Chapter 696: Sharp Critique, Junior College Challenges Top Ten

In the Spirit World, Zhang Yu watched the demonstration from Demon University's press conference, seeing all sorts of items being shrunk, stored into the Demon Secret Vault, and then quickly sorted and placed neatly by category.

The speaker on stage, Eternal Lotus Divine Lord, began: "The retrieval system of spatial equipment has always had a huge pain point."

"With volumes of 100 cubic meters, 200 cubic meters, or even 500 cubic meters—how can items as vast as an ocean be managed effectively and efficiently?"

"When retrieving items, do users have to browse through all those things every time to find the target object?"

"When you need to take medicine on the battlefield, when your boss asks for a work item on the job, when you're studying or cultivating and need to take out immortal cultivation resources… do you have to spend minutes searching through a mountain of items to find what you need?"

"According to the data we've collected, the average retrieval time for all spatial equipment currently on the market is about 1 minute and 33 seconds per retrieval."

"And the average number of retrievals per person per day is 14.5."

"So every user of spatial equipment spends 133 hours each year rummaging through their personal space—what an astonishing waste of time!"

"To solve this problem, my team and I ultimately decided… retrieval requires just one button."

"That means you can take a specified item out of the Demon Secret Vault from among tens of thousands of items with just a single press of a button."

"And the entire process—from selecting the item, to loading and enlarging the space, to finally retrieving the item—takes only 3 seconds."

As he demonstrated, Eternal Lotus Divine Lord continued: "The ability to achieve such one-click lightning-fast storage and retrieval is all thanks to our university's independently developed and innovative quasi-artifact spirits, which effectively enable automatic identification and registration of items, automatic stacking, automatic organization, and automatic uploading of information to the Spirit World…"

"Ultimate space utilization and time efficiency help you go further on the path of immortality, allowing you to live 133 hours more than others every year."

"Next, I'll introduce the trading system of the Demon Secret Vault…"

In Eternal Lotus Divine Lord's subsequent demonstration, the Demon Secret Vault, connected through the Spirit World, could confirm transaction information.

Then, as two bracelet-like Demon Secret Vaults lightly touched, a transaction progress bar lit up.

When the progress bar completed, it indicated that the specified item had jumped from one Demon Secret Vault to another.

At the same time, the Spirit Coin transfer was already completed within the Spirit World network.

Eternal Lotus Divine Lord said: "With just a gentle touch, whether it's a personal trade of one or two artifacts or a bulk commodity transaction of hundreds or thousands of tons, you can easily start item transfer, achieving a transfer speed of 10 cubic meters per second."

"Trading has never been so simple…"

Watching the press conference, Zhang Yu had to admit that the Demon Secret Vault indeed brought astonishing convenience and possessed immense competitiveness.

When the Q&A session came, someone below asked a sharp question: "Are quasi-artifact spirits soul cultivators?"

Eternal Lotus Divine Lord's gaze shifted, and in his ocular implant various information about the questioner surfaced, even recent transfer and payment records—just as he expected, such a sharp question was indeed sent by a competitor.

To this, he smiled faintly and said lightly: "Quasi-artifact spirits are not soul cultivators. Our quasi-artifact spirits are elites selected layer by layer from the various realms of Kunxu, transformed through technology into high-intelligence Spirit World beings."

Holding the Demon Secret Vault in his hands, Eternal Lotus Divine Lord sighed: "And our space management fee… just 0.05 Spirit Coins per cubic meter per month—so that elites who have received a complete immortal education, have a university diploma, have grown for over 20 years, and owe more than 100 Spirit Coins, serve your personal space 24 hours a day…"

Tiansheng Gong watched Demon University's press conference and felt a strong sense of threat.

He thought to himself: "Netherworld… Demon… they're all coming in full force."

Clearly, the new product from Demon University made the already bloody market competition even more brutal.

The advertisements of the three companies—Immortal Soldiers, Netherworld, and Demon—had, without realizing it, become pervasive, filling everyone's ocular implants, as if even the Spirit World was about to be worn away.

Various subsidies and discounts emerged endlessly, and more and more people in the major universities came to own spatial equipment.

And the Magnetic Pole Divine Lord, who had once sat high on the throne, now seemed to totter in everyone's eyes under the challenge of the three schools.

But amid all the external turmoil, Zhang Yu only glanced at it from time to time, then concentrated once more on his cultivation.

Especially the cultivation of the *Three Realms Ten Directions Tai Xu Absolute Barrier*—Zhang Yu knew that as long as he continued to raise the level of this immortal technique, he could master more spatial technology, lead future technological directions, and influence the ten major universities as well as the entire course of the war.

And unconsciously, as time passed, Zhang Yu had pushed the *Three Realms Ten Directions Tai Xu Absolute Barrier* to level 25.

One day, while continuing his cultivation, he received a message from Feng Tingting.

Feng Tingting (Sincerely accepting various business collaborations): True Lord, thank you for your guidance—otherwise, I wouldn't have landed this ad.

Zhang Yu looked at the video link she sent and found it was an advertisement for Tai Xu Cloud Storage.

Zhang Yu knew that not long ago, Feng Tingting had started a part-time job as a political commentary streamer, occasionally posting videos summarizing news and sharing gossip.

In Zhang Yu's view, this was quite a suitable part-time job for Feng Tingting.

Zhang Yu: Tai Xu Cloud Storage has a promotional budget every month anyway. You getting the ad is just because you meet the criteria—it doesn't have much to do with me.

Feng Tingting was still full of gratitude, then asked again, "Perfected Lord, the people from Heavenly Demon, Netherworld, and Immortal Soldiers have been way too arrogant lately. They're trashing the Taixu Cloud Vault all over the web. Should we make some videos to fight back?"

