At the Entrance to the Beginner Village, Big Shots Were Everywhere

Noren Academy.

This colossal entity had not been built on the ground. It floated amid the clouds, like a stack of blocks casually tossed there by some unreasonable giant.

An obscure yet powerful energy fluctuation visibly flowed across its ancient stone walls.

Benjamin stood among the thousands of young men and women packed before the Academy's enormous bronze gates, trying his best to wear the same expression as everyone else—looking around with just the right amount of nervousness and anticipation in his eyes.

But honestly, the reason for his nervousness was on an entirely different wavelength from theirs.

"...One hundred eighty, one hundred eighty-one... Fuck, there are over a hundred and eighty Golden Core cultivators just among the Academy staff greeting people at the entrance... No, wait, in this world, they're called Level 2 Formal Wizards."

Benjamin did his best to maintain the standard "country kid entering the city" expression on his face, but his eyeballs still twitched involuntarily.

Fortunately, the faces of the young people here for the test were also filled with expressions of "Who am I? Where am I?" making him seem less conspicuous.

Feeling the wisp of True Essence in his body, barely tempered to the first level of Qi Refining, Benjamin felt like laughing in fury.

"What kind of interstellar joke is this? How did this 'spiritless world,' where Spirit Energy is so thin even sand would find it grating underfoot, produce so many Golden Core—no, Level 2 Formal Wizard-level powerhouses? Fuck, could the knowledge my cheat gave me be pirated? If something goes wrong, can I even run away?!"

He secretly glanced at the Level 2 Formal Wizards ahead, whose overwhelming presences made them seem like miniature humanoid nuclear missile launchers, as well as the Level 1 Formal Wizards around them, so numerous he could no longer be bothered to count.

A casually released wisp of pressure from any one of them could render him, a Qi Refining cultivator, unable to move.

Then he thought of how, for more than a decade without change, he had painstakingly relied on the ancient method of Refining Essence into Qi—a method nearly fit for a museum even in the Cultivation World—to barely reach the first level of Qi Refining... Benjamin truly wanted to slap himself and see whether he was dreaming.

He had been in this world for a long time, so long that he had nearly forgotten the era of neon lights and high-speed internet from his previous life.

He had become the son of an ordinary merchant in a remote territory of this world. His family was moderately well-off, and the course of his life had proceeded step by step.

Except for... the "librarian" authority hidden deep within his consciousness.

Taking a deep breath and calming emotions more thrilling than a roller coaster, Benjamin split off a portion of his awareness and skillfully located that magnificent white jade palace deep within his soul.

[Great Dao Library]

The name alone sounded absurdly impressive, as though it represented the ultimate truths of the universe.

Its origins were unknown and unfathomable, but the knowledge within was indeed as vast as the sea. From the most basic technique of drawing Qi into the body to supreme secret arts that defied fate, from alchemy and artifact forging to formations and talismans, it encompassed everything under heaven and earth.

"If I were in an Immortal Cultivation World with abundant Spirit Energy, with this thing in hand, I should at least be at Golden Core by now, right? Maybe I'd even have a shot at Nascent Soul or Spirit Transformation!" Looking at the white jade palace standing silently within his consciousness, Benjamin could not help tugging at the corner of his mouth in self-mockery.

This cheat was very good, very powerful.

But Benjamin had discovered that it was more like a top-tier online library and scientific research database than a cheat that could directly pour power into him.

He had to understand the knowledge inside himself, put it into practice himself, and find the "raw materials" himself.

Unfortunately, this world... had no Spirit Energy.

Without Spirit Energy, all those awesome cultivation techniques in the Great Dao Library that required drawing the Spirit Energy of heaven and earth into the body, as well as the alchemy, artifact forging, and formation arts that required spirit herbs, spirit stones, and spirit veins as support, were! All! Useless!

Even the cleverest housewife could not cook without rice. No matter how heaven-defying the Great Dao Library was, it could not conjure Spirit Energy from thin air.

