"Not water?"
Shao Chengfeng stared at the ancient river in the projection, taken aback.
Its surface was still as it flowed quietly into the depths of chaos. At first glance, there was indeed nothing special about it.
If Meng Yuanzhou had not suddenly stood up, he would even have thought it was merely a scene of primordial energy Gu An had formed within the chaos.
"Director Meng, what did you see?"
Meng Yuanzhou did not answer. He simply pointed to the middle of the river. "Look at that wisp of gray vapor."
Everyone focused their gaze on it.
A wisp of chaotic aura was slowly falling into the river, and in the blink of an eye, the water swallowed it.
Strangely, though, as the water flowed onward, the wisp appeared again.
First it gathered into a hazy trace of light, then gradually grew solid, before slowly dissipating farther downstream.
At the same time, upstream, that same wisp of gray vapor was still falling.
"Is this... showing the process of a wisp of primordial energy evolving?"
Luo Yanshan pushed up his glasses.
He had spent years studying immortal-path civilizations and had seen plenty of methods for preserving scenes of the past through magic.
Though the river before him was rare, it was not necessarily beyond explanation.
"Perhaps it's some kind of temporal illusion."
He pondered aloud, "If it merely preserves past changes on the river's surface, it can be called ingenious, but it still doesn't count as the evolution of a complete world."
His assessment was reasonable, and even several instructors beside him nodded slightly.
Shao Chengfeng, however, could not help looking at Gu An.
"You little rascal, ten days out of sight and you've really come up with something!"
Song Zhiwei did not smile.
Looking at the young man on the evaluation platform, she felt the taut string in her heart loosen a little, but she could not help growing expectant again.
Since Gu An had dared to speak up in front of the whole school, presumably he would not simply show everyone an illusion.
"Teacher Luo."
Gu An suddenly smiled. "Take another look. Who caused the changes in the river?"
Luo Yanshan's brows twitched.
The view on the screen followed the river onward.
At the end of its dark surface, a Daoist in grayish-white robes had appeared before everyone at some unknown point.
He stood atop the river, his robes simple and ancient, his eyes lowered, as though he had stood there for endless ages.
A wisp of chaotic aura on the verge of dissipating flowed past him.
The Daoist lowered his gaze and glanced at it.
The next moment.
The wisp of aura that had already dissipated slowly reversed course along the river, gathering again from a fading glimmer into its previous form.
Only when the Daoist withdrew his gaze did it follow the original current and disperse again.
"This..."
Luo Yanshan's hand, which had been holding his glasses, froze in midair.
Just now, he had thought this was merely a spell for preserving a scene of the past.
But now, the changes in the river began and stopped with a single thought from that Daoist!
What was more, the Daoist had not asked Gu An for instructions.
He had simply followed his own wishes and done something that seemed utterly incomprehensible to everyone else.
Meng Yuanzhou slowly turned his head.
"Gu An, was this Daoist a life-form nurtured in your natal world?"
"Yes."
"He already has a consciousness of his own?"
"Of course."
Those two brief words made the instructors on the evaluation panel change color in unison, their expressions filled with shock.
Heaven and earth had yet to be opened in the chaos!
There were no mountains, rivers, sun, or moon, yet living beings already existed!
Even more astonishingly, this life-form had not taken up residence in some ready-made environment, but had come into being alongside that strange river.
Meng Yuanzhou had overseen creation evaluations for many years and knew what conditions were needed to nurture life in an ordinary world.
Thus, he understood better than anyone what this meant.
When he had first seen Gu An's expanse of gray mist, he had thought the results of ten days of evolution were meager.
But now, the facts were right before him.
"Wait!"
Luo Yanshan was still staring at the Daoist, his voice rising involuntarily.
"Gu An, could it be that your chaos first nurtured some special life-form, then used him to form this river?"
If that were the case, it could still be understood as a rare original life-form route.
But Gu An did not answer.
He simply shifted the view slowly away from the river.
In the boundless chaos, a flash of cyan suddenly appeared in the distance.
It was a Daoist in cyan robes.
He stood quietly amid the boundless void. Though he was plainly right there on the other side of the projection, no matter how closely everyone looked, they could not tell just how far away he was.
A layer of void quietly unfolded, separating two stretches of chaos that had been right next to each other by ten thousand miles.
In an instant, a place that had been impossibly far away was suddenly within arm's reach.
The Daoist in cyan cast no spells and paid no attention to the outside world. He merely stood with his hands behind his back, watching the ever-changing void before him.
The smile vanished completely from Shao Chengfeng's face.
He had seen spatial mages on the planar battlefield and knew what it meant to fold distances and open channels.
But those people always had to rely on mana and spell formations to bring about limited changes.
The void before them, however, seemed as though it was meant to unfold with that Daoist.
"Old Luo."
Shao Chengfeng lowered his voice. "What kind of illusion is this supposed to be?"
Luo Yanshan did not respond.
Just now, he had tried to classify the River of Time as a known type of spell. Looking at this now, it seemed even that explanation no longer held up.
Song Zhiwei had still been holding her record book, but at some point she had set it down on the table without realizing it.
Looking at Gu An's back, she suddenly remembered asking him before the evaluation whether he could earn a grade B.
