Evolution - Chapter 20
Chapter 20
As expected, the group arrived late in the afternoon on the second day.
Surprisingly, the same group of people was there to receive them. Three days ago, they had been testing their spiritual roots, handing out wooden tokens and maps, and telling them to form teams for the assessment. Three days later, they were waiting at the finish line, registering each person and assigning them temporary lodging.
Because their group had six people in front and nine trailing behind, the little kids let out a cheer as they neared the end. The nine followers looked more disheveled, but they all quickened their pace, chattering and thanking the people in front of them.
It was a sight that made people look twice. The subtle details only became apparent during registration.
The male disciple who had previously advised the Big Sister couldn’t help but send a quiet voice transmission: “Big Sister, how about we take all six of them for our peak?” A team of eight had passed, with two kicked out but allowed to tag along. They had even picked up seven more people on the way to form a second tag-along squad. Their character, ability, and skill were all top-notch. Taking them would be an absolute gain.
The Big Sister glanced over and grunted in agreement. “That will depend on fate. You can observe them more during their year in the Trial Study Pavilion.”
The male disciple happily agreed. For the Big Sister to say that meant she had agreed to shortlist these six. Heaven knew how miserable their peak had been in recent years. Because the Big Sister was a sword cultivator, her example was too powerful. A crowd of adoring fans, both male and female, clamored to follow in their idol’s footsteps, becoming obsessed with sword practice. Martial prowess became the norm, and they were excellent fighters, but what was the use of that? Few of them knew any money-making skills like alchemy, talismans, formations, or artifact refinement!
All they knew was how to spend money. A bunch of profligates!
As one of the deacons in charge of the peak’s finances, he had been worried sick these past few years. He was as miserable as the financial deacons of other peaks were comfortable. Fortunately, the once-a-decade disciple recruitment he had been waiting for had finally arrived. Over the next year, he was determined to select a batch of new disciples with both intelligence and financial sense for their peak. He would resolutely refuse another bunch of spendthrifts!
If he could do that and nurture them well, then in eight or ten years, as this batch of disciples matured, the peak’s situation would surely improve, right? His standards weren’t high; he just wanted to escape the current predicament of being so broke that their warehouses were empty enough to race horses in!
In the mid-afternoon of the day after Ji Changqing’s group arrived, the entrance assessment officially concluded. Those who failed to arrive within three days of receiving their wooden tokens and those who dropped out midway were naturally sent away. The Big Sister and her group herded the successful candidates onto a flying boat like a flock of chicks. After flying for less than two hours, the boat stopped and began a slow descent.
Standing on the flying boat, the little chicks couldn’t help but let out a collective “Wow!” A sea of clouds churned below. The stone gate stele bearing the characters for “Tianyi” stood above the clouds, ancient and imposing. As the flying boat descended, the sea of clouds gradually transformed into a vast, emerald-green sea of trees.
Strangely, from the sea of clouds to the sea of trees, the gate stele remained constantly in their line of sight, never once looking out of place.
The flying boat came to a steady halt in mid-air. The Big Sister tossed out a jade tablet, and the little chicks once again let out a huge “Wow!” With her toss, it was as if someone had pulled back a canvas. The sea of trees vanished, and another scroll slowly unfurled—a plaza for docking flying boats, a long stretch of stone steps, a magnificent sect gate, disciples with an immortal-like bearing guarding it, pavilions and towers in the distance, and even farther away, disciples flying on their swords…
People from the sect’s Trial Study Pavilion were already waiting at the gate to receive the new disciples. The male disciple accompanying the Big Sister went forward to handle the handover, received a token for the completed task, and then the group mounted their swords and departed cleanly.
An official from the Trial Study Pavilion waved his large sleeve, leaped lightly onto the flying boat, and led the thousand or so little kids straight to the pavilion.
They were assigned dormitories and given student handbooks detailing class schedules, meal times, assessment systems, and so on. He Yi complained from the bottom of her heart, “This is a full-time boarding kindergarten, isn’t it?”
