Wen Xiancheng felt rather helpless.
He caught Xue Ruigao by the hand and said, "Ice Cream."
Xue Ruigao stopped, but she did not dare look at him. She stammered a little, trying to sound casual. "What is it, Orange? We're practically an old married couple. What's there to be shy about, holding hands?!"
Wen Xiancheng smiled. "Right, there's nothing to be shy about. But something's come up. Can we call it a day? We'll come again next time. Then I'll hold your hand."
Xue Ruigao murmured an assent. "Then, then let's go back!"
They let go of each other's hands.
Wen Xiancheng walked Xue Ruigao all the way to the entrance of her dormitory building.
Xue Ruigao's expression was serious. "Get more rest from now on, and stop staying up so late. Sure, you're making money now, but I don't want to see you drop dead. Just look at how dark the circles under your eyes are!"
Wen Xiancheng ruffled her hair. "I'll remember. And you, focus on your cultivation and stop taking part-time jobs. Once you're a strong cultivator, I won't be happy if you try to slack off instead of earning money."
Only then did Xue Ruigao wave and turn to head back into the school dormitory.
After only a few steps, she stopped again and ran back with a smile. "I forgot something important! Summer vacation starts in three days. I can stay home and help you earn money all summer!"
Wen Xiancheng raised his eyebrows. "Do you know Illusion Arts?"
Xue Ruigao looked momentarily stunned. "I, I can learn! Using Illusion Arts to process text shouldn't be that hard, right? Don't look down on me! If you can learn it, so can I!"
"All right, you've got a point!" Wen Xiancheng nodded in concession. "Then we'll talk about it in three days, once your summer vacation starts!"
Only then did Xue Ruigao wave again and leave.
Wen Xiancheng returned to his rented room.
He filled a washbasin with some water, added a few drops of the Marrow-Cleansing Liquid, and placed the Mouse Clone inside.
Immediately, a searing sensation came from the Mouse Clone's body.
Wen Xiancheng shuddered.
Looks like everything comes at a price!
Leaving the Mouse Clone floating in the washbasin to cleanse its marrow, Wen Xiancheng turned on his computer and searched for "another consciousness inside the body" in his browser.
Countless results popped up.
Most, however, were advertisements or pointless nonsense.
Wen Xiancheng felt rather helpless.
Whether on Earth before his transmigration or in this other world, advertisements blanketed everything!
After scrolling through several pages, Wen Xiancheng finally found a key piece of information: in the seventh year of Yue Minghuang's reign, a man named Fan Jin with multiple personalities had appeared in Xu City. Fan Jin often displayed several personalities in a single day, sometimes timid, sometimes forceful and masculine. He suffered terribly, and his family was severely affected as well. Eventually, Zhang Lu, a Junior Martial King of the Yue Kingdom who specialized in healing, intervened and resolved his multiple-personality problem.
Multiple personalities?
That sounds similar to the other consciousness inside my body now.
I could give it a try!
Wen Xiancheng then searched for "healer Zhang Lu" in his browser.
Soon, a densely packed list of information about Zhang Lu appeared.
After reviewing it all, Wen Xiancheng concluded that Zhang Lu was currently in the Imperial City!
She was not at the Royal Academy, however. She had founded her own sect, called Iceheart Hall.
According to Zhang Lu's explanation, the sect's name represented her original aspiration: to remain unburdened by worldly concerns and devote herself to studying healing arts that cured illness and saved lives.
The information about Zhang Lu also included many accounts of poor commoners seeking her help, with her charging only a tiny number of spirit stones to treat them.
Feeling the intense despair and suicidal urges inside him, Wen Xiancheng murmured, "Whatever you think, this body is mine. If you can come back to life, I'll return it to you. If you can't, then disappear! I've really had enough of you, and I can't accept someone else constantly making trouble inside my body."
After noting down Iceheart Hall's address, Wen Xiancheng shut down the computer and resumed practicing the Illusion Arts recorded in Cui Qianqian's notebook.
As Wen Xiancheng rapidly formed seals with both hands, the image of a sphere quickly took shape in his mind.
Almost simultaneously, a phantom hopping rabbit appeared in the air in front of him. It swiftly solidified, eventually turning into a snow-white rabbit that kept hopping back and forth in midair.
Wen Xiancheng's face lit up with wild joy.
After over a month of hard work, I finally have something to show for it!
I can finally create complex animals with Illusion Arts!
Yet when Wen Xiancheng reached out to touch the rabbit, his hand passed straight through its body.
It's so obviously fake!
The joy in Wen Xiancheng's heart swiftly vanished.
He still had a long road ahead.
He reviewed the contents of Cui Qianqian's notebook in his mind.
What came next was the most difficult part of Illusion Arts: Establishing Logic.
Establishing Logic meant making an individual entity created through Illusion Arts act according to a set of rules.
For instance, the rabbit he had just created could only hop back and forth.
But if he practiced and mastered Establishing Logic, he could make the rabbit move like an ordinary animal, making it seem much more lifelike.
And realism was the very essence of Illusion Arts.
In Liu Lanzhi's words, true masters of Illusion Arts could create independent worlds at will!
Although such worlds could not last as long as the real world, everything within an illusory world was indistinguishable from reality for as long as the illusion was maintained!
Even she herself could not achieve that.
To practice Establishing Logic, however, one had to be intimately familiar with all the different things in this world.
This was the decisive difference between true illusion-type martial artists and ordinary martial artists.
It was also the most difficult part.
The vast majority of martial artists could not pass this hurdle, which was why so few studied Illusion Arts.
Of course, the best way to become familiar with all the different things in this world was to see them with one's own eyes and experience them firsthand.
But that was far too difficult.
The world was too vast, and ordinary people here lived only eighty years on average. Martial artists lived longer, with an average lifespan of one hundred and twenty years.
The longest lifespan currently on record belonged to a Junior Martial God from five hundred years ago, who had lived to the age of two hundred and thirty.
Even if everyone lived to two hundred and thirty, they could not possibly see and experience everything in this world.
Thus, watching videos of all kinds of things was essential for martial artists who practiced Illusion Arts.
Liu Lanzhi had created her own website, where she posted all sorts of videos she had obtained permission to use for her students to watch.
Following the instructions in Cui Qianqian's notes, Wen Xiancheng logged into the website.
Its name was quite ordinary: "Liu Lanzhi's Website."
The number and variety of videos on it were staggering.
There were over two hundred thousand videos of different animals and plants alone!
The other videos numbered in the millions!
Cui Qianqian's notebook stated that Liu Lanzhi required every student under her to watch these videos for at least three hours a day, starting from the moment they began practicing Establishing Logic and continuing until the moment they died!
Wen Xiancheng smiled bitterly.
Never mind such dull, tedious videos. Back in the day, even watching those exciting Japanese action-romance films had become utterly tasteless after a dozen or so in a row, leaving him unwilling to watch any more for a long time afterward.
No wonder the entire Yue Kingdom had produced only one Liu Lanzhi.
It really was too difficult!
(End of chapter)
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