Zhang Yu had imagined his life after awakening the Feather Book would look like this:
*Feather Book! Show me your limits!*
The reality, apparently, was:
*Ritual! Show Zhang Yu his limits!*
But complaining wouldn't stop the countdown. The only path forward was to get strong — strong enough to one day break the ritual's hold. So he kept training.
On the bus, he experimented with the Feather Book. He dragged "Basic Breathing Lv. 1" toward the portrait, intending to switch his specialization. A new awareness surfaced in his mind.
*One skill at a time. Switching takes a full day before you can switch back.*
He named this function "Focus." He could specialize in one technique and level it rapidly. Everything else would progress at normal speed. If he switched to Basic Breathing now, he couldn't switch back to Body-Forging 36 Forms until tomorrow — losing a full day of accelerated physical training.
He kept the Focus on Body-Forging.
---
In the cafeteria, Bai Zhenzhen sat down across from him and studied his face. Zhang Yu looked like a corpse that had been reanimated for a second shift.
"Late night?" she asked, deadpan. "Working the wrist?"
"I was training. Until midnight."
She chewed her food with the mechanical efficiency of someone who had optimized even her eating schedule. "You're the only student in this entire school who didn't get the sterilization surgery. I told you — don't cheap out on twenty thousand yuan. Look how much time and energy you're wasting."
"My self-discipline right now is terrifying," Zhang Yu said, with genuine confidence. "And my potential has been awakened. Your number-one spot? It's mine."
Bai Zhenzhen rolled her eyes. Her mouth was small and delicate, but the words came out sharp. "Zhang Yu. You're competing for total score rank, not—" she paused, "—personal time rank. Your unsterilized advantage doesn't apply."
He shook his head. "You act like an ice queen in public, but in private you say anything, don't you?"
The sterilization surgery was one of his few secrets. Among classmates, only Bai Zhenzhen knew he hadn't undergone it. But that raised a question he kept circling back to: *Why was he admitted without it?*
Zhou Tianyi arrived, sliding his tray onto the table. Bai Zhenzhen went quiet immediately. Back to the ice queen.
As they walked to class, Zhang Yu kept summoning and dismissing the Feather Book in his palm. Neither of his friends reacted. *They really can't see it.*
---
A crash echoed from the direction of the main building. Then shouting.
A crowd had gathered in front of the entrance. On the pavement lay a body — head split open, blood spreading in a dark pool.
"It's Lu Chao. Third-year, section three."
"He was in the elite class before. Kept slipping. About to get demoted again."
"He was top ten in second year."
Voices from the crowd, casual as weather commentary:
"Second-year rankings don't matter. Poor people plateau in third year. Always. They're not suited for cultivation."
"Six floors and he died? Must have been a weak student. An elite-class senior jumping from six floors — that's embarrassing. You'd need at least ten to finish the job."
Bai Zhenzhen looked at the body. "Third suicide this year. The seniors are under a lot of pressure."
"What made him do it?" Zhang Yu asked.
She glanced at him. "He was poor. Loans, probably. Students who borrow to pay for school — they're not rich, that's for sure. They usually do well at first. But by third year, they can't keep up with the wealthy kids. End up at second-rate universities. The Ten Great Sects..." She paused. "In Songyang High, no poor student has gotten into a Great Sect university in over a decade."
Zhang Yu felt the words land like a punch. He knew about the Ten Great Sects — their affiliated universities were the dream destination, the golden ticket, the only path to a life worth living. He hadn't known that the path had been closed to his kind for ten years.
He thought about what he'd heard about the rich students. The best tutors. Restricted cultivation manuals. Experimental drugs. A parallel education system that circulated only among the wealthy and was never, under any circumstances, shared with the poor.
*Without the Feather Book,* he thought, *without my potential being awakened... I might have ended up on that pavement too.*
---
The jump was campus gossip for about an hour. Then everyone returned to their training, their cramming, their desperate scramble for points.
The students of Songyang High were young — fifteen, sixteen, seventeen — but they had already internalized the math that would define their lives:
Different scores, different universities. Different universities, different sects. Different sects, different fates.
Every classmate, no matter how close, would eventually diverge along lines of ability and wealth. That was not tragedy. That was arithmetic.
---
PE class. Three consecutive periods. The morning's dread ritual.
Zhang Yu refused Wang Hai's injection sales pitch again, and this time he felt the teacher's gaze shift. Something cold behind the eyes. A merchant losing a customer. A king losing a subject.
*Nothing I can do about it,* Zhang Yu thought. *Can't afford the drugs. Can't keep injecting anyway — my organs are shot from the original body's abuse.*
He threw himself into training. The ritual's enforcement, for once, was an ally — every moment of weakness was met with a countdown, and every countdown drove him back into motion. Pain and progress, intertwined.
**Body-Forging 36 Forms Lv. 2 (17/20)**
Three more reps to Level 3. Two days of training to do what had previously taken three months. The numbers were absurd. He loved them.
But by the third period, his body was finished. He collapsed onto the training floor, chest heaving, and let himself go still.
A shadow fell over him. A large one.
Wang Hai stood above him like a mountain. "What are you doing during my PE class?"
"I trained extra last night, teacher. Hit my limit this morning. Can't move anymore."
Wang Hai's expression didn't soften. Zhang Yu added quickly: "My Body-Forging 36 Forms reached Level 2 last night. I broke through."
He had calculated this. At Songyang High, everything was scores. Good students got leniency. A breakthrough should buy him some slack.
He was wrong.
There were many kinds of teachers. Some loved high achievers. Some focused on struggling students. Some clocked in and clocked out, doing the minimum.
And some — like Wang Hai — cared more about obedience than results. The PE class was his kingdom, and the students were his distribution network. Zhang Yu refusing to buy injections was a personal offense. Zhang Yu lying on the floor instead of training — and then *explaining* himself, as if his breakthrough justified disobedience — was an act of defiance.
"Level 2," Wang Hai repeated. "So impressive. So special."
He pointed at Bai Zhenzhen across the training hall. "She's Level 2. Does she skip injections? Does she lie on the floor during class?"
"Teacher, that's not what I meant—"
"I've seen students like you before. Got a little talent, think they know better than the school. Think they've outgrown the teacher. But you only broke through because of three months of my instruction. Three months of proper training and proper injections. *That's* what built your foundation. Your self-study? Your late-night practice? That's dessert at best. The school curriculum is the main course."
"I'll be discussing this with your homeroom teacher. Think about your attitude."
He walked away. Around Zhang Yu, an invisible perimeter formed. The students, following their teacher's lead, kept their distance. No one spoke to him. No one looked at him.
An island of one, in a sea of cultivation.