Ji Changqing couldn’t help but laugh, giving her a thumbs-up.
And wasn’t it just? It was a full-board system where you couldn’t stay out, received a small monthly stipend, and underwent constant assessments. Those with excellent grades could advance to higher-level classes and even earn scholarships.
The only real difference was that, in addition to their studies, they had to complete a quota of labor and turn in a set amount of materials.
The academic workload was quite heavy. It was, after all, the foundational stage. Guiding qi into the body was a given, but regardless of whether one succeeded, other basic courses proceeded as usual: the history of cultivation, the history of the sect, spirit plants and beasts, demonic plants and beasts, minerals and ores, and so on. Physical education consisted of basic swordsmanship, tempering their bodies to shed their fragility and expand their threshold for spiritual qi, all in preparation for transcending mortality.
Guiding qi into the body was a delicate process. The time it took depended on one’s spiritual root talent and personal comprehension. But even the slowest, under the guidance of the instructors, managed to complete it within a month.
However, in the world of cultivation, nothing could be measured by common sense. In just one month, the new disciples who had entered at the same time were already divided into two major tiers and eight minor ranks, with each tier split into four ranks: A, B, C, and D. Although the Trial Study Pavilion didn’t group students by cultivation level, only by academic performance, after guiding qi into their bodies, their senses sharpened, their minds cleared, and their memories improved drastically. It was as if they had all unlocked a photographic memory skill—and this quickly widened the gap between them.
Someone like Luo Mingsheng, who already had a cultivation base, had already passed the assessment for the intermediate A-rank class. Ji Changqing and He Yi, relying on their intellect and dedicated attitude, were currently in the intermediate D-rank class. Even so, their progress was considered incredibly fast, and they were the two with the weakest cultivation bases in the entire intermediate D-rank class.
The intermediate classes began to cover foundational courses in areas like alchemy, talismans, formations, and artifact refinement. The workload grew heavier and heavier. Moreover, starting from the intermediate level, they had to submit monthly assignments. Whether it was farming in the spirit plant garden, caring for medicinal herbs, serving as a dung officer for spirit beasts, or sorting ores, they had to work.
The group of child laborers cried out in exhaustion every day, yet they had to tearfully forgive the sect for exploiting them and study even harder. Everyone had gained a deep understanding of the sect’s rules. This one year in the Trial Study Pavilion was practically a massive giveaway from the sect’s perspective; learning anything was essentially free.
After a year, when they were assigned to various peaks from the Trial Study Pavilion, they would have to spend money and sect contribution points to take any courses they wanted.
Every little bit they learned in the Trial Study Pavilion was a lot of money saved for their future selves!
Infected by the atmosphere of everyone eagerly looking toward making money, where the motto was “study till you drop as long as it doesn’t kill you”—a spirit even more intense than preparing for college entrance exams—Ji Changqing and He Yi felt immense pressure. The main issue was that they couldn’t truly treat this as a game instance where their main task was to be cross-world exchange students. They still had a mission to complete.
Nine months later, Ji Changqing and He Yi struggled their way into the advanced classes. This pace was likely near the bottom in the Trial Study Pavilion. Normally, new disciples could advance to the advanced classes after three to six months in the intermediate classes. But with thirty to forty thousand people in the pavilion, no one paid any attention to two disciples with five-element spiritual roots. Without attention, there was no trouble, and they existed like two transparent figures.
No one noticed that ever since they entered the intermediate classes and gained access to the pavilion’s library, these two had spent most of their time there, poring over jade slips about this world—annals, travelogues, unofficial histories, biographies, storybooks, and more.
This Xianxia world had once been glorious, a high-level cultivation world where Mahayana cultivators were a dime a dozen and Tribulation stage ones were as common as dogs. But now, it was in a Dharma-ending Age, where even Spirit Transformation cultivators were the pinnacle of power. Theoretically, this was because spiritual qi was dissipating and resources were becoming depleted, making it impossible for cultivators to advance to higher realms. As time went on, the pinnacle of power would decline from Spirit Transformation to Nascent Soul, then to Golden Core, and Foundation Establishment… When the spiritual qi was completely exhausted, this top-tier cultivation world would either devolve into a martial arts world or head down another path.
