Medicine Master Disciple’s Cultivation Notes

Chapter 133: The Illusory Realm Trial Ranked Mode

The next day in class, Li Qiuchen sat down and immediately fell asleep.

It wasn't physical exhaustion. It was mental fatigue.

Staying up all night reading several million characters of fiction... no, not fiction, grinding through problems all night. His mind simply couldn't hold up any longer.

Chen Nangsheng had looked the way he looked. Now Li Qiuchen looked the same way.

The condition of the two top students only deepened the anxiety spreading through the rest of the class.

Just how brutal were these illusory realm trials? If even the top two couldn't hold up, what hope was there for the rest of them?

Li Qiuchen slept straight through to midday. He had barely dragged himself upright and was preparing to go eat when Zeng Mingming shoved his way to the front and asked, "Hey, what's the deal with this illusory realm trial business? Give me the rundown."

When Zeng Mingming wasn't lost in cultivation novels with his head full of delusions of grandeur, he was actually quite an energetic and personable individual.

Chen Nangsheng was like a merciless study machine, keeping his head down every day and having nothing to do with anyone. Li Qiuchen, by contrast, carried himself with enough ease that he could chat comfortably with just about anybody, and had a decent rapport with Zeng Mingming, occasionally borrowing novels from him.

So Zeng Mingming would sooner come to Li Qiuchen than to Chen Nangsheng, whom he found too standoffish.Everyone else was too embarrassed to ask directly, since Master Qin had repeated his warnings again and again about not disclosing information. But Zeng Mingming had never known the meaning of embarrassment.

The moment he opened his mouth, every pair of ears in the vicinity pricked up.

Li Qiuchen smiled and said, "It's pretty interesting."

"Interesting?"

Zeng Mingming stared blankly. "What do you mean, interesting?"

"You'll definitely pass."

"I'll definitely pass?"

Zeng Mingming looked almost afraid to believe it. "Holy hell, I didn't even know I was that capable..."

Li Qiuchen nodded and smiled. He had already made himself perfectly clear. Whether Zeng Mingming could read between the lines was his own problem.

Zeng Mingming had no interest in reading between lines. His personal dictionary didn't contain the concept.

"I heard you have to draw a slip. Which one did you get?"

"Yellow Fox Maiden."

"Then I want that one too!"

As though you could just pick whichever one you wanted.

Li Qiuchen, who had already foreseen the scene of Master Qin spinning Zeng Mingming around like a top with his cane, could only respond with a smile.

It wasn't just Zeng Mingming who was curious. Tang Xiaoxue and Hu Caiyi were curious too.

With those two, there was nothing he needed to hide.

Back at home, Li Qiuchen laid out the rewards he had received from the illusory realm trial.

First, the book collection copy, which happened to be the first book from the left on the top shelf.

Records of the Peach Blossom Spring, Volume One.

Then the Soul-Summoning Lantern, and the wayfaring copper coin.

"There are rewards after clearing a trial, and the higher your rating the more you receive."

"Wonderful!"

Hu Caiyi picked up the lantern and turned it over in her hands. "How does this one work? Can you fling it out and whoosh?"

"Let me explain what the illusory realm trials actually are first."

Li Qiuchen said with a serious expression, "I've talked about this before, but my understanding was incomplete at the time, so the explanation wasn't thorough. Now I can give you a proper rundown."

Tang Xiaoxue looked puzzled. "Didn't you say the contents couldn't be disclosed?"

"Only the contents inside the trial. The context outside of it isn't something the master would explain to you either. That part you're meant to work out for yourselves."

Li Qiuchen said earnestly, "The primary purpose of the illusory realm trials is to train your state of mind. Simply put, a cultivator needs a powerful and steady inner foundation, one that won't be rattled no matter what happens."

Hu Caiyi stared at the ceiling.

I get the feeling someone is directing that at me specifically.

"The first thing is to stay lucid. You have to distinguish between the illusion and reality, and not let yourself become too deeply absorbed in the illusory world. The second is to stay calm. All manner of people and events will unfold within the illusion in ways you won't expect. Don't forget why you're there. You're there to temper your character. Other people's joys and sorrows, their grudges and grievances, have nothing to do with you."

"And lastly, be bold but careful. The illusory realm will deliberately conceal certain plot threads or items, usually to supplement and flesh out the story it's telling. Find that hidden information, and your overall rating will improve."

"But bear in mind that ratings aren't actually the important thing, at least not for where you two are right now. Clear the trial first, and worry about the rest afterward."

Coming from Li Qiuchen's mouth, that may have sounded slightly hollow.

But the two of them were genuinely not the sort of once-in-a-generation prodigies who could afford to aim for more.

They had talent and potential, just not fully realized yet.

Knowing one's own limits was a virtue.

Match the bowl to the size of your appetite.

Fortunately neither of them was the type who burned with the need to outshine everyone, which made it easier to offer this kind of honest advice.

As it turned out, the Dao Heart was not something just anyone could cultivate.

A student of Li Qiuchen's caliber came out of the illusory realm at worst looking drained and listless.

Students further down the rankings came out in a complete state of panic, stumbling over themselves to get away.

Each one worse than the last.

There was no helping it. Young people of this world hadn't grown up with the endless flood of film and television produced by the internet era, and encountering this kind of virtual illusion for the first time, it was genuinely difficult to keep a grip on yourself.

