Cicadas Chirp in May

Xinyue Mountain, a famed peak in the northern lands of the God Continent, was home to the Immortal Alliance's main headquarters.

According to maps drawn by the Mysterious Star Observatory, the God Continent was even larger than the Eurasian continent of Wang Qi's previous life. Its southernmost tip extended beyond the equator, while its northernmost reaches still lay some distance from the North Pole. The God Continent accounted for roughly eighty percent of the planet's landmass. The monsoons here were stronger than those on Earth, so although the continent's interior was somewhat dry, it was far from barren.

Though the city of Xinyue lay in the northern lands, Liuyun Sect and the City of Mountains and Rivers had adjusted its climate, making its scenery resemble that of the south.

The atmosphere here was controlled by Liuyun Sect's formations, and the temperature atop the mountain differed little from that below. It was already late May, nearing midsummer. A trace of heat had reached the academy grounds halfway up the mountain. Outside the dormitory district, cicadas, stirred by the summer heat, shed their final skins, crawled out of the earth, and cried from the trees, "Cicada, cicada."

It was morning, and the cicada song was rather disruptive. Several newly enrolled disciples could not bear the noise and threw open their windows, hurling a few spells into the trees.

Since they were all novices who had scarcely practiced any spells, they did not silence many cicadas. Instead, the spellcasters were immediately pinned down by Conduct Division enforcers, who promptly used "deducting credits" to clear the sleep from these idiots' heads.

It had to be said that things like disciplinary committees were hated in every world.

Wang Qi sat upright on his dormitory bed, cross-legged, silently circulating his heavenly cycle.

He had risen early, and the disturbance outside could not affect him in the slightest. If a Modern Dharma Cultivator had been present, they would have noticed that all spiritual energy within the room had shifted in its flow, converging toward the meditating youth. Vast quantities of spiritual energy were drawn in and expelled with his cultivation.

This phenomenon proved that Wang Qi had gained a preliminary understanding of the concept of "fields." Ordinary cultivators generally would not touch upon this level until the Foundation Establishment Realm.

Modern Dharma emphasized merging one's body with heaven and earth, breathing as heaven and earth breathed. At this moment, Wang Qi himself seemed to have become the breath of heaven and earth!

Wang Qi was currently cultivating the Returning to One Alliance's mental method, the Tian Ge Xing, known as "the sacred pinnacle among poems." A stream of mana ran through his dantian and every acupoint in his body. Unlike the mana of other cultivation methods, which circulated directly, this mana was more like a medium. Mana born from his dantian moved, racing ceaselessly through the acupoints.

Maxwell's electromagnetic theorem: For several separate charged bodies or currents, all electrical and magnetic interactions between them are transmitted through the region between them, whether that intervening region is vacuum or solid matter.

The fluctuations born in his dantian not only drove his mana's circulation, but also caused a portion of it to spill out, forming a field around Wang Qi. For ordinary disciples cultivating the Tian Ge Xing, this portion of mana counted as an acceptable loss. Yet Wang Qi had long found a way to make use of it. His dantian had already developed a restraining force, causing this mana to form a "magnetic field" around his body and gather even more of heaven and earth's breath.

Maxwell's electromagnetic theorem: Electrical or magnetic energy exists not only within charged bodies, magnetized bodies, or current-bearing objects; most of it is distributed throughout the surrounding electromagnetic field.

At this moment, Wang Qi's use of "magnetism" had already far surpassed cultivators of Primordial Magnetic True Qi in his own cohort.

Feeling the mana within him grow at a rate visible to the naked eye, Wang Qi was still somewhat dissatisfied.

"The 'field' I've formed now imitates an electrostatic field. It's open. If I could form a closed vortex field, my cultivation speed should rise another level!"

Over the past month or so, the more Wang Qi cultivated, the more he felt that something had gone wrong with his cultivation.

First, he still severely lacked the ability to connect theory with cultivation methods. Maxwell's electromagnetic theorem was partly high-school material, but its main body was university-level knowledge. To Wang Qi, the top student of his former Earthly life, he could draw the image of a vortex field with his eyes closed. Yet he could not apply that understanding to cultivation.