During this process, the competition for resources grew increasingly fierce, and tensions between sects escalated. After tens of thousands of years of this change, the accumulated resentment and hostility from seeing the path to immortality cut off finally reached a tipping point. The situation took a sharp downturn. The “Dao” they had once upheld collapsed like a burst dam. With no hope for immortality, watching themselves grow old and eventually die from being unable to break through, the cultivators went completely mad.
When they saw records from the last thousand years of frequent small-scale battles between sects over resources, resulting in numerous casualties, and how in these conflicts, generation after generation of prodigies emerged, the two who were pretending to be young couldn’t help but frown. Wasn’t this just like raising Gu worms? The more you killed, the stronger you became. Each time the sect gates opened to recruit disciples, they were treated as consumables.
Then they looked at the compiled records of demonic sects slaughtering cities every century or so, followed by chaotic wars between the righteous and demonic paths, where a few individuals would always manage to break through and advance just as their lifespans were about to end. The two fell silent.
The situation was already so grim. For the sake of immortality and long life, the things being done in the shadows were already so unscrupulous. No wonder their mission was to save as many as they could.
If this instance was about resolving the world’s collapse at the end of the Dharma-ending Age, the time they were sent in would be neither too early nor too late. Theoretically, it would be just before a major turning point. Based on these scattered records, the changes over the last millennium said it all.
If even the high-level figures of the Daoist sects were resorting to unscrupulous and heretical methods to advance, then with the top being corrupt, the bottom would follow. The moral decay of a sect, and indeed the entire Daoist path, would only accelerate and become unstoppable as time went on.
After eight months of hard work, the two had a general understanding of this world. They mulled it over and over. Neither of them possessed that domineering aura of a protagonist who could make the world submit with a single glance, and their spiritual roots were trash. Conquering the world with a single sword was just a dream. So, they had to find another way—science and technology are the primary productive force, after all!
Just like a declining noble family wanting to restore its glory, the solution was to increase income and reduce expenditure. For the cultivation world, the key was spiritual qi. To solve the problem, they had to start with increasing the source and reducing the consumption of spiritual qi.
Use less, produce more. Only when output consistently exceeded expenditure, creating a virtuous cycle, was there a chance of salvation.
But these were not things that two insignificant figures, like dust in the cultivation world, could accomplish at the moment. Since they had a general idea, they decided to first build up some capital for themselves so they would be qualified to latch onto a powerful backer!
Thus, everyone was amazed to find that from the moment they entered the advanced classes, their progress bar shot forward at double speed. How could someone spend eight months in the intermediate classes but finish the advanced curriculum in just over a month?
Ji Changqing and He Yi paid no mind to others’ astonishment. After completing the advanced courses, they threw themselves wholeheartedly into racking up points and taking more classes. With less than two months left, they chose two specialized technical courses. Since they had decided to become technicians, they naturally chose the fields with the most lucrative prospects that also aligned with their interests and talents.
He Yi unhesitatingly chose to continue stimulating her brain, selecting the specialized study of formations, which was the most mentally taxing and required a special talent for mathematics and physics. In her view, in the world of cultivation, the field most likely to produce black tech was formation cultivation.
As for Ji Changqing, she chose to go into smithing! She specialized in artifact refinement, aiming to provide new core energy sources for He Yi’s black tech, as well as the vessels to house and realize it.
Working ten times harder than they would for a college entrance exam, the two successfully worked themselves rail-thin. But no matter how hard or tiring it was, they reveled in it, their hearts filled with a secret joy and pride:
Others cultivate for the great Dao of immortality; they cultivate to change the world!
Just thinking about it felt incredibly awesome!
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