Dinner in the cafeteria. Zhang Yu sat across from Zhou Tianyi, mechanically working through a five-yuan meal that consisted mostly of rice and regret. Bai Zhenzhen sat beside them, devouring a plate piled with chicken legs and stir-fried vegetables and what looked like glazed spirit-beast ribs. She said nothing. She never did, in public.
"Your financial situation," Zhou Tianyi observed, "has gone to hell."
"Is it that obvious?"
Zhou Tianyi gestured at the two plates in front of them. Bai Zhenzhen's — mountains of protein, steaming and fragrant. Zhang Yu's — a sad scoop of rice, a limp cabbage leaf, what might charitably be called soup. "Three months of cafeteria observation. What a person eats maps directly to their economic bracket. And their cultivation tier. Someone who eats ten pounds a meal doesn't sit with someone who eats three. Different classes. Different rungs on the ladder."
Zhang Yu exhaled. *He noticed the food. Not the debt. I'm still anonymous.*
He glanced at Bai Zhenzhen's pile of chicken legs. "Those look different than the regular ones. Let me try one."
She didn't look up. "No."
Zhou Tianyi laughed and slid a duck leg from his own plate onto Zhang Yu's tray. "She trained hard today. Hungry. Here — try mine."
"Brother." Zhang Yu clasped his hands in gratitude. "True brother."
He tore into the duck leg like a man who hadn't eaten protein in days — which was, in fact, accurate.
Zhou Tianyi watched him with an expression Zhang Yu couldn't quite read. Later, after he'd left for his supplementary classes, Bai Zhenzhen finally looked up.
"Three months of observation," she said. "On both of you. He treats you differently than anyone else."
"What do you mean?"
"A guy smiling while putting a duck leg on another guy's tray. In sixteen years, I've only seen that happen in two situations. One: father and son."
She paused, and her lips curved into something that was not quite a smile.
"The other..." She let the sentence hang. "Well. You're the one with the functional equipment around here. You tell me."
"The things you read, Zhenzhen. The things you watch."
She pushed her tray toward him. "I'm full. Leftovers are yours."
Zhang Yu looked down. Half a plate of food — untouched, arranged neatly to one side, clearly separated from what she had eaten. She had planned this. She had been planning this before she even sat down.
"Zhenzhen—"
"Don't make it weird." She was already walking away.
---
Outside the cafeteria, Bai Zhenzhen stopped on the steps. She looked back through the glass doors, watching Zhang Yu finish her food.
*There's a third situation,* she thought. *When a guy gives food to another guy like that.*
Near her feet, a cafeteria worker was scraping leftovers from a metal bucket into a bowl. A stray cat crouched nearby, waiting. The worker poured and the cat ate.
---
Zhang Yu sat in the empty cafeteria and did the math.
Rent: fifteen hundred a month. Utilities: two hundred. Loan payments: fifteen thousand a month. Food, transportation, supplies —
*I need at least twenty thousand a month to break even. No normal job will cover that.*
He called up the Feather Book and scanned his stats while he thought.
**Zhang Yu** **Resolve: Level 1** **Mana: 7.7** **Physical Strength: Level 0.84** **Martial Arts: Body-Forging 36 Forms Lv. 2 (17/20), Free Fighting Lv. 1, High School Basic Sword Technique Lv. 0** **Dao Arts: Basic Breathing Lv. 1**
He paused on the new entry. High School Basic Sword Technique. Today's martial arts class — the first weapons curriculum of the semester. He hadn't practiced it yet, but according to the Feather Book, he could Focus on it and level it rapidly, same as the Body-Forging 36 Forms.
*Useful. But later. First, money.*
---
He started with the obvious plan: tutoring.
He was an active Songyang High student. Elite class. Top-ten ranking. The cram schools where he had once been a customer should have been eager to hire him as an instructor. Cultivation families paid premium rates for direct access to current students — insider knowledge, real strategies, the unspoken curriculum.
He called his old cram school. "I'd like to apply as a part-time instructor."
"Ah — we're fully staffed at the moment. Try elsewhere."
He called another. Then another. Then five more.
