Chapter 138 - 57: The Last Lesson

Chapter 138: Chapter 57: The Last Lesson

However, this peace did not last long.

About halfway through the class, the atmosphere in the room started to feel a bit off.

At first, there was just a faint buzz from a few corners and a couple of muffled exclamations. Yu Xian assumed someone had gotten too absorbed in a mobile game and paid it no mind. Then, spreading like a virus, more and more students picked up their phones. The fluorescent glow of their screens illuminated one bewildered face after another.

Whispers began to spread throughout the classroom. The back rows, the middle rows, and even the front rows here descended into a chaotic hum. Up at the podium, Professor Ning still had his back to the class, writing on the blackboard, seemingly oblivious to the abnormality behind him. But Yu Xian felt it. The students’ gazes were no longer focused on their phone screens, but rather... on Professor Ning’s back.

"What’s going on?" Yu Xian wondered, frowning. Just as he was about to turn his head to check his surroundings, someone violently nudged his arm.

"Old Yu! Look!" Shi Zuozhou shoved his phone over, his expression one of absolute shock.

It was the university’s BBS forum. Students usually used it to post second-hand sales, romantic confessions, gossip, and team recruitment for business competitions. Of course, lately, the trending list had undoubtedly been dominated by those audio exchange threads. However, right now, a post with over a thousand replies pinned at the very top read: "Real-Name Report: Professor Ning Qikun of the JCU School of Physics Commits Academic Fraud and Abuses His Power to Sexually Assault Female Students! Solid Evidence!"

Yu Xian’s pupils sharply contracted. He snatched the phone, his thumb swiping quickly across the screen.

The original poster claimed to be a graduated female master’s student formerly supervised by Professor Ning. The post was a sprawling thousands of words. It accused Professor Ning of repeatedly calling her to his office or a hotel under the guise of guiding her thesis and revising data, subjecting her to harassment, psychological manipulation, and physical assault for an entire year during her postgraduate studies.

In addition, the post listed "ironclad evidence" that Professor Ning had fabricated data in several core journal papers and stolen his students’ research results. Attached below were a few screenshots of chat records and several surveillance photos from a hotel corridor. Although the photos were blurry, the side profile and figure of the man in them... bore an eighty or ninety percent resemblance to the old man currently standing at the podium.

Every word in the post read like a tearful, blood-stained plea. At the very end of the text, there was a photo of a woman holding her ID card, stating her willingness to bear any legal consequences to prove the authenticity of her real-name report.

"Is this real or fake?"

"She used her real name, took a picture with her ID, and said she’s willing to face legal consequences. How could it be fake?"

"What a beast in human clothing..."

"You can know a person’s face but not their heart. This is sickening."

"He’s always smiling every day. Who knew he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, playing so dirty behind the scenes?"

The surrounding discussions were no longer concealed. The students were in an uproar. Professor Ning seemed to sense that something was wrong. He stopped writing, turned around, and looked at the students with some confusion.

"Young comrades? Is there a problem? Or did I explain something wrong?"

No one answered him. Yu Xian even heard a student in the back mutter a low curse, "Who the hell is your comrade?"

Dozens of eyes—dozens of knife-like glares—were uniformly pinned on the old man. Professor Ning stood there, still holding a broken piece of chalk. The smile on his face became somewhat stiff and utterly bewildered.

"Students...?" he called out, a trace of confusion in his voice.

"Professor Ning," a girl in the front row suddenly said, standing up. Her voice was shrill and trembling. She held up her phone, pointing the screen at the podium. "Could you explain what this is?"

Professor Ning froze. He seemed unable to process the situation, hesitating as he stepped down from the podium. He fished a pair of reading glasses from his pocket, put them on, and took the phone the girl handed him.

The classroom fell deathly silent. Everyone held their breath, all eyes focused on the old man, watching as he squinted at the small screen.

A few seconds later, Professor Ning’s hands began to shake. His face turned deathly pale, and his lips trembled. As if entirely drained of his strength, he stumbled back a step.

"What... what is this?" His hoarse voice seemed barely squeezed from his throat. "Nonsense! This is utter... slander!"

He jerked his head up, eyes wide with anger, looking as if he had suffered the greatest of insults. He scanned the young faces around him. "I, Ning Qikun, have taught my whole life and done research my whole life! The word ’integrity’ means more to me than anything else! I would absolutely never do something so unconscionable! This photo... this photo isn’t even me!"

The girl snatched her phone back without retreating a single inch, still glaring fiercely at him. In the classroom, the only response he received was silence, apathy, and whispers.

It was the age of information explosion. People were always far more willing to consume sensational scandals than listen to pale, feeble defenses. What’s more, this was a real-name report accompanied by an ID card photo. That level of weight was enough to instantly obliterate a person’s entire reputation.

Surrounded by those gazes of suspicion, disdain, and even disgust, Professor Ning’s eyes gradually lost their focus. His body swayed unsteadily, like a fallen leaf battered by the rain.

"I know... I know..." he began to mutter to himself, appearing almost manic. "This is revenge... This is their revenge..."