Chapter 99: The Appointed Time, Vying for Competition Spots
Under the bridge, beside the riverbed.
Amidst the rumble of heavy trucks passing over the viaduct, faint booming sounds echoed from beneath the bridge.
A deliveryman on an electric scooter was heading toward the bridge. He was from the nearby slum for mortals.
From a distance, he thought he could faintly hear the sound of impacts, but by the time he arrived under the bridge, he could only see Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen standing opposite each other.
“Your delivery.”
The young deliveryman handed a package to them. When his gaze swept past Bai Zhenzhen, a blush crept up his face.
This high school girl was too beautiful, too delicate for him.
Recalling the class beauty and school belle from his own middle school days, the young man thought to himself, High school students really are a different breed, the chosen ones… Their temperament and looks are on a completely different level than middle schoolers.
But he immediately averted his eyes, afraid of angering them.
It wasn’t the first time the young man had delivered here; he vaguely knew that this pair of high school students often did something mysterious here at night.
He also knew that a group of local thugs used to hang around this area, but they had cleared out immediately after discovering the high schoolers’ presence.
After all, high school students… they were the cream of the crop, people who could get jobs in the city center. They weren’t comparable to mortals like him. Even their delivery fees were much higher.
With a final, envious glance at Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen, the deliveryman rode off on his electric scooter.
Zhang Yu tore open the package and said to Bai Zhenzhen, “It’s the synthetic food and beast protein milk you ordered. I wonder how it compares to the cafeteria’s.”
Bai Zhenzhen was unconcerned. “It’s cheap enough. As long as it doesn’t taste worse than crap, I’ll take it.”
After the deliveryman was completely gone, Zhang Yu smiled faintly. “Let’s continue.”
Zhang Yu stood his ground as wisps of white mist began to rise from his body.
With the growth of his magic power, when Zhang Yu now used the Limitless Cloud Hand, his Formless Cloud-Astral Qi was far more turbulent, completely shrouding his body until only a blurry human figure was visible within the large cloud of white mist.
At the same time, Bai Zhenzhen’s figure flickered at high speed around Zhang Yu, constantly creating thunderous booms, like lightning darting through the clouds. This was Bai Zhenzhen, whose cultivation of the Thunderclap True Body had progressed by leaps and bounds during this time.
In terms of long-distance travel, Bai Zhenzhen was naturally no match for Zhang Yu with his level-ten Sports Car Legs.
But in the short-range sprints, footwork, positioning, dodging, and reflexes of combat… the current Bai Zhenzhen was far more agile than Zhang Yu.
Bai Zhenzhen’s fists plunged into the mist time and again, colliding with Zhang Yu’s Formless Cloud-Astral Qi and producing a series of sharp, crackling sounds.
The next moment, as the mist formed by the Formless Cloud-Astral Qi spun rapidly like a vortex toward Bai Zhenzhen’s striking fist, she felt her center of gravity wobble, and her entire body was flung away.
However, Bai Zhenzhen’s body twisted in mid-air with incredible speed, and she deftly stabilized her center of gravity, landing steadily on the ground.
She looked at Zhang Yu, who was still completely enveloped in the thick fog, and thought, As Yu-boy’s magic power deepens, this Formless Cloud-Astral Qi is getting denser, and its area of effect is expanding. He’s becoming harder and harder to deal with.
She recalled the sensation of repeatedly charging into that dense fog…
With the combination of the Limitless Cloud Hand and the Dragonback Mountain Toppler Hand, not only were Zhang Yu’s form and movements nearly impossible to track, but a variety of forces assaulted her from all directions—crushing, throwing, coiling, vibrating, rebounding… all attempting to shatter her balance, or even trap her within the mist.
And with the combination of the Limitless Cloud Hand and the Imperishable Seal Art, whenever Bai Zhenzhen attacked with her Body-Piercing Sword Qi, the mist would actually expand further, gathering power to rebound her own attack, making the fight increasingly frustrating.
