Pay-to-Win Cultivation: I Get 10,000x Returns

“Gah—!”

Yang Poxiao barely managed to raise his heavy Spirit Treasure sword in a desperate guard, pushing his protective aura to the absolute limit, before a terrifying shockwave hammered him backward.

He tumbled through the air and slammed into the arena floor. As the dust settled, he scrambled up—hair singed, robes tattered, and dignity utterly shredded.

Heart pounding, he hastily swallowed another High-Grade Spirit Recovery Pill. Just as he opened his mouth to unleash a torrent of curses, the words died in his throat.

Across the stage, the Metal and Water puppets raised their hands. With a sharp flash of light, they were gripping brand-new Spirit Treasure longswords, identical in aura and quality to the ones they had just detonated.

“Holy shit?! Is he running a wholesale warehouse?!” Yang Poxiao’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull.

The audience below was collectively petrified into silence.

Before Yang Poxiao could even process the absurdity, the two new swords lit up with the ominous, blinding glow of imminent self-destruction.

BOOM!

Another earth-shaking explosion rocked the plaza.

Yang Poxiao was blasted into a disheveled heap once more, his qi and blood churning violently. Trembling with rage, he swallowed yet another expensive recovery pill to stabilize himself.

He pointed a shaking finger at Zhang Xian and roared, “Are you fucking done yet?!”

Zhang Xian’s expression remained completely impassive. With a flick of his mind, the puppets simply equipped fresh swords again.

The audience had gone numb.

“The… the sixth one.”

“His ancestors must have robbed the treasury of heaven! Where did he get so many Spirit Treasures?”

“Prodigal! He is the number one wastrel in the entire cultivation world!” On the viewing platform, Yun He clutched his chest, feeling a sharp pang of angina. Those weren’t just swords exploding; that was his prospective son-in-law’s inheritance! It felt like half his own family fortune was being vaporized for the sake of a few loud noises.

Emperor Xia Xuanyin’s mouth twitched. He recalled that the grand prize for winning this entire tournament was a single Spirit Treasure. The math simply didn’t add up.

Hu Yanqing’s face was dark. The sheer financial violence Zhang Xian was displaying had exceeded all estimates.

Wang Ya felt his heart skip a beat. He knew that even if he were in Yang Poxiao’s place, he wouldn’t last long against this “Spirit Treasure Detonation Art.” With such immense wealth to burn, it was no wonder Zhang Xian’s luck with women was so good. Losing to a tycoon like this… it wasn’t unjust.

On the stage, Yang Poxiao was thoroughly panicked. No matter how many Spirit Recovery Pills he had in his inventory, he couldn’t sustain this rate of consumption.

More critically, a terrifying realization struck him. Every time Zhang Xian detonated a treasure, the explosion clashed directly with his own heavy sword. The impact wasn’t meant for him; it was meant for his weapon.

He urgently checked his connection to the blade. A groan of metallic strain echoed in his mind. Fine, spiderweb cracks had already appeared on the surface of his Life-Bound Spirit Treasure.

His target is my sword!

Cold sweat drenched Yang Poxiao’s back. Without his weapon, his combat power would plummet by at least thirty percent.

Right then, the third wave of self-destruction began to glow.

“Don’t even think about it!”

A fierce glint flashed in Yang Poxiao’s eyes. No longer passively defending, he erupted with all his potential. His speed skyrocketed as he bypassed the other puppets, charging like a madman straight for the Water Puppet.

He was determined to destroy the one element that countered him most.

Fire and water were natural enemies. Every Water-attribute explosion inflicted double the stress on his fire-based heavy sword.

A thick, earthen-yellow giant shield instantly rose to protect the Water Puppet. Yang Poxiao roared, his heavy sword carrying destructive thunder-fire power as he brought it down with a world-cleaving slash.

“BREAK!!”

The earthen shield shattered instantly. But just as the heavy sword was about to cleave into the puppet, a layer of pale blue light, radiating dense water essence, suddenly enveloped it.

A defensive Spirit Treasure?!

“What?” Yang Poxiao was completely dumbfounded. He equipped a puppet with a defensive Spirit Treasure? And a fucking Water-attribute one at that?

The next second, the watery film blazed with piercing blue light.

Boom!

The defensive treasure detonated at point-blank range.