Simply put, his head was filled with E=mc^2, but his production skill tree had only reached "can swing a hammer." He still had a long road ahead before he could build an atomic bomb.

As for the second problem...

Wang Qi suddenly felt his mana stir restlessly. The spiritual energy within him surged, and his entire body felt as though it had been cast into a sea of flames!

"Just as I thought." Wang Qi sighed, interrupting the Tian Ge Xing's circulation and switching to the Tian Shang Jue.

The Tian Shang Jue was a cultivation method derived from thermodynamics, controlling temperature and heat through entropy. Unlike the fire methods of the ancient ways, where the power of True Fire at every realm was rigidly fixed, the Tian Shang Jue functioned by heating and cooling. Even a Qi Refining Cultivator could raise the temperature of a Free and Unfettered Cultivator's True Fire. So long as one possessed sufficient mana and could keep from being burned or frozen to death, the Tian Shang Jue's heating and cooling were limitless.

The Tian Shang Jue gathered the heat around Wang Qi's body. Under the effect of the "entropy reduction method," the restlessness of his mana gradually subsided.

Wang Qi was just preparing to resume cultivation when another change arose. The power gathered into his dantian by the Tian Shang Jue suddenly erupted, sweeping through his entire body!

Gritting his teeth, Wang Qi began executing a palm technique.

Phase Wave Fist Sword, the accompanying palm technique of the Da Xiang Xiangbo Gong.

The Da Xiang Xiangbo Gong was founded upon phase wave theory. Phase waves, also called matter waves or de Broglie waves on Earth, were the wave forms of all matter derived from wave-particle duality. The Da Xiang Xiangbo Gong could transform mana into invisible waves, then use them to form all tangible objects. It matched the meaning of "the great image has no form," hence its name.

After the surplus power within him was transformed into a wave under the effect of the Phase Wave Fist Sword, Wang Qi shouted and pointed to his right. A blade-shaped wave shot forth vertically from his finger. The tail of the wave blade swept over Wang Qi's bed, slicing the pillow cleanly in two and sending cotton stuffing flying everywhere.

Which one was this? Wang Qi frowned.

When he had first entered the immortal academy, Wang Qi had heard the saying, "The immortal academy is a place that gives you chances to make mistakes." In a rush of excitement, he had gone and cultivated most of the peerless mental methods in Chuan Gong Hall.

Once cultivation methods were set on the right track, they would each form their own internal cycle. If two cycles operated simultaneously, one had to ensure that the methods did not interfere with each other, or it was easy to suffer a qi deviation. Wang Qi had cultivated too many methods in one breath at the start, and there were simply too many points of conflict between them.

The Yao Ding Suanjing and the Geometry Book merely had different emphases, so their contradictions were not difficult to reconcile. But there were enormous conflicts between the Da Li San Cantong Qi and the Tian Ge Xing, the Tian Ge Xing and the Tian Shang Jue, the Da Xiang Xiangbo Gong and the Da Li San Cantong Qi, as well as between the relativity-based Light Determines the Universe and the Tian Ge Xing and Da Li San Cantong Qi. After these methods were cultivated in parallel, the early troubles had seemed insignificant, but as Wang Qi's cultivation deepened, their contradictions became more apparent by the day, nearly driving him into a qi deviation.

Wang Qi found a way to gather up the cotton strewn across the floor, then picked up the ring on the table and put it on.

Zhen Chanzi burst into a wildly undignified fit of laughter. "Ahahahaha! This old man warned you long ago not to cultivate so many mental methods at once. Now you've suffered for it, haven't you?"

Wang Qi curled his lip. At first, he had believed that with Earth's theories, which were a step ahead of the God Continent's, the Superstring theory that claimed to explain everything, and his own decent mathematical ability, he could unify those cultivation methods. Unfortunately, he later realized that his weakness in "connecting theory to practice" was far too severe. Even if he understood higher-level theories, he could not put them to use.

