Six in the morning. The sky was barely light when Zhao Tianxing reached the school — far earlier than he usually came. Today the monthly exam results would be posted, and from the night before he had been too restless to focus on either his studies or his cultivation.
"This spellcraft test was brutal. I doubt I even got sixty," he muttered. "And the Dao Heart exam... I pressed the Harmony Sol button twenty-three times. I wonder what that's worth..."
Unlike Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen — those two never even bothered to compare answers after an exam — Zhao Tianxing was the sort of student who hunted down one classmate after another. If someone else's answer matched his, he quietly gloated. If it didn't, he'd go seek out two or three more people to poll. On the Dao Heart test, he asked how many times others had pressed the button and injected the Harmony Sol. If they'd pressed it more than he had, he'd console them with words while secretly rejoicing. If they'd pressed it less, he'd paste on a look of indifference while his heart sank with grief.
Two hundred meters off, he could already see a crowd gathered before the gate — students just like him, camped out for their scores. Some felt they'd improved, hungry to learn their rank. Some sensed their grades sliding and dreaded being reassigned to a lower class. And of course there were the pure score-chasers, wanting only to know exactly what they'd gotten.
Zhao Tianxing spotted Qian Shen at the head of the line, practicing his breathing even as he waited. That one was always first to arrive on results day. Glancing at the unopened gate, Zhao Tianxing found a corner, sat down, and cracked open a book to review.
A few minutes later the gate creaked open, and the waiting students surged through like sardines in a net. When Zhao Tianxing reached the classroom, Qian Shen was already planted in front of the door, staring at the score sheet pasted there — and exhaling in relief.
At least this time Zhang Yu's score finally matched his ability. The Songyang High monthly-exam system was no longer throwing a bug.
Zhao Tianxing glanced at the crowd. Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen hadn't shown yet. "Figured. At their level, they already know how they did." Envy pricked him — when would he ever have the poise not to scramble for his score? He pushed forward and ran his finger down the list.
First place — Zhang Yu, 653 points.
Second place — Bai Zhenzhen, 652 points.
Those two had to be near-perfect in every subject except spellcraft, he sighed to himself. Not that they could coast — the exams only got harder, the standards only stricter, and a student had to keep improving just to hold their score. Plenty of juniors and seniors slipped precisely because their growth couldn't keep pace. But with Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen's talent, holding steady shouldn't be a problem.
"If I had even a fraction of their gift," he thought, then finally found himself. Eighth place — Zhao Tianxing, 594 points. His heart leapt.
Before long Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen drifted in one after the other, glancing at the rankings for a bare second before shrugging it off. Watching them, Zhao Tianxing thought they both looked damned cool like that. Meanwhile he'd spent all of last night churning and come rushing in at dawn. "Man, I'm pathetic."
But through the rest of the day he noticed both of them seemed to be carrying some worry. He couldn't imagine what — a top scorer and the runner-up, what could they possibly have to fear?
Just then a dark shape whipped past the window. A heavy thud echoed up from the ground floor. Another student had jumped.
That afternoon, when Zhang Yu arrived at the school's meditation room to use his weekly free Spiritual Root rental, Wei Xin swiped his student card, then frowned. "Huh? It's not going through. Hang on, Zhang Yu, let me ask about this..."
Zhang Yu plucked the card back. "No need. I probably mixed something up." He didn't have to ask to know this was the student council's doing again.
On the way home, a message made him laugh helplessly. It was from Lei Jun, the martial-arts teacher who coached him in combat. "Zhang Yu, the school thinks your body still needs tempering. We've decided to sit you out a year and have you compete next year instead."
Zhang Yu exhaled slowly. Mana competition, athletics, martial arts — the student council was systematically erasing every chance he had to compete, cutting off that whole path. And perks like the free Spiritual Root rental, they'd whittle those away one by one too. Keep this up and he'd be squeezed right back into the position of doing menial temp work after class.
"I'm still too weak," he admitted.
