The two worlds were vastly different.
But their classification of Spiritual Roots was surprisingly identical. They were all divided based on a Cultivator's sensitivity to Spiritual Qi into:
Inferior Grade, Low Grade, Middle Grade, High Grade, Earth Spirit Root, and Celestial Spirit Root!
Aside from those with unique constitutions, normal Cultivators all possessed the complete Five Elements.
Therefore, students could practice any of the Five Elements Magic.
Of course, the Cultivation Techniques learned in high school were all for the Qi Refining Realm. The three years of high school corresponded to the early, middle, and late stages of Qi Refining.
The second class was for the Alchemy Department.
The school's main subject, naturally, was Magic.
If you couldn't use Magic, what kind of Cultivator could you call yourself?
In addition, students could choose one major from Pill, Talisman, Array, and Artifact.
This was equivalent to choosing between liberal arts and sciences in a regular high school.
Of course, the Hundred Skills of Cultivation went far beyond these, but Six Continents was just a third-tier city with insufficient teaching staff. Any other courses offered were just for show, for the students' general knowledge.
The students of Class One had all chosen Pill as their secondary subject.
And Chen Che's reason for choosing Alchemy was also very simple:
It had great financial prospects!
"In your first year, you learned about many common Spirit Grasses and their medicinal properties. In your second year, you will try to refine these Spirit Herbs into Pills. In this lesson, we will first familiarize ourselves with some common alchemy equipment..."
"This is a pestle, and this is a Stone Mortar, mostly made of stone. The reason we don't use metal is that some Medicinal Herbs have chemical reactions with metal. Uh... this is chemistry, which you learned in middle school. If you're interested, you can review it. I won't explain it in this class."
"This is a Pill Furnace. Most have three legs, a round body, and a narrow mouth..."
A white-haired, plainly dressed old man stood at the podium, spitting as he spoke animatedly, while the projector behind him changed images in sync with his voice.
Below the podium, some students' pens flew across their paper as they furiously took notes.
Others yawned, drowsy and ready to fall asleep.
Ding Dawei!
The Alchemy Teacher. His lecturing skills were average, he talked a lot of nonsense, and he loved to let class run late.
He finally closed his book half an hour after the bell rang. "There are no shortcuts in Alchemy. Besides comprehension, you also need diligent practice."
Ding Dawei hadn't even left the classroom when figures started leaping out the windows, dashing toward the cafeteria.
High school students were in their growth phase, and Cultivation was physically demanding, so they were already starving.
Chen Che followed the crowd, running to the cafeteria.
The cafeteria offered subsidized Spirit Rice daily. If you were late, it would all be gone, and you'd have to eat regular rice. But Cultivators relied on Spiritual Qi for their Cultivation; consuming too many ordinary grains would only hinder their progress.
Those from well-off families could go to the second floor for medicinal cuisine.
Chen Che shoveled the Spirit Rice into his mouth, unable to stop himself from thinking:
'This is all old rice...'
'The texture isn't great. It's not as good as the Spirit Rice I grow.'
...
The students of Xianmen High School didn't face much academic pressure. Their schedule was from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon, and they could go home right after.
"Let's go online!"
As soon as school was out, students started calling out to their friends.
The girls mostly went shopping or bought snacks in groups of three or five.
"Chen Che, let's go home."
At Lin Yi's call, the two of them headed home together.
As they passed by the backstreet, a shabbily dressed, middle-aged woman stood before a semicircular archway, a cigarette between her fingers as she puffed out smoke. Seeing the two boys, she greeted them enthusiastically:
"Hey, handsome little guys, come in for a cup of tea."
After declining the older woman's enthusiastic invitation, Lin Yi bought a book titled *Sword Immortal Ah Bin* from a bookstall, shoving it into his bag with a beet-red face.
Back home, Chen Che did his homework first.
The homework at Xianmen High School was mostly theoretical.
Of course, there were also extra credit problems to broaden their knowledge, or deduction problems.
For example, the last question in today's *Alchemy Basic Training* was one such problem: List how many different Pills can be refined using thirteen types of Tier One Spirit Grass, including Blue Silver Grass, Deceitful Snake Fruit, Moon White Ginger Flower, and Color-Fixing Leaf, and write down their formulas.
Chen Che himself could only come up with fourteen types. He had to rely on 'All-Encompassing Search' to figure out the remaining two.
After dinner, he reviewed the day's lessons and then immediately went to sleep.
Late at night, eleven o'clock.
An alarm rang, and Chen Che got out of bed. He changed into a set of practical short clothes, picked up a wood-cutting knife, and tucked the nine Sword Pills distributed by the school into his clothes. After sitting silently for half a minute, he opened his eyes again.
...
「Yunzhou, Changshan County.」
While it was the dead of night on Earth Element Star, the sun was already high in the sky in this world.
He pushed the door open, carrying a hoe and a sickle. In the endless fields, smoke curled up from the chimneys of every house. Someone whose meal was ready stood at their door and shouted, their voice carried for miles on the wind, mixed with the crowing of roosters and barking of dogs.
A man heading home to eat saw Chen Che and gave him a slight nod in greeting.
"I told you, he's just a mud-legged peasant who dreams of becoming an Immortal in a single leap. He's not fated for such fortune! He should have died with his dead parents three years ago. Leaving him in this world is just a curse!"
"Going to the fields when the sun's already high in the sky! Those twenty-some mu of paddy fields are completely wasted on him!"
Just then, a string of curses came from under the large locust tree.
"Aunt, believe it or not, I'll tear your mouth off."
