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

Chapter 302: Imagining the Strongest Cheat for Me

A gnawing sense of inconsistency tugged at Zhang Lele’s mind. When Zhang Xian had dealt with the two women just now, his movements had been conspicuously gentle. Unlike his usual ruthless efficiency in slaughtering enemies, he had merely chosen to freeze them.

Suddenly, a startling realization exploded in her mind. Wait!

If this Brother Shan standing before me is simply a guide manifested by my subconscious, how could he possibly recognize these people? And then there were the titles—calling them ‘Junior Sister’ and ‘Master’. Could a mere projection of her own mind really be this detailed? Could it completely fabricate complex interpersonal relationships out of thin air?

As these thoughts raced through her mind, her heart began to hammer wildly against her ribs.

If their half-year of interaction had merely sown the seeds of doubt, this inexplicable scene had forced those seeds to sprout. How else could she understand this?

[Ding! Current Favorability: 47.]

Sensing Zhang Lele’s Favorability spike once again, Zhang Xian figured the iron was hot enough. He smoothly deflected the unspoken questions. “Alright, let’s wait until we shatter this illusion and get out of here before we dissect everything.”

Zhang Lele forcefully clamped down on the stormy sea of emotions churning in her chest, silently reciting the Heart-Cleansing Mantra several times until her racing thoughts finally settled.

She walked over to Li Fuxi’s frozen statue. Currently, the illusion of Li Fuxi was completely immobilized by the restrictions of the Yunmiao Sword Scripture. However, having just been thoroughly patted down and looted by Zhang Xian, her robes were disheveled, leaving her in a rather undignified state.

Zhang Xian studied Li Fuxi’s frost-covered, stoic face. Hmm, she looks exactly like the Master I met for the very first time. Not like the current one, who blushes at the drop of a hat.

“So, this is the Obsession?” Zhang Xian asked. “What do we do now?”

“I have suppressed this Obsession for years; I am intimately familiar with its nature. I’ll try to extract it from this avatar first,” Zhang Lele explained.

Her initial instinct had been to obliterate the illusion with a single sword strike, but considering Brother Shan’s apparent connection to this woman, she opted for a gentler approach.

With that, she began to murmur a soft incantation, her hands blurring as she formed a series of complex seals.

Moments later, a writhing, thumb-thick thread of pure black energy was forcibly dragged out from between Li Fuxi’s eyebrows. Zhang Lele swiftly snatched it from the air, channeling her cultivation base to instantly suppress it.

The moment the thread was sealed, the aura radiating from Zhang Lele violently surged. Like a dam bursting, her cultivation shattered its Bottleneck, instantly propelling her into the seventh level of the Nascent Soul realm.

Watching from the sidelines, Zhang Xian was green with envy.

This is basically a cheat code! Was this the Ancestor Master’s plan all along when she told Lele to suppress the Seven Emotions Evil Thoughts? This growth rate is absolutely absurd!

Then again, he couldn’t complain; his own cultivation speed had been freakishly fast lately, yielding noticeable breakthroughs at regular intervals.

With the Obsession extracted, the frozen avatars of Li Fuxi and Lin Yinyin slowly began to dissolve like bursting bubbles, eventually fading into absolute nothingness.

Zhang Lele took a deep breath, stabilizing her newly acquired power, before turning back to him. “Where to next?”

Zhang Xian stroked his chin, a calculating glint flashing in his eyes. “There are four evil thoughts left: greed, anger, hatred, and malice. I have a rough idea of whose forms they might take.”

“But before that…” A sly, roguish smirk curled his lips as he snapped his fingers. “We need to restock our inventory! Come on, let’s go rob the Cloud Raiment Pavilion!”

Now fully decked out in the Top Grade gear he had stripped from the corrupted illusions, Zhang Xian was brimming with absolute confidence.

He grabbed Zhang Lele and made a beeline straight for Cloud Raiment City.

Upon arriving at the fallen metropolis, Zhang Xian wasted no time with pleasantries. Toggling his proverbial ‘invincible mode’, he unleashed a ruthless, one-sided massacre upon the corrupted illusions wandering the streets.

Carving a bloody path through the city, he easily located his primary target: the blackened manifestation of Yun Wanqing.

Even as an empty-eyed puppet within an illusion, her status as a Peerless beauty remained undeniable. Her breathtaking visage was impossible to conceal.

Zhang Xian, however, possessed zero sense of chivalry. Completely ignoring her instinctive struggles, his hands moved with surgical precision. He ruthlessly stripped her of every visible spirit treasure and glowing accessory she wore. He was so Proficient at it that one might mistake him for a professional bandit.