Under these conditions, she also had to be constantly vigilant for a sudden strike from Zhang Yu’s physical body, hidden within the mist.
“I’m done, I’m done,” Bai Zhenzhen said, waving her hands. “Your Formless Cloud-Astral Qi is now a perfect offense and defense, like a turtle shell covered in spikes. Plus, you’re using my spiritual root, so I can’t find a single opening. This isn’t effective training anymore.”
During this period, besides their individual ascetic training, Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen had also sparred frequently to improve their practical combat abilities.
With no third person watching, the two no longer had to worry about exposing their high-level cultivation techniques. They took turns unleashing their various level-ten arts, making their combat training far more effective than any they could get at school.
At this moment, hearing Bai Zhenzhen call it quits, Zhang Yu dispersed the Formless Cloud-Astral Qi around him.
From their practical training over this period, Zhang Yu had gradually gotten a clear picture of the situation.
If the True Spiritual Root is in my body, I am invincible.
If the True Spiritual Root is in Zhen’s body, our fights are an even match.
Of course, these conclusions were reached under the condition that neither Zhang Yu nor Bai Zhenzhen was fighting with lethal intent.
After all, without enough spare cash for clinic visits, neither of them was willing to get injured during a training session.
The moment Bai Zhenzhen called a halt, just as Zhang Yu dispersed his Formless Cloud-Astral Qi, a figure shot toward him like a bolt of lightning, ran behind him, and leaped up to wrap him in a hug.
Bai Zhenzhen laughed. “My turn to use it!”
As her body pressed against his, the spiritual root returned to her own body.
With the constant exchange of the spiritual root over this period, they had both become extremely familiar with the motion.
Watching Bai Zhenzhen, who had already begun her ascetic training, Zhang Yu smiled faintly and turned his attention to his Feather Book.
Although he had primarily focused on his physical strength, his Dao heart and magic power had also seen steady improvement.
His Dao heart had reached level 4 (28%), and a level-four Dao heart gave him increasingly precise control over his body and magic power, allowing him to execute his martial techniques with greater skill than ever before.
With the help of the True Spiritual Root, his magic power had grown even more rapidly, now reaching 34.8, which made his Formless Cloud-Astral Qi all the more formidable and turbulent when unleashed.
But recently, as my magic power gets higher, the rate of magic power refinement has started to slow down. It seems the effectiveness of the Celestial Cycle Qi-Gathering Method is diminishing. I might be approaching a bottleneck.
As a technique aimed at beginners, the Celestial Cycle Qi-Gathering Method naturally had its limits. Zhang Yu estimated that its upper limit was probably around 50 points of magic power.
To possess even more abundant magic power, I’ll eventually have to switch to an expert-level breathing exercise.
As for his physical strength, which had been his main focus during this time, it had now reached level 3.21, a meteoric rise compared to the martial arts competition a month ago.
Of course, such a significant improvement had also cost Zhang Yu a considerable amount of money.
Although he had his income from tutoring, supplemented by the occasional sale of clothing to Lian Tianji, which had earned him over a hundred thousand yuan during this period.
However, the thirty-thousand-a-piece Crimson Marrow Primordial Pills, along with the skyrocketing food expenses that came with his increased physical strength, had caused Zhang Yu’s expenditures to mount. Now, his savings had dwindled to less than twenty thousand.
As the sky began to lighten, Zhang Yu watched the gradually rising sun and said, “Zhen, time to get ready for school.”
“You remember what day it is, right?”
Bai Zhenzhen’s face was still flushed from her workout. She wiped the sweat from her forehead.
“Of course. Today is the big day we go show off for the sports competition team!”
Inside the stadium.
As training commenced, students began opening large bottles and gulping down Dao heart buffer.
During the subsequent training, one student’s arm suddenly twitched as a wave of weakness overcame him.
Wang Hai walked over, grabbed the student’s arm to inspect it, and frowned.
“Did you drink enough Dao heart buffer yesterday?”