He could only rely on those Refining Essence into Qi methods from the library that were nearly obsolete even in the Cultivation World, literally "eating" his way to cultivation.

Every day of effort consumed enormous amounts of energy and time, along with vast quantities of food to replenish the deficit.

The first level of Qi Refining, insignificant in the Cultivation World, was a step he had barely climbed after gnawing dry rations for more than a decade and exhausting countless drops of blood and sweat.

Then, just when he had thought that this might be his life—that he would only be slightly stronger than ordinary people through his meager True Essence and live out his days in peace—this world suddenly slapped him hard across the face. It was actually a high-magic world, inhabited by wizards who controlled elements, studied souls, and pursued immortality!

Even worse, these wizards were a pack of research fanatics with an almost pathological thirst for unknown knowledge.

And as someone who cultivated an entirely different Power System, he... was practically an exceedingly rare, living research specimen!

Benjamin knew perfectly well that once they discovered he was an outsider, the only fate awaiting him would be research, dissection, having every last scrap of value squeezed out of him, and then being displayed as a specimen.

Human rights? Morality? Could he expect a group of wizards who could casually wage wars in other planes and conduct experiments with souls to possess such things?

So when his lord, a Level 2 Wizard with power equivalent to the early Golden Core stage, informed him that he had reached the proper age and would be going with the other children to the Academy for an aptitude assessment, Benjamin had wanted to refuse.

But faced with the mountain-like pressure of a Level 2 Wizard, those words of refusal circled around in his mouth several times, yet he did not dare let even one word escape.

Fortunately, Benjamin had not despaired enough to simply sit and await death.

Although most of the knowledge in the Great Dao Library could not be used directly, the sheer number of methods it recorded and the strangeness of their varieties far exceeded Benjamin's imagination.

Besides the mainstream knowledge of Cultivation, it also recorded certain special, unconventional methods.

At Benjamin's command, a streak of light flew from the white jade palace and formed the phantom of a book before his consciousness.

He skillfully read through its contents while sensing the circulation of True Essence within his body, making precise comparisons and adjustments to ensure nothing could go wrong.

Basic Volume of Inner Circulation

Inner Circulation was a fairly niche method within the cultivation knowledge Benjamin understood. Usually, only cultivators specializing in body refinement, who sought to forge their bodies into Pocket Dimension Dharma Treasures, would cultivate it alongside their primary path.

Unlike mainstream cultivation methods, which sought outwardly to absorb the Spirit Energy of heaven and earth, it emphasized inward exploration. It used one's own essence, Qi, and spirit as nourishment to form a miniature energy circulation system within the body.

Its most important advantage was this: once the Inner Circulation operated at its limit, it severed the connection between the body and external energy, placing oneself in an extremely sealed state.

So long as one did not deliberately expose it, even if someone scanned them with divine sense, it would be difficult to detect that wisp of True Essence completely isolated from external energy!

"Calm down... I already went through a simple preliminary aptitude test at the lord's manor, so I roughly understand that wizard aptitude testing mainly focuses on mental power and the soul. As long as I use Inner Circulation to hide the fluctuations of True Essence and restrain the strength of my mental power a little, I should be able to fool them... right?"

Even if it could not work, it had to work. This was already the most effective method he could use under his limited circumstances!

Benjamin sighed and let his awareness return to reality.

He raised his head and looked into the bronze gates once more.

To outsiders, he had merely stood there in a daze for a brief moment out of nervousness.

The line ahead continued to shrink. Yet as he drew closer and closer to the bronze gates, his heart instead grew increasingly calm.

The aptitude tests proceeded quite quickly. Batch after batch of young people, carrying unease and hope, stepped through the gates, then emerged in batches as well, their faces bearing all manner of different emotions.

Very soon, it was Benjamin's turn.

He straightened his back, took a deep breath, and cast aside the last of his reservations.

Come on! This was a life-and-death gamble!