Watching from a short distance away, Zhang Lele felt her left eyelid twitch violently. Even knowing full well that this was an illusion and the woman wasn’t real, watching her beloved Brother Shan manhandle a Peerless beauty with such aggressive familiarity felt incredibly perverted.

Is this really how a righteous guide generated by my own subconscious is supposed to act?!

Shortly after, Zhang Xian looted two intricately carved family head jade tokens from the illusions of Yun Wanqing and Yun Qi. With his newly acquired keys in hand, he led Zhang Lele through a labyrinth of winding streets and hidden alleys until they arrived before the imposing, heavy doors of a hidden secret chamber.

Click! Click! The two jade tokens slotted perfectly into the grooves on the door. Spiritual light danced across Zhang Xian’s fingertips as he rapidly tapped out a complex, highly precise sequence of unlocking incantations.

With a deep, grinding groan, the heavy vault doors swung open, revealing a breathtaking treasury bursting with unimaginable wealth.

Mountains of precious Pills, staggering towers of shimmering talismans, racks upon racks of glowing spirit treasures, and vast oceans of Spirit Stones bathed the room in a seductive, intoxicating spiritual radiance.

A deeply satisfied grin split Zhang Xian’s face. Without a single word of hesitation, he activated the Sleeve Cosmos technique. Like a ravenous black hole, he swept the entire room clean—taking not just the treasures, but the display shelves as well.

The entire heist had been as smooth as flowing water. From the moment they stepped foot in Cloud Raiment City to the moment they left fully loaded, less than half an hour had passed.

Sitting cross-legged in the luxurious flying boat they had ‘borrowed’ from the Cloud Raiment Pavilion, Zhang Lele watched the scenery blur past them. Her mind was a chaotic jumble of question marks and exclamation points.

None of this feels real!

Zhang Xian calmly took a seat opposite her and casually flicked a Storage Ring in her direction. “Here, hold onto this.”

Zhang Lele caught it reflexively and swept her Divine Sense inside. She gasped. The ring was packed to the brim with cultivation resources. Mountains of Spirit Stones, premium Pills, rare talismans, and several High Grade spirit treasures practically overflowed with dense Spiritual Qi.

Still somewhat dazed, she pulled out a High Grade Spirit Stone and attempted to refine it. As the incredibly pure Spiritual Qi flooded her meridians, a startling realization washed over her. The Qi is real.

A single, overwhelming thought echoed relentlessly in her mind.

I’m cheating.

That’s it! Master must have seen that I was on the verge of failing. Left with no other options, she directly forced a ‘cheat’ into the illusion for me! And to make it easier for me to accept, she considerately modeled it after the Brother Shan I like so much. Yes, that has to be it!

She stubbornly clung to this logic, aggressively using it to suppress the far more obvious—and deeply heart-racing—truth staring her in the face.

[Ding! You have successfully gifted a High Grade spirit treasure (Illusion). Triggering return multiplier…]

[Reward: Top Grade Spirit Treasure Essence (Illusion) x100 bottles.]

[Item Details – Top Grade Spirit Treasure Essence (Illusion): A Heaven-grade extraction. Refining this essence into a Magical Artifact or lower-grade spirit treasure will instantly elevate its quality to a Top Grade spirit treasure.]

[System Warning: Illusion-based items cannot be extracted to the real world. They will naturally dissipate upon the illusion’s collapse.]

[Ding! Current Favorability: 52.]

Listening to the chiming system prompts echoing in his mind, Zhang Xian felt a wave of profound satisfaction. Whether or not he could take the loot out of the illusion didn’t matter in the slightest. As long as he could use these overpowered cheats to slaughter his way through the realm, he was perfectly content.

Zhang Lele looked up at him weakly, her eyes swimming with a mixture of profound dependency and total bewilderment. “Where to next?”

With a walking cheat code by her side, she didn’t even want to use her brain anymore.

Zhang Xian stroked his chin thoughtfully. “We need to hunt down the remaining Seven Emotions Evil Thoughts. Oh, by the way, does the Spirit Ruins Sword Sect still exist in this illusion?”

Zhang Lele nodded. “It does. The very first time I clashed with the Obsession was on the shores of Penglai, which isn’t far from the Spirit Ruins Sword Sect. But that entire region has definitely fallen to the corruption by now.”

A sharp glint flashed through Zhang Xian’s eyes. Long Zhi should be there as well. That would save him a massive trip to the Central Continent to track her down. Given her absurdly high innate talent, the illusion would have absolutely selected her as one of the primary vessels for the Seven Emotions.

“Perfect!” Zhang Xian declared. “Set course for the Spirit Ruins Sword Sect!”