As mentioned before, three students in Ye Xuan's class had awakened supernatural abilities.
Chen Hao's was "Hawkeye," giving him eyesight sharp enough to rival a bird of prey. Zhang Yu's was "Taotie," which enhanced his digestive capacity and increased how much he could eat, letting him absorb far greater amounts of nutrients from food to strengthen himself physically.
So who was the third?
It might come as a surprise to many, but it was their own homeroom teacher, Mr. Li, who had just finished teaching. The students called him "Zhu-ren," a title somewhere between chairman and head, out of habit and genuine fondness.
Unlike Chen Hao and Zhang Yu, whose abilities only affected themselves, Mr. Li's power resembled the healer archetype found in anime. He could restore a certain amount of HP, which in reality manifested as an accelerated rate of wound recovery.
Mr. Li complained endlessly that his power restored HP and not MP. If it were MP, he could give the whole class an energy boost when he got tired of teaching, or when his students started nodding off, snapping everyone back to attention and making the whole lesson far more productive.
Fortunately for everyone, that was not his ability.
"By the way, have you two been following the news lately?"
"Apparently something appeared over Sakura Nation that looks like Uchiha Sasuke's Susano'o. Whether it's real or not is another question."
"If it is real, I don't like the sound of that." Zhang Yu said, his tone carrying a clear note of irritation as he brought it up.
Even with Elder Zhong's power keeping things in check, the thought of someone wielding Uchiha Sasuke's abilities on behalf of Sakura Nation still made him deeply uncomfortable.
"Inheritance templates from anime characters aren't that easy to come by. You know how the media loves to blow things out of proportion."
"If someone in Sakura Nation had genuinely obtained the Uchiha Sasuke inheritance template and actually awakened the Mangekyo Sharingan, it wouldn't just be us talking about it. The whole world would be."
Chen Hao had read the same report, but he didn't believe a word of it.
After the dimensional invasion, although cross-dimensional treasures were scattered across the world in enormous numbers, most were incredibly difficult to locate, with the exception of things like Devil Fruits, which transformed action figures into actual fruit that could be physically found and eaten.
Among all of them, the hardest to obtain were inheritance templates from anime characters.
Take the current guardian of Xia Nation, Elder Zhong, who had obtained the Rex Lapis template from Genshin Impact. If his grandson hadn't been completely obsessed with Genshin Impact, insisting on changing his name to Zhongli and begging his grandfather to buy him the action figure, Elder Zhong would never have come anywhere near something like that.
In one interview, someone had asked Elder Zhong directly how he had awakened the Zhongli character template.
Many assumed it had been through the most famous of Zhongli's lines: "This world is full of gods and demons who have risen again. Though I have no desire to contend for power, I know the suffering of the common people. I only wish to purify this world and protect this small mortal corner of it."
In truth, it was a quote, but not the one people expected. The line he had spoken was: "All power comes at a price, and a thousand kinds of authority bring a thousand kinds of responsibility."
Elder Zhong likely hadn't anticipated that his grandson's obsession, and the action figure he had bought simply to quiet the child, would eventually stir his own curiosity about the character. He began studying Zhongli's background, discovered that line which resonated with him deeply, and from that, obtained the power millions had longed for.
If it had simply been a matter of gaining power, then while many were grateful that Xia Nation had someone with Zhongli's strength, just as many would have been watching Elder Zhong with considerable wariness.
Because when a person possesses power that far surpasses everyone else, it becomes very difficult for them to continue seeing others as equals.
Today, protecting the nation. Tomorrow, protecting "my nation." That kind of shift in thinking is entirely possible.
But the Zhongli template didn't only give Elder Zhong power. It gave him responsibility.
Elder Zhong once shared that when he first merged the template, he received only a fraction of Zhongli's true strength. To unlock more, he had to align himself with the character of Zhongli, or with the spirit of Rex Lapis himself.
He had to be calm, composed, and unhurried. He had to treat contracts as the highest principle, never to be broken, placing justice, order, and the keeping of promises above all else. He had to act with clear-headed reason, unswayed by emotion. He had to be indifferent to fame and wealth while cherishing the ordinary lives of common people. And he had to bear the responsibility of protecting every living being under his watch.
"A god who loves humanity" was a concept that often felt hollow in many works of fiction, where gods tended to look down on humans from a great height. But in Genshin Impact, that love was something that exceeded even what humans dared to imagine.
Even for the most extreme among those gods, no one could deny the care they held for the people beneath them.
So when this all became known, everyone who had been uneasy quietly set their worries aside. Because this was the kind of guardian they had only ever dreamed of.
And honestly, when they thought about it, they trusted the love of a "god" like Zhongli far more than they would have trusted a "human" who had simply developed an inflated sense of superiority.
Reality bore that out.
From the moment Elder Zhong obtained the Zhongli template, Xia Nation underwent changes it had never seen before.
Past wrongs were corrected, sources of corruption were cleared away, and every person who had violated a contract received a punishment that matched their offense precisely.
Humans could be swayed by self-interest, emotion, and the pressure of power. A god could not.
This had once been something many people hadn't even dared to imagine. Even now, plenty still felt as though they were living in a dream.
So they were profoundly grateful, and for good reason. The first person in the world to obtain a character template had come from Xia Nation, and the template he had received was none other than Rex Lapis Morax, Zhongli himself.
Because he understood how difficult it was to awaken a character template, Chen Hao didn't believe for a moment that anyone in Sakura Nation had actually managed it with Uchiha Sasuke, let alone awakened the Mangekyo Sharingan or the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan.
If someone like that truly existed, Uncle Sam's Nation would have been the first to expose it, regardless of how hard Sakura Nation tried to keep it quiet. And the news back in Xia Nation would never have buried such a story with minimal coverage.
Because something like that would shake the political foundations of the entire world.
So it had to be fabricated.
"What do you think, Ye Xuan?" Zhang Yu turned to look at him.
"The Uchiha Sasuke template... even if someone genuinely obtained it, it's not a serious concern. Unless they've awakened the Six Tomoe Rinnegan and entered the Six Paths domain, even with the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan, they're not a significant threat to us."
"The one that actually warrants attention is Tony. His acquisition of the Mark 3 armor has been confirmed, and he's officially returned to the American film world."
"Setting aside the question of whether Jarvis is actually present in that armor, since we don't know yet, just the Arc Reactor at its core... I don't think I need to explain how significant that is for any nation."
As for whether someone had or hadn't obtained the Uchiha Sasuke template, Ye Xuan didn't particularly care either way.