The young man had even complained that her expectations were too low.
At the time, she had only thought the boy was being deliberately mysterious. Now that she thought about it, he truly had reason to be confident.
"There's more?"
Shao Chengfeng had moved beside the evaluation panel at some point, no longer even in the mood to argue with Luo Yanshan.
He stared at the screen, an eagerness he had not noticed himself creeping into his voice.
"Gu An, just how many more life-forms like these are there in your chaos?"
Gu An did not give him a number.
The view swept across the boundless void, and a patch of crimson appeared before everyone's eyes in the depths of chaos.
There were no plants there to feed the flames, nor were there magic towers or elemental arrays.
There was only a crimson Dao Domain, where divine flames burned unceasingly with the flow of energy within it.
A Daoist in crimson robes sat upright inside.
His features were stern and refined, and an ancient crimson marking lay between his brows. The divine flames around him fell still at times, then swirled and rose at others, lending him an inviolable majesty.
The students who had just seen the Dou Qi Continent's Alchemy Hall suddenly realized that those familiar flames seemed like something else entirely before this Domain of fire.
Alchemists used dou qi to stir their flames, while mages relied on mana to conjure fireballs.
But in this Domain of fire, not even the heaven and earth that might contain it existed.
Yet it was already operating on its own.
Luo Yanshan slowly took off his glasses, wiped them, and put them back on.
He no longer tried to casually classify the sights before him.
A river, a stretch of void, a Domain of fire.
Each was different, yet all continued to evolve within the chaos where heaven and earth had yet to be opened.
And within them were life-forms with wills of their own.
This was certainly not the illusion he had spoken of, nor was it a single peculiar life-form born by chance.
"Old Shao."
Luo Yanshan suddenly spoke.
"Didn't you just say Class Two had three students with B-plus grades?"
Shao Chengfeng glanced at him. "What about it?"
"Nothing."
Luo Yanshan wore a complicated expression.
"I was just thinking, when we used our numbers to get the better of Teacher Song, weren't we a little too pleased with ourselves?"
For a moment, Shao Chengfeng could find no reply.
It was not that he refused to concede, but that the scene before him left him with no way to argue.
Only ten days had passed, yet a chaos without even heaven and earth had produced such results.
If this did not count as outstanding, then what were the B-plus grades they had just been so proud of?
The students of Class One finally came to their senses as well.
Their earlier silence was broken by chatter they could no longer contain. Some stood up in excitement, calling Gu An's name over and over.
Among Class Three's group, Tang Xiaosan stared fixedly at the projection, his knuckles white from clenching his hands.
He had once thought he had only lost a practical battle, and that his natal world could at least still compete with Gu An's.
But only now did he realize for the first time that he did not even know what was in the other boy's world.
Lorina had remained seated in the front row.
She did not join in the uproar, but her ice-blue eyes never left the projection again.
The Life Mother Tree's ability to nurture elves was the result she had obtained only after investing a great deal of origin power and repeatedly adjusting the workings of the silver moon and forest.
Gu An's chaos, however, had no forest, nor any heaven and earth where they could dwell.
Where had those Daoists come from?
The girl pressed her lips together slightly and looked at the young man on the evaluation platform, her gaze more intent than ever before.
So this guy had never intended to compete with her over who could raise more life-forms first.
At the evaluation panel, Meng Yuanzhou said nothing for a long time.
Only after the chatter had died down somewhat did he close the evaluation book in his hands and look solemnly at Gu An.
"Gu An, I previously thought that heaven and earth had yet to be opened in your chaos, and that it lacked basic results of evolution."
The old man paused.
"Now it seems I was mistaken."
The hall gradually fell quiet.
Meng Yuanzhou looked around the hall, his gaze finally settling on Gu An.
"Someone just said that, since heaven and earth had not been opened in your chaos after ten days, it might not even qualify for a grade B."
"Now, I can tell everyone something first."
The old man spoke each word distinctly:
"Gu An's world is already qualified to contend for first place this year!"
The entire hall erupted!
Shao Chengfeng stared at the chaos where heaven and earth did not yet exist, forgetting to respond for a moment.
Lorina had just earned a grade A, and everyone had thought first place was already decided.
Who could have expected Meng Yuanzhou to give such an assessment in public?
Song Zhiwei raised her head sharply, and the frustration that had been pent up in her chest for half the day seemed finally to find an outlet.
The old man, however, did not announce the result.
He looked at the chaos in the projection, which had yet to disperse, and suddenly asked another question:
"Gu An, is this everything your world has evolved so far?"
Gu An smiled faintly. "Of course not."
Meng Yuanzhou was taken aback.
The young man raised his eyes toward the deeper reaches of chaos, his tone calm.
"What you teachers just saw were only the life-forms among them that have already been born."
"As for what this chaos has truly nurtured, that's still to come."
As he spoke, a ray of clear light suddenly shone from the depths of the chaos beyond the three Dao Domains, where it had never dispersed.
Meng Yuanzhou was about to ask another question when he saw the faint outline of an enormous cyan lotus petal emerge within that clear light.
The old man's heart, which had only just settled, tightened once more.
He suddenly felt that he was probably still a very long way from seeing the end of today's evaluation.