The Strongest Teacher

The Strongest Teacher is an urban novel by the web author Liang Shao and roughly his third full-length work after Tang Bohu's Modern Quest for Beauty and The Flower-Protecting Scholar in the Modern World. The story opens in Hangzhou: a battered bicycle on the street stands before the unremarkable Hangzhou No. 9 Middle School, and one morning Long Yu, a Chinese teacher of Grade 10, Class 3, is possessed by the soul of an imperial tutor from the "Empire of All Under Heaven"—a tutor versed in true martial arts, divine arts, alchemy, poisons, the esoteric arts and medicine, who was once the master of an eternal supreme lord. After the possession, Long Yu sheds his former image as a cautious trainee teacher, clashes head-on with Principal Zhang Xianzhu and leaves No. 9 Middle School, moving to Shenglan Middle School to teach the notoriously difficult class known as the "Class of the Supreme," where he straightens out the class and protects his students by unconventional means, setting off a series of stories interweaving campus and urban martial arts circles. His other identity is the lowest-status "loser" young master of the Long family, the foremost ancient martial arts clan in China, and the grudges between the capital and the Long family and the power struggles in the shadows are set in motion as well. Centered on the premise of an "eternal imperial tutor" descending upon a modern city, the work blends the classroom, campus conflicts, family feuds and martial arts secrets, continuing the author's favored "ancient soul in the modern world" and "strong man returns to the city" genre route, with a brisk pace and strong wish-fulfillment appeal; the book runs about 1.2 million characters in over 430 chapters and concludes with "Free and Unfettered."