Zhang Yu had some understanding of the matters Feng Tingting mentioned.

Recently, the spatial products of Heavenly Demon, Immortal Soldiers, and Netherworld universities had been competing with each other. After a period of fierce fighting, they seemed to have reached a tacit understanding, all turning their sights on Universal Law and on Magnetic Pole, aiming to pull the old big brother off his throne.

Next, Feng Tingting asked when the second generation of Taixu Cloud Vault would be released, and Zhang Yu naturally said he didn't know.

In the following days, Zhang Yu saw quite a few trending videos on the Spirit Realm related to this.

In the video, Heavenly Saint Engineer was criticizing the various performances of Taixu Cloud Vault.

"Let me summarize my experience using Taixu Cloud Vault over this past week."

"The volume classification is far too rough, completely disregarding the usage scenarios of ordinary students."

"There aren't even basic partitions inside the space—it's perfectly normal to spend half a day looking for something."

"They say it can deflect attacks, but the activation speed is too slow, the feel is terrible, and it can almost only block the most rigid, unchanging attacks that you could easily dodge yourself..."

"How long has it been since Universal Law updated their product? I think their research on spatial technology is already outdated, full of the arrogance of big corporations."

After listing all the flaws of Taixu Cloud Vault one by one, he threw it into the trash can and picked up the Void Casket beside him.

Besides similar videos criticizing Taixu Cloud Vault, all kinds of rumors about it were being spread around.

Wang Yin posted on his Moments: "I heard that Taixu Cloud Vault secretly scans the items users store, then uploads the data to Universal Law University. Is that true?"

Similar rumors spread quickly. Although Universal Law University tried hard to explain, some still believed them, and some didn't.

In the Dark Spirit Realm, many cultivators from the Righteous Alliance also joined this feast of traffic.

In the video, Quantitative Evolution Perfected Lord picked up Taixu Cloud Vault and commented, "It's inevitable that the Ten Great will review all personal spaces. Forget Universal Law—even Heavenly Demon, Netherworld, and Immortal Soldiers are absolutely the same. You guys are definitely leaking like crazy."

"To return to Taixu Cloud Vault itself, as the first generation of personal spatial products, it indeed has epoch-making significance. But looking at it now, in terms of competitiveness, it's already completely inferior to the products of Heavenly Demon, Netherworld, and Immortal Soldiers."

"Over the past month, Taixu Cloud Vault's market share has been steadily eaten away by the other three. I'm afraid it won't be long before it falls from its throne."

"But the products of Heavenly Demon, Netherworld, and Immortal Soldiers are only optimizations and functional improvements on the basis of Taixu Cloud Vault."

"The fundamental problem remains that the Ten Great universities have hit a bottleneck in spatial technology."

"It's only because our Righteous Alliance's technology blockade has taken effect. After multiple rounds of internal purges and technology upgrades, neither Magnetic Pole nor the cultivators under her can still steal our spatial technology to make progress."

"Therefore, the Ten Great can only re-enter a competition of stock, returning to a state of internal involution among themselves. This is the systemic flaw of the Ten Great universities, causing them to always exhaust their strength in infighting and always hold each other back."

"Even after being beaten down to the third layer by us, they're still thinking about who earns more and who earns less. That is the fundamental flaw of the Ten Great, an Achilles' heel they can never fix."

"Soon, the infighting over spatial products will affect the battlefield situation, further accelerating the collapse of the Ten Great..."

After quickly skimming the video, Zhang Yu thought to himself, "They really can twist anything into the collapse of the Ten Great."

He glanced at the comments section below the video and found all kinds of posts predicting when the Ten Great universities would collapse and when the second to fifth layers would be completely occupied by the Righteous Alliance.

As usual, after browsing the news in the Dark Spirit Realm, Zhang Yu's consciousness returned to the real world and he once again immersed himself in cultivation.

His "Triple Realm Ten Direction Taixu Absolute Barrier" had unknowingly reached level 27.

Immortal Soldiers University.

Projections of victory banners floated inside the laboratory.

As a large number of Foundation Establishment students purchased the Void Casket developed by Immortal Soldiers University, the market share of the Void Casket surged steadily, already showing signs of surpassing Taixu Cloud Vault and eventually topping the market share rankings.

Looking at the data from the past month, Thousand Puppets Divine Lord seemed to already see the day when the Void Casket would rise to the top, establish the largest personal space ecosystem, and become essential equipment for every cultivator.

Thousand Puppets Divine Lord, who had been glum ever since Universal Law launched Taixu Cloud Vault, had been entering and leaving the lab with a smile these past few days.

That day, he even announced to the Heavenly Saint Engineers and others in the experimental group, "Everyone, thank you for your hard work on bug fixes and product updates over this period."

"You'll have the next half day off. Whether you want to study, take exams, or take part-time jobs—do whatever you want..."

Upon hearing about a half-day free time, everyone who had been toiling in the lab got excited.

Heavenly Saint Engineer also let out a light sigh of relief, feeling the pressure that had been weighing on him gradually fade away.

He looked at Zhang Yu's avatar in the contact list and thought to himself, "Now it's your turn to be nervous, right?"

Tiansheng Gong imagined that Zhang Yu at this moment was probably just like he himself had been over the past period—watching the changes in market data every day, nervous and anxious.

Then Tiansheng Gong saw other updates in his circle of friends.

Some cultivators from Tianmo University shared the news that Tianmo Secret Vault's daily sales had surpassed Taixu Cloud Vault, now topping the charts.