Applied Immortality

Wang Qi sat cross-legged on his bed, making a full cycle.

Inside his body, there was anything but peace. Wang Qi gave free rein to his spiritual powers to cycle by themselves, while his focus was on one particular acupoint. Two opposite spiritual powers raged inside. As the two powers clashed, the acupoint expanded.

Afterward, Wang Qi thought he heard a boom and knew this was a sign of the acupoint going through a qualitative change. He rushed to pull back the two rampaging spiritual powers and calm them down to form a yin-yang diagram.

The slowed-down flow of spiritual power regained its usual activity. The newly condensed acupoint was rapidly filled up like a water tank, followed by normal spiritual power flow.

The newly formed yin-yang diagram became a new hub, swallowing spiritual power. The spiritual power flowed through Wang Qi’s Du meridian like a raging flood. (Tamon: Du meridian supervises a body’s yang. It follows the spine, runs through the brain, and reaches the nose.)

This acupoint was the last on the Du meridian. By forming a yin-yang diagram in this major acupoint, he finished linking the entire Du meridian.

Wang Qi kept cultivating, his hands making different signs as he switched to another cultivation method.

A spiritual power of a totally different nature was born in Wang Qi’s Dantian, flowing through the entire Du meridian. It was thin and condensed, like a thread, aiming to link all the yin-yang diagrams in the acupoints on the Du meridian.

This spiritual power didn’t come from Divine Hexagram Computation, but the Book of Geometry. Linking the yin-yang diagram was a crucial process for the two cultivation methods to form the Heavenly Position. Once he successfully trained in Celestial Harmony, each of his major meridians would become a variable, a number line, connecting heaven and earth to form the Cosmos—or Hilbert space back on Earth.

It’s been two months since the monthly examination being held at the start of July, making it the middle of September. Wang Qi spent his days forming yin-yang diagrams at a rate of two-tree a day. At present, he had nearly three hundred of them, more or less done with the major acupoints in the Eight Extraordinary Meridians.

Dong~

The bell’s sound pulled him out of meditation.

“I think it’d be better if you kept on cultivating.” Zhen Chanzi grumbled from the ring.

“Time for class.”

“Not like you pay attention.”

Zhen Chanzi was right. The course was about basic alchemy, not to Wang Qi’s liking.

He ignored Zhen Chanzi, turning to the papers on his desk and rummaging through them.

If Wang Qi had the same attitude a year back, Zhen Chanzi would give him an earful. But ever since modern cultivation made this Great Ascension cultivator no longer feel he was the bomb, but more like a common firecracker, Zhen Chanzi grew accustomed to his diminished status. He didn’t mind it at all now, continuing, “Sometimes it feels like ever since the modern system turned cultivation into something you can stop whenever, cultivators are growing more and more weary.”

Wang Qi cut off mid-way and the spiritual power returned to his Dantian. An ancient cultivator doing something similar would lead to certain deviation. To them, cultivation couldn’t stop or it could backfire, sometimes badly and explosively.

“Right, but if I don’t stop, you’d have to enter seclusion and the gap between you and your peers will only get bigger.” Wang Qi said casually. “Cultivating in seclusion for a century to grasp one special skill, coming out you’d realize the others optimized it 180 times and reduced the process to a mere decade. Wouldn’t you be pissed?”

Wang Qi’s point was more than valid and also true. Two thousand years ago, when modern cultivation appeared, the only thing that set modern cultivators and ancient cultivators apart was that the former used the breath of the world to take in spiritual energy from beyond. Many special skills and art have been passed down by sects like Spirit Beast Mountain since ancient times. Ancient cultivation was measured in millennia. A Unity Integration cultivator entering seclusion for a century was the norm. The original modern system’s Primordial Spirit and Emptiness required seclusion as well. However, each cultivator that spent more than fifty years in seclusion would come out stomping and grumbling in regret—they felt all those years were wasted.

Modern cultivation differed from the ancient one. The modern system was growing every second. In Supreme Lord, Quantum Grandmaster, and Daoist Proscribe’s time, a cultivator’s insight and understanding could drive the system to evolve. Cultivation in the modern way changed yearly most of the time. At this point, three-five years in seclusion was already a luxury.

Hence modern cultivation was particular about stopping cultivation at the drop of the hat.

Before long, Wang Qi found his target—a paper with subjects. He copied the subjects and results he got from the library’s Problem Series. He wanted to check his cultivation progress.

Wang Qi looked at a subject and his spiritual power flowed faster. As it passed the acupoints, Wang Qi’s yin-yang diagrams flickered. Each flicker was a simple operation.

Wang Qi wrote down the answer.

Flipping the paper over, Wang Qi was pleased to find his answer matching the one on paper. [Not bad, it surpassed an average computer, though far below a supercomputer from Earth.]

If Wang Qi would’ve calculated without having trained in Myriad Arts Sect’s mental art, it would’ve taken him hours. But now he did that in an instant. It filled him with pride. There were people on Earth capable of doing operations like a computer, but few, though the vast majority ended up as incredible mathematicians.

Wang Qi walked out of his room still thinking about it, stretching and getting ready to begin a new day in his life as a scholar.

The chilly morning breeze made Wang Qi tighten his clothes, giving a careless shove to close the door. “Note to self, get money for new clothes. Ruined magic clothes sucks.”

Wang Qi had only one magic attire, capable of warding the cold. But the simple quality led to its ruin in the fight two months ago.

Wang Qi entered the mess hall and the clamor grounded to a halt. Wang Qi liked it every time it happened, a homage to his bookwormish authority.

After a moment of silence, the clamor renewed.

There was only one topic on everyone’s lips, Arts Archive’s first floor.