Zhang Yu paused slightly, looking at the reply. “Why do I get the feeling… she’s a bit afraid of me continuing?”

Fuki chuckled. “This woman might have guessed that you and Bai Zhenzhen are participating in the Foundation Establishment exam. After all, the times you’ve left the city aren’t hard to track. And it’s quite normal for Yun Ni, as an inspector from a long line of them, to know the timing of the Foundation Establishment exam.”

Hearing Fuki’s analysis, Zhang Yu’s eyes flickered, and many thoughts came to mind.

Early the next morning, with the certificate issued by the inspection team and a personal call from Yun Ni, Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen finally obtained leave approved by the school and boarded the train to Xiandu.

Watching Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen’s train about to depart, Si Zhouyu called again, asking, “Hello? What’s the situation now? Should we still follow them?”

After a long pause, a voice on the phone replied, “Come back. You don’t need to follow them anymore.”

Si Zhouyu frowned. “What are you saying? A whole group of us have been wasting so much time following these two students, and now you’re saying we don’t need to follow them? They must be on an important mission this time! Why aren’t we following?”

The other person said coldly, “It’s an order from the company leadership. Orders from leadership must be followed, whether you understand them or not. Return immediately.”

Si Zhouyu took a deep breath, watched the train slowly start moving, and after a long moment, shook his head and left the station.

Meanwhile, on the train, after several attempts over the next few hours, Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen confirmed one thing.

Zhang Yu typed on his phone: “They didn’t follow us.”

Bai Zhenzhen: They’re not following? Do they know about the Foundation Establishment exam, so they don’t dare investigate further?

Zhang Yu recalled Yun Ni’s reaction yesterday and replied: I think so too. Such an abrupt withdrawal, the only reason I can think of is the Foundation Establishment exam.

Bai Zhenzhen: What a pity. I had originally hoped to lead these guys to investigate the Foundation Establishment exam.

After Zhang Yu saw Yun Ni’s reaction yesterday and heard Fuki’s analysis of her, he suddenly realized that through continuous waiting and patience, they had found an opportunity to counterattack. Unfortunately, the other party didn’t fall for it today.

Zhang Yu: It’s okay. At least through this incident, we can confirm one thing.

Zhang Yu: The one trying to deal with us isn’t Zhou Chechen.

Zhang Yu: Because Zhou Chechen probably doesn’t know about the Foundation Establishment exam.

Fuki said, “Indeed, only the upper echelons of the Zhou family would likely know such information as the Foundation Establishment exam.”

Zhang Yu: So our true opponent isn’t Zhou Chechen, but… the Zhou family.

Meanwhile, at Songyang High School.

Lan Ling looked at Zhou Chechen with confusion and said, “How could you approve their leave? Zhang Yu might just use this time to cultivate and earn money. We shouldn’t give them any breathing room! You should have resisted the pressure and not let them go. If they left, they should have been disciplined immediately, and we should have found a chance to expel them…”

Seeing Lan Ling’s displeased expression, Zhou Chechen sighed inwardly, no longer having the heart to say much. His mind was still replaying the process of Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen’s leave approval. “Yun Ni, the captain of the inspection team?” Zhou Chechen thought to himself, “Is the inspection team behind them? It’s true, Zhang Pianpian used to be with the inspection team. It’s not impossible that she introduced Zhang Yu to them after she left. And Bai Zhenzhen, this time she took leave with Zhang Yu. It seems their relationship is still quite good, unlike how it appeared in school before? But now that the person behind Zhang Yu has finally been identified, what are Uncle and the others planning to do? Surely they’re not going to continue fighting the inspection team, are they?”

“They can even leverage the power of the inspection team.”

“This evil god truly has courage.”

On the 333rd floor of the Central Building, Zhou Yang lay on his hospital bed, looking at the various messages sent by his subordinates. He thought to himself, “And this timing… it actually coincides with the Foundation Establishment exam? Coincidence? Or an intentional smokescreen?”

Two options suddenly appeared before Zhou Yang. Follow? Or not follow?

Zhou Yang decisively chose not to follow. After all, in his opinion, the worst outcome of not following was simply Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen running away, completely losing this lead.

“If this evil god truly arranged for its followers to flee, it means they’ve become suspicious, so following them wouldn’t be meaningful. At most, we’d only catch Zhang Yu, a mere pawn.”

But what if they did follow, and the other party was actually participating in the Foundation Establishment exam? He couldn’t just let his subordinates investigate everything, especially before knowing what they might uncover. What if his subordinates actually uncovered something they shouldn’t, like this Foundation Establishment exam… what then?

Especially after seeing the timings of Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen’s previous two departures from the city, Zhou Yang suddenly broke out in a cold sweat. He thought with a sense of lingering fear: “If this is indeed an intentional smokescreen, the groundwork was laid too early. They started leaving the city four months ago? Wasn’t that the registration period for the Foundation Establishment exam? So they really went to participate in the Foundation Establishment exam? And they made it to the second round? If that’s true, Zhang Yu’s hidden strength is considerable. What exactly does this evil god want? How dare it even consider the Foundation Establishment exam?”