"Your current school is Songyang? Impressive. Now — where did you attend elementary school? Middle school?"
"I'm a current Songyang student. That's what matters."
"Respectfully, there are many former Songyang students working as tutors. For current students without graduation credentials, families pay close attention to educational pedigree. Elementary and middle school backgrounds are—"
They stopped responding when he named his schools.
*First and second education.* The terms circled in his head like ugly brands. His elementary school. His middle school. Dongyang — a public school in a poor district, underfunded, overcrowded, invisible. His grades had been perfect, and it didn't matter. The name on the diploma was all anyone saw.
*Even tutoring is paywalled.*
---
Plan B. Temp work.
He had done his research. The cultivation economy offered a parallel labor market — jobs that required spiritual energy, combat training, or specialized techniques. High school students were a significant portion of this workforce. Most weren't wealthy. Most needed money for supplements, injections, or just to keep the loan payments from escalating into physical collection visits.
He contacted an agent.
"Today's jobs are all taken," the agent said. "Come down to the office. Sometimes things open up last-minute. Gotta be here to grab them."
---
Half an hour later, Zhang Yu stood in a small plaza on the edge of the commercial district. People were scattered across the square — some in school uniforms, some in work clothes, some old enough to be his parents. A girl in a high school blazer sat cross-legged on the pavement, cycling through breathing exercises. A man in his thirties had spread a newspaper on the ground and was napping on it. A woman with gray in her hair paced back and forth, checking her phone.
The agency was a storefront wedged between a pawn shop and a closed-down dumpling stall. Dirty windows plastered with job listings. Zhang Yu pushed open the door and was hit by a wall of cigarette smoke.
Behind a desk littered with papers and ashtrays, a middle-aged man looked up. "You the high school kid who called?"
Zhang Yu nodded.
"Call me Wang. Fill this out." He pushed a form across the desk. "Name. School. Techniques. Levels. Grades. The basics."
Zhang Yu filled in his information — Body-Forging 36 Forms Lv. 2, Free Fighting Lv. 1, top ten in grade. He slid the form back. "How soon can I find work? What's the pay?"
Wang scratched his unwashed hair. "Minimum a few hundred an hour. Could be more depending on the job. How fast you get placed... that's harder to say. Bad week, nothing. Good week, steady."
A few hundred an hour. Two or three hours of work a day, and he could cover his payments. The math was suddenly, impossibly, optimistic.
"Why is it so hard to find work?" he asked. "I'm Songyang High. Elite class. Top ten."
Wang laughed. He gestured at the window. "See those people outside? Half of them are high school students like you. The other half — high school graduates."
Zhang Yu's brain stuttered. "Graduates? People who finished high school cultivation? They're doing temp work?"
"Didn't get into university, did they?" Wang shrugged. "No university, no ascension. Trapped at Qi Refining forever. Stuck on the first layer. So they work. Day jobs during business hours, temp work after. They don't need sleep — might as well earn."
"But — a formal job. A real position. Why temp work?"
"The day job's salary isn't enough. Loan payments. Cultivation maintenance. Keeping your skills from degrading costs money too — supplements, equipment, practice space. It never ends."
Zhang Yu's entire mental image of post-graduation life crumbled. He had pictured high school graduates in glass towers, sipping tea in air-conditioned offices, collecting respectable salaries. Not this. Not a lifetime of day-and-night labor, peddling their cultivation skills like day laborers, debt hanging over every decision.
*Before graduation: study twenty-four hours a day. After graduation: work twenty-four hours a day. The suffering only increases.*
Wang glanced at the form. "Songyang High, huh. We're alumni. I dropped out senior year."
"You dropped out?"
"Wasn't going to make university. No point burning more money. Paid off my high school loans two years ago." He tapped the form. "Alumni advice: know your limits. If you're not going to make it, bail early. I've seen too many kids bury themselves in debt trying to force something that was never going to happen. Ruins their whole lives."
He stacked the papers. "Wait outside. If something comes up, I'll call you."
"Competing against actual graduates," Zhang Yu said. "Are jobs really going to pick me?"
Wang smiled. "Some jobs specifically want current students. You'll see."