Seeing the student hesitate, Wang Hai snorted coldly.
“You’ve all been through the special training program, which makes your physical strength prone to exceeding your Dao heart’s control. That’s why your daily dose of Dao heart buffer must be increased to over five times the normal amount. Any less could cause you to lose control of your physical power.”
“We make you drink Dao heart buffer not so the school can make a quick buck, but for your own good.”
“After spending so much money and enduring such grueling training, you want to lose your spot in the competition just to save a few mouthfuls of buffer?”
Seeing the student lower his head in shame, Wang Hai finally let the matter drop.
He then turned to look at He Dayou training nearby, his expression complex as he sighed internally.
He Dayou has completely left Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen in the dust, hasn’t he? Alas, with the advancements in Immortal Dao technology, individual talent and effort have become worthless.
At that moment, He Dayou was slowly lifting a heavy and enormous barbell.
Simultaneously, the Demonic Parasite Art within him circulated, accelerating the fusion of his transplanted vital energy during this strength training, allowing him to exert his power with greater freedom and control.
After all, transplanted vital energy could not be controlled with ease from the very beginning.
He Dayou still remembered how, after his first transplant surgery, he felt as if he were wearing a suit of iron armor, his entire body constrained and his movements awkward.
But later, through his efforts, even as the surgeries continued, the ‘iron armor’ on his body grew lighter and thinner with his relentless training.
It went from iron armor to a heavy coat, then from a coat to an undershirt. Now, He Dayou could barely feel any restraint. The transplanted vital energy felt like a nearly imperceptible layer of skin that he could command completely.
Excellent. If I can maintain this state, I can undergo the next stage of surgery in a few days.
Then I’ll continue to train hard. It’s not impossible to push my physical strength above level 4.0 before the competition.
Just then, accompanied by a chorus of “Senior! Senior!”, He Dayou turned his head to see Lan Ling arriving at the gymnasium with several other second-year students from the sports department.
Lan Ling scanned the surroundings and frowned. “Are Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen not here yet?”
He Dayou knew that today was the day to decide the final spots for the sports competition a month from now, and also the day Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen would come to humiliate themselves.
Those two have been skipping class so often, I wonder how much they’ve actually improved.
But it doesn’t matter. No matter how much they’ve improved, it’s impossible for them to surpass me, not when I’m in the special training program.
He Dayou continued his training in silence. Ever since surpassing Zhang Yu in the last monthly exam, he had gradually stopped paying any mind to his former rival.
A person has to look forward. My future rivals are the top students from White Dragon High, Purple Cloud High, and Red Pagoda High.
Meanwhile, Lan Ling had already turned to He Dayou and the other four who were training.
“Since Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen haven’t arrived, you five can test your physical strength first. When they get here, we’ll test them, and that will settle things.”
In Lan Ling’s mind, no further comparison was necessary. Physical strength alone would be enough to eliminate those two paupers.
First Place: He Dayou, Physical Strength Level 3.07
Fourth Place: Li Yong, Physical Strength Level 2.96
Fifth Place: Ye Haitao, Physical Strength Level 2.94
Looking at the physical strength values of the five, Lan Ling nodded slightly.
“He Dayou, you’re improving very quickly. Keep this up, and securing a rank in the sports competition will be no problem.”
“Ye Haitao, you were the last to join the team, so you need to pick up the pace. It will be difficult to place with this value…”
Faced with the critique from Lan Ling, a second-year, and member of the Student Council, the first-year students present all accepted it with grace, bowing in acknowledgment.
Just then, under the watchful eyes of everyone present, Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen walked in.
Lan Ling shot them a cold glance and said flatly, “Test your physical strength first. If you can exceed level 2.94, you can have a competition spot.”
A few moments later, Zhang Yu’s and Bai Zhenzhen’s physical strength values appeared on the large screen, added to the rankings.
First Place: Zhang Yu, Physical Strength Level 3.21
Fifth Place: Bai Zhenzhen, Physical Strength Level 2.98