Everyone Is Non-Human Except Me [Rebirth] Chapter 39

The participants of the mock battle were all new recruits in the combat department across the entire school, making the scale comparable to the freshman tournament. But unlike the freshman tournament, the mock battle was designed specifically to serve the formation of future combat teams, so it followed a mixed-team battle system involving students from all four academies.

Before the official matches began, all students were scheduled to undergo a comprehensive pre-evaluation, including a physical exam, ability assessment, and a compatibility evaluation with weapons conducted by the research department.

For some reason, the day before the exam, Yun Yongzhou suddenly called Wei Huan out to talk. He only went over things Wei Huan already knew, spoke one sentence, then stayed silent for three minutes—so awkward it made Wei Huan panic.

Wei Huan felt like he hadn’t gotten anything out of it when Yun Yongzhou suddenly spread his wings and flew off.

“Hey hey hey!” In a moment of desperation, Wei Huan’s wristband transformed into a light tether on its own and caught Yun Yongzhou’s wrist.

A little awkward.

Wei Huan quickly smiled apologetically, “Well… I just feel like you didn’t finish what you wanted to say…”

Yun Yongzhou’s wings, already midair, suddenly trembled.

After hesitating a while, he landed again.

“If you don’t finish what you want to say today, I definitely won’t be able to sleep. If I can’t sleep, tomorrow’s physical exam will be a disaster. If I fail the physical, I can’t get into a combat team. If I can’t get in…”

“Take care of yourself. Don’t get hurt.”

Yun Yongzhou’s voice wasn’t loud, and it was low and deep, but Wei Huan suddenly forgot what he’d just been rambling about. He stared blankly for a moment, then responded dumbly, “Oh.”

“Any… anything else?”

As their eyes met, Yun Yongzhou quickly looked away and didn’t say anything.

It felt like something was stuck in his throat.

He spread his wings again. Just as he was about to take off, amidst the rustle of feathers, a barely audible, heavy word slipped out: 

“Good luck.”

For some reason, Wei Huan felt like his entire body had been charged with electricity. Yun Yongzhou hadn’t said much, but it somehow hit hard.

Maybe it was because Yun Yongzhou was really strong—so his words carried weight. Wei Huan had always admired the strong, after all.

Yeah, that had to be it.

Still, he felt like he was forgetting something.

It wasn’t until the next morning, when he woke up, that he remembered: he forgot to ask Yun Yongzhou if he had time to watch his match.

Well, he’s an instructor—he’ll definitely be there.

The physical exam began. Standing in line with the Yansui Academy team, Wei Huan spotted the Fuyao team from afar at the entrance of Zhegong Tower—a red and a blue line of students converging in the center hall.

“Stupid human, are you looking for that Chongming bird again?” Yang Ling, standing in front of him, turned around and grumbled, “Every time I go see my brother, that stupid bird is hanging all over him. It’s so annoying.”

“Then you should talk to your brother,” Wei Huan teased in a bratty imitation of her voice, “Tell him: ‘You’re not allowed to play with that Chongming bird anymore!’ See who he chooses—you or the bird.”

“My brother would never choose someone else!” Yang Ling frowned and pouted angrily. Behind her, Yan Shanyue reached from behind to gently rub her ear and calmly said, “It’s fine to be angry, but don’t frown.”

Wei Huan was stunned.

“How’d you know she was frowning from behind? Do you have a third eye or something?”

Flushed with embarrassment, Yang Ling smacked Wei Huan on the back. “Turn around! No more talking!”

No idea what that was about.

The physical exam went by quickly, but Wei Huan was separated from the other students for many of the procedures. He had to be checked in offices run by experts specializing in human physiology.

“Your fitness level has improved a lot since your entrance exam,” the doctor said, handing him the report. “Last time, I thought the combat department’s intensive physical training might break you. But I’m surprised—you’ve adapted well.”

“Really?” Wei Huan asked cautiously. “Then… in the blood test…”

The doctor suddenly smiled and adjusted his glasses. “The fact that you and Instructor Yun Yongzhou formed a blood pact is basically common knowledge throughout Shanhai, so you don’t need to be so nervous.” He turned on a display, and a holographic screen appeared between them, showing all the blood test data.

“Actually, a blood pact doesn’t change your human physiology. Your flesh and blood body can’t be altered by magic. Simply put, the blood pact is like a key—it opens the door to your partner’s abilities, letting you borrow them. But that doesn’t mean those powers are yours.”

“Then…” Wei Huan frowned. “If it’s a key, it should be two-way, right? It can’t just be me borrowing from him and him getting nothing. If that’s the case, what’s the point of forming a pact? That’d be pure charity on his part.”

