What Era Is This? Who Still Uses Talismans?

Due to policy, students in the Spiritual Root Implantation Class paid no tuition for their first ten years.

The world might have seemed heavily capitalized, but with the Immortal Estate governing it as a unified authority, even the most unscrupulous businesses dared not openly defy its decrees.

But free tuition was one thing. Surely he couldn't expect the college to pay for his online classes too?

Five Spirit Coins. It wasn't much.

But Chen Zhuo nearly ground his teeth to dust.

His Immortal Dao Potential was slipping away!

"Immortal Calendar year 14994, September 14. The college charged me five Spirit Coins for an online class. I'll remember this grudge!"

Chen Zhuo made up his mind. He would remember this grudge and sneak around like a rat, quietly siphoning off the college's resources!

Authority +1.

As soon as Chen Zhuo paid, he discovered that Meng Yan and Liang Ningwan had vanished from beside him. He was alone in the room.

"Huh?"

Chen Zhuo froze. Had they not paid, or did payment send everyone into a separate space?

Either way, it had nothing to do with him. All Chen Zhuo cared about was learning the Military Combat Fist!

"Come on, then. Let me see how powerful five Spirit Coins' worth of Military Combat Fist really is!"

Chen Zhuo's eyes went wide. He wasn't going to miss a single detail!

On the video, Teacher Wang Yanqing's Spirit Body came into focus.

He stood in a virtual space resembling a training room, surrounded by glowing meridian diagrams and human-shaped silhouettes.

"Welcome, students, to your first lesson in the Young Dragon Military Fist, 46th Improved Edition."

As he spoke, Wang Yanqing began his introduction. "The Immortal Estate Military Department modified this Military Combat Fist specifically for early-stage Qi Refinement cultivators like you. The copyright belongs to the Immortal Estate Military Department, and the Military Department collects the fees. If you want to complain, don't complain to me."

"The Military Combat Fist isn't just a set of punches and kicks. It has nine forms and thirty-six moves..."

With that, Teacher Wang began demonstrating the movements.

Chen Zhuo's eyes lit up.

His five Spirit Coins hadn't left him after all. They had turned into Immortal Dao Potential and would stay with him forever!

He could set that grudge aside for now.

"All right, that's the theory. Now we'll begin learning the first form, Young Dragon's First Probe..."

An hour later.

Cave Abode No. 2501, Immortal Estate Standard Basic Cultivation Apartments.

Chen Zhuo practiced hard, but he was gasping for breath, sweat pouring off him like rain!

Maintaining a stance as steady as a pine and a spine like a dragon was difficult indeed.

He had to train like hell!

Except...

"I can feel the Spiritual Qi nourishing my body, but this is way too slow."

After completing one round, Chen Zhuo sat down, panting, and calculated in his head.

At his current pace, with the Everlasting Spring Art and Young Dragon Military Combat Fist working together, he would need only about seven months to reach Qi Refining Third Layer...

"The Spiritual Qi in the Immortal Estate World is way too thin!"

Chen Zhuo couldn't help grumbling. Perhaps in the Spirit Pearl World, Military Fist would produce the perfect results.

But Chen Zhuo was being extremely cautious.

After all, a Leopard had been eyeing him hungrily where he had left the Spirit Pearl World.

He still didn't know whether it had gone.

Half a day had passed, so the Leopard had probably left. But it might still be prowling around the same spot. If he entered the Spirit Pearl World unprepared, one wrong move could get him killed.

This wasn't some game. He had only one life, so of course Chen Zhuo was careful.

"That Leopard can't be allowed to leave alive. Even if it isn't waiting there anymore, I'll track it down and kill it on the spot!"

As Chen Zhuo browsed the campus Secondhand Market on his communicator, he thought, It saw me leave that world. With its intelligence, it probably can't make sense of what happened. But if it gets some lucky break someday and cultivates all the way into a Transformed Great Demon, then remembers today, it could cause endless trouble!

All right, the idea was a little far-fetched.

A Transformed Great Demon had to reach at least the Nascent Soul Realm.

Alternatively, certain special surgical methods within the Immortal Estate's territory could let Demon Beasts take human form early, at the Golden Core or even Foundation Establishment Realm.

Neither route was within that Leopard's reach.

But what if?

Even if the chance was only 0.0000001%, Chen Zhuo had to be careful!

The Leopard had to die!

But with his Qi Refining Second Layer cultivation, killing it would take some clever thinking.

"I left the Mystic-Arts Reconnaissance Drone in the Spirit Pearl World without retrieving it. That's fine, though. Its battery should last another two days or so. In that time, I have to sort out both an offensive and a defensive option."

Chen Zhuo planned silently. If the Leopard was lying in ambush, he needed a way to defend against its first attack.

And if he wanted to kill it, ideally he would do so from a distance rather than fight it himself.

That meant spending a mountain of Immortal Dao Potential.

Chen Zhuo checked his balance.

[Greetings, fellow Daoist Chen Zhuo. Your current Spirit Coin balance: 48.83.]

Rounded up, that was barely forty-nine.

Exhausting.

How was he supposed to cultivate with so little Immortal Dao Potential?

And he needed both offense and defense.

What the hell could fifty Spirit Coins buy? Even the cheapest Magical Artifact cost over a hundred. With what he had, he could only buy mundane tools, like the basic Mystic-Arts Reconnaissance Drone he'd bought earlier.

Fortunately, there was the campus network.

Chen Zhuo could see whether he could pick up anything secondhand.

[Male, thirty-seven, Qi Refining Eleventh Layer, graduating soon. Any juniors need to test the power of Spells or martial techniques? Five Spirit Coins per hour. Professional sparring partner...]

[Sincerely seeking two juniors to test pills. Five hundred Spirit Coins each. Guaranteed not to kill you; possible paralysis lasting anywhere from several years to over a decade.]

[Selling a batch of Waste Pills cheap. Pill Toxin content exceeds 30%, but they still pack a punch. Produced by the Alchemy College...]

[I'm Liu Heng, a ninth-year student specializing in restoring ancient pill-formula texts. I recently came across a Dual Cultivation technique. Any female juniors interested in becoming my Dao Companion and pursuing the Great Dao together?]

[...]

"Uh."

After scrolling through the flea market, Chen Zhuo realized something.

This didn't look like a place to sell secondhand goods. It looked more like a temporary job board.

Fortunately, Taiqing City Alchemy Vocational and Technical College was one of Taiqing City's four vocational and technical colleges and had a website linked to the other schools. Without hesitation, Chen Zhuo logged onto the "external network" and connected to Taiqing City Talisman-Making Vocational and Technical College.

Taiqing City Talisman-Making Vocational and Technical College ranked last among the four. Talismans, an ancient medium for storing power, were slowly being phased out in modern society.

After all, what era was this? Who still used talismans?

As the times advanced, cultivators had started using Spirit Chips instead. A single tiny Spirit Chip could be imprinted with the Spirit Talisman patterns of hundreds of talismans...

As a result, enrollment at the Talisman-Making College kept shrinking. In another thousand years or so, it would probably close for good and stop admitting students.

To cultivators these days, even dogs wouldn't use talismans.

But Chen Zhuo had an answer...

Dogs won't use them? I will!

So Chen Zhuo immediately sifted through the flood of junk listings and picked out what he needed.

"Golden Armor Talisman. Sword Qi Talisman!"

"You two are the ones!"