Chen Che whipped his head around to look.
A group of women was gathered under the large locust tree at the village entrance, gossiping about this and that.
Seeing Chen Che look over, the women immediately lowered their heads and pretended to be busy. The timid ones had already picked up their stools and left. One woman, in her forties with a mean-looking face, was Chen Che's aunt: Mrs. Fang of the Chen Clan.
She was completely unfazed. "You try it."
Chen Che didn't answer. He just narrowed his eyes, took the wood-cutting knife from his waist, and flung it.
THWACK!
With a dull thud, the knife embedded itself in the locust tree.
Mrs. Fang of the Chen Clan only felt a warmth on her earlobe. She raised her hand to touch it and found it covered in blood.
"Murder!"
Seeing Chen Che walking toward her, she let out a terrified shriek and scrambled into her house, slamming the door with a CLANG. The women who had been secretly watching him moments before turned pale with fright, grabbing their sieves and needlework as they fled in a panic.
Chen Che walked to the tree, pulled out the wood-cutting knife, tucked it back into his waist, and turned to leave.
"He's gone."
A moment later, a woman went up and knocked on the door.
"What's he so smug about!"
CREAK... The door opened, and the mean-faced woman walked out with a cold expression. "If he weren't my nephew, I would've beaten him to death with a flail long ago."
"Auntie, keep your voice down!"
The woman who knocked on the door seemed to be persuading her kindly, but her words were clearly meant to stir up trouble. "Be careful he doesn't hear you! He might set your house on fire and spend three days and nights sharpening his knife at your doorstep!"
Hearing the other women's chatter—"It's just a few mu of his family's land. We're his closest blood relatives, after all. He's being too ruthless!"—Mrs. Fang of the Chen Clan nearly ground her teeth to dust, fuming internally. 'What a pity. If he had just provoked Master Hu yesterday and gotten himself beaten to death, his land would be ours now!'
Arriving at his fields, Chen Che began to harvest the Spirit Valley.
This was his ration for the coming year.
The rules of Jinyun Valley:
Farmers must hand over seventy percent of their Spirit Valley, and are allowed to keep the remaining thirty percent.
However, most farmers sell the remaining thirty percent back to those in the Valley to earn money, either to build a bigger house or send their sons to private tutors. This was precisely why his uncle's family coveted his land so much.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Chen Che lifted a bundle of rice stalks and threshed it forcefully against the side of a wooden tub. The mature grain fell into the bucket. Only after being hulled would it become Spirit Rice.
The primitive methods of planting and harvesting had not changed, despite the presence of Cultivators.
"Brother Che'er, I heard you almost killed your aunt today?"
A shout came from a distance. A half-grown boy wearing a straw hat and riding a water buffalo was approaching. As he spoke, he tossed a pear over:
"You're in the right about the land, so their family has nothing to say. If you had actually struck her today, they would have had a reason to come after you, and even the village elder couldn't help you."
"She's just a sharp-tongued village woman. I was just scaring her to shut her up."
Chen Che caught the pear, wiped it on his clothes, and took a bite, juice bursting from the fruit.
"That's good!"
Just as he said that, a man over seven feet tall, his face weathered by the elements, arrived at the field, brandishing a wood-cutting knife. A large crowd of curious villagers followed behind him.
"You beast! She's your aunt! How dare you draw a knife on her?"
The man cursed the moment he arrived.
"I was just greeting my aunt. My hands were greasy, and the knife slipped. I didn't expect to frighten her, I'm truly sorry. However..."
Chen Che pulled the wood-cutting knife from his waist, brought it down on the threshing tub with a THWACK, and shot a cold glance at him:
"Uncle, did you bring all these people here to kill me and seize my land?"
His uncle, Chen Shan, was taken aback.
To make trouble, you had to have justification. If you did something unjust in the village, people would talk behind your back. He certainly didn't dare to accept such a serious accusation:
"No."
"If not, then leave."
Chen Che lowered his head, grabbed a bundle of rice stalks, and continued threshing the grain.
Chen Shan gripped his wood-cutting knife, the veins on the back of his hand bulging.
He was just a simple villager; he was no match for Chen Che in an argument. He nodded fiercely and stormed off. With his son not around, he wouldn't have the upper hand in a direct fight with Chen Che.
Seeing that nothing was going to happen, the crowd of villagers dispersed.
"Brother Che'er, you're too fierce..."
"If you're not ruthless, you can't survive!"
Chen Che grinned. People always say villagers are simple and honest. That's because they don't hide their kindness, and they don't hide their malice either.
"Chaoyang, do you want to pursue Cultivation?"
"Of course I want to..."
"Chaoyang!"
"Yeah!"
The boy was about to say more when a call echoed from the fields. He answered, then quickly tugged on the reins, riding his ox toward the end of the path. "Dad doesn't let me hang out with you. I'm going to graze the ox. We can talk later when I'm free."
Chen Che said nothing. He poured the grain from the tub into a burlap sack, shouldered it, and left the field.
"That lazybones only worked for an hour before heading back."
"Yeah, if he harvested this Spirit Valley early, he could still plant some soybeans. He really doesn't know how to manage his life..."
The men in the fields greeted him, then started muttering as soon as he turned his back.
Chen Che acted as if he didn't hear a thing.
Back in his house, he poured the grain onto a cooling mat. The harvested grain had to be dried before it could be stored, otherwise it would sprout or grow moldy. This was true even for spirit rice.
He glanced left and right, seeing no one around.
Only then did he sling the wood-cutting knife over his shoulder and stride toward the back mountain.