Wen Xiancheng began to feel a little sorry for him.
That kind of pressure was more than an ordinary person could bear.
But that was an ordinary person.
He was no ordinary person.
Besides, he even had a Mouse Clone!
Taking a deep breath, Wen Xiancheng turned on the computer.
According to the memories in his head, far too many people wanted him dead.
And the reason probably lay with Xue Ruigao.
Everyone believed his existence was a serious drag on Xue Ruigao's development.
Everyone believed that without him, Xue Ruigao could live a far freer life.
Wen Xiancheng could only set aside the search for whoever wanted to kill him. It was a helpless choice.
For now, he could only stay on his guard and wait for them to strike again.
Wen Xiancheng quickly searched for "how to cultivate with ordinary aptitude" in the computer's browser.
He had expected results like "you might as well die" or "you're just trash, stop dreaming."
To his surprise, not only were the results nothing like that, but plenty of methods popped up.
One example was the "Aptitude-Enhancing Pill," a seventh-grade pill that cost around ten million low-grade spirit stones apiece.
Spirit stones were this world's universal currency.
An ordinary family of three earned around fifty thousand low-grade spirit stones a year.
As an outstanding student at the Royal Academy, Xue Ruigao received a monthly allowance of one high-grade spirit stone.
One high-grade spirit stone equaled a hundred middle-grade spirit stones, and one middle-grade spirit stone equaled a hundred low-grade spirit stones.
In other words, Xue Ruigao's annual allowance amounted to a hundred and twenty thousand low-grade spirit stones.
That fell far short of the cost of a single Aptitude-Enhancing Pill.
It simply wasn't realistic.
Besides, the effect of an Aptitude-Enhancing Pill was random.
It could raise someone's aptitude straight to the first grade, but the odds were about the same as winning a hundred million in the lottery.
Generally speaking, it could improve aptitude by one to five grades.
But for Wen Xiancheng, all of that was a fool's dream.
A price of ten million low-grade spirit stones was utterly beyond his reach.
Aside from the "Aptitude-Enhancing Pill," there was another method called resource stacking.
Aptitude determined how quickly the human body absorbed spiritual energy from the natural world.
The worse the aptitude, the slower the absorption.
However, the speed of spiritual energy absorption depended not only on aptitude, but also on the concentration of spiritual energy nearby.
Thus, increasing the surrounding concentration of spiritual energy could go a long way toward addressing the cultivation difficulties of people with poor aptitude.
Still, this method could only alleviate the problem. It couldn't close the cultivation gap between them and people with top-tier aptitude.
Moreover, this method relied on consuming vast quantities of spirit stones.
To Wen Xiancheng, it felt rather like standing on stacks of banknotes to make himself taller.
Utterly unrealistic.
Wen Xiancheng browsed hundreds of methods in succession.
Finally, his gaze settled on an entry in the "Encyclopedia of Notable Figures":
Liu Lanzhi, the Royal Academy's master of Super Illusion Arts, was proficient in various techniques and had made particularly outstanding contributions to Illusion Arts. A year earlier, she had achieved a new breakthrough in her research into Illusion Arts, allowing her to turn illusions into reality.
Manifestation into reality: turning illusory objects into real ones. Since these objects did not originally exist and were instead constructed from powerful spiritual energy, anything manifested this way had a limited duration.
Illusion Arts: techniques were divided into martial arts techniques, formation techniques, talisman techniques, five elements techniques, illusion techniques, and so on. Illusion techniques were among the most unusual. Each consumed very little spiritual energy compared with other techniques, relying primarily on powerful imagination to construct illusory realms.
By this point, Wen Xiancheng was trembling slightly with excitement.
In this other world, although there were countless ways to make a living, cultivators stood at the pinnacle of all professions.
Everyone harbored a dream of becoming a cultivator.
Even trains, high-speed trains, and other forms of transportation ran on spirit stones.
Almost everyone had some exposure to cultivation and possessed spiritual energy within their bodies. Only the amount differed.
So if he could become an accomplished cultivator, he would not give up!
He searched for "Liu Lanzhi" in the browser again.
A flood of news about Liu Lanzhi popped up.
Wen Xiancheng focused on her research into "turning illusions into reality."
References to this field were everywhere, yet there was no introduction to any specific details.
His memories also indicated that cultivators in this other world were highly protective of their unique techniques.
Generally speaking, they only passed them on to people they favored, mostly relatives and students.
In other words, unless someone was family, their only chance of learning these techniques was to fight tooth and nail to become a student and pay sufficient tuition.
Even if they paid the full tuition, there was still a very good chance they would not be accepted.
Wen Xiancheng stared blankly at Liu Lanzhi's information.
He had decided. He would learn cultivation from her!
However, given this body's aptitude, his chances of learning from her were practically zero.
The only way was to steal her teachings!
How could he steal her teachings "in plain sight"?
The corners of Wen Xiancheng's lips lifted into a faint, smug smile.
He had an advantage no one else possessed—a Mouse Clone!
All he had to do was control the Mouse Clone and sneak into Liu Lanzhi's classroom.
But before that, there were two things he had to accomplish:
First, the end of the month was only seven days away, which was when Xue Ruigao would return. He had to tell Xue Ruigao that he wanted to leave this place and accompany her to the Imperial City of Linzi.
This body harbored intense feelings for Xue Ruigao and could not leave her unless Xue Ruigao herself decided to abandon him.
Second, Wen Xiancheng had to learn to split his attention between two tasks! At the very least, he had to master controlling both bodies simultaneously to perform simple movements. Otherwise, switching back and forth between the two bodies would be too cumbersome and inconvenient.
Having made his decision, Wen Xiancheng took the Mouse Clone out of his pocket.
When his fingers touched the Mouse Clone, he experienced a very strange sensation.
His brain distinctly felt as though it had been divided into two regions.
On the left, he felt the frustration of "being pinched between a giant's fingers, as tiny as an ant."
On the right, he felt the softness of "touching something furry, afraid of squeezing it flat."
When he immersed his awareness in the "left," Wen Xiancheng's human body stopped moving, frozen in midair. Meanwhile, he seemed to become a rat, able to perceive everything in the outside world through the rat's senses.
Including his human body.
Looking at his human body nevertheless felt like looking at himself.
When he immersed his awareness in the "right," Wen Xiancheng's human body resumed moving.
The Mouse Clone, meanwhile, seemed frozen in place, unable to move at all.
Holding the Mouse Clone between his fingers, Wen Xiancheng went into the living room, took two packets of biscuits out of the refrigerator, and tore open their wrappers.
Then he placed the Mouse Clone beside one portion of biscuits.
Wen Xiancheng closed his eyes and concentrated on the sensations, switching back and forth between his human body and the Mouse Clone.
He wanted to control his human body and the Mouse Clone to eat biscuits at the same time!
(End of chapter)
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