High School Student with Immortal Race System

The grand endeavor of recruiting disciples was off to a flying start. Although the bonds with his two new disciples weren’t very deep yet, it proved the method was viable.

The other eight students were all very curious about the strange scene that had just occurred in the corner.

Why did someone suddenly kneel?

After gym class, Yang Shen didn’t chat much with the two, nor did he mention it to the rest of the ten-person group. He simply promised to guide them more diligently tomorrow.

’The fish will hook themselves.’

Look at Tian Zihan over there. With that door-panel-like frame and childish face, he might as well have had "I’m super curious" written all over it!

After six o’clock, the ten-person group had their own exclusive evening study session, while Yang Shen left the basement with Xu Bamboo.

Back in the classroom, the room was already somewhat empty, with sunlight generously flooding the space.

A handful of students were still scattered about, clearly exhausted from running in gym class to the point they wouldn’t recognize their own mothers. Some were secretly giving themselves injections in the corner of the classroom, lifting their shirts and jabbing away. POKE. POKE.

"I saw a post recently. It said that if you want the shots to be more effective, one injection site isn’t enough!"

"How so?"

"First, you poke the area seven or eight times before finally pushing the needle in on the last one."

"Holy shit, dude, wouldn’t that turn you into a sieve?"

"Think about it. Don’t sieves absorb things faster? It’s the same principle as a sponge—a porous structure."

"Huh... That actually makes sense! I’ll give it a try!"

Thinking of his two ’disciples’ and their Life Charts, then looking at these characters in his class, Yang Shen was rendered speechless...

’How absurd! This is beyond absurd!’

As Xu Bamboo packed his bag, he sensed something was off with Yang Shen’s expression and asked curiously, "What’s wrong?"

Yang Shen shifted the Sun Worms in his bag. These little things had been disgusting when they first came out of the Giant-mouthed Woman’s stomach, but after raising them for a while... he was starting to find them rather dashing.

Yang Shen said, "Zhuzi, why are there so few normal people in this world..."

Xu Bamboo was confused. "Who do you think isn’t normal?"

"I think everyone’s got some serious issues."

Nanliang High School was an inhuman place. Teachers were spearheading drug sales, the dean was an avid loan shark, and outside the school gates, various large corporations were circling like vultures.

And the students were a whole other breed of characters—so well-spoken, and so steady and precise with their needles.

But in reality... all high schools were probably more or less the same, and universities were likely even more vicious.

Ultimately, it all boiled down to one core reason: practicing Martial Arts requires money.

Essentially, what one needs are ’resources,’ but in modern society, anything scarce has a price tag—and not a low one. Thus, ’resources’ might as well mean ’money.’

Every seemingly absurd situation was built upon this unbreakable foundation.

Either you don’t pursue Cultivation and remain an ordinary person who can never get ahead, or you do, and you have to pour money into it.

No money? Take out a loan. Got the loan? Now join the rat race. You couldn’t survive without doing both. Debts piled higher and higher, and you could only rest when you finally reached a balance between your ’ambition’ and your ’ability.’

Or you could just fall and die.

This high-pressure environment trickled down from society into the schools, which was why a ’calm and collected’ normal person had become an extreme rarity.

It was no wonder, then, that everyone’s mental state was a complete mess.

Yang Shen stretched. "You think college is the same as high school? Just as much of a rat race?"

Xu Bamboo thought for a moment. "I haven’t been yet... but I’d guess some people will think just getting into college is the ultimate victory. They’ll start ’lying flat’ and just coast to graduation. But there will always be another group that chooses to keep striving."

’That’s true,’ Yang Shen thought.

As long as one hadn’t given up the desire to advance in the Martial Arts, high school and college were pretty much the same.

If you didn’t join the rat race, you’d get trampled by it so badly you wouldn’t recognize your own mother.

As for those who already wanted to ’lie flat’—some of them might have still been physically in school, but in reality, they had already graduated...

Yang Shen had never realized just how absurd society on Cyan Blue was.

Everything was benchmarked against Martial Arts, money was the price tag on every opportunity, technology and resources were constantly plundered from Exotic Realms, and subversive factions hid in the shadows, endlessly causing destruction...

