As noon approached, the bustle of freshman enrollment in the Grade 1 classes gradually dispersed, and the sophomores and seniors in Grade 2 and Grade 3 also put down their pens and flocked to the cafeteria.
Only Chen Shi'an's transfer enrollment process was still ongoing.
The young Daoist priest was currently sitting alone in a spacious administrative building meeting room, with six test papers waiting to be completed at his hand, covering the six subjects of Chinese, mathematics, English, physics, chemistry, and biology.
Aside from the test papers, there was a bottle of mineral water and a boxed meal on the table-the boxed meal was quite lavish, packed specially for him by Principal Lin from the faculty cafeteria.
"How is it, Fatty Mo, is this food alright?"
"Meow."
"You usually ignore me when I call you Fatty Mo, but you answer right away when there's food, huh?"
"..."
Chen Shi'an picked up the meal box lid and shared a portion with the Black Cat. Neither he nor the cat were picky eaters; compared to the meals on the mountain, the variety of food in this cafeteria was obviously much richer.
The man and cat ate their boxed meal and enjoyed the air conditioning just like that, quite leisurely indeed.
Chen Shi'an was a meticulous person and did not rush to pick up his pen to do the problems, fearing he would stain the papers while eating. Until he finished, he used a tissue to tidy up the table and the meal box, and only then began to ponder the test papers before him.
The Black Cat took two glances and only felt dizzy; anyway, the one who had to study and go to school wasn't it. Once full and satisfied, it simply lay down on the meeting table and fell into a sound sleep.
Facing the six test papers in his hands, Chen Shi'an's state was no better than the cat's, and his expression also changed from initial relaxation to solemnity.
--This was his first time encountering exam papers.
This "exam" was somewhat special: the examination room was a meeting room, the examinee was only him alone, there were no proctors, no surveillance, and his phone had not been confiscated.
In Teacher Liang's words, if he could find the answers through his phone or by flipping through books, his foundation could still be considered acceptable.
The point of a baseline test was to establish a baseline. Not only did Teacher Liang want to know where his baseline was, but Chen Shi'an himself also wanted to know what score he could actually get by doing these test papers.
The one Chen Shi'an unfolded first was the Chinese test paper.
Two modern prose reading passages, one classical Chinese reading passage, as well as ancient poetry reading, recitation of famous pieces and sentences, language and text application, and finally the composition.
He had originally thought Chinese would be his most proficient subject, but he hadn't expected to get stuck somewhat right at the very beginning.
An article about artificial intelligence was filled with unfamiliar terms like "algorithms" and "neural networks."
Chen Shi'an stared blankly at the question of "whether machines will possess consciousness," pondering for a long time before writing in the blank space: [Form is the dwelling of life; breath is the fulfillment of life; spirit is the ruler of life. If an instrument lacks breath and spirit, how can it speak of consciousness?]
Fortunately, after modern prose reading, the classical Chinese reading, ancient poetry reading, and recitation of famous pieces and sentences were all subjects he excelled in.
The classical Chinese reading tested "Records of the Grand Historian: Biographies of Laozi, Han Feizi, and Zhuangzi," and Chen Shi'an read it even more smoothly than scripture scrolls.
For the definition question on the two characters "nature" in "the Dao models itself after nature," not only did he write the annotation, but he also added the phrase [Heaven and earth possess great beauty yet do not speak] beside it, merely feeling that the test creator had asked too shallowly.
As for the recitation of famous pieces and sentences, it went without saying. Although some questions appeared in the form of contextual application, having thoroughly read classics like the Four Books and Five Classics since childhood, he handled these famous sentences with ease.
Arriving at the final composition, the prompt given was "On Innovation and Heritage."
Seeing this prompt, Chen Shi'an felt deeply moved. Writing fluently from Zhuangzi's "changing along with the times" to Ge Hong's "transmitting without creating," he dashed off half a page in a flowing script. Upon raising his head to see the requirement of no less than 800 words, he added another paragraph of words from the Taiping Scripture. The entire piece lacked a single punctuation mark, separated only by pauses and stops, making it unmistakably a piece of classical Chinese writing.
I must admit, although doing the Chinese test paper felt somewhat unfamiliar, overall it was still rather smooth, which also gave the young Daoist priest a great deal of confidence. Faintly, a sentiment of "nothing much after all" began to bubble up from the bottom of his heart.
Only, such complacency did not last long.
When he flipped to the mathematics test paper, Chen Shi'an's brow knitted into a knot.
A vast amount of previously unseen terminology and bizarrely shaped symbols flooded the test sheet. Those formulas printed with $x, y, f(x), \in, \cap, \angle, \sin, \cos...$ looked like unfamiliar talismans. He did recognize the geometric solid as a "square box," but what on earth was "the angle between skew lines"?!