So being a transmigrator did not automatically make one a dragon among men!

As Wang Qi pondered a solution, he walked toward the dining hall.

In truth, there were two ways to resolve this problem.

The first was to find an even more advanced cultivation method as his primary method and forcibly suppress the backlash of all the others.

The Da Xiang Xiangbo Gong, Tian Shang Jue, Tian Ge Xing, and Light Determines the Universe were all peerless mental methods with weighted values as high as four, while the Yao Ding Suanjing and Geometry Book had values of three. Where was Wang Qi supposed to find a stronger mental method?

Oh, Chuan Gong Hall had one: the Tianyan Tulu. Although its initial power weighting was only one, it was fundamentally a peerless mental method with a weighting of six. But...

"I study physics and mathematics, not biology!" Wang Qi roared inwardly. He did not believe that knowing an evolutionary algorithm meant he had thoroughly grasped evolution, much less that he could independently derive the Tianyan cultivation method further.

The second was to use Earth's Grand Unification theory and Superstring theory to derive a cultivation method capable of encompassing all these methods.

However, Wang Qi took one look at Unforgiving Taoist's manuscript and tearfully rejected that option. Even with Unforgiving Taoist's research foundation and Heisenberg's various theories, he still could not derive a usable spell.

What? Stop cultivating the other methods and focus on only one?

That idea looked beautiful, but in practice it was even less viable than the previous two—rather, it was "approximately equal to zero." Wang Qi discovered that the cycles of the various methods within his body had long formed a dangerous dynamic balance. If he suddenly advanced one of them in a single burst, that balance would be broken. At that point, Wang Qi would most likely die from qi deviation, with a small chance of merely being crippled by it.

"This feeling of lifting a stone only to smash my own foot, while riding a tiger and being unable to get off, yet having no choice but to keep smashing... is truly heartbreaking!"

The rule that protagonists who recklessly cultivated would either unlock special achievements or be rescued by an expert and gain greatly increased power was a lie after all!

Without realizing it, Wang Qi's thoughts drifted off into the clouds again, and he nearly walked past the dining hall.

Because cultivation had taken up considerable time, Wang Qi had not left very early, and a long queue had already formed in the dining hall. He obediently took his place at the very back.

Wang Qi recalled the matter of his pillow, so his gaze swept toward a corner of the dining hall. Near its edge, he found that familiar flash of orange.

Mao Zimiao—pah, Mao Zimiao's ears twitched, as though she sensed someone looking at her. She glanced over, spotted Wang Qi, and happily waved.

This little cat was kind by nature and did not hold grudges. Moreover, there had been few people in the immortal academy during its first days, so Wang Qi and Mao Zimiao had quickly grown familiar with each other.

Carrying a small bowl of noodles and a cup of soy milk, Wang Qi sat beside Mao Zimiao and habitually glanced twice at her cat ears.

Mao Zimiao quickly covered her ears. "I won't let you touch them, meow!"

Wang Qi nearly choked to death on the soy milk. "That really was just an accident that day!"

"That only proves that Little Qi has very little self-control, meow!"

"I have no response to that..." Wang Qi covered his face. "Fine, Zi Miao. Since I have no self-control, I need to ask you for another favor."

"Of course." Mao Zimiao wore an expression of complete understanding. "I knew it. Little Qi would never take the initiative to find me unless he needed my help, meow. What is it this time? Clothes or bedding?"

After Wang Qi lost control of the Da Xiang Xiangbo Gong, he could only rely on the wave blade attack to expel surplus power. In half a month, he had cut apart five sheets, seven pillows, and several articles of clothing. Later, Wang Qi discovered that Mao Zimiao was also skilled with needle and thread, so he simply asked her to mend them for him—after a month, Wang Qi had obtained the equipment: "Beggar's Bedding."

Mao Zimiao enjoyed helping people and did not mind. "All right. I'll sew it for you after I finish practicing movement techniques this afternoon."

Even an idiotic young man had moments when his artistic soul burned!