What surprised everyone was that Zeng Mingming, whose academic standing sat somewhere in the lower-middle of the cohort, actually cleared the trial successfully.

He came back and threw his arm around Li Qiuchen's shoulder with a booming laugh. "You were completely right! That was great! I'm telling you, that's exactly the kind of thing I love! When does the next round start?"

Well. In terms of character and composure, this particular person was, in a certain sense, utterly unbreakable.

No one could talk a truly immovable stubborn streak into doubting itself. Not even a ghost.

That was probably the real reason Master Qin kept caning him without ever actually expelling him.

The first round of illusory realm trials took nearly half a month to complete. During that same period, news arrived from the upper years that Yang Wenping had successfully cleared the second-grade illusory realm trial and claimed the first second-grade first-class rating.

A person really did carry themselves differently once they sat in the top seat.

Around the same time, Li Qiuchen's own results arrived with the final consolidated rankings.

First place, Li Qiuchen, First Class Mid.

Second place, Chen Nangsheng, Second Class Upper.

...

So I'm first now?

Li Qiuchen looked at his name on the rankings and reflexively touched his own face, struck by a sense of unreality.

Honestly, I barely did anything, right?

I didn't even follow the story properly. I spent the whole night grinding through books.

And that's enough to put me in first place? Were the rest of you really putting in so little effort?

Yes.

The results on this particular rankings board were unusually absurd.

He had already been second before, and now he had simply swapped positions with Chen Nangsheng, which wasn't that remarkable in itself.

The genuinely absurd part was third place.

Zeng Mingming. Second Class Lower.

How on earth had he earned third place?

Not just Li Qiuchen was baffled. Everyone was baffled.

We couldn't even beat Zeng Mingming? Does that make us completely hopeless?

Yes.

Second Class ratings belonged to Chen Nangsheng and Zeng Mingming alone.

Below them, Third Class had ten students, Tang Xiaoxue and Hu Caiyi both among them.

Fourth Class had twenty-one.

And everyone remaining had failed outright.

Liu Huai'an, who had entered the school at the start of term with the third-place finish in the children's examination, had fallen all the way into the ranks of the failures.

Devastating.

The moment the rankings were posted, the entire class sank into an atmosphere of gloom.

Zeng Mingming laughed loudly, walked to the front, tore the rankings sheet right off the wall, and announced he was taking it home to show his father.

Nobody stopped him.

Nobody wanted to look at the thing for another second.

It felt like a verdict. Nothing had been stated outright, but everyone understood in their hearts. The starting line of the cultivation path had already separated the winners from the losers.

Even though Master Qin had repeatedly stressed that first-attempt illusory realm trial results were nothing to worry about, when someone else cleared it and you didn't, what excuse could you possibly make for yourself?

Some students clenched their teeth and resolved to prove themselves in the next round.

But others had already lost their drive entirely.

Immortal cultivation was simply not a path open to everyone.

Even when given the opportunity, not everyone had what it took.

And this was all still within the bounds of a single county.

Li Qiuchen looked at his ranking of over two million on the cleared trial leaderboard and didn't know what to say.

He couldn't work out how those two million plus entries had been calculated. Was it all within the same year? That seemed wildly excessive.

Were there really over two million cheaters like himself being mass-produced every year?

Probably not. Too absurd.

The territory of Great Chu wasn't that vast. The nine provinces of the central plains, plus the four frontier regions, plus tributaries like Yanqiao, came out to three hundred prefectures at the most generous count.

There was no setting here involving a million li of wilderness with a Great Qi or Great Qin sitting on the other side.

No such records appeared in the histories at any rate, and if they did exist, the Emperor would have marched over and conquered them long ago.

But there were Hollow Heavens.

A Hollow Heaven was an independent realm attached to the real world, varying in size.

According to historical records, whenever the great northern cold tide descended, Great Chu would open the Hollow Heavens and allow the border population of the north to take refuge in the south. Once the cold tide receded, they would return to their homeland.

This recurring cycle was typically measured in millennia, and had appeared three times in recorded history.

Even so, that still didn't explain why his ranking was over two million. The number was alarming.

Li Qiuchen hadn't yet resolved this question when Master Qin summoned him.

Looking at the bamboo slips arranged in the brush holder before him, noticeably different in material from the previous batch, Li Qiuchen asked with genuine curiosity, "Master, how does this round of illusory realms differ from the last?"

"For everyone else, there is no difference. It is only because you achieved a first-class rating that you have the right to draw from the higher-grade illusory realms."

Master Qin explained patiently, "Earning a first-class rating indicates that the most basic grade of illusory realm trial holds no further meaning for you. By the same token, if you earn a first-class rating again in this round, the difficulty will increase once more."

"Three consecutive first-class ratings is what proves your Dao Heart is sufficiently steadfast to cultivate the Elixir Viscera and formally set foot on the path of cultivation."

"What if I fail to earn a first-class rating?"

"Then it indicates your Dao Heart still has deficiencies, and you will need to start again from the beginning."

Master Qin coughed and added in a quieter tone, "The path of cultivation is like rowing upstream. Stop advancing and you fall back. Do not entertain the idea of deliberately holding back your rating to accumulate experience and collect rewards. Every failure inflicts damage on your Dao Heart that is difficult to repair."

Li Qiuchen understood completely. So this was basically a ranked mode, was it?

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