Chapter 212: The Most Profitable Direction in the Dark World of Tutoring
Zhang Yu looked at the newly purchased Resentful Baleful Art on his phone, repeatedly flipping through the technique’s content.
This top-tier, expert-level cultivation technique’s price had plummeted due to its requirement of resentment for cultivation, allowing Zhang Yu to now buy it for 500,000.
After a careful reading, Zhang Yu intended to practice the body tempering method described within.
He touched the employee ID card hanging from his chest. On it were written the three large words “Front-line Employee,” and it was continuously absorbing the resentment surging through the air.
This ID card-like object was precisely the external spiritual root sent by Zhou Chechen’s people—the Resentment Spiritual Root.
The reason for its ID card appearance was supposedly that it made it easier to store resentment.
The moment Zhang Yu channeled his magic power into the Resentment Spiritual Root, his perception of the entire world underwent a dramatic change.
Songyang High School, which had just been serene and peaceful, was now, in his perception, filled with wisps of black qi soaring into the sky. Within the black qi were all sorts of twisted, struggling faces, letting out howls like wailing ghosts and wolves.
“Is this resentment?”
Zhang Yu knew that so-called resentment was a remnant of negative human emotions, commonly found in Kunxu’s cemeteries, schools, and companies.
However, because schools and companies had more living people constantly generating resentment, the quantity of resentment far surpassed that of cemeteries.
But cemeteries had the advantage of purer, older resentment, with a quality far superior to that of schools and companies, which was why the resentment of the dead had a wider range of uses and sold for a higher price.
Zhang Yu thought to himself, According to Fu Ji, if a family has enough ancestors buried for a long enough time, they could earn a lot just by renting out the cemetery as a cultivation ground each month.
Sigh, truly, having an elder in the family is like having a treasure. It’s a pity that the original Zhang Yu’s ancestors couldn’t even afford to buy a cemetery plot; the money they saved up was barely enough to cover the body disposal fee.
He controlled the Resentment Spiritual Root to take a deep breath and felt those wisps of resentment pour into his mouth and nose.
In an instant, powerful waves of anger, humiliation, regret, despair… assaulted Zhang Yu’s mind, making him feel the intense negative emotions that erupted from the numerous underachieving students when they faced low rankings, declining grades, and insults.
Zhang Yu hastily activated the Crippled Ox Body-Sacrifice Heart Art to resist the assault of these negative emotions and began to refine the resentment according to the method in the Resentful Baleful Art.
The cultivation method of the Resentful Baleful Art was to absorb resentment, wash away the specific emotions within it to leave behind a pure baleful qi, and then temper one’s own flesh by imitating the method of corpse refinement, ultimately forging a copper-armored corpse skin impervious to blades and spears.
It took several minutes for Zhang Yu to stumble through the first round of cultivation. He felt a faint coolness on the palm-sized patch of skin on his chest.
He thought to himself, If I follow the standard procedure, this technique would probably take a year and a half to show any significant results.
Thankfully, with my hard work, the Feather Book can help me master this technique quickly.
Zhang Yu looked up and saw that the Resentful Baleful Art displayed on the Feather Book had changed from level 0 (0/1) to level 1 (2/10).
The ultimate effect brought by the High School Sacred Body was that when Zhang Yu cultivated any Qi Refinement stage technique, one round of practice was equivalent to three.
This was precisely the source of his confidence that he could madly cultivate techniques in the next three months to gradually complete the foundation for the Martial Dao Holy Embryo.
A dozen minutes later, as he completed round after round of cultivating the Resentful Baleful Art, it was as if a bolt of lightning flashed through Zhang Yu’s mind, and scenes of tempering the skin on his chest with resentment flashed by.
At the same time, he felt as if something alive was growing violently under the skin of his chest, tightly wrapping around it like a thin membrane.
“Resentful Baleful Art level 1 is complete.”
Zhang Yu slowly recalled the cultivation memories in his mind, feeling the changes in his body.
Each level of the Resentful Baleful Art is about tempering the skin and flesh of a different part of the body. At level 10, I will have forged a complete copper-armored corpse skin, like a layer of form-fitting inner armor, greatly increasing my body’s defensive power.
After sensing the changes for a short while, Zhang Yu continued his cultivation, intending to push this Resentful Baleful Art to level 10 as quickly as possible.
Time flew by as Zhang Yu cultivated, and in the blink of an eye, it was the end of the school day and the beginning of night.
Under the night sky, 999 silver needles glinted with electric light, piercing into different points all over Bai Zhenzhen’s body from top to bottom.
As Bai Zhenzhen circulated the Thunderclap True Body, one could see electric light dancing back and forth on the silver needles, constantly stimulating the nerves and muscles throughout her body.
Bai Zhenzhen could feel that besides the increase in her physical strength, her nerves, which had not grown for a long time, were now, under the effect of the Profound Thunder Searing Acupuncture Set, like a withered tree meeting spring, beginning a new round of growth, helping her to master her body more deeply, more meticulously, and more rapidly.
If the original Thunderclap True Body was merely a second-rate expert-level body tempering technique, then after the deductions of the True Spiritual Root, the enhancement of thunder magic power, and now the assistance of the Profound Thunder Searing Acupuncture Set, it had the effect of a top-tier expert-level body tempering technique.
Suddenly, the electric light began to weaken.
A voice came from the needle box’s artifact spirit: “Low battery. Please charge in a timely manner.”
