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

Chapter 291: This is a Righteous Gang-Up!

The moment the command dropped, a tidal wave of dark metal submerged the enemy.

It was a tiger lunging into a flock of sheep. Song Yuanyi’s elite subordinates—including Song Zheng, the freshly minted Daughter of Destiny—didn’t even have time to scream. In the face of absolute, overwhelming mechanical force, they were instantly deleted from existence.

Song Yuanyi’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull. He had guessed Zhang Xian might have a trump card, but he never, in his wildest nightmares, expected this.

It wasn’t a fight. It was a mountain crashing down on an ant hill.

“AHHH!”

Song Yuanyi roared, the spiritual power he had accumulated over ten thousand years erupting without reservation.

Wood-grain patterns surfaced on his skin—a sign of his demonization after refining Wang Ye’s core. He slashed out with everything he had, sending a dazzling golden beam of sword Qi straight at Zhang Xian.

This was the full-power strike of a Half-Step Soul Formation expert.

Zhang Xian didn’t even twitch. He didn’t need to.

Countless battle puppets threw themselves in front of him, forming a living wall of celestial metal.

Boom! Boom!

The golden beam sheared through seven puppets before running out of momentum and dissipating into the air.

But what truly drove Song Yuanyi to despair was what happened next. The severed metal stumps of the destroyed puppets began to flow like liquid mercury, knitting themselves back together in seconds.

Indestructible. Unstoppable.

Run.

The thought consumed Song Yuanyi’s mind. Without a shred of hesitation, he turned into a streak of light, tearing at space itself to flee.

But a shadow faster than him—a meteor of dark gold—intercepted his path.

Whoosh!

A pair of heavy metal feet slammed into his midsection with the force of a collapsing star.

BANG!

Song Yuanyi’s protective spirit shield shattered like glass. His ribs snapped with a sickening crunch. He sprayed a fountain of blood as his body was punted back into the center of the battlefield like a ragdoll.

He crashed into the earth, creating a massive crater. Gasping for air, he looked up in horror at the special puppet slowly descending from the sky.

It was dark gold, identical in shape to the others, but the terrifying intelligence in its mechanical eyes and the sheer weight of its Pressure screamed a different truth.

“This… this isn’t Nascent Soul,” Song Yuanyi stammered, his voice trembling with primal fear. “This is a Soul Formation puppet!”

The sensation of helplessness threw him back ten thousand years, to the nightmare of being dominated by the original Su Clan Battle Puppets. Cold sweat drenched his back.

Calm down. Calm down!

He forced himself to think. It’s only one. Just one Soul Formation puppet. If I play this perfectly, I might still have a chance to escape.

Zhang Xian drifted down, landing beside the dark gold puppet. Behind him floated a standard Nascent Soul seventh-layer unit.

“You look like you think you still have a chance,” Zhang Xian said, his voice dripping with amusement.

Song Yuanyi tensed, his eyes locked on the dark gold puppet, daring not to blink.

Then, Zhang Xian reached out and casually tapped the chest of the ordinary puppet behind him.

Click.

The chest armor slid open, revealing the energy core. Zhang Xian pulled out the standard spirit stone, tossed it aside, and produced a pouch filled with blindingly white, high-purity crystals.

Supreme Spirit Stones.

He jammed the pouch into the core and slammed the chest shut.

VROOOOM!

The ordinary puppet’s aura exploded upwards, shattering the limits of the Nascent Soul stage and stabilizing at the exact same terrifying level as the dark gold one.

Another Soul Formation puppet?

The blood drained from Song Yuanyi’s face until he looked like a corpse.

Zhang Xian pointed a lazy finger at the sky, where thousands of puppets hovered in silent formation.

“Oh, I forgot to mention. Every single puppet here has the potential to reach Soul Formation output. All I have to do is swap the batteries.”

He smiled, a cold, cruel expression. “But for trash like you? Two should be more than enough.”

“No… Impossible! THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE!” Song Yuanyi’s mind finally snapped.

He was a Half-Step Soul Formation expert. And he was facing an army of thousands of potential Soul Formation constructs?

This wasn’t a battle. It was bullying. It was a massacre.

“If you had these puppets, why didn’t you use them in the secret chamber?!” Song Yuanyi screamed, his voice cracking. “Why didn’t you use them against the Hatred cultivators in the West?! Why?!”

“If I didn’t play my cards one by one, how would I have baited out the fox?” Zhang Xian sneered. “If I dropped the hammer too early, you would have just kept pretending to be the noble Councilor Lin, hiding in the shadows forever.”

While Song Yuanyi was paralyzed by shock, the last of his Half-Step Soul Formation subordinates were torn apart by the swarm.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

Four more Soul Formation-enhanced puppets descended from the sky, landing in a circle around him.

Six Soul Formation puppets. One broken villain.

Clang.

Song Yuanyi’s life-bound spirit sword slipped from his trembling fingers and hit the ground.

Resistance was meaningless.

“Kill him,” Zhang Xian ordered, bored.

A giant metal palm, heavy as a mountain, smashed down.

CRUNCH!

Song Yuanyi was flattened into the dirt.

“AHHH! I’LL TAKE YOU WITH ME!”

Song Yuanyi spat a mouthful of essence blood, roaring in despair.

Above them, the phantom of the Heavenly Gourd suddenly erupted with blinding golden light. A thick pillar of energy shot skyward. He was trying to forcibly overload the Prism Project and shatter the world’s cage, hoping the resulting dimensional collapse would kill them all.

Zhang Xian didn’t even blink. “Suppress it.”

The puppets moved as a blur. In an instant, they smothered the light pillar, snuffing out the overload before it could even begin.

Song Yuanyi, seeing his final suicide pact neutralized like a child’s tantrum, let out a hysterical, broken laugh.

“HAHAHA! It’s useless! Stopping me is useless! The Calamity of the Seven Emotions has already damaged the Origin of this world! The cage is fragile! Sooner or later, the Supreme Beings will descend! When they do, you are all ants! YOU ARE ALL ANTS!!”

Zhang Xian ignored the madman’s ravings.

The puppets’ energy engulfed him.

There was no suspense. The battle ended as quickly as it had begun.

Song Yuanyi—the mastermind who had plotted for ten thousand years, the man who betrayed his best friend and twisted his own bloodline—was erased. No body. No soul. Just dust.

As the smoke cleared, Zhang Xian waved his hand, collecting the fallen Heavenly Gourd.

On the ground where Song Yuanyi had stood, only a single object remained: an emerald-green, pulsating bead.

A pure Demon Core.

Zhang Xian used his spiritual energy to lift it. It felt warm to the touch, thrumming with immense life force.

He remembered Wang Ye’s audio logs. The essence of the “Little Grass Spirit” was apparently a potent supplement for dual cultivation.

Yeah… no.

The idea of consuming Song Yuanyi—who had consumed Wang Ye—was a bit too gross, even for him. And he had no intention of becoming a half-demon.

“I’ll stow it for now.” He sealed the core in a jade box and tossed it into his inventory.

He looked down at the ruined battlefield. The enemy was dead. The threat was neutralized.

But there was no joy on his face. Only a heavy, lingering worry.

Lele is still trapped in that five-fold nightmare. How the hell am I supposed to save her?