The doctor laughed heartily. “You’re funny. And right. A blood pact is a two-way connection. But in most cases, the one who initiates the pact holds the upper hand and controls the magic rules. The passive side doesn’t. So what we often see is practically no different from domestication. In other words…”

Wei Huan cut in, “I haven’t found my key yet.”

The doctor nodded approvingly. “Smart.” Then leaned back in his chair. “But you don’t need to go looking. I don’t think Instructor Yun expects anything from you.”

And that was the problem.

Wei Huan stood up, thanked him, and left the room.

Whether Yun Yongzhou needed anything or not—Wei Huan wanted the relationship to be equal.

Even if he had to force it, he’d find a way to shove his own key into Yun Yongzhou’s hand.

After the physical exam, all new students went to the training grounds by academy for the ability assessment. Just like during admissions, this evaluation focused on gauging potential and growth curves. Since it carried some risk, academy instructors were stationed at every room to maintain order.

What surprised him was that the supervising instructor for Yansui Academy… wasn’t Yun Yongzhou.

But honestly, every time Wei Huan saw the chaos of his presence caused among his classmates, he felt that he really shouldn’t be in charge of order. They needed someone terrifying and ugly—like the creepy mural monsters in No Speak Building. Just have one of them stand in the corner and no one would dare make a sound.

Every student would face off against a senior member of the combat preparedness unit—usually alumni who had already graduated from Shanhai but continued to serve in the military—fully equipped with a mechanical exoskeleton.

These exoskeletons weren’t simply for enhancing combat effectiveness. They were specially developed by the research division as intelligent evaluation units.

The research and combat divisions had conducted comprehensive data analysis on each student’s performance during the freshman tournament, storing their strengths, weaknesses, and fighting styles in the system. This allowed the exoskeleton to formulate customized combat strategies in real time, enabling highly targeted ability evaluations.

Wei Huan found it all very novel. Back when he underwent ability assessment, it wasn’t this high-tech—just a rotation of seven or eight evaluators taking turns. It must be due to the war seven years ago that the Demon Realm had started to pay more attention to technology.

When Nine-Tails went up, Yang Ling and Wei Huan were still in line, munching on the drama.

“That evaluator looks like a pretty senior sister,” Wei Huan teased. “Hey, who do you think is prettier—the evaluator or your Sister Shan Yue?”

“Obviously Sister Shan Yue!” Yang Ling glared at him.

Wei Huan clicked his tongue. “You’ve got nothing but Sister Shan Yue on your mind. I bet during the mock battle, you’ll end up separated from Yan Shanyue. What’ll you do then?”

Yang Ling’s fists crackled with sparks as her knuckles clenched. “Say that again…”

Wei Huan quickly waved the white flag. “No, no, no. You two will totally be on the same team—meant to be together, no doubt.”

Love-struck people are terrifying, he thought, though he didn’t dare say it aloud.

On the training room stage, Yan Shanyue and the evaluator had already begun. With the aid of the exoskeleton, the evaluator’s durability and power had been multiplied several times over.

As a classmate and teammate, Wei Huan was familiar with Yan Shanyue’s close-combat style. She was light, fast, and extremely agile—her biggest advantages. As long as she was in good form, she rarely lost the upper hand.

But unexpectedly, the evaluator blocked every one of her moves. Round after round, it was like the evaluator could predict her next strike.

So the data analysis was effective.

Although he hadn’t seen Yan Shanyue’s matches during the freshman tournament, it was true that her close-combat style hadn’t changed much since then, which made her especially vulnerable against these AI-supported assessments.

She started using foxfire—but even the trajectory of the flames was anticipated and dodged.

“This is… seriously impressive,” Yang Ling said, clearly worried.

Wei Huan glanced at her. “It’s fine. This isn’t a competition—it’s just an objective evaluation. No winners or losers.”

On stage, violet-blue foxfire coiled around Yan Shanyue’s fingers. Her powerful control enveloped the evaluator midair. The evaluator, trying to counter with ranged physical attacks, aimed at her hands to break her control.

Under the assault, Yan Shanyue unleashed even more demonic power. Her long black hair flared around her, and the iris-shaped mark on the back of her hand glowed brightly with demon energy.

With a sharp downward slash of her fingers, the suspended evaluator was slammed to the ground. Using the exoskeleton’s assistance, he spun midair and landed on one knee back on the stage.

“Combat Battle Evaluation for Yan Shanyue of Battle Prep Class One complete. Please proceed to the rest area and await your report,” the organizing teacher said, looking up at the schedule hovering above the stage. “Next, Wei Huan.”

“What the—already?!” Wei Huan exclaimed, stunned, as he stepped onto the platform. A new male evaluator in an exoskeleton appeared across from him.

“Since Student Wei Huan is human, we’ve created a custom rule set. In his evaluation, all demon power elements are excluded. The assessment will focus solely on close combat.”

“Then, the ability assessment begins.”