A fish that has spent its whole life in murky water can’t tell if the water is clean or foul.

The classmates in school who turned themselves into human pincushions; the old farmer who took out loans only to be bled dry by the bank; Tian Zihan, who sold his family’s house to prepare for the college entrance exams; Xu Bamboo, so caught up in the rat race he didn’t even have time to sleep.

If it were the old Yang Shen, he would have seen all of this as perfectly ordinary... including his own past self, who had been on the brink of death.

But now that he had the system, an outsider’s perspective, and had gradually found his footing through his own Cultivation, he had some breathing room. His gaze briefly shifted beyond high school, and as he tried to plan for the more distant future, he discovered...

The distance was just as absurd.

Because whether you left high school for college, or even left college for the working world, the fact that Martial Arts dominated society didn’t change. The underlying logic that you had to pour money into it didn’t change either.

A place like Nanliang High School might even be considered relatively wholesome in comparison!

He had no doubt that the wider world would be even more absurd.

’Yang Shen couldn’t help but wonder: What if there were a world with no Martial Arts and no Cultivation, where everyone relied on their intellect to make a living, without needing to spend massive resources to raise their personal power level...’

’Would there still be a rat race?’

Regardless, he, Yang Shen, and the Jianghuai Yang Family were inevitably, if passively, entered into the Martial Arts Society’s King of the Rat Race tournament.

Only by out-competing everyone, by being the last one standing, by having the strength to exist outside the rules, would he earn the right to talk about anything else.

Until then, if you lacked the power to change the rules, you had to adapt to them. The best option was to exploit them.

For instance, by using his unparalleled skill in the Sixth Set and the abundant time his Cultivation afforded him, he had more than enough to handle the ’grade-grubbers’ at school.

Then, for the long term, he could absorb the family resources of his disciples and turn them into his own ’clan resources.’

He would be the key figure in their rise, with Spirit Plants as the foundation of his long-term enterprise.

At this thought, Yang Shen opened his system and checked the side quest: ’A Single Spirit Stone Can Defeat a Nascent Soul Cultivator’.

Option Three: ’Total family earnings: 10 Spirit Stones (3/10). Expected sustained monthly earnings: no less than 1 Spirit Stone. (1/1)’

The three points of total earnings so far had all come from Lin Yuebai’s medicine sales, though there was probably a fraction of a point from his aunt’s salary in there too.

As for the tens of thousands he had earned earlier, the timing was off, so it hadn’t been counted toward the quest.

The Yang Family’s total assets had struggled up to 100,000. If he were to go all-in...

That was already enough to buy a grave for his Uncle! Just thinking about it felt so badass!

What high school kid could earn this much in a month?

Now that he possessed a Qi Sea, his upper limit for Nurturing Spirit Plants was in a completely different league. Best of all, it didn’t interfere with his own Cultivation. Once he restocked at the herb market, he estimated he could upgrade his entire operation in half a month.

’Earning one or two hundred thousand a month!’

However, when he glanced at ’Option Two,’ Yang Shen froze...

The Exotic Treasure... was now very close. Only two kilometers away!

Today, Xu Bamboo was headed to that high-class gym that cost over a hundred thousand a year. He said his goodbyes to Yang Shen and left without hesitation, his steps light.

Only the two boys who were busy turning themselves into human pincushions remained in the classroom.

Yang Shen thought for a moment, then slung on his bag. He grabbed the Standard Long Spear—which he hadn’t let out of his sight since the Jinkang Pharmacy incident—and headed out of the classroom.

He could complete the quest safely just by making money; he didn’t necessarily need to acquire this Exotic Treasure.

Profit was often accompanied by risk. This thing had crawled ashore from the sea thousands of miles away and had been moving frequently ever since. It was highly likely that it already had an owner...

It was just like Option One, which told him to go plunder a ’civilian faction’ (the Yanhua Official)!

But at this distance... it would be a crime not to at least go take a look!

Yang Shen opened the map on his phone, checking the direction.

’I’ll just take a look... Seriously!’

’I never said I was going to touch it!’

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