Chapter 140, As Long You Love Learning Love Questions Love Using Your Head

Translator: Tamon

 

Wang Qi didn’t look good waking up.

 

Zhen Chanzi worried. “Mishap in cultivation? With your low stage and predilection to altering cultivation methods…”

 

Wang Qi waved him off, putting the ring on before heading for the mess hall.

 

It had been three days since Zhen Chanzi passed on the ancient legacy. On the first day, Wang Qi stuck to amending the cultivation and nothing else, adhering to his strict routine of eating, sleeping, reading, and fighting baddies every day. Apart from leaving a bit of time before bed to practice the Upper Clarity Spiritual Jewel Sutra’s Store Thoughts Art, there was no impact on his habits.

 

Zhen Chanzi knew better; Wang Qi woke up every day with a heavy heart.

 

[Don’t tell me the amending is hurting his soul.]

 

He was worried. His future was in Wang Qi’s hands. Wang Qi’s success was his success. Wang Qi’s fall was his obscurity.

 

Wang Qi ignored him and muttered all the time. At the mess hall, he got a plate of fried rice, sat at a table, and played with his food.

 

“Morning, Little Qi, nya!” Mao Zimiao scurried into the seat across from him while carrying her tray, along with a groggy Wang Zhenqi.

 

“Mm.” Wang Qi nodded.

 

Wang Zhenqi had the same breakfast as him. She lay on the table with her head by the tray, absentmindedly putting some rice in her mouth. “Wan, Ah’Miao, I’m dying here, wan…”

 

“That’s what you get for putting it off for so long, nya.” Mao Zimiao talked with her friend while stealing glances at Wang Qi. The girl was quick to notice something was off—Wang Qi kept pushing away the fried rice and never taking a bite.

 

Mao Zimiao asked with deep concern. “Little Qi, no appetite, nya?”

 

Wang Zhenqi whined. “Ah’Miao, you traitor, wan… What about me? I’m dying here…”

 

Wang Qi gave a lazy oh and took two bites before resuming picking on his food.

 

“Little Qi?” Mao Zimiao finally roused him.

 

Wang Qi started. “Ah’Zimiao, what is it?”

 

“Little Qi, what’s going on with you, nya?” Mao Zimiao asked. “You always rush through your meal to not waste time. But today…”

 

Wang Qi glanced at his fried rice. “I’m working on a pattern…”

 

The curious Mao Zimiao noticed his fried rice was a random mess. Wang Zhenqi shouted, “Heavens, wan! So it is true! Obsessing over Dao gets you brain-dead, wan!”

 

In modern cultivation culture, if someone said, ‘I’m thinking,’ all their actions were understandable. No cultivator mocked a deep thinker.

 

The custom was related to Computation Demon Lord Archimedes. Computation Demon Lord was an ancient cultivator that still needed to take pills. But as he refined, he always found himself making patterns with the ashes from who knew how many failed batches. So after Computation Demon Lord became enlightened and accomplished in Dao, he gave up alchemy.

 

A similar tale revolved around the Imperial Luster Sect’s High Venerable Dao’s Instrument Bacon. (Tamon: Francis Bacon)

 

Imperial Luster Sect was a native group from the Cracked Peak Island in the westernmost area. Imperial Luster Sect’s High Venerable sounded like your average rank, but the two quaint terms were tied with another person, glorifying them—the next to earn this title after Bacon was Transcendent Newton. Bacon’s Principles of Applied Dao influenced the cornerstone of modern cultivation, Transcendent’s Arithmetics of Dao.

 

They say that when Bacon toured the Western Sea, he stumbled upon a bright reef, and a math problem came to mind. He solved it with the reef. Then the reef began swimming faster and faster, and Bacon realized that he was facing a Great Ascension dragon turtle with a draconic bloodline. To preserve his formula, Bacon fought three hundred bitter exchanges with the dragon turtle before finally ending it.

 

Modern cultivation had nothing but gratitude to these cultivators that furthered its development. In between were countless others striving to do the same, only to give birth to another trend.

 

Thus, by loving learning, loving questioning, and loving to use your brain, the behavior of following Archimedes’ tradition became accepted, though no less strange.

 

Seeing Wang Qi putting up such an attitude, Mao Zimiao and Wang Zhenqi couldn’t bring themselves to bother him. Zhen Chanzi asked, “Boy, why must you insist on reflecting on problems first thing in the morning?”

 

Wang Qi stared at his fried rice for a few long minutes before shaking his head. As if he rejected it, he didn’t take the traditional enlightened look from a eureka moment, content to stuff himself fully with the now-ignored pattern. “I was struck by inspiration.”

 

Zhen Chanzi asked, “You mean that Store Thoughts Art?”

 

Wang Qi nodded.

 

“Is it useless?”

 

“On the contrary.” Wang Qi chewed his food with gusto, clenching his jaw particularly hard. “I just can’t accept not knowing the principle behind its usefulness.”

 

The Store Thoughts Art outlined a complex flame energy cloud pattern in his soul through visualization to control the soul power and then mobilize the spiritual energy of heaven and earth through the unified soul.

 

After his first shot with it, Wang Qi shortened it by giving up breathing in spiritual energy and refining spiritual power parts—not to mention even ancient cultivation found breathing in spiritual energy to be already slow. Besides, the mystical spiritual power couldn’t hold a candle to modern cultivation’s spiritual power.

 

The true value Wang Qi found in it was its possible wonderful influence on resolve.

 

Maybe the world’s Dao was aligned with psychoanalysis, or maybe not. Whichever the case, meditating on the severely cut-down fire cloud pattern made Wang Qi realize a part of his mind strengthened. He could fully grasp any of his thoughts, aware as each of them was born or faded. He even had a faint sense of their ‘root.’

 

Contemplating the manifold of thoughts, reflecting on the origin.

 

Through the process of uncovering his subconscious, Wang Qi gradually gained control over his negative mental state and slowly removed his inner demons.

 

Most cultivators would be thrilled about such an accomplishment. Not Wang Qi. He was bothered by one question.

 

[What the hell is the principle behind this thing?]

 

[Drawing cures psychosis? There’s nothing scientific about it!]