Chapter 166: Another Decisive Battle with Yu Xinghan

Chapter 166: A Rematch of Victory with Yu Xinghan

He applied his mastery over bodily force to the very act of digestion, even unleashing volleys of palm strikes to aid his eating.

Such a thing had never been done by Zhang Yu before.

Yet, thanks to his terrifying skill with physical power, Zhang Yu grasped it with astonishing speed.

At first he had to hammer his abdomen palm after palm, driving his gut into compression.

Soon his movements grew subtle, and the thunder of each strike faded.

It signified his growing familiarity with meddling in the digestive system through raw force, his control of its flow and pull becoming ever more deft.

In the end, Zhang Yu seemed merely to pat his belly lightly, yet his whole body quivered with a series of low, muffled booms.

He felt delicate currents of palm force thread through muscle, fat, and organ, pulverizing and squeezing the food within, allowing him to swallow a few more bites of synthetic nourishment.

Zhang Yu’s technique did not go unnoticed by Meng Tao alone; soon other lagging high‑schoolers tried to imitate it, hoping to hasten their own digestion, only to feel a dull ache in their viscera after a few attempts, nearly sustaining internal injury.

A junior deity kept a vigilant eye on Zhang Yu’s motions, constantly monitoring the data streamed from the detection patches.

He remarked, “Zhang Yu possesses an exceptionally strong command over his own bodily power.”

“Each palm blast not only lands precisely on the food in his stomach, but also spares his organs from damage, sometimes even enlisting the viscera into the flow of power.”

“Such a level… does not seem attainable by a first‑year student from Songyang City.”

“He isn’t cheating, is he?”

Huang Zichou replied coolly, “If he can achieve this through technique, how can it be called cheating? Mastery of bodily force is, after all, a facet of true strength.”

“In this examination hall, those capable of wielding such technique already possess bodies and digestive systems so robust that they need not rely on it.”

“Conversely, those who try to use this trick to boost their scores lack the ability, and end up injuring themselves.”

The junior deity continued, “Alas, I still think that rather than measuring food intake, we should gauge drug tolerance; pharmacological dosing is the true crucible of body‑refinement.”

Another junior deity nodded in earnest agreement.

Huang Zichou said nothing, merely casting a glance at his approving counterpart, silently wondering how much the pharmaceutical company had paid him.

“Lately there’s been a wave of substituting drugs for exams, believing that the amount of dosage can assess a student’s strength and potential, while also selling medicine and conducting experiments.”

“Whoever is pulling the strings behind the scenes remains a mystery…”

While the deities conversed, Zhang Yu’s eating speed accelerated, and in the blink of an eye he surged to sixteenth place.

Just ahead of him stood Yu Xinghan, who had already vaulted into the fifteenth slot.

Yu Xinghan sensed Zhang Yu’s pursuit and thought inwardly, “Oh? He’s catching up?”

Gazing at the holographic screen, he watched the column labeled 55 continue to rise even after breaching the sixteenth rank, a faint smile tugging at his lips.

In that instant, memories of a sports competition months earlier flashed through his mind—Zhang Yu sprinting at full throttle, relentlessly chasing his silhouette.

Back then, Yu Xinghan had outpaced his rival in sheer speed, yet he had lost the subsequent Sky‑Pillar segment.

Because of Senior Sister Li Xuelian’s misjudgment, he could not give his all in the Sky‑Pillar, and the championship slipped through his fingers.

But to claim there were no regrets would be impossible.

“This time…” Yu Xinghan felt a spark of excitement and thought, “Here no one can hold my head back from unleashing my full power.”

With that thought, Yu Xinghan abruptly halted his eating.

Zhang Yu stared at the screen, at the competitor ahead of him, at the now‑stagnant column numbered 31, and felt a brief flicker of surprise.

“Number 31 must be that Yu Xinghan fellow, right?”

In the next heartbeat, as if a realization struck him, he turned toward Yu Xinghan and met a pair of eyes blazing with battle intent.

“That guy…” Zhang Yu felt as if he were back on the track months ago, seeing Yu Xinghan retreat swiftly while he himself surged forward on the same starting line.

“Do you wish to settle this with a duel of victory?”

Zhang Yu and Yu Xinghan locked gazes, the fierce will of each colliding like thunder in the air.

Three!

Two!

One!

As if by unspoken pact, three seconds later both erupted with a roar in their hearts, ravenously devouring the synthetic fare before them.

The cavernous gulping—gurgling, gurgling—mixed with the chorus of organs croaking, and in that moment Yu Xinghan seemed to become a colossal beast, swallowing the bucket’s synthetic sustenance whole.

Yet as the bucket’s contents dwindled, he spun to seize another barrel and began a binge.

Yu Xinghan was startled to see on the screen that his and Zhang Yu’s consumption rates, instead of diverging, were drawing ever closer.

“That guy… is still catching up?”

Sweat began to bead on Yu Xinghan’s forehead, one drop after another.

Soon the droplets multiplied.

It was not nerves, haste, or fear that caused them.

Those beads of sweat signified his all‑out effort.

