No Money to Cultivate Immortality?

No Money to Cultivate Immortality?

Just as Bai Zhenzhen stared at her phone in confusion—

The ground suddenly trembled violently, as if some colossal beast had slammed into the earth, the force nearly throwing her off her feet.

A wave of hair-raising dread surged through her, setting every nerve on edge. Her Thunder Mana erupted instinctively, forming arcs of lightning that crackled across her body.

The next moment, a thunderous boom shattered the air. A fierce wind surged through, whipping Bai Zhenzhen’s long hair into a frenzy.

She turned her head toward the source of the blast—only to see a blinding column of fire pierce straight through a high-rise apartment building, dozens of stories tall.

An immense explosion followed. In the blink of an eye, the entire building collapsed into rubble, sending up a choking cloud of dust that swallowed Bai Zhenzhen whole.

The ground pitched and rolled beneath her feet like a wave, mimicking a full-scale earthquake.

“What… what just happened?”

As she watched the apartment disintegrate before her eyes, Bai Zhenzhen’s mind went utterly blank.

“Yuzi!”

She darted forward, preparing to sprint toward the wreckage. But before she could move, a second explosion erupted. A visible shockwave swept across the street.

Every muscle and strand of mana in her body surged to full power. Lightning burst into the sky as Bai Zhenzhen held her ground against the wave, eyes straining open, bloodshot with fury and disbelief.

As the shockwave roared past, the thick dust finally cleared, revealing a heap of shattered concrete and twisted steel.

Bai Zhenzhen’s chest clenched painfully at the sight. A suffocating pressure rose from deep within her.

Then, two voices rang out nearby.

A man’s voice said, “Search complete. No lifeforms remain.”

A woman replied, “Why was the other one outside? Never mind, I’ll take care of her. You clean up the ruins and bury them afterward.”

Bai Zhenzhen whipped her head around. A man and a woman were walking slowly toward her.

The woman had a head full of white hair. Her limbs, torso, and abdomen were composed of some kind of jade Law Husk, glowing faintly with embedded runes.

Bai Zhenzhen’s eyes narrowed. Just the presence of multiple Law Husks marked the woman as a cultivator with many years in the Foundation Establishment Realm.

And the pair’s words left no doubt—this was no accident. Someone had deliberately targeted them.

“Hey…” Bai Zhenzhen locked eyes with them. “What did you mean by ‘no lifeforms remain’?”

Neither responded.

But as she stared at the wreckage, the answer was already all too clear.

“Yuzi…”

“I…” Bai Zhenzhen clenched her fists. The whole world seemed to turn gray around her.

She whispered in her heart, “I’d already fallen into the darkest abyss… but it was Yuzi who stayed by my side. He climbed out with me.”

“We fought so hard to get this far.”

“Yuzi, who’s better to me than anyone in the world, who let me call him ‘Daddy’ every day.”

“If it weren’t for me, he would’ve gone with his sister to Wanfa Sect University two years ago…”

Zhang Yu’s face kept flashing through her mind.

Every word he’d ever said echoed like lightning in her heart.

“Ah-Zhen, let’s aim for the Ten Great Academies together.”

“This is your Spirit Root. Let’s name it the Zhenzhen Root.”

“Jie, are you really leaving Ah-Zhen behind?”

“If I stay, do you think Ah-Zhen and I could take the normal path, like you did, and get into the Ten Great Academies?”

“We still have to get our Master’s, then our PhD. We’ll break through to Gold Core together, reach Nascent Soul together, enter the Wanfa Sect together…”

Bai Zhenzhen’s body began to tremble. The green lotus mark at her lower abdomen flickered. Within her Dantian, her Zhen Spirit Root unfurled into a blossoming lotus.

“These three years with Zhang Yu were the happiest of my life.”

“He’s the best thing that ever happened to me…”

And in this moment, a tidal wave of emotion surged within her—stronger than anything she had ever felt, stronger even than her desire to survive, to enter the Ten Great Academies, to earn her Foundation License.

A feeling she’d never known before erupted from her soul like a dam breaking.

“I’m going to kill every last one of you.”

The murderous gleam in her eyes went ignored by the two Foundation-level cultivators.

To them, Bai Zhenzhen, who’d only just entered the Foundation Establishment Realm, was no threat at all. Their twenty years of cultivation, their perfected Law Husks, and the sheer might of their Level 20 bodies made them superior in every way.

