I Know Nothing About This Vast World

Chen Ping immediately felt a headache coming on.

He hadn't thought things through when he used the medicine!

He had only considered that he needed to prepare enough medicine to boost his Cultivation Speed for two months, enough to reach Level Fifteen Soul Power before enrollment.

But he had forgotten something: the medicine the system had created to stimulate one's Cultivation Speed didn't simply lose all effect the moment its duration ended.

Its effects were like a Sine Function. After several Medicinal Baths, it would gradually raise one's Cultivation Speed to its peak.

Then, after remaining at that peak for a short while, it would begin to decline slowly.

Once it dropped below the Cultivation Speed of Innate Level Two Soul Power, the repayment period would begin, and Chen Ping's Cultivation Speed would grow slower and slower.

Only after the overdrawn Cultivation Speed had been fully repaid would the Cultivation Speed at rock bottom slowly begin to rise again, eventually returning to the Cultivation Speed of Innate Level Two Soul Power.

This was also the effect curve of most Forbidden Drugs on the market that stimulated one's potential.

It was just that these people began Using Potions much later than Chen Ping and had missed the optimal timing, so the curve of their side effects was often twice as severe as the curve of the beneficial effects.

Simply put, when the Forbidden Drug took effect, their drug-effect curve was y=sin2x. But the curve for repaying the overdrawn effects was y=sinx.

The faster a Forbidden Drug's effects came, the greater the debt that usually had to be repaid afterward.

For example, in the Original Work, Xiao Hongchen forcibly swallowed drugs for the second All-Continent Advanced Soul Master Tournament, raising himself by three or four levels.

But the price was that he made no progress at all for the next five years.

And that wasn't the full price of taking drugs. After five years of no progress, there would most likely be another five years in which his Cultivation Speed was extremely slow, less than half of his peak speed!

Under normal cultivation, those ten years would have been enough for Xiao Hongchen to gain seven or eight, perhaps even eight or nine Soul Power Levels.

But after taking the drugs, he could at most immediately cash in three or four levels. Then, after the five-year period of no progress, he would spend another five years working bitterly just to barely cultivate one or two levels.

The reason Chen Ping's Cultivation Speed was declining now was mainly because he had made the wrong request.

What he had asked the system for was a medicine that could increase his Cultivation Speed for a little over two months.

But the problem was that a 1.5-fold increase in Cultivation Speed and a 1.05-fold increase in Cultivation Speed both counted as a genuine increase in Cultivation Speed to the system.

So Chen Ping could only accept a grim reality: from now until Shrek's Start of School next semester, his Cultivation Speed would only get slower and slower.

By the day school started, his Cultivation Speed should have dropped right back to the speed of Innate Level Two Soul Power.

Then it would continue to decline, bottoming out at a level close to Innate Zero Soul Power before rebounding and slowly rising again, until it settled at the proper Cultivation Speed of Innate Level Two Soul Power.

Damn idiot system!

Chen Ping closed his eyes in anguish. If one said the system's understanding was flawed, then there really wasn't a flaw at all.

But with his Cultivation Speed constantly declining as it was now, could he fucking gain another level in a little over two months?

Forget that useless crap. Time to grind.

When Wang Yan slowly emerged from the shock brought on by that Damage Dilution Theory, he looked up and realized that he seemed to have left Chen Ping standing off to the side.

Wang Yan slapped his forehead. "Look at me, falling into that habit again. The moment I see a book, I can't move—eh?"

With an apologetic look, Wang Yan raised his head toward Chen Ping. But halfway through speaking, his tone abruptly changed, and his voice jumped an octave.

What had he seen? That kid Chen Ping was meditating while standing?

"What is it, Teacher Wang?"

Chen Ping froze for a moment, his expression unchanged. While circulating his Soul Power, he poured Wang Yan a cup of water and handed it over.

"Teacher Wang, just keep reading. I'm not in a hurry."

Chen Ping's actions left Wang Yan completely stunned. For a long while, he failed to come back to his senses, much less take the cup Chen Ping offered him.

"Teacher Wang? Second Uncle?"

Only after Chen Ping asked several times did Wang Yan seem to awaken from a dream. Somewhat stiffly, he accepted the cup from Chen Ping, while sensing Chen Ping's condition once more.

Honestly, if he had not successfully advanced to the Soul King realm, he might not have noticed Chen Ping's abnormality at all.

He could clearly sense a stream of Soul Power slowly circulating within Chen Ping's body.

What was this new thing now?

Wang Yan raised his brows, the two tufts nearly squeezing together, his expression somewhat comical.

As for how he felt at that moment, it was probably:

~~There was no scene I, Wang Yan, hadn't seen before.~~

~~This was a scene I really seemed never to have seen before.~~

~~What the fuck was this new thing?~~

~~There had been so many new things lately.~~

I know nothing about this vast world. (√)

"N-no, it's nothing. Um, Teacher is a little tired today, so I'll go back and rest first. I'll come study that Self-Evolving Willow Staff Martial Soul of yours tomorrow."

Wang Yan barely forced out a smile and returned to his room in a daze.

For a while, he could not tell whether everything he had encountered today had been a dream or had truly happened.

He would not even mention the astonishingly detailed parameter charts for different Martial Souls, the advanced training manual that even the Body Sect might not possess, or the damage-calculation formulas and methods for preventing Damage Dilution.

But what had that kid Chen Ping just been doing?

He could meditate and cultivate while talking and pouring him water at the same time?

That was fucking impossible.

Wang Yan sat cross-legged on the bed in his room and scratched his head. After a long while, he scratched it again, unable to make sense of it no matter how hard he thought.

Gathering a wisp of Soul Power, Wang Yan tried to meditate while standing up.

Before he could even rise, he had merely stretched out his legs when that wisp of Soul Power instantly slipped out of his control and crashed wildly through Wang Yan's meridians.

"No, no, no."

The piercing pain caused by the Soul Power Riot nearly left Wang Yan frozen on the bed.

Fortunately, the amount of Soul Power he had gathered was not much, so it did not cause any irreversible damage to his Meridians.

But that only made Wang Yan even more confused. Ordinary Soul Masters could barely begin to touch upon the applications of a Spiritual Power Domain only after reaching Level Fifty or so, allowing them to precisely control the flow of their Soul Power.

Yet even he could not move his body while meditating. How could Chen Ping cultivate while so effortlessly completing such a long series of complex movements?

Don't think pouring water was a simple action.

Broken down, it could at least be divided into three parts: 'reaching the teapot,' 'pouring the water from the teapot into the cup,' and 'steadily bringing over the cup.'

Which of those three parts did not require the coordinated cooperation of multiple parts of the body to complete accurately?

And under those circumstances, Chen Ping had actually maintained a meditative state—this defied all logic.