Applied Immortality

June’s monthly examination.

Early in the morning, the Immortal Institute called everyone to the training grounds. They weren’t ordered based on class groups but on dorms, placing Wang Qi next to Wu Fan.

The early July sun shone a little brighter this morning. Wang Qi shielded his eyes from the blinding sunlight while looking around. “Is this the written test? Wait, how are we going to write? What do you think?”

He elbowed his neighbor, and Wu Fan had to lower his book with annoyance. He had heavy, dark circles under his eyes. “A miracle of immortal cultivation, probably. Wang Qi, you should review as well.” 

“A bookworm never crams the last minute.”

“Not everyone’s like you. I want to review.”

“Just pay attention in class, and you’re done.”

“Wang Qi, don’t you dare give me that! I know you took most of the month off.”

“Ah-ha-ha-ha…”

Wang Qi’s laughter drew the others’s attention. He noticed nine out of the ten students were reviewing around him, with seven out of ten weary from burning the midnight oil. Wu Fan threw his arm over Wu Fan’s shoulders without a care. “Hey, what don’t you get? Just tell me.” 

Wu Fan flinched. “What are you doing, Wang Qi?”

Wang Qi narrowed his eyes. “Don’t you trust me?”

Wu Fan shivered. “I’d never not… Wang Qi, I trust your skills fully. Only… everyone is getting ready.”

“Well, not me. This is such a drag.”

Wu Fan held up his book, and Wang Qi offered him all the help he could.

Wang Qi’s action earned the surprise of others. The freshman standing in front of the duo sneered. “Such confidence, brother. Aren’t you scared others will surpass you?” 

Wang Qi asked instead of replying. “Am I doing something wrong here, brother?”

The disciple took a vigilant look around and shook his head. “No, no, brother. You go on ahead.”

The Immortal Alliance advocated cooperation. If he said no to this, another disciple might just tell on him to the teachers. 

Wang Qi shook his head, ignoring the guy.

[The average guy can’t grasp a bookworm’s joy.]

A true bookworm didn’t take pride in deriding school kids. It lacked not just taste but style, working to prove you were an amateur who rote-memorized everything without bothering to understand the content. Hazing those with worse grades than himself was something only underachievers did. 

A true bookworm found joy in guiding underachievers or even peers in their studies. Think about it. Casually offering the solution to a painful problem the underachiever couldn’t figure out, the underachiever would exclaim in joy, “That works?!” Or when you’re researching a hard topic with other bookworms and was the first to crack the study, the others will exclaim, “I see it now!” This intellectual satisfaction was second only to an experiment’s results in pursuing Dao.

Wu Fan had Wang Qi explain everything he didn’t understand. He was reviewing mechanics and Newtonian mechanics. In Divine Province terms, it was the energy path. 

The Immortal Institute’s curriculum was more or less like the ones in high schools on Earth. The questions were easy enough for Wang Qi to offer quick answers to all of them.

The others around were impressed Wang Qi knew his stuff. Unlike the Immortal Institute’s teachers, he didn’t lecture on a subject but rather offered hints to nudge Wu Fan into figuring out the answer by doing the calculations on his own. As Wu Fan was doing the math, one asked, “Senior Brother… Wang, could you help me with a few problems?”

Wang Qi patted his chest. “Ask away.”

People gathered around to ask him, drawing in more and more students as time went by.

“Ha-ha-ha…” A creepy laughter came from behind, startling him. He turned to the saluting freshman. “Brother Wang, many thanks…”

“It’s nothing…” Wang Qi replied in modesty while trying to recall who he was. The guy was Yang something, living quite close to him. He had to have gotten answers to some problems he had, and that’s why he thanked.

[Gratefulness aside, why laugh like a hyena?] Wang Qi thought. [Creepy.] 

The examination time came quickly. Teacher Xiong Mo flew above them and shouted, “Silence! Everyone’s to line up and stand in position!”

The crowd around Wang Qi scattered, with all the freshmen taking their spots. Xiong Mo shouted, “I’m sure your teachers told you all about the written test, its scope, and its content.”

Wu Fan suddenly recalled spending most of his time with Su Junyu to study ahead and missing out on the ‘pre-test guidance’ and ‘highlights.’ He asked Wu Fan, “How does it work?”

Xiong Mo boomed before Wu Fan could reply. “The examination starts now!”

Another teacher, Yun Xiang, flew from behind him with a copper mirror in hand. He threw it in the sky and made a few signs to make it glow blue and spin around as it grew larger and larger. A white light came from it and covered the entire training grounds. 

Wang Qi’s vision shifted with the changing surroundings. The students were gone, leaving him in a world of white.

“All-immortal Realm?” Wang Qi looked at his hands and pinched them hard.

They felt the same as in reality. [Are they made based on my brain’s sensory input, or is it a function of the All-immortal Realm? Or maybe the All-immortal Realm is only blocking my sight and hearing.] 

Wang Qi didn’t expect the examination to be done through the immortal Realm. This world’s Dao axioms were but a hint behind the scientific theories on Earth, making him assume Earth was superior, at least when it came to common items. He forgot that the worlds had different physical laws, leading to branching development. On Divine Province, digital products weren’t popular, yet augmented reality was fully established, beyond what Earth could achieve. 

An ink painting appeared in front and a brush in his hand.

“As shown in the painting, there are two objects, A and B, of mass 2m and m, respectively, placed on a horizontal surface, one on top of the other. The kinetic friction factor between A and B is… and between B and the ground… The given gravitational constant is… If a horizontal force F is applied to object A, then…”(Tamon: To reiterate, the Chinese language doesn’t have or use Arabic numbers or a common standard alphabet. I used letters and Earth terms to simplify understanding.) 

The examination had begun!