Waiting at the bus stop, he seized the time to work through the forms of the Heavenly Martial Heart Refining Art — but each posture sat wrong. He felt it deep: he no longer had the all-out-battle mindset the art demanded.
A knot of fire pressed against his chest with nowhere to vent. Walking through the alley toward his apartment, he thought: if he went to Li Xuelian... with his current level in the art, would Starfire True Person take him on as a disciple? Could drawing that elder into the game buy him more room to negotiate?
Then he sighed, realizing Starfire True Person was probably just another person who wanted him to sign away his soul. He looked up at the sky and saw all of Songyang as one enormous dining table, and he and Bai Zhenzhen as two dishes laid out on it, waiting to be picked over by well-heeled customers.
Should I run? Flee to another city, work odd jobs, cultivate in the shadows, and come back fifteen years from now? But what about Zhenzhen — would she come with me? And this stupid Ritual Contract was forcing him to chase a university; it probably wouldn't agree to him fleeing either.
He opened his apartment door and froze.
A girl in a White Dragon High uniform was seated in his chair. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, and her pale hands slowly stroked the sheath of a longsword resting across her lap.
"...Sis?" Zhang Yu managed.
It was Zhang Pianpian — the original body's older sister. Except Zhang Yu had no memory of her being a White Dragon student at all. And the huge numeral ONE stitched over her chest meant she was ranked first in some grade at White Dragon High. His sister had pulled that off? How? And why had the original Zhang Yu never known?
Zhang Pianpian regarded him coldly. "Go see Zhou Chechen. Sign the contract."
Zhang Yu's brows knit on instinct. "You came to make me sign?"
"I'm doing this for your own good. If you keep going, they'll grind you to death."
Zhang Yu thought of the Ritual Contract bound to his soul. "If I sign," he said just as flatly, "that's what kills me."
Their gazes clashed in the air, and seeing he wouldn't budge an inch, Zhang Pianpian seemed to read a kind of settled recklessness in his eyes. She gave a small nod. "I didn't expect you'd turned out like this. I thought you were better suited to a quiet, ordinary life. But since you won't sign with Songyang High — come with me instead. I'll take you to White Dragon."
Zhang Yu blinked, a hundred questions crowding his mind, yet he asked the one that mattered most: "Can I still aim for the Ten?"
Zhang Pianpian smiled. "Of course. At least now you've got a bit of the will to charge the immortal path. I'll give you a chance at it."
Meeting this sister for the first time, Zhang Yu found her utterly unlike the fading ghost in the original body's memory. Was this really his sister? Could money and grades have changed her that completely?
But now wasn't the time for that. He asked the second most important question. "Can I bring someone else along?"
Zhang Pianpian tilted her head, curious. "Why?"
"Can I bring Bai Zhenzhen to White Dragon with me?" He thought: if I leave and leave Zhenzhen to shoulder the student council alone, those bastards will hit her even harder.
Zhang Pianpian looked baffled. "A close relative? Is Bai Zhenzhen family of ours too?"
At first Zhang Yu thought she was mocking him, but her face was perfectly earnest, so he tried to explain. "I mean we're really, really close. When I was at my poorest, the lowest point of my life, she gave me five hundred and fed me a meal."
Zhang Pianpian was still confused. "Can't you just pay her back the five hundred now?"
"No."
"Five thousand, then?"
"It's not about the money."
The strangeness grew — this sister was nothing like the one the original memory held. Seeing him adamant, Zhang Pianpian mused a moment. "White Dragon has limited places. I can only bring one person in with me." Zhang Yu's heart sank. "But," she went on, "if you can pass a certain assessment, both of you can be protected."
"What assessment?" Zhang Yu pressed.
"A divine affairs contractor — what they call outsourced god-admin staff." Zhang Pianpian spoke casually. "If you hold a position under one of the divine departments, then at least until I enter university, even staying at Songyang, no one will dare move against you two. I can act as your recommender. But understand: if you follow me to White Dragon, it shelters you through your final year. If you rely only on this contractor identity, then once I enter university, they'll lose those qualms. And I graduate in only half a year. Are you sure you want to take that risk?"