But it wasn’t over.

Almost simultaneously, the swords held by the Gold, Fire, Earth, and Wood puppets—along with the wooden sword in Zhang Xian’s own hand—ignited.

Five beams of light. Five Spirit Treasures. A synchronized, bankrupting chain reaction.

As they exploded, Zhang Xian calmly activated several Earth-Grade defensive talismans, shielding himself and his puppets in a turtle shell of light.

BOOOOOOM!!!

The power of the Five Elements super-imposed over one another, creating a chaotic energy storm that seemed capable of annihilating heaven and earth. The entire arena was swallowed by a maelstrom of five-colored destruction.

“Pfft!”

As the light dissipated, a figure was blasted out of the smoke. Yang Poxiao hit the ground hard, his body charred black, blood gushing from his mouth. His aura had withered to a critical low.

And his hands were empty. His heavy Spirit Treasure sword had been reduced to a pile of scrap metal, shattered into countless pieces.

Zhang Xian slowly emerged from behind his pristine energy shields, completely unscathed. He looked down at the ruined Yang Poxiao with a flat, unimpressed gaze.

“Truly formidable. I had to self-destruct over a dozen Spirit Treasures just to destroy one of yours. Admirable. Truly admirable.”

“Gah!” Upon hearing this, Yang Poxiao was so enraged he spat out another mouthful of blood.

He fumbled frantically, stuffing several healing pills into his mouth to stabilize his injuries. But as his breath returned, a sinister, numbing sensation began to crawl along his meridians.

Poison too?!

Yang Poxiao was terrified. The memory of Hu Yanzhi’s bizarre, burning death flashed through his mind. He frantically circulated his thunder-fire spiritual power to purge his system.

Lightning flickered across his body, forcing wisps of cyan gas out of his pores. But the process came with a side effect. His skin rapidly began to change color, dyeing him a vivid, undeniable emerald green.

“Pfft!” He spat out a mouthful of foul-smelling green blood. The poison was suppressed, but the visual damage was done.

“Hahaha! Look! He’s turned green!”

“Green from head to toe! It’s the color of betrayal!”

“The Green Prodigy of the Guiyuan Sect! He’s wearing the cuckold’s color quite well!”

Deafening laughter erupted from the stands. The crowd, sensing blood, leaned into the double meaning. In their eyes, Yang Poxiao was now a walking symbol of infidelity and shame.

The damage was physical, but the humiliation was spiritual.

Zhang Xian chose that moment to twist the knife. “Heh. This is the Central Continent’s number one prodigy? A Pill Refining Grandmaster? You couldn’t even touch the hem of my robe.”

“ZHANG XIAN!!!” Yang Poxiao screamed, his sanity snapping. A warrior could be killed, but this—this was intolerable. “All you fucking do is throw money and poison! What else can you do?! Have the guts to fight me like a man! Fair and square!!”

Zhang Xian merely stood amidst his four puppets, looking at the glowing green man.

“No need. You’re so… green. I’m afraid your condition might be contagious.”

That light, casual sentence pierced straight through Yang Poxiao’s psychological defenses. As a modern transmigrator, he understood the subtext of the “Green Hat” better than anyone. He had a particular, pathological aversion to the word.

His eyes turned bloodshot, practically dripping with hate. But within this extreme rage, a cold, mechanical intuition forced him to suppress the urge to charge blindly.

He took a deep, shuddering breath, his chest heaving like a bellows. A flash of dark resolve appeared in his eyes.

Without another word, he pulled out a pill the size of a longan—the [Blood Incinerating Soul Burning Pill].

It was a Peak Earth-Grade pill that burned the user’s essence blood and lifespan in exchange for infinite stamina and a massive, temporary surge in power.

As a Pill Refining Master, he could eventually recover the lost lifespan. But this pill had cost him a fortune of points in the System Store. It was his nuclear option.

Gulp.

The pill went down.

A flame far more violent and ominous than before erupted from Yang Poxiao’s core. At the edges of the crimson inferno, faint threads of pitch-black fire danced, seeming to devour the surrounding light.

The emerald green hue on his face was instantly vaporized by the sheer heat. It looked as if molten lava was now flowing beneath his skin. His aura climbed vertically, smashing through barriers until it faintly brushed against the terrifying threshold of the Nascent Soul stage.