his long golden hair was neatly combed, and he looked like a Hollywood star walking on the red carpet, radiating dazzling light.

His gaze swept across the room, like a monarch surveying the territory he had just conquered.

Finally, his gaze fell on Chu Zihang.

Chu Zihang was sitting at his desk, where the documents and stationery were neatly arranged and the desk was spotless.

"So this is what offices are like in your country. It looks pretty good, a bit small, but clean enough." He walked to the center of the room, pulled up a chair, and sat down, crossing his legs. "However, I'm not used to sharing workspace with others, especially a teaching assistant."

His words were understated, but the intense smell of gunpowder instantly filled the air.

Chu Zihang finally looked up from the stack of lab reports.

His dark pupils showed no emotion as he calmly looked at Caesar: "I am not your teaching assistant."

"Oh?" Caesar raised an eyebrow, seemingly amused. "But I heard you're only here to assist with some lab classes. Isn't that a teaching assistant's job?"

Chu Zihang did not respond further.

He lowered his head again and continued to correct the report with a red pen, as if Caesar did not exist at all.

Chu Zihang knew exactly how to deal with Caesar; this kind of ignoring was far more lethal than a fierce rebuttal.

Caesar's smile froze slightly, but he quickly regained his nonchalant expression.

Cheng Sui was lying on the sofa in the corner, quietly refining Hashirama's cells, watching the two people's open and covert struggle with a leisurely air.

He was somewhat surprised when he was summoned to the principal's office yesterday, not understanding why the principal had called him over after only two days in office. But when he saw Caesar sitting in the office, all his questions were answered. It turned out that this big shot had arrived.

Although he didn't understand why the academy would send Caesar to handle this incident at the Imperial Capital Preparatory Class, Cheng Sui hoped that Caesar wouldn't cause trouble and disrupt his plans. Otherwise, Cheng Sui would have no choice but to take some extreme measures, such as knocking out the only heir of the Gattuso family and locking him in the basement for ten days or half a month.

Cheng Sui narrowed his eyes, secretly observing the two who were secretly competing. He felt that the atmosphere in the office was as tense as a war about to break out.

The war quickly spread from the office to the classroom.

Caesar's elective course on Western cultural appreciation became the most popular course in the entire preparatory class.

Caesar never followed the textbook; he didn't even bring a textbook to class.

When talking about the Colosseum in ancient Rome, he vividly describes the glory and tragedy of the gladiators, as if he had been there in person.

When it comes to Renaissance art, he can readily recount the romantic tales behind every famous painting, which are more captivating than any unofficial history.

His classes are full of personal charm, humorous and elegant.

Every class was packed, and even the windows in the corridors were crowded with students listening in.

Meanwhile, the alchemy experiment class where Chu Zihang was located presented a completely different and bustling scene.

He remained the same taciturn teaching assistant.

But he can always pinpoint the problem precisely a second before a student makes a mistake.

He can complete the most complex alchemical reactions using the simplest steps.

He would circle every mistake in the lab reports he graded, and provide detailed feedback next to them.

His classes are rigorous, efficient, and full of practical information.

All students who aspire to make a name for themselves in the field of alchemy regard him as a god.

So every afternoon after school, a spectacular sight would appear in the office.

Two long lines stretched from the office door all the way to the end of the corridor.

The group on the left consisted entirely of girls with flushed faces and adoring eyes, chattering excitedly around Caesar's desk.

"Professor Caesar, do you think Dante truly loved Beatrice when he wrote the Divine Comedy?"

"Teacher, could you tell me about Celtic mythology next time? I'm very interested in Druids!"

Caesar always maintained an elegant smile, patiently answering every question, and occasionally adding a wink that would make any girl scream.

The group on the right consisted mostly of serious-looking boys, holding thick notebooks, quietly lined up in front of Chu Zihang's desk.

"Assistant Professor Chu, I have three technical questions regarding the extraction of unstable sulfur."

"Teaching assistant, the data model in this dating report of the dinosaur skeleton seems to have a more optimized algorithm."

Chu Zihang's words were concise and to the point, each answer hitting the nail on the head without a single wasted word.

The two groups of people were clearly separated, as if the Chu River and Han border had divided the small office into two completely different worlds.

Only Cheng Sui seemed unaffected, leisurely brewing a cup of goji berry and red date tea while watching the scene, which resembled a large-scale fan meeting, and silently commenting in her mind.

Caesar's fan base is as powerful as a cult.

Chu Zihang's fan club is almost as professional as the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

It was truly a match made in heaven, a meeting of equals.

The competition intensified silently.

The incident stemmed from a homework assignment.

When Caesar graded his students' art appreciation essays, he liked to use an expensive Montblanc pen to leave his elegant and artistic annotations on the paper.

Chu Zihang, on the other hand, always used an ordinary red pen to correct lab reports, his handwriting as neat as printed text.

That day, the two of them received their assignments that needed to be graded at almost the same time.

An invisible competition has begun.

The only sounds in the office were the rustling of papers turning and the swishing of pens across paper.

In the end, Caesar finished grading the last paper by a three-minute margin.

He gracefully closed the pen cap, a victor's smile spreading across his face.

Chu Zihang put down the red pen expressionlessly. Although he had lost time, every report he had corrected was as if it had been scanned by an instrument, without any omissions.

From then on, the flames of war spread to every corner.

The student satisfaction rate was 99.8% for Caesar, with the only 0.2% negative review coming from a boy who was jealous of his popularity.

Chu Zihang is 99.9% because his professional competence is beyond question.

In terms of the speed at which teaching materials are organized, Caesar pursues an aristocratic leisure, while Chu Zihang pursues machine-like efficiency.

Even when it came time to leave work, the two of them tacitly agreed to leave at the same time, neither willing to be a second earlier than the other.

"I'm telling you," Cheng Sui finally couldn't help but complain to Caesar, "the principal sent you here to secretly investigate the elevator crash, right? What's wrong with you? Have you become addicted to being a teacher?"

Upon hearing this, Caesar merely glanced at him indifferently.

"You don't understand, this is called strategic camouflage."

He explained in a very serious tone.

"To understand this body of water, you must first become the most dazzling fish in it."

Cheng Sui rolled her eyes, too lazy to pay any more attention to this guy who could come up with excuses so easily.

After a day of classes, the noisy office finally returned to peace.

The students had already left, leaving only the three of them.

The afterglow of the setting sun shone through the blinds, casting long shadows on the ground.

Caesar did not leave as usual; he stood by the window, gazing at the towering buildings of the distant capital.

"I've been investigating these past few days," Caesar said quietly. "That elevator accident wasn't as simple as we thought. My intuition tells me that something big might be about to happen in the capital."

Chu Zihang was carefully wiping a test tube with a clean velvet cloth, ignoring Caesar, who was pretending to be deep in thought by the window.

Chu Zihang thought of Xia Mi, who had left the laboratory under the pretext of that day, and hesitated whether to reveal this information to Caesar. But for some reason, Chu Zihang subconsciously did not want to tell anyone this secret.

Cheng Sui lay back in his chair, calmly sipping a cup of green tea. The computer screen in front of him displayed the weather forecast for Beijing, which indicated that a heavy rainstorm was expected tomorrow.