Zhou Yang couldn’t figure it out, no matter how hard he thought. After all, how could Zhang Yu or Bai Zhenzhen possibly defeat the prodigies of Xiandu? In his view, participating in any Foundation Establishment exam was a complete waste of time and energy, and might even lead to their Dao hearts being shattered by the people of Xiandu. Moreover, Zhang Yu had been tormented so much by Zhou Chechen recently… “They know they’ll be eliminated, yet they still go? Is it for some intelligence?”

Although he couldn’t grasp the evil god’s purpose, Zhou Yang became increasingly interested in the evil god behind Zhang Yu. “To dare to consider the Foundation Establishment exam, this evil god’s status must be quite high. And now I’m hidden in the shadows, while the other party knows nothing about me, but I’m gathering more and more information about them… there’s an opportunity. If Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen return, seizing this lead would give me a great chance to devour this evil god’s status. But I can’t touch the Foundation Establishment exam. I must be careful not to discover anything about them participating in it… or rather, only after the exam ends can I put aside these concerns.”

As he pondered, Zhou Yang’s phone vibrated. He opened his phone and looked at the surveillance footage, seeing a hard drive suddenly throbbing violently amidst the ritual suppression formed by countless coils, antiques, chains, and other objects. Watching the continuously throbbing hard drive, Zhou Yang frowned, gently tapped his phone, and saw copper wires in the surveillance footage coil around the hard drive like giant dragons, suppressing it once again.

“Old thing, still not giving up?”

The entity suppressed within this hard drive was the evil god passed down through generations of the Zhou family. As the most outstanding successor of the Zhou family for ten generations, Zhou Yang, after learning the evil god’s secret and witnessing his clansmen’s worship of it, had an idea. “Why worship this thing? Humans should raise evil gods like they raise monstrous beasts, rather than being enslaved by them.”

So, after continuous cultivation, learning, and planning… he finally suppressed the evil god and turned it into his own ritual battery. But because of this, he paid a huge price.

Glancing at his missing lower body, Zhou Yang snapped his fingers. “Change clothes, I’m going out.”

The clothes rack beside him suddenly opened, revealing not just jackets, shirts, and other apparel, but also complete, seemingly intact lower bodies, dressed in pants and shoes. He casually picked a lower body and put it on. Feeling the flesh connect and the sensation of having feet again, Zhou Yang frowned. “Are these legs a bit too short?”

After switching to another lower body, he finally nodded in satisfaction. “This is more like it.”

As for the lower body he had deemed too short, it dissolved directly into a pool of blood, which he poured down the drain. However, seeing the faint lividity appearing on the calf, Zhou Yang sighed helplessly, “Ugh, using it for a day shouldn’t be a big problem, right?”

While staring at the title of “Purple Gold Merit Master,” he thought to himself, “Let me think, who in Songyang City can control the inspection team?”

Ever since suppressing the evil god, Zhou Yang had lost his lower body. And no matter what new physical body he put on, it would quickly decay and become a corpse. But this didn’t pose a challenge for someone as wealthy as him. After all, Kunxu lacked many things, but never people. There were plenty of poor souls willing to sell their legs for money… and then replace them with prosthetics.

But whether it was a prosthetic or a common person’s lower body, they were like clothes to Zhou Yang, used and discarded at will. They couldn’t withstand his usage, nor could they assist in his cultivation. After all, many cultivation techniques require a complete body to practice and utilize. So he selected many compatible spare “materials” for himself, cultivating them in various locations, letting them grow freely, and taking them when needed.

“I didn’t expect…” Zhang Yu’s figure appeared in Zhou Yang’s mind. “My lower body actually went to participate in the Foundation Establishment exam.”

Just as Zhou Yang was plotting something, Zhang Yu and Bai Zhenzhen had already arrived once again at the underground examination hall in Xiandu City.

However, Zhang Yu didn’t meet Bai Zhenzhen this time. After all, from the second round of the Foundation Establishment exam onwards, the examination was divided into four tracks: Dao Heart, Mana, Physical Fitness, and Martial Arts, with one candidate from each track ultimately receiving a Foundation Establishment Qualification Certificate.

“A’Zhen went to the Martial Arts exam, right?”

Zhang Yu looked at the four other candidates before him, knowing these were the opponents he would face in the upcoming Physical Fitness exam. Among them were Ye Lingxiao, a top Xiandu young master, and Yu Xinghan, an old acquaintance of Zhang Yu’s. However, seeing Yu Xinghan’s gaunt appearance, Zhang Yu thought to himself, “Damn it, kid… you weren’t pulling an all-nighter the day before the exam, were you?”

Then Zhang Yu felt Ye Lingxiao’s gaze, a look filled with fighting intent.

Ye Lingxiao: “You’ll use your full strength this round, right?”

Zhang Yu thought to himself: “The current me and the me from two months ago are worlds apart.”

Their gazes clashed in the air, as if intense fighting intent was surging between them.