To get students into combat mode quickly, the evaluator initiated the attack. Before Wei Huan could react, his opponent had already charged—fast as lightning.

A punch encased in the exoskeleton flew at his face, the force sweeping his bangs aside. Like a trigger had been pulled, Wei Huan ducked low, then rebounded with a quick spin and launched a side kick at the evaluator’s head. Although the exoskeleton provided protection, the impact still knocked the evaluator off balance.

Wei Huan seized the chance to unleash a flurry of blows.

He could faintly hear the exoskeleton’s AI voice:

“Loading combat strategy…”

Elbow strike. Side kick. Low sweep.

Analyzing his freshman tournament combat data was pointless.

Back then, he’d purposely held back to conceal his identity—nothing like how he used to fight in his past life.

“Strategy match rate too low. Re-scanning. Analyzing opponent’s combat style…”

Wei Huan tilted his head. “Scanning?”

Letting an AI read his moves? Embarrassing.

“Try me.”

He had no intention of giving the exoskeleton time to adapt. He relentlessly knocked the evaluator off balance, and it worked.

Sitting in the rest area, Yan Shanyue watched Wei Huan’s every move. He was moving faster and faster, attacking from every angle, leaving the evaluator no room to collect data or make predictions.

“That human’s close combat is insane…”

“How else do you think he got into Shanhai? He fought his way up to face Bifang back in the day—he’s basically a legend.”

“Tch. What’s so special? One fire spell could burn him to ashes.”

By now, Wei Huan’s performance had drawn the attention of two instructors watching from the observation room—as well as Xing Yan, who was also monitoring the live feed.

“That’s really strange.” One of the instructors pushed the physical metrics screen to the front. “Look here—this human student actually consumed less stamina than the test subject, even though he was the one on the offensive.” He turned to look at Xing Yan. “The human student in your class is pretty impressive.”

“He’s alright.” Xing Yan squinted slightly as he watched Wei Huan on the screen. His low stamina consumption was due to how he leveraged the opponent’s force—exerting minimal effort for maximum effect. But what truly surprised him was Wei Huan’s level of close-combat skill. Not only did he outclass most of the students present, he even surpassed some of the instructors in technique.

He was just an eighteen-year-old human boy, yet he fought like a seasoned veteran—each move not aimed at injuring but at disorienting the opponent. Those tricks were not something an average person could pull off.

The time for the evaluation was nearly up. The evaluator standing across from Wei Huan was swaying on his feet, unable to stay balanced. His exoskeleton emitted a low, mechanical whirring, adjusting to stabilize his posture.

Glancing at the countdown, Wei Huan took a few steps back. “Sorry, senior.”

As soon as he finished speaking, he dashed forward, stepped onto the evaluator’s waist exoskeleton for leverage, then clamped his thighs around the opponent’s neck like a pair of scissors. Using that grip as an anchor, he quickly spun his body to shift from front to back, using his own weight to slam the evaluator to the ground. The whole combo was fluid as flowing water. From the audience’s perspective, it seemed the match ended before it even began.

Even Yang Ling couldn’t help but exclaim, “So strong…”

“Combat Preparedness Unit 1, Wei Huan’s ability evaluation is complete. Please proceed to the rest area and wait for your evaluation results.”

Wei Huan got up and helped his evaluator to his feet. “Thanks for your effort, really.”

The other man had a good temperament. After getting up, he even gave Wei Huan a hug and laughed.

After the match, Wei Huan walked over to Yan Shanyue. “Thank you, boss!” He twisted open a bottle cap and chugged more than half of it before collapsing into a chair. Then he remembered the evaluation report and turned to look at Yan Shanyue’s profile. He opened his mouth to speak but hesitated.

“What?” Yan Shanyue turned to him. The fur by her ears swayed, adding a vivid contrast to her usually cold expression. “Don’t tell me you want me to ‘save the kid’ again?”

Wei Huan chuckled and played along. “Exactly. You didn’t even save me just now.”

As they joked, the ring on Yan Shanyue’s finger blinked red twice. She turned it slightly, and a holographic screen appeared. Wei Huan pulled over a little stool to peek at the screen. “Wow, your total score is so high.”

Yan Shanyue didn’t respond. She just stared solemnly at the score—89.

“Still not enough,” she muttered.

Wei Huan recalled what Yang Ling had said before about the traditions of the Nine-Tailed Fox clan and felt a bit indignant on her behalf. Grinning lazily, he slapped her evaluation report shut. “Don’t look at that anymore. Our little princess is about to go on stage.”

Halfway through her results, Wei Huan’s own evaluation report came in. He didn’t even need to look to guess that the demon power section would be a flat zero—he hadn’t used any. But to his pleasant surprise, his close combat score was nearly perfect.

Being recognized always feels good.

