Chapter 7: Physical Education

Zhang Yu could feel it happening—as the memories fused more deeply, they began to shape his thoughts. He was starting to care more and more about academic rankings at this school.

At that moment, Zhou Tianyi leaned over and asked, “So, did he try to sell you Elephant Force?”

Zhang Yu nodded. “Yeah, tried to peddle Elephant Force to me.”

“But you didn’t buy it?” Zhou Tianyi clicked his tongue. “Aren’t you afraid Old Wang’s gonna come after you?”

“Come after me?” Zhang Yu replied. “I just didn’t buy the meds. That’s not a big deal, is it?”

Zhou Tianyi shook his head. “Tsk. Wanna hear some gossip about Wang Hai?”

“I’m not really the gossipy type.”

Zhang Yu turned and headed over to the training equipment, planning to get a feel for his new body and the physical education curriculum.

Zhou Tianyi continued, “Rumor is, a teacher complained that Wang Hai was jerking off in the next office. The guy finished so hard he cracked the ceiling.”

Zhang Yu stopped in his tracks. He wasn’t into gossip—but a story that ridiculous? Now he had to hear what the hell that was about.

Zhou Tianyi grinned. “Wang Hai claimed he wasn’t doing that. Said the banging sounds were just him disciplining some unruly students.”

“I asked a couple of seniors from previous years, and it turns out Wang Hai’s been into corporal punishment for a long time.”

“Especially if your grades are slipping and you’re not buying his supplements? You’re a prime target for his bullying.”

“I heard one student even had a mental breakdown from the pressure a few years back.”

Zhang Yu’s gaze sharpened. “And no one’s stopped this guy?”

Zhou Tianyi shrugged. “Wang Hai’s track record is solid. He’s the top PE teacher at Songyang High—trained three students who ranked first in the city for physical strength during college entrance exams. Some say he’s got access to experimental drugs still being tested in the big sect labs.”

“Even if the school wanted to get rid of him, most parents and students wouldn’t allow it. They’re all banking on his meds to boost their physical stats.”

Then he glanced over at Zhang Yu, voice lowering in warning. “If you keep skipping the meds and your scores don’t improve, you might be his next target.”

Seeing Zhang Yu frown, Zhou Tianyi tilted his head curiously. “Wait… you used to get injections all the time, didn’t you? What’s changed? Don’t tell me you’re broke now. Want me to spot you some?”

Zhang Yu saw the sincerity in his eyes and gave a helpless smile. “Thanks, but no.”

“Really? Not even one shot today?” Zhou Tianyi said, half-joking, “C’mon, use mine.”

Zhang Yu quickly shook his head. He was genuinely afraid that one more injection might kill him outright.

Based on what he remembered, this world was full of people who’d been crippled, maimed, or even killed from excessive drug use. Even at Songyang High, there were students injured every year from overdosing on enhancement meds.

And yet, the stream of students willing to use them in pursuit of greater physical strength never stopped.

The body’s original owner had already begun to show signs of collapse last week.

Thinking about the seventy-thousand-yuan debt, and the damaged body he’d inherited along with it, Zhang Yu sighed again.

While the two of them whispered, a sharp gaze suddenly swept over. Wang Hai barked, “Stop chatting and focus on PE!”

Zhang Yu and Zhou Tianyi immediately shut up and started their exercises.

Zhang Yu stepped up to a massive iron sphere. His muscles tensed. With a sudden burst of force, he lifted the 100-kilogram weight clean off the ground.

His whole body began to move. Muscles bulged and rippled as he shifted the iron ball around like it was a toy, rotating it through various positions around his body.

As the ball flipped and spun, Zhang Yu felt his blood surging and his body steadily heating up.

“This must be the warm-up…”

The whole routine felt instinctual, etched into his flesh and bones. He hardly had to think—his body moved on its own, completing the warm-up drill.

As training continued, he grew more in tune with his physical body. Related memories surfaced one after another.

“In the Qi Refinement stage, physical training mainly means forging muscles and bones. Repeating each movement over and over until you break your current limits and boost your physical strength rating.”

“The most widely practiced method among high schoolers… is the Body-Refining Thirty-Six Forms.”

The Body-Refining Thirty-Six Forms was a foundational technique created by the Ten Great Sects specifically for high school physical training. Thirty-six movements, each matched with a different piece of equipment, designed to fully develop the body and boost physical strength effectively.

Under the immortal cultivation framework laid out by the Ten Great Sects, all martial arts and dao techniques were categorized from level 1 to 100.

At Songyang High, most students managed to get started with this technique within a week or two, reaching level 1 proficiency in the Body-Refining Thirty-Six Forms.

If they kept leveling it up, the technique’s effects became increasingly powerful—eventually bordering on the miraculous.

But that wasn’t easy. In Zhang Yu’s memory, only Bai Zhenzhen had managed to get it to level 2 in the three months since school started.

Which was why she could maintain the second-highest physical strength score in the entire grade with just nine injections per day—right behind Qian Shen, who took sixteen.

“Sure, the level of the Body-Refining Thirty-Six Forms affects how efficiently your strength increases. But in the end, your actual physical strength rating is what determines how strong you are—and how you score in PE.”

“My rating is 0.82, and I can already toss around stuff that weighs hundreds of pounds. At the Qi Refinement level, the strength rating can go up to 10. Once you reach Foundation Establishment, it caps out at 20… The difference between people here is massive.”

At first, Zhang Yu just wanted to go through the motions and get a feel for his PE class and new body.

But as he practiced more sets of the Body-Refining Thirty-Six Forms, he grew more and more focused. It was as if some primal instinct inside him kept urging him forward, pushing him to keep training without rest.

Muscles tore, bones took a beating—over and over again. His body was battered repeatedly, until finally, a warm current surged from within, quietly repairing the damage to his flesh and bones.

That was his mana—and just like in the past few months of PE class, the process repeated: the body broke under pressure, then healed under the influence of mana, only to come back even stronger.

Huff!

Two hours flew by. Zhang Yu exhaled deeply, every part of his body aching like it was about to fall apart.

“No wonder they need painkillers…”

He looked across the field and saw Bai Zhenzhen still drenched in sweat, pushing herself nonstop. The rest of the class was just as intense. A sense of urgency surged up from within him, as if his body itself was begging him to keep going, to keep pushing his limits.

“If I trained like this in my old world, I’d be dead by now.”

“But here, thanks to all the cultivation-era meds and mana… not only can you survive, you get stronger.”

Feeling the pain pulsing from every corner of his body—and the lingering hunger to train more, to grow stronger—Zhang Yu couldn’t help but marvel at the sheer obsession that must have driven the original Zhang Yu.

Yet as the training wore on, that primal drive began to fade.

The path forward would have to be carved by the current Zhang Yu, step by step.

By the time the morning PE session ended, Zhang Yu was collapsed flat on the field, utterly spent. Around him, classmates were still bounding about, immersed in their relentless training.

Zhang Yu looked around and realized: this was the difference between taking meds and going without.

Just then, he glanced at his palm and noticed the spreading patch of black. Only about a quarter of it remained untouched by the creeping darkness.