Temporarily retracting the 999 silver needles, Bai Zhenzhen looked at Zhang Yu beside her and said, “Yu-boy, ready to go to the Dark Learning Gang?”
Zhang Yu, who was cultivating the Resentful Baleful Art, slowly opened his eyes, a trace of baleful qi flashing through them.
After a day of cultivation, he had already pushed the Resentful Baleful Art to level 8 (15/90).
At this moment, Zhang Yu could feel as though a thin membrane had grown under the skin all over his body, except for his face. Normally, this membrane didn’t affect his movement, but as soon as he exerted force, it would act like a layer of iron armor protecting his body.
Fu Ji, standing to the side, sensed the changes in Zhang Yu’s body, especially the faint, intricate patterns on his exposed arm. She was amazed. “This guy’s progress with the Resentful Baleful Art is so fast!”
“Why do I feel like he’s almost mastered this technique in just one day?”
“It must be because his potential was stimulated again last time, making his talent even more terrifying.”
“Hehehe, good, good, good. Once he gets his high school Foundation Establishment certificate and ascends to the second layer, the sky will be the limit for the bird to fly, and the ocean will be vast for the fish to leap.”
Zhang Yu slowly stood up, twisting his somewhat dry and stiff skin, and nodded. “Let’s go.”
Before leaving, however, Bai Zhenzhen returned the Profound Thunder Searing Acupuncture Set to charge.
After leaving the school, Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen’s figures flickered. They each used their movement techniques, found a place to change their appearance and disguise their faces, and then sped towards the Dark Learning Gang’s base.
When Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen arrived outside the district under the aliases of Ma Yunteng and Le Mulan.
They were surprised to find that in the brightly lit district, security teams from the Immortal Resonance Group were moving in and out, with constables assisting them, escorting out members of the Dark Learning Gang one by one.
One of the gang’s tutors, with a bruised and battered face, cried out, “This is my first time tutoring here! It’s really my first time!”
A constable beside him snorted coldly. “Does your family know you’re here committing a crime?”
The tutor said with a mournful face, “It has nothing to do with my family. They trust me a lot; they don’t know I would come to do this kind of thing.”
“It was a moment of weakness. I wanted to make some quick money and thought tutoring once or twice wouldn’t matter.”
“I really know I was wrong. I’ve let my parents down. They didn’t bring me into this world to give illegal tutoring.”
“Please let me go. I really don’t have any money to pay the fine…”
Another old constable nearby reminded them, “The names, identities, and motives of these people from the dark world of tutoring are all fabricated. There’s not a single true word in their mouths. You can’t believe a single word they say. You’ll get used to it after seeing it more.”
In the distance, Zhang Yu, hiding in the shadows, exclaimed in shock, “The Dark Learning Gang was wiped out?”
Bai Zhenzhen said helplessly, “What do we do now? Find another gang and start from scratch?”
Fu Ji reminded him, “Don’t you have the contact information for that middleman from the Dark Learning Gang, the one called Black Crow?”
“Contact him and see.”
“The Dark Learning Gang is not small. Just because one district was taken down doesn’t mean the gang is finished.”
Zhang Yu remembered it too. He had added him as a friend in the Kun Shen World and could contact the middleman named Black Crow.
So, Zhang Yu opened the Kun Shen World on his phone and soon got in touch with Black Crow.
After some conversation, Zhang Yu learned that the dark world of tutoring in Songyang City had been experiencing turbulent undercurrents lately.
In particular, the clashes between the Dark Learning Gang and the Golden Class Gang had become increasingly severe, with endless incidents of stealing syllabi, burning textbooks, assassinating gold medal teachers, and reporting tutoring locations.
And as far as Zhang Yu knew, behind these two gangs were the Deep Sea Education Group and the Immortal Resonance Education Group, respectively.
Zhang Yu thought, The Dark Learning Gang and the Golden Class Gang are fighting so fiercely. Does this mean the conflict between the behemoths behind them, the Deep Sea Group and the Immortal resonance Group, has also escalated?
For some reason, Zhang Yu had a feeling that starting this year, all the companies in Songyang City seemed to exude a sense of impatience, a feeling that the intensity of competition was constantly escalating.
Temporarily suppressing his speculations about the situation in Songyang, Zhang Yu focused his attention back on the Dark Learning Gang’s situation.
Zhang Yu said, “According to Black Crow, with the escalating gang war, many of the Dark Learning Gang’s gold medal teachers have fallen. So they’ve been recruiting experts to teach classes or participate in gang battles.”
Upon hearing this, Bai Zhenzhen replied, “Teaching classes? What kind of classes are profitable now? Can the techniques I know make big money?”
“I feel like just tutoring high school students or construction workers like before isn’t fast enough.”
Zhang Yu asked Black Crow, who sent him a dynamic poster.
On the poster, a group of white-haired elderly people were diligently studying and cultivating.
One of them, a spirited old man, spoke, “At 90 years old, with elders above me and children below, I am at the prime age for adventure and struggle.”
“I want to take my 130-year-old parents to eat pre-made meals, enroll my 60-year-old son in a tutoring center, help my 30-year-old grandson rent a sewer apartment near the subway, and ensure my 5-year-old great-granddaughter can get into a key kindergarten. How can I stop learning? How can I let myself be eliminated by the workplace?”
“In ancient times, a 100-year-old prime minister reclaimed the lands, a 500-year-old great demon refined itself into human form, and a 1000-year-old granny married an immortal.”
The old man in the poster clenched his fist and shouted with fighting spirit, “Strive! It’s never too late, no matter how old you are!”