Cui Qianqian's Notebook

It was already very late when Wen Xiancheng returned to his lodgings.

He took a cold shower, dried off, then turned on his computer, switched on his phone's hotspot, and connected to the internet.

In his memories, the original Wen Xiancheng actually had a systematic understanding of many job-hunting websites.

Yet there seemed to be nothing Wen Xiancheng could do.

In terms of education, ordinary people in this world could secure better jobs with advanced qualifications, too.

But Wen Xiancheng had only finished high school. After his parents passed away one after the other, he had stopped studying.

As for work experience, Wen Xiancheng had spent over a year shut away at home.

After browsing for an hour, Wen Xiancheng shut down his computer.

Now, unless he swallowed his pride and took low-end work, such as sales or manual labor, he had no other options.

Tomorrow, I'll start sending out résumés!

With that decided, Wen Xiancheng went to sleep.

Now he only needed to wait for his Mouse Clone to make its move.

At midnight, the dorm supervisor began urging the girls in Cui Qianqian's dormitory to turn off the lights and go to sleep.

After watching the last girl—the one who had borrowed Cui Qianqian's notebook and had been playing games earlier—climb into bed, the Mouse Clone climbed onto the balcony and then onto the desk beneath Cui Qianqian's bed.

To its wild delight, the girl who had borrowed Cui Qianqian's notebook had simply left it on her desk rather than slotting it into the bookshelf!

The Mouse Clone caught the cover between its teeth and carefully opened it to the first page.

The Mouse Clone really was beginning to feel grateful that its clone form was a rat.

Even in the dark, it could clearly see everything around it.

However, the colors the Mouse Clone saw were different from those humans saw.

In the Mouse Clone's eyes, the whole world consisted of only black and white.

When the Mouse Clone fully opened the first page, it was utterly astonished.

The characters spelling "Cui Qianqian" floated out of the first page and circled around it!

But when the Mouse Clone excitedly reached out a paw to catch them, the characters spelling "Cui Qianqian" shattered with a pop.

There was nothing left around it.

Beneath its paw, the three elegant little characters spelling "Cui Qianqian" rested quietly on the first page.

The Mouse Clone suppressed its excitement.

Amazing!

What was that just now called?

It continued on to the notebook's second page.

Suddenly, the Mouse Clone felt its body plummeting. Before long, it had arrived in an enormous space.

The space was utterly quiet.

What was this?!

The Mouse Clone looked around in bewilderment.

Before long, lights came on all around it.

All the lights converged on him, dazzlingly bright.

The Mouse Clone hurriedly shielded its eyes with its paws.

The next moment, a figure slowly drifted down out of thin air.

It was a girl of seventeen or eighteen, with a distinct resemblance to Cui Qianqian around her brows and eyes.

But in every other respect, she and Cui Qianqian looked like entirely different people.

Compared to Cui Qianqian's chubby figure.

The girl before it was slender and very pretty.

Moreover, hers was a completely natural beauty, without makeup or any adornments.

Like Xue Ruigao, she wore only a shirt on her upper body, a white one.

On her lower body, she wore extremely short denim shorts, fully revealing her long, shapely thighs.

On her feet was a pair of silver sandals.

As she descended from above, she looked like a fairy coming down to the mortal world, leaving the Mouse Clone a little dazed.

The girl landed in front of the Mouse Clone, broke into a smile, and said, "September 3, 2219. This was my first day attending an Illusion Arts class. Today's class was so interesting!"

"The teacher explained all sorts of historical facts about Illusion Arts cultivation methods and all kinds of famous figures, and even demonstrated some Illusion Arts skills."

The girl's voice was as lilting as an oriole's song, lovely to hear.

The Mouse Clone was almost intoxicated by it.

These were Cui Qianqian's notes?

As expected of a student of Liu Lanzhi, a super Illusion Arts master.

This note-taking technique alone could knock 99.9999 percent of students flat!

This went far beyond a question of money!

After the girl spoke to the Mouse Clone for three minutes, her figure vanished.

The scenery before the Mouse Clone vanished along with her.

It was still standing on the second page of Cui Qianqian's notebook.

The Mouse Clone lowered its head and scanned the words on the paper.

They were exactly the same as what the girl had said.

The Mouse Clone felt its heart leap into its throat.

What I just experienced was definitely an illusion!

An illusion Cui Qianqian had cast on her notebook!

Otherwise, there was no explaining what I just saw!

The Mouse Clone raised its head and looked at the wooden board overhead.

Aside from looks that really left much to be desired, this chubby girl named Cui Qianqian was pretty impressive in every other way.

At the very least, her level of cultivation in Illusion Arts was high!

If I study her notes carefully, I'm bound to achieve something!

Having made its decision, the Mouse Clone continued reading her notes.

The contents that followed were much the same as before: the Mouse Clone would fall into a space and listen to the girl explain various aspects of Illusion Arts.

The Mouse Clone listened, utterly entranced.

Back in his rented room, Wen Xiancheng got up from his sleep as well.

He felt brimming with energy.

Without a second thought, he began practicing Illusion Arts according to what the Mouse Clone had seen and heard within the illusions.

However, while the Mouse Clone read nearly half the notebook over the course of the night, Wen Xiancheng only reached the fourth page in his practice.

The first three pages introduced the history of Illusion Arts, such as who had first created them, the famous battles involving them that had followed, and the current Illusion Arts masters in this world.

The fourth page's contents were simple, yet also complicated.

This page began addressing Illusion Arts proper: how to cast illusions.

Illusion Arts were divided into three categories: one against the world, one against many, and one against one.

Their difficulty increased in that order.

One against the world was the simplest. It only required releasing an illusion outside the body to distort human senses.

The fourth page recorded the cultivation method for one-against-the-world illusions.

In the girl's words, first, begin cultivating, absorb spiritual energy from the outside world, form spiritual power within the meridians, and circulate it.

Second, construct the illusion scene you wished to display in your mind.

Third, while constructing the illusion scene, mobilize your spiritual power and "sketch" those scenes in your dantian, copying them as though tracing a gourd from a model.

Fourth, release the "sketched" scenes from your dantian through your meridians and out of your body. This step also involved an extremely high degree of control over spiritual power.

Without extremely strong control over spiritual power, you would be unable to maintain the integrity of the "sketched" scenes while releasing them from your dantian to the outside of your body.

The illusion would fail.

Furthermore, illusions had no incomplete form.

With other cultivation methods, such as Martial Arts Techniques, you might achieve ten or twenty percent resemblance and still produce a certain amount of power.

Illusion Arts had only two possible outcomes: failure or success.

On the notebook's fourth page, the girl demonstrated the simplest illusion: a thin line.

Wen Xiancheng kept practicing according to the method the girl explained. After working all night, only at dawn did a one-inch length of yarn finally appear in front of him.

Watching the yarn float in midair, Wen Xiancheng could not help letting out a roar, keeping his voice low.

It worked!

Although my aptitude is ordinary, I still have some talent for Illusion Arts!

(End of chapter)