Studying at White Dragon High, he had long since undergone a digestive‑system overhaul.

When he started to perspire, it meant his revamped gut had entered a high‑intensity mode.

At that moment his stomach and intestines became a massive furnace, crushing and pulverizing everything he swallowed, while surges of heat streamed through his entire body.

Metabolic waste, heated to a fever, poured out through his sweat glands, turning into fine rivulets that slipped down his skin.

But then… Boom! Boom! Boom!

A cascade of thunderous roars rolled from Zhang Yu’s direction.

A food barrel toppled onto the table, and Zhang Yu lay beneath it.

Synthetic nourishment cascaded like a galactic waterfall, and he opened his maw, swallowing it greedily.

Simultaneously, his hands pounded his own body in relentless succession.

Palm after palm struck, as if bolts of lightning were detonating in mid‑air.

In that instant, Zhang Yu appeared to Yu Xinghan as a thunder god incessantly beating a divine drum, the rolling thunder echoing as he surged toward him.

Watching the gap between them narrow on the hologram, Yu Xinghan’s sweat began to take on a faint white hue.

The emergence of white‑tinged sweat signaled that he was truly becoming urgent.

For the excess undigested protein in his sweat revealed he was sacrificing complete digestion in pursuit of speed.

“It’s still not enough…”

He watched Zhang Yu close the distance on the screen, feeling the increasingly dense, booming thunder.

Yu Xinghan’s gaze grew heavier, his sweat shifting from pale white to a milky hue.

As the sweat whitened, his data surged faster, allowing him to temporarily hold the gap with Zhang Yu.

…

Just as Zhang Yu and Yu Xinghan were locked in fierce competition.

Bai Zhenzhen, who had fallen to twenty‑first place, also sensed a whiff of danger.

"I must think of a way," she muttered.

Bai Zhenzhen patted her ever‑growing belly and thought inwardly, "I'm about to vomit from overeating."

"I need to find a way to digest this," she whispered.

Yet as her ranking kept slipping, Bai Zhenzhen felt only a growing calm.

"Is this the effect of the Cold‑Heart Ice‑Soul Technique?"

"I feel my qi and blood becoming more lively throughout my body."

"My mind seems clearer than ever before."

In that instant, Bai Zhenzhen sensed every datum, skill, and ability flashing in vivid detail within her mind, as if each were a weapon she could wield.

Simultaneously, the myriad pieces of information from the examination hall rose before her eyes, transforming into streams of intelligence that flooded her brain.

One thought after another surfaced, only to be weighed and then discarded.

At last, Bai Zhenzhen's gaze fixed upon Zhang Yu.

"Yu's method is not bad," she mused.

"But it cannot be applied wholesale."

"I must discover a pattern that suits me..."

Images of her own martial arts, the tenth‑level effect of the Thunder‑Crushing True Body, and its extrapolations flickered through her mind.

The tenth‑level Thunder‑Crushing True Body rendered Bai Zhenzhen's flesh more resilient, allowing her to sustain high‑speed states for a longer span.

And after refining it with her True Spirit Root, the tenth‑level form amplified that resilience further, even enabling her muscles in full‑speed mode to act as buffers and energy absorbers.

With that realization, a plan began to take shape in Bai Zhenzhen's heart.

She felt her body start to sway gently, and as the sway quickened it turned into a tremor, then into a rapid vibration.

Her powerful physique and cultivated martial prowess kept her flesh and organs healthy even under such high‑frequency oscillation.

The food that had once been hard to digest was pulverized, shattered, and eventually reduced to juice by the relentless vibration.

Riding the surge of her body's rapid oscillation, Bai Zhenzhen accelerated her intake, surging from twenty‑first to twentieth place, then pressing toward nineteenth.

Holding the nineteenth spot was Li Tongyun, drenched in cold sweat.

As her eating speed faltered, despair deepened within her.

She strained to swallow the synthetic food in her mouth, only to feel a soil‑like mass clogging her throat from the stomach up.

Huang Zichou remarked, "Li Tongyun has reached her limit."

Another minor deity laughed, "After that long a bout of diarrhea, is her digestive system about to give out?"

Huang Zichou replied, "A one‑off burst is fine, but trying to sustain it to the end is impossible."

Thinking of the wager contract and her parents on the brink of bankruptcy, Li Tongyun forced herself to shove a little more synthetic food into her stomach.

But she seemed to have hit a ceiling; with a soft pop, she abruptly expelled every morsel she had just swallowed.

"No..."

The mana test had already slipped past twentieth; if the physical test also fell below twentieth now, Li Tongyun knew she would be doomed in this round of foundation‑building.

The thought of becoming corporate property coiled around her heart like a venomous snake.

As the daughter of a former company leader, she knew all too well that once she became an asset, her body, her flesh, even her soul would no longer belong to her.

"I really cannot afford to lose

Almost reflexively, Li Tongyun forced the vomit back down, clutching the barrel of synthetic food and shoving it into her belly as if by force‑feeding.

No amount of struggling could change her fate; she had reached her limit and could only watch helplessly as her ranking continued to tumble backward.

(End of chapter)