Time Capsule

"Professor Chen, cutting your losses again?"

"Why did you get caught in the rain again?" Professor Chen looked up from behind his phone for a moment, his voice mild. "Your exams are coming up. You'd better not run around or eat out for a while, or you might get sick. Yuanzhou's been dangerous lately, too. Don't wander around outside."

"Well, now! That's a rare sight!"

"..."

Professor Chen buried his head in his phone again. He couldn't be bothered with him, though he did ask, "I told you to add Uncle Shi Qian on Feixin. Did you?"

"I did."

"Have you talked to him?"

"A couple of messages."

"Ask him if there's anything you don't understand."

"Got it."

Chen Shu went back to his room and lay down on the bed.

His room was tidy, mostly because there wasn't much in it. Books lay scattered across the tea table on the balcony, and the trash can held quite a few notebook pages crumpled into balls. A desk stood against the wall, its books neatly stacked beside a computer.

Chen Shu picked up a physics textbook, flipped through a couple of pages, and grew bored.

He had come to a fantasy world, and he still had to study physics. How infuriating was that?

But that was how things were. Spiritual energy and cultivation existed in this fantasy world, yet the laws of physics from his previous world still applied. The Creator hadn't deprived people of the right to use those laws just because they could cultivate and wield spiritual energy and Runes. Instead, the two worked together, making this world's technology tree larger and more complete.

So this world had both Earth's physical technology and its own spiritual-energy Runes technology.

Take the little vehicles driving outside. If it had wheels, it was essentially an electric vehicle. Its energy was simply stored as spiritual energy, then converted into electricity when needed, giving it a tremendous range. The light overhead was different: it was a pure spiritual-energy bulb. Its luminous Runes used spiritual energy directly to produce light, making it simple and durable. The Runes themselves wouldn't break down or lose efficiency.

In short, people chose whichever worked better.

Chen Shu held the book but couldn't concentrate.

He had flipped through Ning Qing's problem collection earlier. He knew how to solve most of the questions at a glance, but a few were genuinely tricky, and some looked extremely difficult. Anything about spells drew him in far more than the physics book in his hands.

The more he thought about it, the more he itched to try.

Chen Shu was usually rather lazy. If he hadn't encountered a problem, fine. But once he had, leaving it unsolved would bother him for ages. Solving it, or even just figuring it out, gave him a tremendous sense of achievement.

"Forget the book."

Chen Shu tossed the physics textbook aside, rolled out of bed, turned on his computer, opened his notebook, and picked up his fountain pen to start working through the problems.

The sky gradually darkened. Rain pattered outside.

He stopped for dinner.

His notebook grew a little thinner.

Between thinking and looking things up, he solved almost every problem. One question stumped him, and he couldn't find the answer online, so he asked Teacher Shi Qian and took the opportunity to get to know him better.

Teacher Shi Qian had been Professor Chen's university classmate. Chen Shu had even met him once when he was little.

Both men had studied history at Yujing University, one of the finest institutions of higher learning in Yi Nation. Given the country's cultural standing internationally, it was among the best in the world, too. Professor Chen had stayed in his field and returned to his hometown of Yuanzhou. He was now a history professor at Yuanzhou University and one of the country's best-known historians. Shi Qian had remained at Yujing University to teach, though not in the history department. He taught in the ancient cultivation department.

Chen Shu planned to enter Yujing University and study the principles of spells. Shi Qian might well become his teacher.

"That feels good!"

Chen Shu rested for a while. When his phone alarm rang, he quickly sat cross-legged on the bed.

It was time for his daily cultivation.

Cultivators in this world were divided into nine tiers.

That division wasn't arbitrary. It had arisen naturally—

Before setting foot on the path of cultivation, a person needed a long period of preparation to become familiar with spiritual energy and learn to control it. Once that preparation was complete, they could attempt to open their Spirit Sea. Only after doing so could they be called a true cultivator.

But once opened, the Spirit Sea didn't grow steadily with cultivation. Cultivators would eventually reach a bottleneck and have to expand it again.

It was a difficult process.

Each successful expansion enlarged the Spirit Sea.

And when the expansion succeeded, the cultivator heard a sound like striking metal. That was why the limit on the Spirit Sea was also called the Spirit Sea Lock.