They were only here because of a contract from Oasis Group:

To eliminate Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen.

Risky? Yes. But for cultivators whose Foundation years were nearly up, any chance at advancement was worth the danger.

After all, they didn’t have many years left.

With a bang, the female cultivator launched herself toward Bai Zhenzhen on a wave of force.

But her face twisted in shock the next instant.

Dozens of green lotus projections burst open behind Bai Zhenzhen. The ambient spiritual energy went berserk, rushing toward her uncontrollably.

Even the two peak-Foundation cultivators couldn’t draw in a shred of it.

The woman’s heart screamed in panic. “That… is that a Divine Spirit Root?!”

Divine Spirit Roots surpassed even Celestial Spirit Roots. They were classified as military-grade power and strictly forbidden from civilian possession by the Ten Major Sects.

In the eyes of most cultivators, within the same realm, one with a Divine Spirit Root was simply unbeatable—unless the opponent had one too.

The female cultivator grit her teeth and screamed, “All-out attack! Kill her now!”

Bai Zhenzhen’s Foundation level might be new, but with both attackers working together, they might still have a chance.

Then she realized—the man was gone. He’d already fled into the night sky.

“Bastard!”

In her moment of hesitation, Bai Zhenzhen’s body vanished like smoke.

Then lightning-fast sword beams flashed through the air, slicing toward the female cultivator.

She dodged several in a row, but her expression darkened.

She couldn’t sense her attacker. Couldn’t touch her. Even wide-range counterattacks struck nothing.

It felt like they were in separate dimensions—Bai Zhenzhen could hit her, but not the other way around.

“Divine Spirit Root…” the woman muttered, growing more desperate with every second.

And then came the pillars of light—descending from the sky and locking down a radius of a thousand meters like an unbreakable prison.

…

More than ten minutes later—

Rescue vehicles arrived. The ruins were gradually cleared, and body after body was retrieved.

One rescue worker glanced at Xinghuo Zhenren and said carefully, “My condolences, Zhenren.”

But Xinghuo Zhenren responded coolly, “You think he’s dead?”

After eight months of training Zhang Yu, Xinghuo Zhenren dared say—he knew Zhang Yu’s body better than anyone alive. Better than his past teachers, classmates, even Bai Zhenzhen or Yu Xinghan.

That physique—blessed with unmatched durability and self-healing—would not die so easily.

The man blinked at the wreckage, skeptical. “How could he not be dead?”

“Even if he survived, he’s probably crippled. It’d cost a fortune to heal him. His Immortal Path’s probably finished.”

“And right before the college entrance exams, too…”

The worker sighed.

But Xinghuo Zhenren stepped forward, unleashing a surge of Martial Qi that tore through the wreckage layer by layer.

He stepped into the ruins—and moments later emerged holding a mangled body.

Murmurs rippled around them.

“Is that Zhang Yu?”

“What a shame…”

But Xinghuo Zhenren said calmly, “He’s not dead. Call the doctors.”

As he gazed at Zhang Yu, he narrowed his eyes. Years of mastery over martial techniques made his judgment instant.

Endless Spring and Autumn Meditation’s death-trance mode?

This kid had pushed the body-tempering Technique to Level 20… and in just eight months?

Even without a full examination, Xinghuo Zhenren could faintly sense an unyielding will blazing inside Zhang Yu, like a flame refusing to go out.

He thought to himself, “Looks like this crisis triggered another breakthrough in his Heart Technique. Even while unconscious, in death-trance, his mind instinctively continues the Technique—no longer deliberate, but reflexive.”

“That’s a whole new level above splitting focus just to maintain it.”

As the onlookers stared in confusion and awe, doctors rushed forward at Xinghuo Zhenren’s command.

“Multiple compound fractures… spinal dislocation…”

“Eighty percent of surface muscle crushed.”

“Cranial trauma…”

“Renal failure…”

“But…”

At first, they assumed Zhang Yu had no vital signs. But after a thorough check, their faces shifted to disbelief.

“He’s… really still alive.”

“Let’s administer medication.”

“The wounds… they’re closing on their own.”

“The medicine’s working fast…”

“Amazing vitality…”

As the stunned doctors watched, Zhang Yu’s flesh began knitting itself back together. Strands of muscle and skin seemed to move with their own will, closing and weaving into place—accelerating his recovery by the second.