For a brief moment, Chen Shi'an suspected that what he was doing wasn't mathematics, but some sort of foreign language test paper.
When ordinary people like us buy groceries, go shopping, and do business to keep accounts, can we make use of these?
Perhaps using copper coins to cast a divination could help find something among the four choices that resembled the answer, but after all, this was merely a baseline test, so if he didn't know, he didn't know. Furthermore, the points for multiple-choice questions were limited, so even guessing a few right would be a drop in the bucket.
It could be said that such a set of questions far exceeded the young Daoist priest's cognitive range regarding the scope of mathematics; racking his brains, he could only think of what his master had taught: "seeking a circle within a square, seeking a square within a circle."
In the end, he simply drew circles behind all the questions, varying in size, resembling the lines in divination hexagrams...
Mathematics was "finished" quickly.
Chen Shi'an then unfolded the English test paper.
But after just a short moment, he silently put the English test paper aside once again.
Finally came the science comprehensive test paper.
Terms like "acceleration," "kinetic energy," and "electromagnetism" in the physics paper-he searched his brain through the Records of Examination of Crafts and found no corresponding explanation;
The various element symbols and reaction equations on the chemistry paper looked rather like mineral charts for alchemy. He knew how to alchemy, but what kind of ghost was this chemistry experiment;
The cell structure diagram on the biology paper was even more absurd. Chen Shi'an looked at it with some lingering doubt: were these "cells" really the things that composed his own body? And how did consciousness arise from this pile of components? Thinking about it, the young Daoist priest was startled to realize his Dao heart was becoming somewhat turbulent, and he hurriedly reined in his mind and concentrated, writing only the sentence: [All things possess essence; if essence persists, they live.]
Looking at these haphazardly answered mathematics, English, and science comprehensive test papers, Chen Shi'an was inevitably somewhat lost...
"Master, does your saying 'the Dao models itself after nature' mean letting me naturally bomb the exam?"
"Coming down the mountain to see the world, could it be just to let me see these conic sections?"
Because he had been detached from the schoolhouse for many years and lacked cognition of the corresponding academic subjects, Chen Shi'an had previously guessed that he probably wouldn't test very well, yet he never expected it to be this disastrous.
Since childhood he had been smarter than others, learning everything quickly and managing to achieve the best in whatever he did. Those successive successes piled up into a nearly arrogant self-confidence deep within his heart, making him feel that ordinary people were merely sluggish fish.
And this baseline test directly subverted his trust in himself, while also indirectly changing his views on his peers-he had learned from Teacher Liang's words that the monitor of Class 5 could score full marks on that mathematics test paper where he had complete ignorance.
Study ought to have been something he excelled at, yet in the end it produced such a test paper.
For the first time, Chen Shi'an so profoundly realized his own arrogance.
No wonder his master wanted him to go down the mountain and re-enroll in school.
People always live within a series of reference objects. If one stays only on the mountain, the reference object is merely oneself, and after a long time one is bound to lose oneself.
[Knowing how high the sky is and how deep the earth is, having a mind clear as a mirror to know one's own position, and understanding the bustling masses to the left and right-this is truly a great realm.]
[Master, then which level am I on?]
[You don't yet know how high the sky is or how deep the earth is, let alone presume to have a mind clear as a mirror to know your own position.]
[I am crystal clear on it!]
[Heh heh, arrogance. Are you truly not going to the schoolhouse tomorrow?]
[I'm not going. It's too easy to learn; there's no point.]
[...]
Promising mundane world tempering, until this very moment, Chen Shi'an finally had the feeling of being tempered.
Regarding his past understanding of the phrase [having a mind clear as a mirror to know one's own position], he had only felt that it was probably a fixed location.
Now he understood that so-called [one's own position] was actually changing.
Just as throwing him, someone who intensely practiced Daoist arts, into a schoolhouse resulted in him testing in a complete mess, perhaps throwing the top student from the school into the mountains to study Daoist arts would leave them unable to find a doorway even in five or ten years.
The difference in reference objects brought about different [own position] locations; it was a dynamic and complex realm.
Flawed determination of one's position by unilaterally taking what one excelled at as a reference might seem lofty, but in reality it was rootless and drifting. A person who relied solely on self-confidence would one day collapse upon the destruction of that confidence.
After figuring out this layer of logic, Chen Shi'an's turbulent heart returned to peace once more, even calmer than at any time before.
That split-second feeling was very wondrous, resembling an elevation in place that allowed him to overlook and inspect his own position from another perspective.
Master, your disciple here is truly a genius of Dao cultivation... No, I must be humble, humble! The Great Dao doesn't even know seven tenths of itself yet!
He bombed this exam, but the young man's Dao heart became even more firm.
Arrogance truly was the original sin!
(Thanks to Alliance Leader Ai Xiaoxun! Boss is generous~! Thank you very much for your support of the new book!)
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