Advancing meant breaking open that lock. In ancient times, cultivators often spent an enormous amount of time grinding away at it. Only outstanding disciples of a few great sects could obtain rare treasures or miraculous pills to help them, saving much of the time and effort needed to wear through a Spirit Sea Lock. One step ahead meant staying ahead at every step.

Each expansion counted as advancement by one tier.

Supposedly, the lock could be broken open as many as nine times.

In ancient times, successive dynasties used a nine-rank system for officials, so cultivators adopted it too. Ninth rank was the lowest; First Grade was the highest. Back then, if you were a cultivator of a certain rank, you could generally enjoy the social standing of an official of the same rank.

And no one should underestimate court officials. In ancient times, a unified central court was generally the strongest power on the planet. No one dared defy it.

In the modern era, the nine-rank system had been abolished in favor of the Nine-Tier System. First Tier was the lowest; Ninth Tier, the highest.

Chen Shu was currently at the peak of the Second Tier.

Notably, this world had no saying that cultivation should start in the cradle, though it did say that about martial arts.

There were two main reasons.

The first was physiological. Research showed that the Spirit Sea lay somewhere between the body and the soul. Like the body, the soul needed time to develop. Only a mature body and soul could open a mature, healthy Spirit Sea. Even in ancient times, people had worked out that opening it too young was no good. Childhood was for laying a solid foundation.

The second was psychological. Opening the Spirit Sea was excruciating, a pain that reached deep into the soul, and it did nothing for a child's physical or mental development. Nor could someone whose mind had yet to mature necessarily control or make good use of a cultivator's great power. Pure good and pure evil often came from children.

There were other, smaller reasons as well.

People generally considered the ideal age for opening the Spirit Sea to be eighteen to twenty-two for men and seventeen to twenty for women.

In Yi Nation, most people spent their years before university building a foundation and studying general subjects, mathematics, and cultivation theory. Only after entering university did they attempt to open their Spirit Sea.

One important reason was that students entering a public university received a free potion to help open their Spirit Sea, paid for by the government. With modern technology, these potions were far more reliable than the miraculous pills of ancient times. Provided a student had laid a solid foundation and passed the tests, the chance of opening their Spirit Sea exceeded ninety-seven percent. It saved them vast amounts of time grinding away at the lock and had almost no subsequent side effects. Even if a person's constitution caused discomfort at the time, the university had specialist teachers on hand to look after them.

By then, they were usually around twenty.

Chen Shu hadn't reached the Third Tier yet, but he was already far ahead of his peers.

The only painful part was the money spent on his Spirit Sea-opening potion.

Oh, wait. I didn't pay for it?

Then never mind.

Modern cultivation methods were also highly developed. Countless masters had poured their hearts and souls into gathering the strengths of hundreds of schools. The foundations of ancient sects and factions, along with secrets they had never passed on, were all brought out for reference. Any advantages found in foreign cultivation methods were taken too. Combined with advanced modern theory, they ultimately produced this modern cultivation art, built upon the spiritual cultivation art of an ancient Esoteric Sect.

And it was still being updated and improved.

Chen Shu had only learned its first two tiers, but the results were fantastic.

Around midnight.

Chen Shu emerged from cultivation. His mind was utterly exhausted, as though even his soul had wilted. There was nothing pleasant about it.

He took out a Crystal shimmering with strange colors and poured most of his spiritual energy into it.

The Spirit Sea that had only just filled up was empty again.

"This feels awful."

Cultivation in this world was tiring and tedious. It wasn't like the novels he had read in his previous life, where sitting in meditation felt even better than playing cards and the years slipped by unnoticed. Nor was it like a game, where every session made a progress bar rise. Putting in effort without being able to sense any return was the hardest part.

Anyone could cultivate for at most around four hours a day, regardless of their tier. Higher-tier cultivators were more efficient, but the time limit stayed the same.

So he had to persist every day, using habit to overcome his reluctance and endorphins to ease the ordeal. He couldn't slack off for even one day.

As for why the people of this world were called cultivators, and why its cultivation system felt familiar to Chen Shu, that went back to Emperor Shengzu five thousand years ago—

While establishing this civilization and creating its writing and culture, Emperor Shengzu had also borrowed many terms familiar to Chen Shu to describe the world's "supernatural system." That made it sound like the things Chen Shu had read about online in his previous life. In substance, though, many parts ran contrary to what he expected.