While he was watching the others, a man from the research team approached—dressed in a silver lab uniform.

He was young, and Wei Huan immediately sensed his half-demon aura.

“Excuse me…” The half-demon sat down and pushed his glasses up onto his forehead, then pointed to the bracelet on Wei Huan’s wrist. “That bracelet—did someone give it to you?”

Wei Huan was a little surprised. How did this guy know?

He touched his bracelet and chuckled awkwardly. “Ah… I guess you could say that.”

“Really?” The man seemed stunned and mumbled to himself in exaggerated disbelief. “Oh my god, he actually gave this to someone else? That’s insane.”

Wei Huan was just about to question him when the man suddenly dashed off.

“Hey! Wait a sec—”

The guy had an exoskeleton on his legs and vanished in the blink of an eye.

So strange…

Wei Huan looked at his bracelet and grew suspicious.

He had the feeling that Yun Yongzhou was hiding a lot of things from him.

The entire evaluation lasted nearly the whole afternoon. As the sky darkened outside the training hall, the broadcast came on again:

“All combat division students have completed their evaluations. Please proceed to the training field. Simulated combat group assignments will be issued in ten minutes.”

People jostled and pushed their way forward. Wei Huan instinctively walked behind Yang Ling to block anyone bumping into her from behind.

The groupings for the mock battle were randomly assigned by the system every year. If you were lucky, you’d get strong teammates. If unlucky, you’d end up dragging the team down. Back in the day, Wei Huan’s group got assigned a kid from Jiahui Academy. His true form was a tree—bad enough—but his ability was emitting a fragrance that slowed people down. The worst part? It slowed him down too. The entire match turned into a sloth-on-sloth brawl.

He also remembered meeting Yun Yongzhou’s team back then. Yun Yongzhou was dragging the team too, and by the end, only the two of them were still fighting while the rest sat on the sidelines chatting.

Back then, Yun Yongzhou was so cold that no one wanted to talk to him.

Fresh out of her evaluation, Yang Ling was still hyped up, clinging to Yan Shanyue’s arm and chattering nonstop. When they finally stood under the hovering quad-screens in the center of the training ground, she realized Wei Huan had been quiet for a while. She turned to check if he was still there—then scolded herself for caring—and deliberately said harshly, “You weak little human better not end up in my group. I can’t carry you.”

Wei Huan perked up. “You’re right, I definitely shouldn’t be in your group. I checked the stars last night—Purple Star rising high, totally clashes with my luck. If we’re together, we’re doomed for sure. So…” He sidled over to Yan Shanyue. “I need to be in the same group as Boss Shanyue. I even thought of our team name already—‘Save the Child Squad’!”

Yang Ling nearly burst a blood vessel and almost hurled a lotus fireball at him.

“You see? If we end up in the same group, we might as well forfeit. It’d be like the Dragon King Temple getting flooded—we’d be beating up our own team.”

“You!”

The four academies’ teams had gathered around the four sides of the large floating screens. Directly across from Yansui’s team was Fuyao’s. From a distance, Wei Huan could see Jing Yun waving at him, and also spotted Yang Sheng standing at the very front of Fuyao’s group.

“I’ll get my brother to beat you up!” Yang Ling was so furious she started spouting nonsense.

Wei Huan mumbled quietly, “Your brother doesn’t just beat you, he stabbed me…”

“What are you muttering about?!”

Yan Shanyue chuckled helplessly as the screens began to change, now showing many rows of selection boxes, each containing three smaller slots.

“Now, random team allocation begins!”

Suddenly, all the slots started spinning through student photos. Wei Huan found it funny—it looked exactly like the slot machines they used to sneak off and play with as kids in the dark zone.

“Hey,” he said, watching the extremely tense Yang Ling with both amusement and affection, “I forgot to tell you, I’m the reincarnation of the Buddha. If you hug my leg now, maybe a flash of holy light will put you in the same group as your Sister Shanyue.”

Yang Ling stomped hard on his foot out of pure rage. Wei Huan let out a cry, hopping on one foot like a red-crowned crane walking across burning coals.

“…It’s over.”

Amid the crowded noise, he heard Yang Ling’s voice filled with despair. Just as he was about to tease her, he looked up and saw the team assignments.

Group A: Yansui – Yan Shanyue, Yansui – Zhao Xingjian, Jiahui – Ai Yao

Group B: Yansui – Yang Ling, Fuyao – Jing Yun, Yansui – Wei Huan

Wei Huan stood there blankly, letting Yang Ling shake his arm, staring dumbfounded at this bizarre team setup.

What the h*ll.

Now he had to team up with his “god sister” and his “future sister-in-law”… to fight his “brother-in-law” and the guy who always treated him like a romantic rival?

Who the h*ll put these teams together, a d*mn celestial being?!