Monday morning.

White City No. 7 Academy, fourth-year Class One, second-to-last row by the wall.

This was the best academy in all of Yuanzhou, roughly equivalent to a combination of high school and university in his previous life. It was a four-year program, called an academy for short. Chen Shu's class was the best in the school. Nearsightedness wasn't a thing in this world, and no one in the advanced class made a racket, so seating depended entirely on height.

"Modern history is the most important part!

"It's guaranteed to be on the exam!

"Especially these figures I mentioned! You've seen them on the banknotes, right? Everything about them—you must memorize it, all of it, down cold!"

It was a history lesson.

Cultivators had to study history too... Well, that made sense. Ancient cultivators probably had to study it as well.

Chen Shu had no desire to listen, and the teacher left him alone. He was the son of a nationally renowned historian, practically raised among history books. His knowledge of the subject was probably far beyond the teacher's.

So Chen Shu propped his chin on one hand and looked down at his biology notes while absently playing with the hair of the girl in front of him with the other.

The girl didn't like it. She reached back and slapped his hand away.

A little while later, Chen Shu took hold of her hair again.

She slapped his hand away once more and pulled her hair over her shoulder.

Chen Shu didn't mind. He simply pulled it back.

Smack!

This time she slapped his hand harder, then turned to give him a thoroughly displeased look.

Chen Shu grinned at her.

When he took hold of her hair again, she couldn't be bothered with Chen Shu anymore.

He kept hold of it until class ended.

"Time for the group photo!"

The class monitor stood and called out, "Everyone, meet in the stands by the rostrum at the sports ground."

Chen Shu stood at once and patted the girl in front of him on the shoulder. The only thing on her desk was a copy of Cosmic Hypothesis. With no other books in sight, it looked utterly out of place among her classmates' desks.

"Let's go!"

Chen Shu walked ahead, with Ning Qing following behind.

He really had annoyed her. The longer Ning Qing held back, the angrier she grew. As they left the classroom, she suddenly gave him a hard shove from behind, but it only sent him stumbling a single step.

At the stands beside the sports ground's rostrum, everyone lined up in front of the tiered seats, dressed in their youthful best. The subject teachers and school leaders sat in the front row, also wearing their finest clothes. A few teachers who usually dressed casually had even put on formal wear for once.

Chen Shu stood beside Ning Qing.

"Everyone, stand still!

"Ready—

"Three, two, one!"

Chen Shu flashed a brilliant smile. Ning Qing's expression remained calm as still water, betraying neither joy nor anger.

Click!

"Let's take a few more!

"Three, two..."

Chen Shu slipped an arm around Ning Qing's shoulders.

"One!

Click!

"Great, great!

"Now everyone sit down for another!"

The students sat down one after another.

Ning Qing turned to look at Chen Shu. She said nothing and stayed seated beside him.

Ten minutes later, the photos were done. Everyone dispersed and headed back to their classrooms; they still had lessons.

Ning Qing said to Chen Shu, "I'm going back."

"Hm? Stay for another couple of classes."

"You'll pull my hair."

"There's still the time capsule activity."

"..."

Ning Qing silently followed him back to the classroom and sat in her usual seat. Sure enough, he took hold of her hair again.

"Think carefully, everyone. You can write down your dreams or goals, encourage yourselves, or write a message to your future selves. The school will keep these time capsules safe by class for at least—at least twenty years. If you come back to visit your old school then, you can collect yours."

Ning Qing's face showed little expression. To her, these activities were all pointless.

Chen Shu didn't think so. He poked her from behind.

"Take it seriously."

Ning Qing ignored him.

Only when Chen Shu poked her again did she give an impatient hum.

The classroom fell quiet for a time, filled with the scratch of pens on paper.

The students in this room were among the most talented in all of Yuanzhou, and every one of them had boundless possibilities ahead. They were twenty this year. Where would they be, and what would they be doing, after they turned forty? Would they still remember themselves sitting in this classroom at this moment?

Let me share a useful reading tip—

If a new book feels too short, go into the settings and turn the font size all the way up. It'll have more pages!

In return for this very useful tip, leave Jasmine a monthly ticket! Jasmine will mail the contract tomorrow, and once the status changes in a few days, you'll be able to vote!

(Bows, showing cleavage.)